Worlds of IF (November 1962) (Modified)

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WORLDS OF NOVEMBER 1962 • 35c FICTION ROBERT HEINLEIN’S

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FOR ONLY $3.95 -SAVING YOU $1.65 IF YOU ACCEPT THIS SPECIAL OFFER If you wonder what happened to the “wonder” in your science-fiction stories — it’s in IF! Every issue packed with new, fast tales of tomorrow and space! THE KIND OF SCIENCE FICTION THAT YOU'VE MISSED FOR YEARS IF brings you new stories by old masters, plus the best of today’s new writers— challenging ideas combined with skillful writing and all the adventure and thrills of interstellar space itself! The greatest names in science fiction WRITE FOR IF Del Rey, Clarke, Harmon, Schmitz, Pohl, Davidson, Simak, Bloch,' Keyes, Sturgeon, Galouye, Sharkey, McIntosh, Fyfe; Dickson — they’re all in IF! CLIP COUPON AND MAIL TODAY if 421 Hudson St., New York 14, N. Y. Yes! Send me the next 16 big issues of IF! I enclose $3.95. (Outside of N. and S. America add $1.35 postage.) Name Address Use coupon or order by letter if you wish

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worlds of Vol. 12, Number 5 NOVEMBER 1962 All Stories New science fiction Sol Cohen, Publisher Frederik Pohl, Editor Theodore Sturgeon, Feature Editor SERIAL — First of Three Parts Podkayne of Mars by Robert A , Heinlein 8 NOVELETTES The Desert and the Stars by Keith Laumer 70 The Critique of Impure Reason by Poul Anderson 104 SHORT STORIES The Real Thing by Albert Teichner 60 The Reluctant Immortals by David R, Bunch 66 The Man Who Flew by Charles D, Cunningham, Jr, 89 Too Many Eggs by Kris Neville 101 The Dragon Slayers by Frank Santa 124 SPECIAL FEATURES Most Personal 5 The Popoff by Theodore Sturgeon 98 Hue and Cry by The Readers 129 Cover by Virgil Finlay from Podkayne of Mars Next issue ( January ) on sale November 15th IF published bi-monthly by Digest Productions Corporation, Robert M. Guinn, President, Vol. 12, No. 5, Main Office: 421 Hudson Street, New York" 14, New York. 35c per copy. Subscriptions 12 issues $3.00 in the United States. Canada, Mexico, South and Central America and U. S. possessions, elsewhere $4.00. Second-class postage paid at New York, New York, and at additional mailing offices. Copyright by Digest Productions Corporation, 1962. All rights including translations reserved. All material submitted must be accompanied by self-addressed stamped envelopes. The publisher as- sumes no responsibility for unsolicited material. All stories printed in this magazine are fiction, and any similarity between characters and actual persons is coincidental. Printed in the IT. S. A. by the Guinn Company, Inc., New York 14, N. %

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JP # Editorial MOST PERSONAL Theodore sturgeon, your Feature Editor, de- poses and says: I seize this space for my own and personal asons, writing before the events at the Pick-Congress in Chicago on Labor Day, where the World Science Fiction Con- vention has invited me to be Guest of Honor. Certain of these sentiments will be ex- pressed in my speech, but it is my great desire to unload them now, suffused with an- ticipation. Now I know that the most acceptable public posture is a politician’s mixture of humili- ty with a confident, “well, of course.” There is something mildly obscene about someone who publicly gloats (unless he’s an Asimov, and who can possibly be an Asimov?)... and a^ for humility, it’s usual- BY THEODORE STURGEON ly phoney and necessary. When Earl Kemp called me and told me his Committee had chosen me, I said, “I have waited twenty-three years for this pho^e call.” I repeat that here. I am grateful and I am proud, and I don’t think I am altogether humble. The Good Book says “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” I be- lieve that most people follow this precept. I believe further that most people don’t like themselves very much — which accounts for the rather fright- ening lack of love in the world. Low self-esteem takes a frightening toll. A guy who, at base, thinks little of his personal worth, meets a girl who thinks quite as little of hers. In the springtime of their association, the sap runs strong and warm, and she sud- 5

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dcnly tells him he is a good dancer. He, startled, responds with the statement that she has beautiful eyes. Something happens then, something which is the surrogate of love: it feels like it, tastes and sounds like it. On gift. I was born with it ; I didn’t create it and I didn’t earn it. It’s this gift which is being hc.iored at the Convention, not me, and I honor it too. If this be humility, make the most of it. Before the Convention, I have one more thing to say; and it has to do with science fiction. We’re still trying to define sf, and I guess we always will. The reason that it’s so hard, in these speciali !ng times, to say what sf is about is that it isn’t about anything — it’s about everything. It begins at the most remote horizons of any other form of expression except, possibly, poetry. As such, it is big enough for a talent — a gift — like mine. Sf has been the only place for it, and what I’m most grate- ful for is that sf coexisted with its birth and growth. The Gift knows where it wants to be. It is at home there. END 6 by Theodore Sturgeon

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BY ROBERT A. HEINLEIN ILLUSTRATED BY VIRGIL FINLAY The first Podkayne was a Martian and a saint. The second Podkayne was not — precisely — either one! PODKAYNE OF MARS ALL my life I’ve wanted to go to Earth. Not to live, of course — just to see it. As everybody knows, Terra is a wonderful place to visit but not to live. Not truly suited to human habitation. Personally, V m « not con- vinced that the human race originated on Earth. I mean to say, how much reliance should you place on the evi- dence of a few pounds of old bones plus the opinions of anthropologists who usually contradict each other anyhow when what you are being asked to swallow so obviously flies in the face of all com- mon sense? Think it through. The sur- face acceleration of Terra is 8 clearly too great for the hu- man structure,* it is known to result in flat feet and hernias and heart trouble. The inci- dent solar radiation on Terra will knock down dead an un- protected human in an apnaz- ingly short time — and do you know of any other organism which has to be artificially protected from what is alleged to be its own natural environment in order to stay alive? As to Terran ecology — Never mind. We humans just couldn't have originated on Earth. Nor (I admit) on Mars, for that matter — al- though Mars is certainly as near ideal as you can find in this planetary system today. Possibly the Missing Planet

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was our first' home — even though I think of Mars as “home” and will always want to return to it no matter how far I travel in later years... and I intend to travel a long, long way. But I do want to visit Earth as a starter, not only to see how in the world eight billion people manage to live almost sitting in each others’ laps (less than half of the land area of Terra is even margin- ally habitable) but mostly to PODKAYNE OF MARS see oceans. .. from a safe dis- tance. Oceans are not only fantastically unlikely but to me the very thought of them is terrifying. All that un- imaginable amount of water, unconfined. And so deep that if you fell into it, it would be over your head, incredible! But now we are going there! Perhaps I should introduce us. The Fries Family, I mean. Myself: Podkayne Fries — “Poddy” to my friends, and 9

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we might as well start off be- ing friendly. Adolescent fe- male; I’m eight plus a few months, at a point in my de- velopment described by my Uncle Tom as “frying size and just short of husband high” — a fair enough descrip- tion since a female citizen of Mars may contract plenary marriage without guardian’s waiver on her ninth birthday, and I stand 157 centimeters tall in my bare feet and mass 49 kilograms. “Five feet tWo and eyes of blue” my Daddy calls me, but he is a historian and romantic. But I am not romantic and would not con- sider even a limited marriage on my ninth birthday ; I have other plans. Not that I am opposed to marriage in due time, nor do I expect to have any trouble snagging the male of my choice. In these, memoirs I shall be . frank rather than modest because they will not be published until I am old and famous, and I will cer- tainly revise them before then. In the meantime I am taking the precaution of writ- ing Anglish in Martian Old- script — a combination which I’m sure Daddy could puzzle out, only he wouldn’t do such a thing unless I invited him to. Daddy is a dear and does not snoopervize me. My brother Clark would pry, but he regards Anglish as a dead language and would never bother his head with Qld- script anyhow* VjERHAPS you have seen a * book titled : Eleven Years Old: the Pre-Adolescent Ad- justment Crisis in the Male, I read it, hoping that it would help me to cope with my brother. Clark is just six, but the “Eleven Years” referred to in that title are Terran years because it Was written on Earth. If you will apply the conversion factor of 1.8808 to attain real years, you will see that my brother is exactly eleven of those un- dersized Earth years old. That book did not help me much. It talks about “cushion- ing the transition into the so- cial group” — but there is no present indication that Clark ever intends to join the hu- man race. He is more likely to devise a way to blow up the universe just to hear the bang. Since I am responsible for him much of the time and since he has an I.Q. of 160 while mine is only 145,' you can readily see that I need all the advantage that greater age and maturity can give me. At present my standing rule with him is: Keep your guard up and never offer hostages. Back to me. I’m colonial mongrel in ancestry, but the Swedish part is dominant in my looks, with Polynesian and Asiatic fractions adding no more than a not-unpleasing V I ; . by Robert A. Heinlein

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exotic flavor. My legs *are long for my height,’ my » waist is forty-eight centimeters and my chest is ninety-r-not all of which is rib cage, I assure you, even thqugh we old colo- nial families all run to hyper- trophied lung development; some of it is burgeoning sec- ondary sex characteristic. Be- sides that, my hair is pale blonde and wavy and I’m pret- ty. Not beautiful. Praxiteles would not have given me a second look. But real beauty is likely to scare a man off, or else make him quite unman- ageable, whereas prettiness, properly handled, is an asset. Up till a couple of years ago I used to regret not being male (in view of my ambi- tions), but I at last realized how silly I was being. One might as well wish for wings. As Mother says: “One works with available .materials”... and I found that the materials available were adequate, In ffict I found that I Jike hciflg female. My hormone balance is okay and es- pecially if he is .about twice my age. There are more ways of computing a ballistic than by counting it on your fin- PODKAYNE OF MARS . • / i‘i / 'gers: 1 1 That’s me : Poddy Fries, ' ftee citizen of Mars, female. Future pilot and someday Commander of deep-space ex- ; ploration parties. Watch for ' me in the news. , Mother is twice as good looking as I am and much tall- er than I ever will be; she looks like a Valkyrie about to gallop off into the sky. She holds a system-wide license as a Master Engineer, Heavy 1 Construction, Surface or Free Fall, and is entitled to wear both the Hoover Medal with cluster and the Christania Or- der, Knight Commander, for bossing the rebuilding of Dei- mos and Phobos. But she’s more than just the traditional hairy engineer. She has a so- cial presence which she can switch from warmly charming to frostily intimidating at Will, she holds honorary de- grees galore, and she! ^Ub- lishes popular little gerris SUch ‘&s Design Criteria with Re* ‘ dpect' to the Effects of Radi - 1 at ion on the Bonding of 5 Pressure-Loaded Sandwich Structures. i • » . » IT is because Mother is of- ten away from home for professional reasons that I am, from time to time, the re- luctant custodian of my younger brother. Still, I sup- pose it is good practice, for how can I ever expect to com- mand my own ship if I can’t 11

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tame a six-year-old savage? Mother says that a boss who is forced to part a man’s hair with a wrench has failed at some point, so I try to con- trol our junior nihilist with- out resorting to force. Be- sides, using force on Clark is very chancy. He masses as much as I do, and he fights dirty. It was the job Mother did on Deimos that accounts for Clark and myself. Mother was determined to meet her con- struction dates; and Daddy, on leave from Ares U. with a Guggenheim grant, was even more frantically determined to save every scrap of the an- cient ‘Martian artifacts no matter how much it delayed construction. This threw them into such intimate and bitter conflict that they got married and for a while Mother had babies. Daddy and Mother are Jack Spratt and his wife. He is in- terested in everything that has already happened, she is interested only in what is go- ing to happen, especially if she herself is making it hap- pen. ' Daddy’s title is Van Loon Professor of Terrestrial History, but his real love is Martian history, especially if it happened fifty million years ago. But do not think that Daddy is a cloistered don given only to contemplation and study. When he was even younger than I am now, he 12 lost an arm one chilly night in the attack on the Company Offices during the Revolu- tion— and he can still shoot straight and fast with the hand he has left. The rest of our family is Great Uncle Tom, Daddy’s father’s brother. Uncle Tom is a parasite. So he says. It is true that you don’t see him work much, but he was an old man before I was born. He is a Revolutionary veteran, same as Daddy, and is a Past Grand Commander of the Martian Legion and a S e n a t o r-at- Large of the Republic, but he doesn’t seem to spend much time on either sort of politics, Legion or public. Instead he hangs out at the Elks Club and plays pinochle with other relics of the past. Uncle Tom is really my closest relative, for he isn’t as intense as my parents, nor as busy, and will always take time to talk with me. Furthermore he has a streak of Original Sin which makes him sympathetic to my problems. He says that I have such a streak, too, much wider than his. Concerning this I reserve my opinion. That’s our family and we are all going to Earth. Wups! *1 left out three — the infants. But they hardly count now and it is easy to forget them. When Daddy and Mother got married, the PEG board— Population, Ecology & Genet- ics— pegged them at five and by Robert A. Heinlein

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would have allowed them sev- en had they requested it, for, as you may have gathered, my parents are rather high-grade citizens even among planetary colonials all of whom are de- scended from, or are them- selves, highly selected and drastically screened stock. But Mother told the Board that five was all that she had time for. Then she had us as fast as possible, while fidget- ing at a desk job in the Bu- reau of Planetary Engineer- ing. Then she popped her babies into deep-freeze as fast as she had them, all but me, since I was the first. Clark spent two years at constant entropy, else he would be al- most as old as I am. (Deep- freeze time doesn’t count, of course, and his official birth- day is the day he was decant- ed.) I remember how jealous I was. Mother was just back from conditioning Juno and it didn’t Seem fair to me that she would immediately start raising a baby. Uncle Tom talked me out of that, with a lot of lap sitting, and I am no longer jealous of Clark — merely wary. SO we’ve got Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon in the sub- basement of the creche at Marsopolis, and we’ll uncork and name at least one of them as soon as we get back from Earth. Mother is thinking of revivifying Gamma and Epsi- PODKAYNE OF MARS Ion together and raising them as twins (they’re girls) and then launch Delta, who is a boy, as soon as the girls are housebroken. Daddy says that is not fair, because Delta is entitled to be older than Epsi- lon by natural priority of birth date. Mother says that is mere worship of precedent and that she does wish Daddy would learn to leave his rev- erence for the past on the campus when he comes home in the evening. Daddy says that Mother has no sentimental feelings — and Mother says she certainly hopes not, at least with any problem requiring rational a n a 1 y s i s — and Daddy says let’s be rational, then . . . twin older sisters would either break a boy’s spirit or else spoil him rotten. Mother says that is unsci- entific and unfounded. Daddy says that Mother merely wants to get two chores out of the way at once — w hereupon Mother heartily agrees and demands to know why proved production engineering prin- ciples should not be applied to domestic economy? Daddy doesn’t answer this. Instead he remarks thought- fully that he must admit that two little girls dressed just alike would be kind of cute. . . name them “Margret” and “Marguerite” and call them “Peg” and “Meg”— Clark muttered to me, 13

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“Why uncork them at all? Why not just sneak down some night and open the valves and call it an acci- dent ?" I told him to go wash out his mouth with prussic acid and not let Daddy hear him talk that way. Daddy would have walloped him properly. Daddy, although a historian, is devoted to the latest, most progressive theories of child psychology and applies them by canalizing the cor- tex through pain associ- ation whenever he really wants to ensure that a lesson will not be forgotten. As he puts it so neatly: “Spare the rod and spoil the child/' I canalize most readily and learned very early indeed how to predict and avoid incidents which would result in Dad- dy's applying his theories and his hand. But in Clark's case it is almost necessary to use a club simply to gain his divid- ed attention. So it is now clearly evident that we are going to have twin baby sisters. But it is no head- ache of mine, I am happy to say, for Clark is quite enough maturing trauma for one girl's adolescence. By the time the twins are a current problem I expect to be long gone. Interlude HI, Pod. So you think I can’t read your worm tracks. A lot you know about me! Poddy — oh, excuse me, “Cap- tain" Podkayne Fries, I mean, the famous Space Explorer and Master of Men — Captain Poddy dear, you probably will never read this because it wouldn't occur to you that I not only would break your “code" but also write com- ments in the big, wide mar- gins you leave. Just for the record, Sister dear, I read Old Anglish just as readily as I do System Ortho. Anglish isn't all that hard. I learned it as soon as I found out that a lot of books I wanted to read had never been translated. But it doesn't pay to tell everything you know, or somebody comes along and tells you to stop do- ing whatever it is you are do- ing. Probably your older sis- ter. But imagine calling a straight substitution a “code"! Poddy, if you had ac- tually been able to write Old Martian, it would have taken me quite a lot longer. But you can't. Shucks, even Dad can't write it without stewing over it and he probably knows more about Old Martian than anyone else in the Solar Sys- tem. B,ut you won't crack my code — because I haven't any. Try looking at this page un- der ultra-violet light — a sun lamp, for example. 14 by Robert A. Helnlein

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II H, Unspeakables ! Dirty ears! Hangnails! Snel-frockey ! Spit! WE AREN’T GOING ! At first I thought that my brother Clark had managed one of his more charlatanous machinations of malevolent legerdemain. But fortunately (the only fortunate thing about the whole miserable mess) I soon perceived that it was impossible for him to be in fact guilty no matter what devious subversions roil his id. Unless he has managed to invent and build in secret a time machine, which I mis- doubt he would do if he could . . .nor am I prepared to offer odds that he can’t. Not since the time he rewired the de- livery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks and charge them to my code number without (so far as anyone could ever prove) dis- turbing the company’s seal on the control box. We’ll never know how he did that one, because despite the fact that the company of- fered to Forgive All and pay a cash bonus to boot if only he would please tell them how he managed to beat their un- beatable seal — despite this, Clark just looked blank and would not talk. That left only circumstantial evidence. I.e., it was clearly evident to anyone who knew us both (Daddy and Mother, namely) that I would never order can- dy-stripe ice cream smothered in hollandaise sauce, or — no, I can’t go on; I feel ill. Where- as Clark is widely known to eat anything which does not eat him first. Even this clinching psycho- logical evidence would never have convinced the company's adjuster had not their own records proved that two of these obscene feasts had taken place while I was a house guest of friends in Syrtis Ma- jor, a thousand kilometers away. Never mind. I simply want to warn all girls not to have a Mad Genius for a baby brother. Pick instead a stupid, stolid, slightly subnormal one who will sit quietly in front of the solly box, mouth agape at cowboy classics, and never wonder what makes the pretty images. But I have wandered far from my tragic tale. We aren’t going to have twins. We already have triplets. Gamma, Delta and Epsilon, throughout all my former life mere topics of conversation, are now Grace, Duncan and Elspeth in all too solid flesh — unless Daddy again changes his mind before final regis- tration ; they’ve had three sets of names already. But what’s in a name? — they are here, al- ready in our home with a nur- sery room sealed on to shelter PODKAYNE OF MARS 15

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them... three helpless unfin- ished humans about canal- worm pink in color and no features worthy of the name. Their limbs squirm aimlessly, their eyes don’t track and a faint, queasy odor of sour milk permeates every room even when they are freshly bathed. Appalling sounds come from one end of each — in which they heterodyne each other — and even more appalling conditions prevail at the other ends. (I’ve vet to find all three of them dry at the same time.) AND yet there is something decidedly engaging about the little things. Were it not that they are the proximate cause of my tragedy I could easily grow quite fond of them. I’m sure Duncan is be- ginning to recognize me al- ready. But, if I am beginning to be reconciled to their presence, Mother’s state can only be de- scribed as atavistically mater- nal. Her professional journals pile up unread, she has that soft Madonna look in her eyes and she seems somehow both shorter and wider than she did a week ago. First consequence : she won’t even discuss going to Earth, with or without the triolets. Second consequence: Daddy won’t go if she won’t go — he spoke quite sharply to Clark li for even suggesting it. Third consequence : since they won’t go, we can’t go. Clark and me, I mean. It is conceivably possible that I might have been permitted to travel alone (since Daddy agrees that I am now a “young adult” in maturity and judg- ment even though my ninth birthday lies still some months in the future), but the question is formal and with- out content since I am not considered quite old enough to accept full responsible con- trol of my brother with both my parents some millions of kilometers away (nor am I sure that I would wish to, un- less armed with something at least as convincing as a morn- ing star) and Daddy is so dis- mayingly fair with us that he would not even discuss per- mitting one of us to go and not the other when both of us had been promised the trip. Fairness is a priceless vir- tue in a parent — but just at the moment I could stand be- ing spoiled and favored in- stead. But the above is why I am sure that Clark does not have a time machine concealed in his wardrobe. This incredible contretemps, this idiot’s dream of interlocking mis- haps, is as much to his disad- vantage as it is to mine. How did it happen? Gather ye round. Little did we dream that, when the question of a by Robert A. Hoinlein

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family trip to Earth was be- ing planned in our household more than a month ago, this disaster was already complete and simply waiting the most hideous moment to unveil it- self. The facts are these: the creche at Marsopolis has thou- sands of new-born babies mar- belized at just short of abso- lute zero, waiting in perfect safety until their respective parents are ready for them. It is said, and I believe it, that a direct hit with a nuclear bomb would not hurt the consigned infants. A thousand years lat- er a rescue squad could bur- row down and find that auto- matic, self-maintaining ma- chinery had not permitted the tank temperatures to vary a hundredth of a degree. In consequence, we Marsmen (not “Martians,” please ! — Martians are a non- human race, now almost ex- tinct)— Marsmen tend to mar- ry early, have a full quota of babies quickly, then rear them later, as money and time per- mit. It reconciles that dis- crepancy, so increasingly and glaringly evident ever since the Terran Industrial Revolu- tion, between the best bio- logical age for having chil- dren and the best social age for supporting and rearing them. ; A couple named Breeze did just that, some ten years ago. They married on her ninth birthday and just past his . ' , . . ■ ■ ■ : . • ' PODKAYNE OF WARS I.',!' * . v' f > i ' t tenth, while he was still a pilot cadet and she was at- tending Ares U. They applied for three babies, were pegged accordingly and got them all out of the way while they were both finishing school. Very sensible. The years roll past, he as a pilot and later as master, she as a finance clerk in his ship and later as purser — a happy life. The spacelines like such an arrangement. 'Married cou- ples spacing together mean a taut, happy ship. Captain and Mrs. Breeze serve their ten-and-a-half (twenty Terran) years and put in for half-pay retirement, have it confirmed — and imme- diately radio the creche to un- cork their babies, all three of them. The radio order is received, relayed back for confirma- tion; the creche accepts it. Five weeks later the happy < * . , . • 17

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couple pick up three babies, sign for them and start the second half of a perfect life. So they thought — But what they had deposit- ed was two boys and a girl. What they got was two girls and a boy. Ours. Believe this you must — it took them the better part of a week to notice it. I will readily concede that the dif- ference between a brand-new boy baby and a brand-new girl baby is almost irrelevant. Nev- ertheless there is a difference. Apparently it was a case of too much help. Between a mother, a mother-in-law, a temporary nurse and a helpful neighbor, and much running in and out, it seems unlikely that any one person bathed all three babies as one continuous operation that first week. Cer- tainly Mrs. Breeze had not done so — until the day she did ...and noticed. . .and fainted — and dropped one of our babies in the bath water, where it would have drowned had not her scream fetched both her husband and the neighbor lady. So we suddenly had month- old triplets. The lawyer man from the creche was very vague about how it happened. He obvious- ly did not want to discuss how their “foolproof” identifica- tion system could result in such a mix-up. So I don’t know myself. But it seems logically certain that, for all their serial numbers, babies’ footprints, record machines, et cetera, there is some point in the system where one clerk read aloud “Breeze” from the radioed order and another clerk checked a file, then punched “Fries” into a ma- chine that did the rest. But the fixer man did not say. He was simply achingly anxious to get Mother and Daddy to settle out of court — accept a check and sign a re- lease under which they agreed not to publicize the error. They settled for three years of Mother’s established pro- fessional earning power while the little fixer man gulped and looked relieved. But nobody offered to pay me for the mayhem that had been committed on my life, my hopes and my ambitions. Clark did offer a suggestion that was almost a sensible one, for him. He proposed that we swap even with the Breezes. Let them keep the warm ones, we would keep the cold ones. Ever •/hod" happy — and we all go to Earth. My brother is far too self- centered to realize it, but the Angel of Death brushed him with its wings at that point. Daddy is a truly noble soul. . . but he had had almost more than he could stand. And so have I. I had expect- ed today to be actually on my IS by Robert A. Heinlein

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way to Earth, my first space trip farther than Phobos — which was merely a school field trip, our “Class Honey- moon/' A nothing thing. Instead, guess what I'm do- ing. Do you have any idea how many times a day three babies have to be changed? Ill HOLD it ! Stop the ma- chines! Wipe the tapes! Cancel all bulletins — WE ARE GOING TO EARTH AFTER ALL! Well, not all of us. Daddy and Mother aren't going, and of course the triplets are not. But — Never mind ; I had bet- ter tell it in order. Yesterday things just got to be Too Much. I had changed them in rotation, only to find as I got the third one dry and fresh that number one again needed service. I had been thinking sadly that just about that moment I should have been entering the dining sa- loon of S.S. Wanderlust to the strains of soft music. Perhaps on the arm of one of the of- ficers.. .perhaps even on the arm of the Captain himself had I the chance to arrange an Accidental Happy Encounter, then make judicious use of my “puzzled kitten" expression. And, as I reached that point in my melancholy day dream, it was then that I discovered that my chores had started all over again. I thought of the Augean Stables and suddenly it was just Too Much and my eyes got blurry with tears. Mother came in at that point and I asked if I could please have a couple of hours of recess? She answered, “Why, cer- tainly, dear," and didn't even glance at me. I'm sure that she didn't notice that I was crying. She was already do- ing over, quite unnecessarily, the one that I had just done. She had been tied up on the phone, telling someone firm- ly that, while it was true as reported that she was not leaving Mars, nevertheless she would not now accept an- other commission even as a consultant. No doubt being away from the infants for all of ten minutes had made her uneasy, so she just had to get her hands on one of them. Mother's behavior has been utterly unbelievable. Her cor- tex has tripped out of circuit and her primitive instincts are in full charge. She reminds me of a cat we had when I was a little girl — Miss Polka Dot Ma'am— and her first litter of kittens. Miss Pokie loved and trusted all of us, except about kittens. If we touched one of them, she was uneasy about it. If a kitten was taken out of her box and placed on the floor to be admired, she her- self would hop out, grab the kitten in her teeth and imme- PODKAYNE OF MARS 19

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diately return it to the box, with an indignant waggle to her seat that showed all too plainly what she thought of irresponsible people who didn't know how to handle babies. Mother is just like that now. She accepts my help simply because there is too much for her to do alone. But she doesn't really believe that I can even pick up a baby without close supervision. So I left and followed my own blind instincts, which told me to go look up Uncle Tom. I found him at the Elks Club, which was reasonably certain at that time of day, but I had to wait in the ladies' lounge until he came out of the card room. Which he did in about ten minutes, counting a wad of money as he came. “Sorry to make you wait,” he said, “but I was teaching a fellow citizen about the un- certainties in the laws of chance and I had to stay long enough to collect the tuition. How marches it, Podkayne mavourneen?” I tried to tell him and got all choked up, so he walked me to the park under the city hall and sat me on a bench and bought us both packages of Choklatpops and I ate mine and most of his and watched the stars on the ceiling and told him all about it and felt better. 2Q HE patted my hand. “Cheer up, flicka. Always re- member that when things seem darkest they usually get considerably worse.” He took his phone out of a pocket and made a call. Presently he said, “Never mind the protocol rou- tine, Miss. This is Senator Fries. I want the Director.” Then he added in a moment, “Hymie? Tom Fries here. How’s Judith? Good, good... Hymie, I just called to tell you that I’m coming over to stuff you into one of your own liquid helium tanks. Oh, say about fourteen or a few minutes after. That’ll give you time to get out of town. Clearing.” He pocketed his phone. “Let’s get some lunch. Never commit suicide on an empty stomach, my dear. It’s bad for the digestion.” Uncle Tom took me to the Pioneers Club where I have been only once before and which is even more impressive than I had recalled. It has real waiters... men so old that they might have been pioneers themselves, unless they met the first ship. Everybody fussed over Uncle Tom and he called them all by their first names and they all called him “Tom” but made it sound like “Your Majesty” and the mas- ter of the hostel came over and prepared my sweet him- self with about six other peo- ple standing around to hand him things, like a famous sur- • t by Robert A. Heinlein

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ge on operating against the swift onrush of death. Presently Uncle Tom belched behind his napkin and I thanked everybody as we left, while wishing that I had had the forethought to wear my unsuitable gown that Mother won’t let me wear un- til I’m nine and almost made me take back. One doesn’t get to the Pioneers Club every day. V/e took the James Joyce Fogarty Express Tunnel and Uncle Tom sat down the whole way. So I had to sit, too, although it makes me restless; I prefer to walk in the direction a tunnel is mov- ing and get there a bit soon- er. But Uncle Tom says that he gets plenty of exercise watching other people work themselves to death. I didn’t really realize that we were going to the Marso- polis Creche until we were there, so bemused had I been earlier with my own tumultu- ous emotions. But when we were there and facing a sign reading: OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR — PLEASE USE OTHER DOOR, Uncle Tom said, “Hang around somewhere; I’ll need you lat- er.” and went on in. The waiting room was crowded and the only maga- zines not in use were Kiddie Ka ners and Modern Home- maker, so I wandered around a bit and presently found a corridor that led to the Nurs- ery. The sign on the door said that visiting hours were from 16 to 18.60. Furthermore it was locked, so I moved on and found another door which seemed much more promising. It was marked: POSITIVE- LY NO ADMITTANCE— but it didn’t say “This Means You “ and it wasn’t locked, so I went in. You never saw so many babies in your whole life! Row upon row upon row, each in its own little trans- parent cubicle. I could really see only the row nearest me, all of which seemed to be about the same age — and .much more finished than the three we had at home. Little brown dumplings, they were, cute as puppies. Most of them were asleep, some were awake and kicking and cooing and grab- bing at dangle toys that were just in reach. If there had not been a sheet of glass between me and them I would have grabbed me a double armful of babies. T'HERE were a lot of girls in the room, too— well, young women, really. Each of them seemed to be busy with a baby and they didn’t notice me. But shortly one of the babies nearest me started to cry, whereupon a light came on over its cubicle and one of the nurse girls hurried over. PODKAYNE OF MARS 21

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slid back the cover, picked it up and started patting its bot- tom. It stopped crying. “Wet?” I inquired. She looked up, saw me. “Oh, no, the machines take care of that. Just lonely, so I’m lov- ing it.” Her voice came through clearly in spite of the glass — a hear & speak circuit, no doubt, although the pick- ups were not in evidence. She made soft noises to the baby, then added, “Are you a new employee? You seem to be lost.” “Oh, no,” I said hastily, “I’m not an employee. I just—” “Then you don’t belong here, not at this hour. Un- less— ” she looked at me rather skeptically — “just pos- sibly you are looking for the instruction class for young mothers?” “Oh, no, no! Not yet.” Then I added still more hastily, “I’m a guest of the Director.” Well, it wasn’t a fib. Not quite. I was a guest of a guest of the Director, one who was with him by appointment. The relationship was certainly concatenative, if not equiva- lent. It seemed to reassure her. She asked, “Just what did you want?” “Uh, just information. I’m making a sort of a survey. What goes on in this room?” “These are age six-month withdrawal contracts,” she told me. “All these babies will be going home in a few days.” She put the baby, quiet now, back into its private room, adjusted a nursing nipple for it, made some other sort of ad- justments on the outside of the cubicle so that the pad- ding inside sort of humped up and held the baby steady against the milk supply, then closed the top, moved on a few meters and picked up an- other baby. “Personally,” she added, “I think the age six-months con- tract is the best one. A child twelve months old is old enough to notice the transi- tion. But these aren’t. They don’t care who comes along and pets them when they cry... but nevertheless six months is long enough to get a, baby well started and take the worst of the load off the mother. We know how, we’re used to it, we stand our watches in rotation so that we are never exhausted from be- ing ‘up with the baby all night’... and in consequence we aren’t short tempered and we never yell at them. And don’t think for a minute that a baby doesn’t understand a cross tone of voice simply be- cause he can’t talk yet. He knows! And it can start him off so twisted that he may take it out on somebody else, years and years later. There, there, honey,” she went on but not to me, “feel better now? 22 by Robert A. Heinlein

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Feeling sleepy, huh? Now you just hold still and Martha will keep her hand on you until you are fast asleep.” She watched the baby for a moment longer, then with- drew her hand, closed the box and hurried on to where an- other light was burning. “A baby has no sense of time,” she added as she removed a squalling lump of fury from its crib. “When it needs love, it needs it right now. It can’t know that — ” An older woman had come up behind her. “Yes, Nurse?” “Who is this you’re chat- ting with? You know the rules.” “But... she’s a guest of the Director.” The older woman looked at me with a stern no-nonsense look. “The Director sent you in lyjre?” I was making a split-second choice among three non-re- sponsive answers when I was saved by Fate. A soft voice coming from everywhere at once announced: “Miss Pod- kayne Fries is requested to come to the office of the Director. Miss Podkayne Fries, please come to the of- fice of the Director.” I tilted my nose in the air and said with dignity, “That is I. Nurse, will you be so kind as to phone the Director and tell him that Miss Fries is on her way?” I exited with deliberate haste. THE Director’s office was four times as big and six- teen times as impressive as the principal’s office at school. The Director was short. He had a dark brown skin and a gray goatee and a harried expression. In addi- tion to him and to Uncle Tom, of course, there was present the little lawyer man who had had a bad time with Daddy a week earlier — and my brother Clark. I couldn’t figure out how he got there. . .except that Clark has an infallible homing instinct for trouble. Clark looked at me with no expression ; I nodded. The Director and his legal beagle stood up. Uncle Tom didn’t but he said, “Dr. Hyman Schoenstein, Mr. Poon Kwai Yau — my niece Podkayne Fries. Sit down, honey. No- body is going to bite you. The Director has a proposition to offer you.” The lawyer man interrupt- ed. “I don’t think — ” “Correct,” agreed Uncle Tom. “You don’t think. Or it would have occurred to you that ripples spread out from a splash.” “But— Dr. Schoenstein, the release I obtained from Pro- fessor Fries explicitly binds him to silence, for separate good and sufficient consider* ation, over and above damages conceded by us and made good! This is tantamount to blackmail. I—” PODKAYNE OF MARS 23

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Then Uncle Tom did stand up. He seemed twice as tall as usual and he was grinning like a fright mask. “What was that last word you used?’* “I ?” The lawyer looked startled. “Perhaps I spoke hastily. I simply meant — ” “I heard you,” Uncle Tom growled. “And so did three witnesses. Happens to be one of the words a man can be challenged for, on this still free planet. But, since I'm getting old and fat, I may just sue you for your shirt in- stead. Come along, kids.” The Director spoke quickly. “Tom... sit down, please. Mr. Poon ... please keep quiet un- less I ask for your advice. Now, Tom, you know quite well that you can’t challenge nor sue over a privileged com- munication, counsel to client.” “I can do both or either. Question is: will a court sus- tain me? But 1 can always find out,” “And thereby drag out into the open the very point you know quite well I can’t af- ford to have dragged out. Simply because my lawyer spoke in an excess of zeal. Mr. Poon?” “I tried to withdraw it. I do withdraw it.” “Senator?” Uncle Tom bowed stiffly to Mr. Poon, who returned it. “Accepted, sir. No offense meant and none taken.” Then Uncle Tom grinned merrily, let his pot-belly slide back down out of his chest, and said in his normal voice. “Okay, Hymie, let’s get on with the crime. Your move.” DR. SCHOENSTEIN said carefully, “Young lady, I have just learned that the re- cent disruption of family planning in your home — which we all deeply regret — caused an additional sharp disappointment to you and your brother.” “It certainly did !” I an- swered, rather shrilly I'm afraid. “Yes. As your uncle put it, the ripples spread out. An- other of those ripples could wreck this establishment, make it insolvent as a private business. This is an odd sort of business we are in here, Miss Fries. Superficially we perform a routine engineering function, plus some not tin- usual boarding nursery serv- ices. But in fact what we do touches the most primitive of human emotions. If confi- dence in our integrity, or in the perfection with which we carry out the service entrust- ed to us, were to be shaken — ” He spread his hands helpless- ly. “We couldn’t last out the year. Now I can show you ex- actly how the mishap oc- curred which affected your family, show you how wildly 25 PODKAYNE OF MARS

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unlikely it was to have it hap- pen even under the methods we did use... prove to you how utterly impossible it now is and always will be in the future for such a mistake to take place again, under our new procedures. Neverthe- less— ” he looked helpless again — “if you were to talk, merely tell the simple truth about what did indeed happen once... you could ruin us.” I felt so sorry for him that I was about to blurt out that I wouldn’t even dream of talk- ing ! — even though they had ruined my life — when Clark cut in. “Watch it, Pod ! It’s loaded.” « So I just gave the Director my Sphinx expression and said nothing. Clark’s instinc- tive self-interest is absolutely reliable. Dr. Schoenstein motioned Mr. Poon to keep quiet. “But, my dear lady, I am not asking you not to talk. As your uncle the Senator says, you are not here to blackmail and I have nothing with Which to bar- gain. The Marsopolis Creche Foundation, Limited, always carries out its obligations even when they do not result from formal contract. I asked you to come in here in order to suggest a measure of relief for the damage we. have un- questionably—though unwit- tingly— done you and your brother. .Your uncle tells me 26 that he had intended to travel with you and your family. . . but that now he intends to go via the next Triangle Line de- parture. The Tricorn , I be- lieve it is, about ten days from now. Would you feel less mistreated if we were to pay first class fares for your brother and you — round trip, of course — in the Triangle Line?” Would I! The Wanderlust has, as her sole virtue, the fact that she is indeed ' a spaceship and she was shap- ing for Earth. But she is an old, slow freighter. Whereas the Triangle Liners, as every- one knows, are utter palaces! I could but nod. “Good. It is our privilege and we hope you have a won- derful trip. But, uh, young lady. . .do you think it pos- sible that you could give us some assurance, for no con- sideration and simply out of kindness, that you wouldn’t talk about a certain regret- table mishap?” “Oh? I thought that was part of the deal?” “There is no deal. As your uncle pointed out to me, we owe you this trip, no matter what.” “Why — why, Doctor, I’m going to be so\>usy, so utterly rushed, just to get ready in time, that I won’t have time to talk to anyone about any mishaps that probably weren’t . fey Robert A. Heinlein

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your fault anyhow!” “Thank you.” He turned to Clark. “And you, son?” Clark doesn’t like to be called “son” at best. But I don’t think it affected his an- swer. He ignored the vocative and said coldly, “What about our expenses?” DR. Schoenstein flinched. Uncle Tom guffawed and said, “That’s my boy! Doc, I told you he had the simple ra- pacity of a sand gator. He’ll go far — if somebody doesn’t poison him.” “Any suggestions?” “No trouble. Clark. Look me in the eye. Either you stay behind and we weld you into a barrel and feed you through the bunghole so that you can't talk — while your sister goes anyhow— or you accept these terms. Say a thousand each — no, fifteen hundred — for trav- el expenses, and you keep your snapper’ shut forever about the baby mixup ... or I personally, with the aid of four stout, black-hearted ac- complices, will cut your tongue out and feed it to the cat. A deal?” “I ought to get ten per cent commission on Sis’s fifteen hundred. She didn’t have sense enough to ask for it.” “No cumshaw. I ought to be charging you a commission on the whole transaction. A deal?” “A deal ” Clark agreed. ' 44' 44 | . Uncle Tom stood up. “That does it. Doc. In his own un- appetizing way he is as utter- ly reliable as she is. So relax. You, too, Kwai Yau, you can breathe again. Doc, you can send a check around to me in the morning. Come on, kids.” “Thanks, Tom. If that is the word. I’ll have the check over before you get there. Uh... just one thing—” What, Doc?” Senator, you were here long before I was born, so I don’t know too much about your early life. Just the tra- ditional stories and what it says about you in Who's Who on Mars. Just what were you transported for? You u^ere transported? Weren’t you?” Mr. Poon looked horror- stricken, and I was. But Un- cle Tom didn’t seem offended. He laughed heartily and an- swered, “I was accused of ^freezing babies for prof it.. Rut it ! was a frameupi— J never did no ) such thing nohow. Come on, kids. Let’s get out of this ' ghouls’ nest before they smuggle us down into the sub-basement.” Later that night in bed I was dreamily thinking over the trip. There hadn’t even been the least argument with Mother and Daddy; Uncle Tom had settled it all by 1 phone before we got home; I heard a sound from the nurs- ery, got up and paddled in. It ) . i. ■ \ FODKAYNE OF MARS 27

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was Duncan, the little darling, not even wet but lonely. So I picked him up and cuddled him and he cooed and then he was wet, so I changed him. I decided that he was just as pretty or prettier than all those other babies, even though he was five months younger and his eyes didn’t track. When I put him down again, he was sound asleep; I started back to bed. And stopped — The Triangle Line gets its name from serving the three leading planets, of course, but which direction a ship makes the Mars-Venus-Earth route depends on just where we all are in our orbits. But just where were we? I hurried into the living room and searched for the Daily War Whoop — found it, thank goodness, and fed it into the viewer, flipped to the shipping news. Yes, yes, yes ! I am going not only to Earth — but to Ve- nus as well! Venus ! Do you suppose Mother would let me — no, best iust say nothing now. Un- cle Tom will be more tract- able, after we get there. I’m going to miss Duncan — he’s such a little doll. IV 1 haven’t had time to write in this journal for days . Just getting ready to leave was al- 28 most impossible — and would have been truly impossible had it not been that most preparations — all the special T e r r a n innoculations and photographs and passports and such — were mostly done before Everything Came Un- stuck; But Mother came out of her atavistic daze and was very helpful. She would even let one of the triplets cry for as much as a minute rather than disappear and leave me half pinned up. I don’t know how Clark got ready or whether he had any preparations to make. He con- tinued to creep around silent- ly, answering in grunts if he answered at all. Nor did Uncle Tom seem to find it difficult. I saw him only twice during those frantic ten days (once to borrow baggage mass from his allowance, which he let me have, the dear!) and both times I had to dig him out of the card roornT at the Elks i Club. I asked him how he managed to get readv for so important a trip and still have time to play cards? “Nothing to it,” he an- swered. “I bought a new toothbrush. Is there something else I should have done?” So I hugged him and told him he was an utterly utter beast and he chuckled and mussed my hair. Query: Will I ever become that blase about space travel? I suppose I must if I am to be an astronaut. by Robert A. Heinlefii

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But Daddy says that getting ready s for a trip is half the fun ... so perhaps I don’t want to became that sophisticated. Somehow Mother delivered me, complete with baggage and all the myriad pieces of paper — tickets and medical records and passport and uni- versal identification complex and guardians’ assignment- and-guarantee and three kinds of money and traveler s’ checks and birth record and police certification and se- curity clearance and I don’t remember — all checked off, to the city shuttle port. I was juggling one package of things that simply wouldn’t go into my luggage, and I had one hat on my head and one in my hand. Otherwise every- thing came out even. Good-by at the shuttle port* was most teary and exciting. Not just with Mother and Daddy, which was to be ex- pected (when Daddy put his arm around me tight, I threw both mine around him and for a dreadful second I didn't want to leave at all), but also because about thirty of my classmates showed up (which I hadn’t in the least expect- ed), complete with a banner that two of them were carry- ing reading: BON VOYAGE PODKAYNE I got kissed enough times to start a fair-sized epidemic if any one of them had had any- thing, which apparently they didn’t. I got kissed by boys who had never even tried to, in the past — and I assure you that it is not utterly impossi- ble to kiss me, if the project is approached with confidence and finesse, as I believe that one’s instincts should be al- lowed to develop as well as one’s overt cortical behavior. The corsage Daddy had given me for going away got crushed and I didn’t even no- tice it until we were aboard the shuttle. I suppose it was somewhere about then that I lost that hat, but I’ll never know. I would have lost the last-minute package, too, if Uncle Tom had not rescued it. There were photographers, too, but not for me — for Uncle Tom. Then suddenly we had to scoot aboard the shuttle right now because a shuttle can’t wait. It has to boost on the split second, even though Deimos moves so much more slowly than Phobos. A report- er from the War Whoop was still trying to get a statement out of Uncle Tom about the forthcoming Three-P 1 a n e t s conference but he just pointed at his throat and whispered, “Laryngitis” — then we were aboard just before they sealed the airlock. It must have been the short- est case of laryngitis on rec- ord. Upcle Tom’s voice had PODKAYNE OF MARS 29

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been all right until we got to the shuttle port and it was okay again once we were in the shuttle. ONE shuttle trip is exactly like another, whether to Phobos or Deimos. Still, that first tremendous whoosh ! of acceleration is exciting as it pins you down into your couch with so much weight that you can't breathe, much less move — and free fall is al- ways strange and eerie and rather stomach-fluttering even if one doesn't tend to be nau- seated by it, which, thank you, I don't. Being on Deimos is just like being «in free fall, since nei- ther Deimos nor Phobos has enough surface gravitation for one to feel it. They put suc- tion sandals on us before they unstrapped us so that we could walk, just as they do on Phobos. Nevertheless Deimos is different from Phobos for reasons having nothing to do with natural phenomena. Pho- bos is, of course, legally a part of Mars. There are no formali- ties of any sort about visiting it. All that is required is the fare, a free day and a yen for a picnic in space. But Deimos is a free port, leased in perpetuity to Three- Planets Treaty Authority. A known criminal, with a price on his head in Marsopolis, could change ships there right under the eyes of our own police. We couldn't touch him. Instead, we would have to start most complicated le- gal doings at the Interplane- tary High Court on Luna, practically win the case ahead of time and, besides that, prove that the crime was a crime under Three-P 1 a n e t rules and not just under our own laws. Then all that we could do would be to ask the Authority’s proctors to arrest the man if he was still around — which doesn't seem likely. I knew about this, theoreti- cally, because there had been about a half page on it in our school course Essentials oi Martian Government in the section on “Extraterritorial- ity." But now I had plenty of time to think about it because, as soon as we left the shuttle, we found ourselves locked up in a room misleadingly called the '‘Hospitality Room" while we waited until they were ready to “process" us. One wall of the room was glass. I could see lots and lots of people hurrying around in the concourse beyond, doing all manner of interesting and mysterious things. But all we had to do was to wait beside our baggage and grow bored. I found that I was growing more furious by the minute, not at all like my normally sweet and lovable nature. Why, this place had been built by my own mother! And here I was, caged up in it like 30 by Robert A. Hein lei n

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white mice in a bio lab. (Well, I admit that Mother didn’t exactly build Deimos. The Martians did that, start- ing with a spare asteroid that they happened to have handy. But some millions of years back they grew tired of space travel and devoted all their time to the whichness of what and how to unscrew the in- scrutable— so when Mother took over the job, Deimos was pretty run down ; she had to start in from the ground up and rebuild it completely.) IN any case, it was certain that everything that I could see through that transparent wall was a product of Moth- er’s creative imaginative and hard-headed engineering abil- ity. I began to fume. Clark was off in a corner, talking privately to some stranger. “Stranger” to me, at least. Clark, for all his anti-social disposition, always seems to know somebody, or to know somebody who knows some- body, anywhere we go. I sometimes wonder if he is a member of some vast under- ground secret society; he has such unsavory acquaintances and never brings any of them home. Clark is, however, a very satisfactory person to fume with, because, if he isn’t busy,' he is always willing to help a person hate anything that needs hating. He can even dig up reasons why a situation is even more vilely unfair than you thought it was. But he was busy, so that left Uncle Tom. So I explained to him bitterly how outrageous I thought it was that we should be penned up like animals — free Mars citizens on one of Mars’ own moons ! — simply because a sign read : “Passen- gers must wait until called by order of Three-Planets Treaty Authority.” “Politics!” I said bitterly. “I could run it better myself.” “I’m sure you could,” he agreed gravely, “but, flicka, you don’t understand.” “I understand all too well!” “No, honey bun. You under- stand that there is no good reason why you should not walk straight through that door and enjoy yourself by shopping until it is time to go inboard the Tricorn. And you are right about that, for there is no need at all for you to be locked up in here when you could be out there making some free port shopkeeper happy by paying him a high price which seems to you a low price. So you say, ’Poli- tics !’ as if it were a nasty word — and you think that set- tles it.” i He sighed. “But you don’t understand. Politics is not evil. Politics is the human race’s most magnificent achievement. When politics is good, it’s wonderful. . .and PODKAYNE OF MARS 31

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when politics is bad — well, it's still pretty good/' “I guess I don’t under- stand/’ I 'said slowly. “Think about it. Politics is just a name for the way we get things done. . .without fighting. We dicker and com- promise and everybody thinks he has received a raw deal, but somehow after a tedious amount of talk we come up with some jury-rigged way to do it without getting any- body’s head bashed in. That’s politics. The only other way to settle a dispute is by bash- ing a few heads in. . .and that is what happens when one or both sides is no longer willing to dicker. That’s why I say politics is good even when it is bad. The only alternative is force — and somebody gets hurt.” “Uh. . .it seems to me that’s a funny way for a revolution- ary veteran to talk. From f f* j r \ * 1 * *. , * i ■ ' f r * r . . > - i, ; * * f * 1 * A » 1 • , . i -A. «.,* . • T . ^ . - - what I’ve heard, Uncle Tom, you were one of the blood- thirsty ones who started the shooting. Or so Daddy says.” HE grinned. “Mostly I ducked. If dickering won’t work, then you have to fight. But I think maybe it takes a man who has been shot at to appreciate how much better it is to fumble your way through a political compro- mise rather than have the top of your head blown off.” He frowned and suddenly looked very old. “When to talk and when to fight — That is the most difficult decision to make wisely of all the de- cisions in life.” Then sudden- ly he smiled and the years dropped away. “M a n k i n d didn’t invent fighting; it was here long before we were. But we invented politics. Just think of it, hon. Homo sapiens is the most cruel, the most vi- cious, the most predatory and certainly the most deadly of the time, get along well enough so that we usually don’t kill each other. So don’t let me hear you using ‘poli- tics’ as a swear word again.” wI'm sorry, Uncle Tom,” I Said humbly. *Like fun you are. But if you let that idea soak for twenty or thirty years, you may — Oh, oh! There’s your villain, baby girl. The politi- cally appointed bureaucrat who has most unjustly held 32 by Robert A. Heinlein

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you in durance vile. So scratch his eyes out. Show him how little you think 6f his silly rules.” I answered this with digni- fied silence. It is hard to tell when Uncle Tom is serious. He loves to pull my leg, al- ways hoping that it will come off in his hand. The Three- Planets proctor of whom he was speaking had opened the door to our bull pen and was looking around exactly like a zookeeper inspecting a cage for cleanliness. “Passports !” he called out. “Diplomatic passports first.” He looked us over, spotted Uncle Tom. “Senator?” Uncle Tom shook his head. “I’m a tourist, thanks.” “As you say, sir. Line up, please. Reverse alphabetical order” — which put us near the tail of the line instead of near the head. There followed mad- dening delays, for fully two hours — passports, health clear- ance, outgoing baggage in- spection. Mars Republic does not levy duties on exports, but just the same there is a whole long list of things you can’t export without a license, such as ancient Martian arti- facts (the first explorers did their best to gut the place and some of the most priceless are in the British Museum or the 'Kremlin; I’ve heard Daddy fume about it), some things you can’t export under any circumstances, such as certain narcotics, and some things you can take aboard ship only by surrendering them for safekeeping by the purser, such as guns and other weap- ons. Clark picked outgoing in- spection for some typical ab- normal behavior. They had passed down the line copies of a long list of things we must not have in our baggage. A fascinating list; I hadn’t known that there were so many things that were illegal, immoral or deadly. When the Fries contingent wearily reached the inspection coun- ter, the inspector said, all in one word: “ ‘Nything-t’- d’clare?” He was a Marsman and as he looked up he recog- nized Uncle Tom. “Oh. Howdy, Senator. Honored to have you with us. Well, I guess we needn’t waste time on your baggage. These two young people with you?” “Better search my kit,” Un- cle Tom advised. “I’m smug- gling guns to -an out-planet branch of the Legion. As for the kids, they’re my niece and nephew. But I don’t vouch for them ; they’re both subversive characters. Especially the girl. She was soap-boxing revolution lust now.” The inspector smiled and said, “I guess we can allow you a few guns, Senator. You know how Mo use them. Well, how ab&ut it, kids? Anything to declare?” PODKAYNE OF MARS 33

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I said, ‘‘Nothing to declare/' with icy dignity — when sud- denly Clark spoke up. “Sure!” he piped, his voice cracking. “Two kilos of happy dust! And whose business is it? I paid for it. I'm not go- ing to let it be stolen by a bunch of clerks.” His voice was surly as only he can man- age and the expression on his face simply ached for a slap. THAT did it. The inspector had been just about to glance into one of my bags — a purely formal inspection, I think — when my brattish. brother deliberately stirred things up. At the very word “happy dust” four other in- spectors closed in. Two were Venusmen, to judge by their accents, and the other two might have been from Earth. Of course, happy dust doesn’t matter to us Marsmen. The Martians use it, have al- ways used it, and it is about as important to them as tobacco is to humans, but apparently without any ill effects. What they get out of it I don’t know. Some of the old sand rats among us have picked up the habit from the Martians. But my entire botany class experimented with it under our teacher's supervision and nobody got any thrill out of it and all I got was blocked sinuses that wore off before the day was out. Strictly zero squared. But with the native Veneri- ans it is another matter — when they can get it. It turns them into murderous maniacs. They’ll do anything to get it. The (black market) price on it there is very high indeed ...and possession of it by a human on Venus is at least an automatic life sentence to Sat- urn’s moons. They buzzed around Clark like angry jetta wasps. But they did not find what they were looking for. Short- ly Uncle Tom spoke up and said, “Inspector? May I make a suggestion?” “Eh? Certainly you may. Senator.” “My nephew, I am sorry to say, has caused a disturbance. Why don’t you put him aside — chain him up, I would — and let all these other good people go through?” The inspector blinked. “I think that is an excellent idea.” “And I would appreciate it if you would inspect myself and my niece now. Then we won’t hold up the others.” “Oh, that’s not necessary.” The inspector slapped seals on all of Uncle’s bags, closed the one of mine he had started to open and said, “I don’t need to paw through the young lady’s pretties. But I think we’ll take this smart boy and search him to the skin and X-ray him.” “Do that.” 34 fcy Robert A. Heinlefit

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So Uncle and I went on and checked at four or five other desks — fiscal control and migration and reservations and other nonseivs e — and finally wound up with our baggage at the centrifuge for weighing in. I never did get a chance to shop. ? TO my chagrin, when I stepped off the merry-go- round the record showed that my baggage and myself were nearly three kilos over my al- lowance. That didn’t seem possible. I hadn’t eaten more breakfast than usual — less ac- tually— and I hadn’t drunk any water because, while I do not become ill in free fall, drinking in free fall is very tricky. You are likely to get water up your nose or some- thing and set off an embar- rassing chain reaction. So I was about to protest bitterly that the weightmaster had spun the centrifuge too fast and produced a false mass reading. But it occurred to me that I did not know for surely certain that the scales Mother and I had used were perfectly accurate. So I kept quiet. Uncle Tom just reached for his purse but the weight-mas- ter shook his head. “Forget it, Senator. I'm minus on a cou-- pie of other things; I think I can swallow it. If not, I'll leave a memo with the purser. But I’m fairly sure I can.” “Thank you. What did you PODKAYNE OF MARS say your name was?” “Milo. Miles M. Milo— Aasvogel Lodge number sev- enty-four. Maybe you saw our crack drill team at the Legion convention two years ago. I was left pivot.” “I certainly did, I certainly did !” They exchanged that secret grip that they think other people don't know and Uncle Tom said, “Well, thanks. Miles. Be seeing you.” “Not at all — Tom. No, don't bother with your bag- gage.” Mr. Milo touched a button and called out, “In the Tricorn ! Get somebody out here fast for the Senator’s baggage.” It occurred to me, as we stopped at the passenger tube sealed to the transfer station to swap our suction sandals for little magnet pads that clipped to our shoes, that we need not have waited for any- thing at any time — if only Uncle Tom had been willing to use the special favors he so plainly could demand. But, even so, it pays to trav- el with an important person- even though it's just your Un- cle Tom whose stomach you used to jump up and down on when you were small enough for such things. Our tickets simply read “First Class” — I'm sure, for I saw all three of them — but where we were placed was in what they call the “Owner’s Cabin,” which is actually a suite with three 35

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bedrooms and a living room. I was dazzled ! But I didn't have time to admire it just then. First they strapped our baggage down, then they strapped us down — to seat couches which were against one wall of the living room. That wall plainly should have been the floor, but it slanted up almost verti- cally with respect to the tiny, not-quite-nothing weight that we had. The warning sirens were already sounding when someone dragged Clark in and strapped him to one of the couches. He was looking mussed up but cocky. "Hi, smuggler," Uncle Tom greeted him amiably. "They find it on you?" "Nothing to find." "That’s what I thought. I trust they gave you a rough time.” "Naah !" I wasn’t sure I believed Clark’s answer; I’ve heard that a skin & person search can be made quite annoying indeed, without doing any- thing the least bit illegal, if the proctors are feeling un- friendly. A "rough time" would be good for Clark’s soul, I am sure. But he cer- tainly did not act as if the experience had caused • him any discomfort. I said, "Clark, that was a very foolish re- mark you made ‘to the in- spector. And it wai a lie, as * well. A silly, useless lie." "Sign off,1’ he said curtly. 36 "If I’m smuggling anything, it’s up to them to find it; that’s what they’re 'paid for. ‘Any-thing-t’-d’clare?’ " he added in a mimicking voice. "What nonsense! As if anybody would declare some- thing he was trying to smug- gle." - "Just the same," I went on, "if Daddy had heard you say — ’’ "Podkayne." “Yes, Uncle Tom?" "Table it. We’re about to start. Let’s enjoy it." "But — Yes, Uncle." THERE was a slight drop in pressure, then a sudden surge that would have slid us out of our couches if we had not been strapped — but not a strong one, not at all like that giant whoosh ! with which we had left the surface. It did not last long. Then we were truly in free fall for a few moments. . .then there started a soft, gentle push in the same direction, which kept up. Then the room started very slowly to turn around... al- most unnoticeable except for a slight dizziness it gave one. Gradually, gradually (it took almost twenty minutes) our weight increased, until at last we were back to our prop- er weight. . .at which time the floot*', Which had been all wrong whfen we came in, was where it belonged, unde i us, and almost level.1 Here is whit hkd liappened. The first ‘stidpt boost w&s • * v, i t ' t r. . ' ’ . f . by Robert A. Heinlein .. % f ;■ r t ' =5 t : 5 C • I

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made by the racket tugs of Deimos Port picking up the Tricorn and hurling her out into a free orbit of her own. This doesn't take much, be- cause the attraction between even a big ship like the Tri- corn and a tiny, tiny satellite such as Deimos isn't enough to matter. All that matters is getting the very considerable mass of the ship shoved free. The second gentle shove, the one that kept up and nev- er went away, was the ship’s own main drive — one-tenth of a standard gee. The Tricorn is a constant-boost ship. She doesn’t dilly-dally around with economical orbits and weeks and months in free fall. She goes very fast indeed... because even 0.1 gee adds up awfully fast. But one-tenth gee is not enough to make comfortable passengers who have been used to more. As soon as the Captain had set her on her course, he started to spin her and kept it up until the cen- trifugal force and the boost added up (in vector addition, of course) to exactly the sur- face gravitation of Mars (or 37% of a standard gee) at the locus of the first-class state- rooms. But the floors will not be quite level until we approach Earth, because the inside of the ship had been constructed so that the floors would feel perfectly level when the spin and the boost added up to ex- actly one standard gravity — PODKAYNE OF MARS or Earth-Normal. Maybe this isn't too clear. Well, it wasn't too clear to me, in school. I didn’t see ex- actly how it worked out until (later) I had a chance to see the controls used to put spin on the ship and how the cen- trifugal force was calculated. Just remember that the Tri- con?— and her sisters, the Trice and the Triad and the Triangulum and the Tricolor — are enormous cylinders. The thrust is straight along the main axis. It has to be. Centrifugal force pushes away from the main axis — how else? The two forces add up to make the ship’s “artifi- cial gravity” in passenger country. But, since one force (the boost) is kept constant and the other (the spin) .can be varied, there can be only one rate of spin which will add in with the boost to make those floors perfectly level. For the Tricorn the spin that will produce level floors and exactly one Earth gravi- ty in passenger country is 5.42 revolutions per minute. I know because the Captain told me so... and I checked his arithmetic and he was right. The floor of our cabin is just over thirty meters from the main axis of the ship, so it all comes out even. ) AS soon ,as they had the floor back under us and had announced- Lthe “all clear" I unstrapped me and hurried out. I wanted a quick look at > 37

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the ship; I didn’t even wait to unpack. There’s a fortune awaiting the man who invents a really good deodorizer for a space- ship. That’s the one thing you can’t fail to notice. Oh, they try, I grant them that. The air goes through precipitators each time it is cycled. It is washed, it is per- fumed, a precise fraction of ozone is added and the new oxygen that is put in after the carbon dioxide is distilled out is as pure as a baby’s mind. It has to be, for it is newly released as a by-prod- uct of the photosynthesis of living plants. That air is so pure that it really ought to be voted a medal by the Society for the Suppression of Evil Thoughts. Besides that, a simply amaz- ing amount of the crew’s time is put into cleaning, polish- ing, washing, sterilizing — oh, they try! But nevertheless, even a new, extra-fare luxury liner like the Tricorn simply reeks of human sweat and ancient sin, with undefinable over- tones of organic decay and unfortunate accidents and matters best forgotten. Once I was with Daddy when a Martian tomb was being un- sealed. I found out wlfy xeno- archeologists always' have gas masks handy. But a spaceship smells even worse than that tomb. It does no good to complain to the purser. He’ll listen with professional sympathy and send a crewman around to spray your stateroom with something which (I suspect) merely deadens your nose for a while. But his sympathy is not real, because the poor man simply cannot smell anything wrong himself. He has lived in ships for years; it is lit- erally impossible for him to smell the unmistakable reek of a ship that has been lived in. And, besides, he knows that the air is pure; the ship’s instruments show it. None of the professional spacers can smell it. But the purser and all of them are quite used to having passengers complain about the “unbearable stench” — so they pretend sympathy and go through the motions of correcting the matter. Jtfot that I complained. I was looking forward to hav- ing this ship eating out of my hand, and you don’t accom- plish^ that sort of coup by becoming known first thing as a complainer. But other first-timers did, and I cer- tainly understood why. In fact I began to have a glim- mer of a doubt about my am- bitions to become skipper of an explorer ship. But — Well, in about two days it seemed to me that they had managed to clean up the ship quite a bit, and shortly there- after I stopped thinking about it. I began to understand why the ship’s crew can’t smell the by Robert A. Heinlein 38

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things the passengers com- plain about. Their nervous systems simply cancel out the did familiar stinks — like a cy- bernetic skywatch canceling out and ignoring any object whose predicted orbit has previously been programmed into the machine. But the odor is still there. I suspect that it sinks right into polished metal and can never be removed, short of scrapping the ship and melt- ing it down. Thank goodness the human nervous system is endlessly adaptable. BUT my own nervous sys- tem didn’t seem too adapt- able during that first hasty tour of the Tricorn . It is a good thing that I had not eaten much breakfast and had refrained from drinking any- thing. My stomach did give me a couple of bad moments, but I told it sternly that I was busy. I was very anxious to look over the ship; I sim- ply didn’t have time to cater to the weaknesses to which flesh is heir. Well, the Tricorn is lovely all right — every bit as nice as the travel folders say that she is... except for that dreadful ship’s odor. Her ball room is gorgeous and so big that you can see that the floor curves to match the ship. . .only it is not curved when you walk across it. It is level, too. It is the only room in the ship where they jack up the floor to match perfectly with what- ever spin is on the ship. There is a lounge with a simulated sky of outer space, or it can be switched to blue sky and fleecy clouds. Some old bid- dies were already in there, gabbling. The dining saloon is every bit as fancy, but it seemed hardly big enough — which re- minded me of the warning in the travel brochure about first and second tables, so I rushed back to our cabin to urge Un- cle Tom to make reservations for us quickly before all the best tables were filled. He wasn’t there. I took a quick look in all the rooms and didn’t find him — but I found Clark in my room, just closing one of my bags ! “What are you doing?” I demanded. He jumped and then looked perfectly blank. “I was just looking to see if you had any nausea pills,” he said wood- enly. “Well, don’t dig into my ; i : • > i PODKAYNE OF MARS j r 39

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things! You know better.” I came up and felt his cheek. He wasn’t feverish. “I don’t have any. But I noticed where the surgeon’s office is. If you are feeling ill, I’ll take you straight there and let him dose you.” He pulled away. “Aw, I’m all right — now.” “Clark Fries, you listen to me. If you — ” But he wasn’t listening. He slid past me, ducked into his own room and closed the door; I heard the lock click. I closed the bag he had opened — and noticed some- thing. It was the bag the in- spector had been just about to search when Clark had pulled that silly stunt about “happy dust.” My younger brother never does anything without a rea- son. Never. His reasons often are in- scrutable to others. But, if you just dig deeply enough, you will always find that his mind is never a random- choice machine, doing things pointlessly. It is as logical as a calculator — and about as cold. I now knew why he had made what seemed to be en- tirely unnecessary trouble for himself at outgoing inspec- tion. I knew why I had been un- expectedly three kilos over my allowance on the centri- fuge. The only thing I didn’t know was: What had he 40 smuggled aboard in my bag- gage? And why? Interlude WELL, Pod, I’m glad to see that you’ve resumed keeping your diary. Not only do I find your girlish view- points entertaining but also you sometimes (not often) provide me with useful bits of information. If I can do anything for you in return, do let me know. Perhaps you would like help in straightening out your grammar? Those incom- plete sentences you are so fond of indicate incomplete thinking. You know that, don’t you? For example, let us consid- er a purely hypothetical case: a delivery robot with an un- beatable seal. Since the seal is in fact unbeatable, think- ing about the seal simply leads to frustration. But a complete analysis of the situ- ation leads one to the obvious fact that any cubical or quasi- cubical object has six sides, and that the seal applies to only one of these six sides. Pursuing this line of thought one may note that, while the quasi-cube may not be moved without cutting its connections, the floor under it may be lowered as much as forty-eight centimeters — if one has all afternoon in which to work. Were this not a hypothet- by Robert A. Heinlein

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leal case I would now suggest the use of a mirror and light on an extension handle and some around-the-corner tools, plus plenty of patience. That’s what you lack. Pod . — patience, I hope this may shed some , light on the matter of the hypothetical happy dust. Do . feel free to come to me with your little problems, } • } V CLARK kept his stateroom door locked all the time the first three days we were in * the Tricorn : I know, be- cause I tried it every time he left the suite. Then on the fourth day he failed to lock it at a time when ft was predictable that he would be gone at least an houTj as he had signed up for a tour of ’ the ship — the parts 'passengers ordinarily are not ’ allowed in, I mean. I didn’t mind missmg: ft myse’lf^ forvby then T had worked1 ofct my own- private 4 special” escort service. Nor did* I have to worry about * Uncle > T om. •He wasn't' making the tour, it would have violated his no- exercise rule, but he had ac- quired new pinochle cronies and he was safely in the smoking room. Those stateroom door locks are not impossible to pick. Not for a girl equipped with a nail file, some bits of this and that, and free run of the purser's office— me, I mean. But' I found I did not have to pick the lock. The catch had not quite caught. I breathed the conventional sigh of relief, I figured that the happy accident put me at least twenty minutes ahead of schedule. I shan’t detail the search, but I flatter myself that the Criminal Investigation Bu- reau could not have done it more logically nor more quickly if limited, as I was, to bare hands and no equipment. It had to be something foi> bidden by that list they had given us on Deimos — and I had carefully kept and studied my copy. It had to mass slightly over three kilos. It had to bulk so large and be sufficiently fixed in its shape and dimensions , that , Clark was forced to hide it in bag- gage. Otherwise I am sure, he would have concealed it on his person and coidly depend- ed. on his youth and '*inho- .^ence,” plus the chaperonage of Uncle Toni, to breeze him :#r '}• •• • r * I » . t through the outgoing inspec- tion. Otherwise he would nev- er have taken the calculated risk of hiding it in my bag- gage, since he couldn’t be sure of recovering it without my knowing. - Could he have predicted that I would at once go sight- seeing; without waiting to un- pack? Well, perhaps he could, even though I had done so on the spur of the moment. I must reluctantly admit that Clark: carx outguess me with A 1 PODKAYNE OF ftJARS

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maddening regularity. As an opponent, he is never to be underrated. But still it was for him a “calculated risk,” albeit a small one. Very well. Largish, rather massy, forbidden. But I didn’t know what it looked like and I had to assume that anything which met the first two re- quirements might be dis- guised to appear innocent. And so to work— Ten minutes later I knew that it had to be in one of his three bags, which I had left to the last on purpose as the least likely spots. A stateroom aboard ship has many cover plates, access holes, removable fixtures, and the like, but I had done a careful practice run in my own room; I knew which ones were worth open- ing, which ones could not be opened without power tools, which ones could not be opened without leaving un- mistakable sighs of tamper- ing. I checked these all in great haste, then congratulat- ed Clark on having the good sense not to use such obvious hiding places. THEN I checked everything readily accessible — out in the open, in his wardrobe, etc. —using the classic “Purloined Letter” technique, i.e., J never assumed that a book was a book simply because it looked like a book, nor t;haf a jacket was simply that and nothing more. Null, negative, nothing. Re- 42 luctantly, I tackled his three pieces of luggage, first noting carefully exactly how they were stacked and in what or- der. The first was empty. Oh, the linings could have been tampered with, but the bag was no heavier than it should have been and any false pocket in the linings could not have held anything large enough to meet the specifica- tions. The second bag was the same. And the bag on the bot- tom seemed to be the same. . . until I found an envelope in a pocket of rt. Oh, nothing nearly massy enough, nor gross enough; just an ordi- nary envelope for a letter — but nevertheless I glanced at it. And was immediately in- dignant! It had printed on it: M iss Podkayne Fries Passenger, S.S. Tricorn , For -delivery in ship Why, the little wretch! He had been intercepting my . mail ! With' fingers trembling with rage so badly that I could hardly do so I opened it — and discovered that it had already been opened and was angrier than ever. But, at least, the note was still inside. Shaking, I pulled it out and read it. Just six words— Hi, Pod. Snooping again , I * see. — in Clark’s handwriting, by Robert A. Hein loin

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I stood there, frozen, for a long moment, 'While I blushed scarlet and chewed the bitter realization that I had been hoaxed to perfection— again. There are only three people in the world who can make me feel stupid — and Clark is two of them. I heard a throat-clearing sound behind me and whirled around. Lounging in the open doorway (I had left it closed) was my brother. He smiled at me and said, "Hello, Sis. Looking for something? Need any help?" I didn’t waste time pretend- ing that I didn’t have jam all over my face ; I simply said, "Clark Fries, what did you smuggle into this ship in my baggage?" He looked blank — a look of malignant idiocy which has been known to drive well- balanced teachers to their therapists. "What in the world are you talking about, Pod?” "You know what Tifi talk- ing about! Smuggling!" "Oh!" His face lit up in a sunny smile, "You mean tliosi two kilograms of happy dust. Goodness, Sis, is that still worrying you? There never were any two kilos of happy dust. I was just having my little joke with that stuffy in- spector. I thought you knew that." "I do not mean any ‘two kilos of happy dust’! I am talking about at least three PODKAYNE OF MARS kilos of something else that you hid in my baggage!" He looked worried* "Pod, do you feel well?" "Ooooooh —dandruff ! Clark Fries, you stop that! You know what I mean! When I was centrifuged, my bags and I weighed three kilos over my allowance. Well?" He looked at me thought- fully, sympathetically. "It has seemed to me that you were getting a bit fat — but I didn’t want to mention it. I thought it was all this rich food you've been tucking away here in the ship. You really ought to watch that sort of thing, Pod. After all, if a girl lets her figure go to pieces — Well, she doesn’t have much else. So I hear." Had that envelope been a blunt instrument I would have blunted him. I heard a low growling sound, and realized that I was making it. So I stopped. "Where’s the letter that was in this en- velope?" 5 , • _ » ’’ •' Clark looked , surprised. "Why, it’s right there, in your other hand." "This? This is all there was? No letter from some- body else?" "Why, just that note from me, Sis. Didn’t you like it? I thought that it just suited the occasion... I knew you would find it your very first chance." He smiled. "Next time you (\vant to paw through my things, let 1 me know and I’ll help. Sometimes I have 43

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experiments running. You might get hurt. That can hap- pen to people who aren’t very bright and don’t look before they leap. I wouldn’t want that to happen to you , Sis.” I didn’t bandy any more words. I brushed past him and went to my own room and locked the door and bawled. Then I got up and did very careful things to my face. I know when Vm licked; I don’t have to have a full set of working drawings. I re- solved never to mention the matter to Clark again. But what was I to do? Go to. the Captain? I already knew the Captain pretty well ; his imagination extended as far as the next ballistic pre- diction and. no further. Tell * . > » him that my brother had been smuggling something, I didn’t hnqw what — and that he had better search, the entire ship most carefully, because, what- ever it was, it was not in my brother’s, ropm? Don’t be txiple silly,. : Poddy.. In. .the first place, he would laugh at you; in the second place, you don’t want 'Clark to be caught. Mother and Daddy wouldn’t like it. t Tell Uncle Tom about it? He might be just as unbeliev- ing. . .or, if he did believe me, he might go to the Captain himself — with just as1 disas- trous results. J V>' .( . I decided not tp. go to Un- cle Tom— at least not yet. In- stead I wouldy\keej4' rtiy eyes and ears open and’ try to find a workable answer myself. • . • ( IN any case I did not waste much time on Clark’s sins (if any, I had to admit in bare honesty). I was in my first real space ship— half way to my ambition thereby— a n d there was much to learn and do. i Those travel brochures, are honest enough, I guess, but they do not give you the full picture. , For example, take this bit right out of the text of the Triangle Line’s fancy folder: “Romantic days in ancient Marsopolis, the city older than time; exotic nights un- der the hurtling moons of , Mars.” * • r Let’s rephrase it into ey^ry- ; day language, shall \ Mar- sopolis is my home, town and I love it — but it is v as. roman- tic as bread . and butter with no-tjam. The parts people live in are new and were designed for function, not fomapc^e.iAs for , ,t}je, . ruins outside , town t(wly£h * ,tl^e , .Martians ,pever arsopolis”),, a lot of > ■ high foreheads i n c 1 u d i, p g > IJ)addy have seen to it .thijat the best parts are locked off, so that tourists will not carve their initials in something that was old when stone axes were the latest thing in su- per-weapons. Furthermore, Martian ruins are Peit’her beautiful, nor ■ picturesque, nor impressive to human fcyes. The way to appreciate them is to read a really good bbok by Robert A. Hbfniein 44

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with illustrations, diagrams, and simple explanations — such as Daddy’s Other Paths Than Ours . (Adv.) As for those exotic nights, anybody who is outdoors af- ter sundown on Mars other than through sheer necessity needs to have his head exam- ined. It’s chilly out there. I’ve seen Deimos and Phobos at night exactly twice, each time through no fault of my own. And I was so busy keep- ing from/ freezing to death that I wasted no thought on “hurtling moons.” That advertising brochure is just as meticulously ac- curate— and just as deceptive in effect — concerning the ships themselves. Oh, the Tri- corn is a palace; I’ll vouch for that. It really is a miracle of engineering that anything so huge, so luxurious, so fan- tastically adapted to the health and comfort of human beings, should be able to “hurtle” (pardon the word) through space. But take those pictures — You know the ones I mean : Full color & depth, showing groups of handsome young people of both sexes chatting or playing games in the lounge, dancing gaily in the ballroom— or views of a “typical stateroom.” That “typical stateroom” is not a fake. No, it has simply been photographed from an angle and with a lens that makes it look at least twice as big as it is. As for those handsome, gay, young people — well, they aren’t along on the trip I’m making. It’s my guess that they are profes- sional models. In the Tricorn this trip the young and handsome passen- gers like those in the pictures can be counted on the thumbs of one hand. The typical pas- senger we have with us is a great grandmother, Terran citizenship, widowed, wealthy, making her first trip into space— and probably her last, for she is not sure she likes it. Honest, I’m not exaggerat- ing. Our passengers look like refugees from a geriatrics clinic. I am not scoffing at old age. I understand that it is a condition I will one day attain myself, if I go on breathing in and out enough times — say about 900,000,000 more times, not counting heavy exercise. Old age can be a charming condition, as witness Uncle Tom. But old age is not an accomplishment. It is just something that hap- pens to you despite yourself, like falling downstairs. And I must say that I am getting a wee bit tired of hav- ing youth treated as a pun- ishable offense. OUR typical male passenger is the same sort, only not nearly so numerous. He dif- fers from his wife primarily in that, instead of looking down his nose at me, he is sometimes inclined to pat me in a “fatherly” way that I do PODKAYNE OF MARS 45

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not find fatherly, don’t like, avoid if humanly possible — and which nevertheless gets me talked about. I suppose I should not have been surprised to find the Tricorn a super-deluxe old folks’ home, but (I may as well admit it) my experience is still limited and I was not aware of some of the econom- ic facts of life. The Tricorn is expensive. It is very expensive. Clark and I would not be in it at all if Uncle Tom had not twisted Dr. Schoenstein’s arm in our behalf. Oh, I suppose Uncle Tom can afford it, but, by age group though not by temperament, he fits the de- fined category. But Daddy and Mother had intended to take us in the Wanderlust , a low-fare, economy-orbit freighter. Daddy and Mother are not poor, but they are not rich. After they finish rais- ing and educating five chil- dren it is unlikely that they will ever be rich. Who can afford to travel in luxury liners? Ans. : Rich old widows, wealthy retired cou- ples, high-priced executives whose time is so valuable that their corporations gladly send them by the fastest ships — and an occasional rare excep- tion of some other sort. Clark and I are such excep- tions. We have one o,ther ex- ception in the ship, Miss — well. I’ll call her Miss Girdle FitzSnugglie, because if I used her right name and per- 46 chance anybody ever sees this, it would be all too easily recognizable. I think Girdie is a good sort, I don’t care what the gossips in this ship say. She doesn’t act jealous of me even though it appears that the younger officers in the ship were all her personal property until I boarded — all the trip out from Earth, I mean. I’ve cut into her monop- oly quite a bit, but she isn’t catty to me. She treats me warmly woman-to-woman, and I’ve learned quite a lot about Life and Men from her. . . more than Mother ever taught me. (It is just possible that Mother is slightly naive on subjects that Girdie knows best. A woman who tackles engineering and undertakes to beat men at their own game might have had a fairly limit- ed social life, wouldn’t you think? I must study this seri- ously... because it seems pos- sible that much the same might happen to a female space pilot and it is no part of my Master Plan to become a soured old maid.) Girdie is about twice my age, which makes her awfully young in this company. Nev- ertheless it may be that I cause her to look just a bit wrinkled around the eyes. Contrariwise, my somewhat unfinished look may make her more mature contours appear even more Helen-of-Troyish. As may be, it is certain that my presence has relieved the by Robert A. Heinlein

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pressure on her by giving the gossips two targets instead of one. And gossip they do. I heard one of them say about her: “She’s been in more laps than a napkin!’’ If so, I hope she had fun. Those gay ship's dances in the mammoth ballroom! Like this: they happen every Tues- day and Saturday night, when the ship is spacing. The music starts at 20 :30 and the Ladies’ Society for Moral Rectitude is seated around the edge of the floor, as if for a wake. Uncle Tom is there, as a con- cession to me, and very proudsome and distinguished he looks in evening formal. I am there in a party dress which is not quite as girlish as it was when Mother helped me pick it out, in consequence of some very careful retailor- ing I ha V6 done with my door locked. Even Clark attends because there is nothing else going on and he‘s afraid he might miss something — and looking so nice I’m proud of him, because he has ‘to climb into his own monkey suit or he can’t come to the ball. Over by the punch bowl are half a dozen of the ship’s junior officers, dressed in mess jacket uniforms and looking faintly uncomfort- able. THE Captain, by some process known only to him, selects one of the widows and asks her to dance. Two husbands dance with their wives. Uncle Tom offers me his arm and leads me to the floor. Two or three of the junior officers follow the Captain’s example. Clark takes advantage of the breath- less excitement to raid the punch bowl. But nobody asks Girdie to dance. This is no accident. The Captain has given the Word (I have this intelligence with utter certainty through My Spies) that no ship’s officer shall dance with Miss Fitz- Snugglie until he has danced at least two dances with oth- er partners — and I am not an “other partner,’’ because the proscription, since leaving Mars, has been extended to me. This should be proof to anyone that a captain of a ship is in sober fact the Last of the Absolute Monarchs. There are now six or seven couples on the floor and the fun is at its riotous height. The floor will never again be so crowded. Nevertheless nine-tenths of the chairs are still occupied and you could ride a bicycle around the floor without endangering the dancers. The spectators look as if they were knitting at the tumbrils. The proper fin- ishing touch would be a guil- lotine in the empty space in the middle of the floor. The music stops. Uncle Tom takes me back to my chair, then asks Girdie to dance — since he is a Cash PODKAYNE OF MARS 47

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Customer, the Captain has not attempted to make him toe the mark. But I am still out of bounds, so I walk over to the punch bowl, take a cup out of Clark’s hands, finish it, and say, “Come on, Clark. I’ll let you practice on me.” “Aw, it’s a waltz !” (Or a “flea hop/’ or a “chasse,” or “five step” — but whatever it is, it is just too utterly im- possible.) “Do it — or I'll tell Madame Grew that you want to dance with her, only you’re too shy to ask her.” “You do and I’ll trip her! I’ll stumble and trip her.” However, Clark is weaken- ing, so I move in fast. “Look, Bub, you either take me out there and walk on my feet for a while — or I’ll see to it that Girdie doesn’t dance with you at all.” That does it. Clark is in the throes of his first case of puppy love, and Girdie is such a gent that she treats him as an equal and accepts his attentions with warm courtesy. So Clark dances with me. Actually he is quite a good dancer and I have to lead him only a tiny bit. He likes to d a n c e — but he wouldn’t want anyone, espe- cially me, to think that he likes to dance with his sister. We don’t look too badly matched, since I . am short. In the meantime Girdie 1 is, look- ing very gfood indeed with Uncle Tom, which is quite an accomplishment/ as Uncle -* > 48 Tom dances with great enthu- siasm and no rhythm. But Girdie can follow anyone. If her partner broke his leg, she would fracture her own at the same spot. But the crowd is thinning out now; husbands that danced the first dance are too tired for the second and no one has replaced them. Oh, we have gay times in the interplanetary luxury lin- er Tricorn! Truthfully we do have gay times. Starting with the third dance Girdie and I have our pick of the ship’s officers, most of whom are good dancers, or at least have had plenty of practice. About twenty-two o’clock the Cap- tain goes to bed and shortly after that the chaperones Start putting away their whetstones and fading, one by one. By midnight there is just Girdie and myself and half a dozen of the younger officers — and the Purser, who has dutifully danced with every woman and now feels that he owes him- self the rest of the night. He is d[uite a good dancer, for an old man. Oh, and there is usually Mrs. Grew, too — but she isn’t one of the chaperones and she is always nice to Girdie. She is a fat old woman, full of sin and chuckles. She doesn’t ex- pect anyone to dance with her but she likes to watch. And the officers who aren’t dancing at the moment like to sit with her; she’s furi. by tadbert A. Helnlein

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About one o’clock Uncle Tom sends Clark to tell me to Come to bed or he’ll lock me out. He wouldn’t, but I do — my feet are tired. Good old Tricorn l i VI THE Captain is slowly in- creasing the spin of the ship to make the fake gravity match the surface gravitation of Venus, which is 84% of one standard gravity or more than twice as much as I have been used to all my life. So, when I am not busy studying astrogation or ship handling, I spend much of my time in the ship’s gymnasium. I want to garden myself for what is coming, for I have no inten- tion of being at a disadvan- tage on. Venus in either strength or, agility. If I can adjust to an ac- celeration of 0.87 gee, the later transition to the full Earth-normal of one gee should be sugar pie with chocolate frosting. So I think. I usually have the gymnasi- um all to myself. Most of the passengers are Earthmen or Venusmen who feel no need to prepare for the heavy gravitation of Venus. Of the dozen-odd Marsmen I am the only one who seems to take seriously the cpming burden. The handful of aliens that gre • aboard the ship with us we never see; $ach ~ "mains in his specially; conditioned state-, room. The ship’s, officers do POp^AYNt QF.^pS.,, . . * • t use the gym. Some of them are quite fanatic about keep- ing fit. But they use it mostly at hours when passengers are not likely to use it. So, on this day (Ceres thir- teenth actually but the Tri- corn uses Earth dates and time, which made it March ninth. I don’t mind the strange dates but the short Earth day is costing me a half-hour’s sleep each night) — on Ceres thirteenth I went/ charging into the gym, so an- gry 1 could spit venom and intending to derive a double benefit by working off my mad (at least to the point where I would not be clapped in irons for assault), and by strengthening my muscles, too. And found Clark inside, dressed in shorts and a massy bar bell. I stopped short and blurted out, “What are you doing here?’’ He grunted, “Weakening my mind.” Well, I had asked for it. There is no ship’s regulation forbidding Clark to use the v gym. His answer made sense to one schooled in his devious logic, which I certainly should be. I changed the sub- ject, tossed aside my robe and started limbering exercises to warm ;up. “How massy?” I asked. “Sixty 'kilos.” * * J ’ * «• ■ > ( t «. | I glancecLat a weight meter i on the wall’ ^ loaded spring scale marked to had in frac- L } f i ' t , • . i

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tions of standard gee. It read “52%.” I did a fast rough in my mind — fifty-two thirty- sevenths of sixty — or unit sum, plus nine hundred over thirty-seven, so add about a ninth, top and bottom for a thousand over forty, to yield twenty-five. . .call it the same as lifting eighty-five kilos back home on Mars. ‘‘Then why are you sweating ?” “I am not sweating !” He put the bar bell down. “Let’s see you lift* it.” “All right.” As he moved I squatted down to raise the bar bell — and changed my mind. NOW, believe me, I work out regularly with ninety kilos at home and I had been checking that weight meter on the wall each day and load- ing that same bar bell to match the weight I use at home, plus a bit extra each day. My objective (hopeless, it is beginning to seem) is eventually to lift as much mass under Venus conditions as I had been accustomed to lifting at home. So I was certain I could lift sixty kilos at 52% of standard gee. But it is a mistake for a girl to beat a male at any test of physical strength . . . even when it's your brother. Most especially when it's your brother, and he has a fiendish disposition and you’ve sud- denly had a glimmering of a way to put his fiendish pro- 50 clivities to work. As I have said, if you’re in a mood to hate something or somebody, Clark is the perfect partner. So I grunted and strained, making a good show, got it up to my chest, started it on up — and squeaked, “Help me!” Clark gave a one-handed push at the center of the bar and we got it all the way up. Then I said, “Catch for me,” through clenched teeth, and he eased it down. I sighed. “Gee, Clark, you must be get- ting awful strong.” “Doing all right.” It works. Clark was now as mellow as his nature permits. I suggested companion tum- bling... if he didn’t mind be- ing the bottom half of the team? — because I wasn’t sure I could hold him, not at point- five-two gee. . .did he mind? He didn’t mind at all; it gave him another chance to be muscular and masculine — and I was certain he could lift me; I massed eleven kilos less than the bar bell he had just been lifting. When he was smaller, we used to do quite a bit of it, with me lift- ing him. It was a way to keep him quiet when. I was in charge of him. Now that he is as big as I am (and strong- er, I fear), we still tumble a little, but taking turns at the ground and air parts — back home, I mean. But with my weight almost half again what it ought to be I didn’t risk any fancy capers. Presently, when he had me in by Robert A. Heinlein

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a simple handstand over his head, I broached the subject on my mind. “Clark, is Mrs. Royer any special friend of yours ?” “Her?” He snorted and add- ed a rude noise. “Why?” “I just wondered. She — Mmm, perhaps I shouldn't re- peat it.” He said, “Look, Pod, you want me to leave you stand- ing on the ceiling?” “Don't you dare!” “Then don't start to say something and not finish it.” “All right. But steady while I swing my feet down to your shoulders.” He let me do so, then I hopped down to the floor. The worst part about high acceleration is not how much you weigh, though that is bad enough, but how fast you fall. And I suspected that Clark was quite capable of leaving me head downwards high in the air if I annoyed him. “What's this about Mrs. Royer?”. “Oh, nothing much. She thinks Marsmen are trash, that's all.” “She does, huh? That makes it mutual.” “Yes. She thinks it's dis- graceful that the Line allows us to travel first class — and the Captain certainly ought not to allow us to eat in the same mess with decent peo- ple.” “Tell me more.” “Nothing to tell. We're riff- raff, that's all. Convicts, you PODKAYNE OF MARS know.” “Interesting. Very, very in- teresting.” “And her friend Mrs. Gar- cia agrees with her. But I suppose I shouldn't have re- peated it. After all, they are entitled to their own opinions. Aren't they?” Clark didn't answer, which is a very bad sign. Shortly thereafter he left without a word. In a sudden panic that I might have started more than I intended to, I called after him but he just kept going. Clark is not hard of hearing, but he can be very hard of listening. WELL, it was too late now. So I put on a weight har- ness, then loaded myself down all over until I weighed as much as I would on Venus and started trotting on the treadmill until I was covered with sweat and ready for a bath and a change. Actually I did not really care what bad luck overtook those two harpies. I simply hoped that Clark's sleight-of- hand would be up to its usual high standards so that it could not possibly be traced back to him. Nor even guessed at. For I had not told Clark half of what was said. Believe you me, I had nev- er guessed, until we were in the Tricorn, that anyone could despise other persons simply over their ancestry or where they lived. Oh, I had encountered tourists from 51

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Earth whose manners left something to be desired. But Daddy had told me that all tourists, everywhere, seem ob- noxious simply because tour- ists are strangers who do not know local customs. . .and I believed it, because Daddy is never wrong. Certainly the occasional visiting professor that Daddy brought home for dinner was always charming, which proves that Earthmen do not have to have bad man- ners. I had noticed that the pas-, sengers in the Tricorn seemed a little bit stand-offish when we first boarded, but I did not think anything of it. After all, strangers do not run up and kiss you, even on Mars — and we Marsmen are fairly informal, I suppose; we’re still a frontier society. Be- sides that, most passengers had been in the ship at least from Earth. They had already formed their friendships and cliques. We were like new kids in* a strange school. But I said, “Good morn- ing!” to anyone I met in the passageway. If I was not an- swered I just checked it off to hard-of-hearing — so many of them obviously could be hard of hearing. Anyhow, I wasn’t terribly interested in getting chummy with passen- gers. I wanted to get ac- quainted with the ship’s of- ficers, pilot officers especial- ly, so that I could get some practical experience to chink in Vvhat I altekily * khew :f rom i : • ■ i i < t : ' 52 reading. It’s not easy for a girl to get accepted for pilot training ; she has to be about four times as good as a male candidate — and every little bit helps. I got a wonderful break right away- — we were seated at the Captain’s table! Uncle Tom, of course. I am not conceited enough to think that “Miss Podkayne Fries, Marsopolis” means anything on a ship’s passenger list (but wait ten years !) — whereas Uncle Tom, even though he is just my pinochle-playing, easy-going oldest relative, is nevertheless senior Senator- at-Large of the Republic, and it is certain that the Marsopo- lis General Agent for the Tri- angle Line knows this. No doubt the agent would see to it that the purser of the Tri- corn would know it if he didn’t already. As may be. I am not one to scorn gifts from heaven, no matter how they arrive. At our very first meal I started working on Captain Darling. That really is his name, Bar- rington Babcock Darling — and does his wife call him “Baby Darling”? But of course a captain does not have a name aboard ship. He is “the Captain,” “the Master,” “the Skipper” or even “the Old Man” if ^t is a member of the ship’s company speaking pot in his august presence. But never a name: — simply a majestic, fig- ure of impersonal authority. by Robert A. Heinleip

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(I wonder if I will some- day be called “the Old Wom- an” when I am not in ear- shot ? Somehow it doesn’t sound quite the same.) CAPTAIN Darling is not too majestic nor imper- sonal with me. I set out to impress him with the idea that I was awfully sweet, even younger than I am, ter- ribly impressed by him, over- awed. . .and not too bright. It does not do to let a male of any age know that one has brains, not on first acquain- tance. Intelligence in a wom- an is likely to make a man suspicious and uneasy, much like Caesar’s fear of Cassius’s “lean and hungry look.” Get a man solidly on your side first. After that it is fairly safe to let him become grad- ually aware of your intellect — he may even feel uncon- sciously that it rubbed off from his own. So I set out to make him feel that it was a shame that I was not his daughter. (For- tunately he only has sons.) Before that first meal was over I confided in him my great yearning to take pilot training . . . suppressing, of course, any higher ambition. Both Uncle Tom and Clark could see what I was up to. But Uncle Tom would never give me away and Clark just looked bored and contemptu- ous and said nothing, because Clark would hot bother to in- terfere with Armageddon un- PODKAYNE of MAris less there was ten per cent in it for him. But I do not mind what my relatives think of my tactics; they work. Captain Darling was obviously amused at my grandiose and “impossible” ambition. . .but he offered to show me the control room. Round one to Poddy, on points. I am now the unofficial ship’s mascot, with free run of the control room. And I am almost as privileged in the engineering department. Of course the Captain does not really want to spend hours teaching me the practical side of astrogation. He did show me through the control room and gave me a kindergarten explanation of the work — which I followed with wide- eyed awe — but his interest in me is purely social. He wants to not-quite hold me in his lap (he is much too practical and too discreet to do any- thing of the sort!) — so I not- quite let him and make it a point to keep up my social relations with him, listening with my best astonished-kit- ten look to his anecdotes while he feeds me liters of tea. I really am a good listen- er because you never can tell when you will pick up some- thing useful. And all in the world any woman has to do to be considered “charming” by men is to listen while they talk. But Captain Darling is not the only astrogator aboard. 53

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He gave me the run of the control room; I did the rest. The second officer, Mr. Sav- vonavong, thinks it is simply amazing how fast I pick up mathematics. You see, he thinks he taught me differen- tial equations. Well, he did, when it comes to those awful- ly complicated ones used in correcting the vector of a constant-boost ship, but if I hadn’t worked hard in the supplementary course I was allowed to take last semester, I wouldn't know what he was talking about. Now he is showing me how to program a ballistic computer. The junior third, Mr. Clancy, is still studying for his unlimited license, so he has all the study tapes and reference books I need and is just as helpful. He is near enough my age to develop groping hands. . .but only a very stupid male will make even an indirect pass unless a girl manages to let him know that it won’t be resent- ed. Mr. Clancy is not stupid and I am very careful to offer no opportunity. I may kiss him — two min- utes before I leave the ship for the last time. Not sooner. They are all very helpful and they think it is cute of me to be so dead serious about it. But, in truth, practical as- trogation is much harder than I had ever dreamed. I had guessed that part of the resentment I sensed — resentment that I could not fail to notice despite my cheery “Good mornings !” — lay in the fact that we were at the Captain’s table. To be sure, the “Welcome in the Tricorn!” booklet in each stateroom states plainly that new seating arrangements are made at each port and that it is the ship’s custom to change the guests at the Cap- tain’s table each time, making the selections from the new passengers. But I don’t suppose that warning makes it any pleas- anter to be bumped. I don’t expect to like it when I'm bumped off the Captain's ta- ble at Venus. But that is only part of the trouble. Only three of the passen- gers were really friendly to me : Mrs. Grew, Girdie and Mrs. Royer. Mrs. Royer I met first and at first I thought that I was going to like her, in a bored sort of way, as she was awfully friendly and I have great capacity for en- during boredom if it suits my purpose. I met her in the lounge the first day. She im- mediately caught my eye, smiled, invited me to sit by her and quizzed me about my- self. I answered her questions, mostly. I told her that Daddy was a teacher and that Moth- er was raising babies and that my brother and I were travel- ing with our uncle. I didn't boast about our family. Boast- ing is not polite and it often by Robert A. Heinlein 54

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is not believed — far better to let people find out nice things on their own and hope they won’t notice any unnice things. Not that there is any- thing unnice about Daddy and Mother. I told her that my name was Poddy Fries. “‘Poddy’?” she said. “I thought I saw something else on the passenger list.” “Oh. It’s really ‘Pod- kayne,’ ” I explained. “For the Martian saint, you know.” But she didn’t know. She answered, “It seems very odd to give a girl a man’s name.” Well, my name is odd, even among Marsmen. But not for that reason. “Possibly,” I agreed. “But with Martians gender is rather a matter of opinion, wouldn’t you say?” She blinked. I started to explain how a Martian doesn’t select which of three sexes to be until just before it matures. . .and how, even so, the decision is opera- tive only during a relatively short period of its life. But I gave up, as I could see that I was talking to a blank wall. Mrs. Royer sim- ply could not imagine any pattern other than her own. So I shifted quickly. “Saint Podkayne lived a very long time ago. Nobody actually knows whether the saint was male or female. There are just traditions.” i OF course the traditions are pretty explicit and many living Martians claim PODKAYNE OF MARS descent from Saint Podkayne. Daddy says that we know Martian history of millions of years ago much more accu- rately than we know human history a mere two thousand years ago. In any case most Martians include “Podkayne” in their long lists of names (practically genealogies in synopsis) because of the tra- dition that anyone named for Saint Podkayne can call on him (or “her” —or “it”) in time of trouble. As I have said. Daddy is ro- mantic and he thought it would be nice to give a baby the luck, if any, that is at- tached to the saint’s name. I am neither romantic nor su- perstitious. But it suits me just fine to have a name that belongs to me and to no other human. I like being Podkayne “Poddy” Fries. It’s better than being one of a multitude of Elizabeths or Dorothys or such. Anyway, I like it. But I could see that it sim- ply puzzled Mrs. Royer, so we passed to other matters. Speaking from her seniority as an “old space hand” based on her one just-completed trip out from Earth, she told me a great many things about ships and space travel. Most of them weren’t so, but I in- dulged her. She introduced me to a number of people and handed me a large quantity of gossip about passengers, ship’s officers, et cetera. Be- tween times she filled me in 55

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on her aches, pains and symp- toms, what an important ex- ecutive her son was, what a very important person her late husband had been and how, when I reached Earth, she really must see to it that I met the Right People. “Per- haps such things don’t matter in an outpost like Mars, my dear child, but it is Terribly Important to get Started Right in New York.” I tabbed her as garrulous, stupid and well intentioned. But I soon found that I couldn’t get rid of her. If I passed through the lounge— which I had to do in order to reach the control room — she would snag me and I couldn’t get away short of abrupt rude- ness or flat lies. She quickly started using me for chores. “Podkayne darling, would you mind just slipping around to my state- room and fetching my mauve wrap? I feel a tiny chill. It’s on the bed I think, or perhaps in the wardrobe — that’s a dear.” Or, “Poddy child, I’ve rung and I’ve rung and the stewardess simply won’t an- swer. Would you get my book and my knitting? Oh, and while you’re at it, you might bring me a nice cup of tea from the pantry.” Those things aren’t too bad ; she is probably creaky in the knees and I’m not. But it went on endlessly. . .and shortly, in addition to being her personal stewardess, I was her private nurse. First she asked me to read her to sleep. “Such a blinding headache and your voice is so soothing, my sweet.” I read to her for an hour and then found myself rub- bing her head and temples for almost as long. Oh well, a per- son ought to manage a little kindness now and then, just for practice. And Mother sometimes has dreadful head- aches when she has been work- ing too hard; I know that a rub does help. That time she tried to tip me. I refused it. She insisted. “Now, now, child, don’t argue with your Aunt Flossie.” I said, “No really, Mrs. Royer. If you want to give it to the fund for disabled spacement as a thank-you, that’s all right. But I can’t take it. She said pish and tosh and tried to shove it into my pocket. So I slid out and went to bed. 1 didn’t see her at breakfast ; she always has a tray in her room. But about midmorning a stewardess told me that Mrs. Royer wanted to see me in her room. I was hardly gruntled at the summons, as Mr. Sawonavong had told me that if I showed up just be- fore ten during his watch, I could watch the whole process of a ballistic correction and he would explain the steps to me. If she wasted more than five minutes of my time, I would be late. by Robert A. Heinlein 56

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But I called on her. She was as cheery as ever. “Oh, there you are, darling! I’ve been waiting ever so long! That stupid stewardess. Pod- dy dear, you did such wonders for my head last night... and this morning I find that I’m positively cripple d with my back— you can’t imagine, dear; it’s ghastly ! Now if you’ll just be an angel and give me a few minutes mas- sage— oh, say a half hour— I’m sure it’ll do wonder for me. You’ll find the cream for it over there on the dressing ta- ble, I think. . .and now if you’ll just help me — ” “Mrs. Royer.” “Yes, dear? The cream is in that big pink tube. Use just- — ” • /‘Mrs. Royet, I canT do it. I have an appointment/’ “What, dear? Oh, t6sh, let ‘ them wait. No one is ever on time aboard ship. Perhaps you had ^better warm your hands before — ” ' ' * ■ “Mrs. Royer, I am not go- in g : to do • it. If' somethin g i s •wrong with your > back, ‘ I ^shouldn’t .touch it. I might in- jure you. -B.ut I’ll take a mes- > sage to the Surgeon! if you - like and ask him. to come see you.” Suddenly she wasn’t at all cheery. “You mean you won't do it!” “Have it your way. Shall I tell the Surgeon ?” > “Why, you impertinent — Get out of here!” : T : got. •’’ worse. Have you noticed that little Martian girl ? The niece-*-or $7

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so they clainvr-of that big black savage?” > • I counted ten backwards in Old Martian and reminded myself of the penalty for mur- der. I didn’t mind being called a “Martian.” They didn’t know any better and, anyhow, it’s no insult ; the Martians were civilized before humans learned to walk. But “big black savage”! Uncle Tom is as dark as I am blonde; his Maori blood and desert tan make him the color of beauti- ful old leather. . .and I love the way he looks. As for the rest — he is learned and civil- ized and gentle... and highly honored wherever he goes. Mrs. Garcia: “I’ve seen her. Common, I would say. Flashy but cheap. A type that attracts a certain sort of man.” Mrs. Royer: “My dear, you don’t know the half of it. I’ve tried to help her. I really felt sorry for her, and I always be- lieve in being gracious, espe- cially to one’s social infe- riors.” Mrs. Garcia: “Of course, dear.” Mrs. Royer: “I tried to give her a few hints as to proper conduct among gentle people. Why, I was even paying her for little trifles, so that she wouldn’t be uneasy among her betters. But she’s an utterly ungrateful little snip. She thought . she could squeeze moire money out of me. She was rude about it, so rude that I feared for my safety.' I had 56 to order her out of my room, actually.” Mrs. Garcia : “You were wise to drop her. Blood will tell. Bad blood or good blood, blood will always tell. And mixed blood is the Very Worst Sort. Criminals to start with... and then that Shameless Mixing of Races. You can see it right in that family. The boy doesn’t look a bit like his sister, and as for the uncle — Hmmm. . .my dear, you half way hinted at something. Do you suppose that she is not his niece but something, shall we say, a bit closer?” “I wouldn't put it past ei- ther one of them!” “Oh, come, ’fess up, Flossie. Tell me what you found out.” Mrs. Royer : “I didn’t say a word. But I have eyes — and so have you.” Mrs. Garcia: “Right in front of everyone!” Mrs. Royer : “What I can't understand is why the Line permits them to mix with us . Perhaps they have to sell them passage — treaties or some such n o n s. e,n s e — but we shouldn’t be forced to asso- ciate with them... and cer- tainly not to eat with them!” Mrs. Garcia: “I know. I'm going to write a very strong letter about it as soon as I get home. There are limits. You know, I had thought that Cap- tain Darling was a gentleman . .but when I saw those crea- tures actually seated at the Captain’s table — well, I didn’t i - , by Robert A. Hein lei n * • i . .

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believe my eyes. I thought I would faint,” Mrs. Royer. “I know. But after all, the Captain does come from Venus.” Mrs. Garcia: “Yes, but Ve- nus was never a prison colony. That boy. . .he sits in the very chair I used to sit in, right across from the Captain.” (I made a mental note to ask the Chief steward for a dif- ferent chair for Clark; I didn’t want him contaminat- ed.) AFTER that they dropped us “Martians” and started dissecting Girdie and com- plaining about the food and the service, and even stuck pins in some of their ship- board coven who weren’t present. But I didn’t listen. I simply kept quiet and prayed for strength to go on doing so — because if I had made my presence known I feel sure that I would have stabbed them both with their own knitting needles. Eventually they left, to rest a while to fortify themselves for lunch. I rushed out and changed into my gym suit and hurried to the gymnasium to work up a good sweat instead of engaging in violent crime. It was there that I found Clark and told him just enough— or maybe a little bit too much, Mr. Savvonavong had told me that we were likely to have a radiation storm almost any time. The solar weather station on Mercury reported “flare” weather shaping up and warned all ships in space to be ready for it. I knew that when I told Clark, but I didn’t think there would be any connection. I was wrong. TO BE CONTINUED I 'T • 1 - '■ ******* ) In the next big issue of IF— THE SHIPSHAPE MIRACLE by Clifford D. Simak THE FIVE HELLS OF ORION by Frederik Pohl — plus -Part Two of Heinlein’s great new novel Podkayne of Mars, additional shprt stories and novelettes, features, etc. January issue qn sale Npyember J5th — ask your newsdealer to reserve your copy! PODKAYNE OF MARS

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IF • Short Story Stacks of hundred-dollar bills — but sadly, almost all of them were genuine! THE REAL THING BY ALBERT TEICHNER . {^EVERYTHING in this tion, that slight Mongoloid C wing is genuine old fold in Washington's left eye- fake/' Stahl told the two tour- lid/* Stahl re jilied, tightly, en- ists while his wife clung circlihg his' Wife's waifct; hs if , proudly, tp his ami. Like him, ' showing off all hlS' finest >os- she was tall, )blpndJe and, im- s'esfcidnk 1 simultaneously/ He , pp$jptjly good-looking.. glanded at Tinkeriai cybetfict- , /|EWen this sttopgbpx money icist who, like SitiitH, had ,1s. ^fyiest American counter- sent several requests to sfee the fell, she said. . famous Suite of 1 Artifices. ‘‘May I see it?” asked “Ever try collecting?” ; • Smith. The lifeless face of the “Not money,” Tinker an- mathematician brightened as swered, eyes still on Mrs. he peered through the quartz Stahl. top at a dollar bill marked “Got the ‘Mongoloid' bill W8265286A. “I can only get five years ago, same year as the worthless real stuff. An- I got Mary.” He gave his wife cient governments always de- an even more ostentatious strpyed counterfeits. But squeeze. Smith stared at her, you’re in Economic Planning, too, but more with dull dis- so it mu&t bfc easier to get ; satisfaction than desire. “Fif- good fakes.” teen bills in the box now— -hut “Only the merest imperfec- I've still only one wife.” 60

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“Fifteen!” exclaimed Smith, “The rich get richer and the poor stay poor.” “The wallpape r,” Stahl smoothly proceeded, “is a rep- lica of Italian murals. If you adjust your focus properly the flat columns become solids through the art of vanishing- point perspective.” “Excellent period distortion of Greek styles,” said Tinker, studying the columns. “And those three chairs are fine copies of Chippendale. You’re to be complimented on your taste in everything, Stahl.” “You really know ancient designs,” Stahl said. “Genuine old copies are even scarcer than their originals. And orig- inals, of course, can never be quite as good,” “Sometimes I don’t see why,” Smith muttered. They all looked shocked. “Smith, you need a checkup,” Tinker advised. “You sound rundown. How can we prog- ress without imitating past achievements ?” “A little rundown,” Smith admitted, “but... Oh, let’s forget it.” “Let’s,” Stahl nodded, striv- ing to recapture the pair’s at- tention as they went on through the Suite. “Notice the paintings. Those two are ex- cellent pseudo-Braques and in the last room were fine fakes of Van Gogh, Picasso and Chardin. In fact,” he pointed toward a Gauguin-like nude, all flattened sensuousness, “that one’s as close to a real Gauguin as an imitation can go without being a mere re- production.” They all gasped and even Smith shook his head rever- ently. “To be that close to the real thing! It’s all you’d ever need.” “Becoming more possible all the time.” Tinker grinned sug- gestively at Mrs. Stahl. She looked back, mildly interested. “We’ll get there eventually.” Happily oblivious to every- thing but his collections, Stahl led them into the li- brary. One wall, covered with rows of book spines, swung around to reveal a well- stocked bar. There was also a large bar across the room which quickly became a li- brary of real books and re- cording systems. “I’m not much for eating and drinking,” Smith protest- ed feebly. “Who is?” Mrs. Stahl laughed. “But this must be a special occasion for you.” Eyes bulging nervously. Smith ran his fingers through his luxuriant hair and sighed, “Special it is. All right.” Stahl casually mixed drinks for them all and sipped an Old Fashioned. “I’ve concen- trated somewhat more on the twentieth century of the Old Times than any other,” he said. “A particularly intri- guing century, I find, al- though not crucial like the twenty-first, of course.” “The crucial one,” Tinker protested. THE REAL THING 61

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‘'As a fellow antiquarian/ 1 must beg to differ, sir.” "What about rocket travel, Mr. Stahl? When did that be- gin?” "Old hat,” he yawned. "And atomic energy?” "Same applies there. Look, Tinker, don’t get me wrong. I love the period. But, objec- tively viewed, the twenty- first makes the great differ- ence.” "And what about duplica- tion of life functions, like the mechanical heart? That really got started in the twentieth.” "Absolutely right,” Smith nodded vigorously. "All strictly mechanical,” Stahl sighed. "But the twen- ty-first turned the study of pain and pleasure itself from an art into a true science.” "No, no,” scoffed the cyber- neticist. Stahl pounded the bar. "All right. I’m going to prove it by putting on an All-Sense Feeliescope of Thomas Dyall. It’s fully sense-adapted, so it should pick up perfectly.” "Hope it isn’t noisy,” said Smith. "It’s beautiful answered Mary Stahl. "I could listen to it all day.” The odor of damp, new- mown grass filled the room and another more elusive scent mingled with it. Entry of June 3rd , 2068, said an im- personal, mechanical voice, from the journal of Thomas Dyall, elected World's First 62 Poet Laureate in 2089 . A warm rich bass took over: This morning I rode far out to reach open coun- tryside in the preserved areas to replenish my stock of sensory experi- ences. As I was walking along through the woods, the most delicious scent struck my nostrils. I immediately recognized new-mown grass in it but the factor making the true difference escaped me until I realized the faint odor belonged to roses. At r that point, my senses reeling with de- light, I composed in my mind most of my long poem, The Nature of Na- ture, grasping intuitively an experience more in- tense, more valuable, than any "real” one. I say in- tuitively because I still thought the odor was merely that of grass and roses. A minute after- wards, though, I came into a clearing, spotted a forest ranger’s cottage there and discovered that the scent was from a re- cently-improved insecti- cide that the ranger’s wife was using in the liv- ing room. There was lit- tle grass in the area and not a single rose! The following note, inter- rupted the monotone voice, by Albert Teichner

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was added by the author in the year 2116: Here in “real” life the great guiding principle of my future was brought home to me. The well- done imitation of a thing was better than the thing itself! This was the les- son I had to disseminate for all humanity. “Interesting,” Tinker said, “although we all know now that one thing cannot be sub- stituted for. Also — ” “No discussion now,” pleaded Smith. “You need a while to consider all that. Anyway, I’ve been thinking about your bill, Stahl. That wasn’t a fold on Washington’s eyelid, just a tiny inkstain. It’s genuine” “It can’t be,” Stahl snapped and angrily led them back to the first room. “Tinker, I want you as my witness.” He handed the bill around and Smith had to concede it was really counterfeit. “What’s that next one?” he asked. “A ten.” Stahl hesitated, then took it off the pile along with three others and passed them to the visitors, showing off fine points of imitation. When he collected the bills he carefully made certain there were still five and locked them up again. “What about another drink?” Smith asked hastily. “No.” Tinker sat down in a large chair. “Let’s straighten out something right now, Stahl. Dyall was making the first crude statement of an obvious truth. If we have a pleasant sensation it doesn’t matter whether it’s caused by a rose or a chemical imitation of a rose or by making a brain imagine a rose — doesn’t mat- ter except that the real rose itself is the hardest thing to control. So it can’t be as in- tensely real as its imitations.” “Mr. Tinker, isn’t that cru- cial enough for you?” Mrs. Stahl asked. Her voice was so rich and warmly rounded that Smith stared wonderingly at her, as if trying to fathom an alien tongue. “Not quite,” Tinker shrugged. “Stahl, you’re dis- cussing the smallest aspect of the three-part equation, Stim- ulus -{- Stimulated Body = Experience. Your poet was saying certain changes in Stimulus would still give a Stimulated Body the same Experience as the original. But the philosophers and cy- berneticists, they already sus- pected something more radi- cal. If the Stimulated Body was properly changed the same Stimulus could give dif- ferent Bodies the same Ex- perience. In other words, a properly-arranged process would have the same Experi- ence as the life function for which it was substituted.” “Now then,” he went on, “all life reproduces itself, right? Well, they finally fig- 63 THE REAL THING

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ured the most important thing to reproduce was a man’s Experience itself, not any particular form of Stim- ulated Body. Of course we have higher ideals. We want the Stimulated Body to be as nearly like what it was as possible — then we can have the best of all possible worlds.” “Some people,” Smith grum- bled, “don’t get their fair share of that best.” “Anyway I hate all theo- ries,” said Mrs. Stahl. Stahl disregarded them as he stared at his cashbox. “My money,” he said ominously, “has been changed!” The two visitors exchanged nervous glances. “That’s not possible,” said Tinker. “It is. Somebody’s palmed a real one as a substitute!” “That’s very unfair,” Smith protested. “We came here as guests, strangers to you and to each other. We’ve given you the correct degree of en- vious admiration and now you show your gratitude for our human reaction by saying we’re deranged!” Stahl was unmoved. “I still say it’s been stolen.” He opened the box. “See — the dollar’s different! When the people of the Old Times made us their heirs and children they left piles of this real stuff around along with al- most everything else they’d made. It’s practically worth- less !” Tinker frowned uncertain- 64 ly. “If it makes you feel bet- ter I’ll submit to a lie-detec- tor. I hope you’re capable of feeling shame when it proves my innocence !” “Good enough,” said Stahl, turning expectantly to his other guest. As he waited. Smith pulled back a little. “Well?” Mary smiled, mov- ing a little toward him. Smith leaped away from her, heading toward an open window, but the others moved faster and grabbed him before he reached the wall. “What’s the matter with you anyway?” Tinker grunt- ed, straining to hold him. “The window’s painted on the wall !” Smith slumped forward in despair as Stahl triumphantly wormed the valued counter- feit from his pocket. “I can’t do anything right,” Smith wailed. “I heard about this collection and thought I could manage to get one little thing for myself. I haven’t been given much else by life.” “You — you defective!” Stahl shouted. Smith only slumped further forward. “How can I help it? The Monte Carlo computer gave me one of the last places for advanced altering and I have to wait and wait. Com- pared to you, I’m still a half- breed !” “Don’t hand me that,” Stahl snapped. “I didn’t mean phys- ical defects. You look as nor- mal as anyone else.” “No, darling, I think he’s by Albert Teichner

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telling the truth,” Mary said sympathetically. “When alter- ing began it was only skin- deep for all of us.” “I’ll bet you’re sixty per cent altered already,” Smith cried out. “It’s my bad luck to be only twenty-five per cent so far. All I can do is look at her and wonder why the two of you make such a fuss.” The cyberneticist tried to calm him. “Your turn’s com- • _>» mg. “I have to find out what it’s about sooner than that!” Tinker sighed. “I’ll try to get your number advanced.” “Let him wait his turn,” Stahl said coldly. “He’s faking a lot anyway.” At that Smith broke free from them and pressed his back to the optical illusion window. “Don't come closer,” he warned. “I don’t have much to lose.” They stopped a few feet away and waited. Suddenly he raised his left hand to his face and dug the long nails in a semicircle into his flesh. As a thin stream of locally cir- culated blood gushed out, he dug deeper and the eyeball fell forward, quivering, on his cheek. “He was telling the truth!” Stahl gasped, pointing at the glittering metal bits within the eyesocket. A glowing wire was slowly evaporating on the retinal plate as optical feed- back collapsed. tinker, all professional competence now^ hfelpefl1' • ' 1 ’ • - /,/.!{{ \ • ; THE REAL THING ■- I 1 1 . i . " * Smith to a chair. “We’ll be able to repair you in a month,” he said, “because you’ve a simpler arrangement, and I can promise you’ll have as good an electro-chemical near-cortex as anybody. And the other more interesting changes too.” Stahl glanced at his wife, then, as she nodded back, slowly put his precious coun- terfeit into the dangling hand. He was pleased to see enough consciousness was still func- tioning enough for the fin- gers to close greedily around it. “Keep it,” he said, “you de- serve it more than me.” Suddenly he realised he was feeling not only shame but pity too! It was the first time for pity — and that meant he was one step further on his own journey. How far that journey had already taken him! For, when their brilliant labors had de- humanized them, the humans had possessed sufficient un- derstanding to pass the dead world on to the superior- wis- dom of their creations. If they had been unable to fore- see what would eventually happen, Stahl and his fellow robots could. Some day the su- preme knowledge and the su- preme feeling would be per- fectly wedded, the day they became truly humanoid copies of their makers. \ He moved forward, Tinker- following him, to help his fel~t low creature closer to thati common final destiny. ENP: * ■ J I I ■ I- ;• i ; - A 1 • ,/ f » _ 65 f-

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IF • Short Story THE RELUCTANT IMMORTALS There they were, on the threshhold of life — a life that might be un- bearably, terribly long! BY DAVID R. BUNCH SO they went on down there, with all along the big fat glove signs pointing at them, squirting — not blood — merely reminder in color, out of something like beet juice or wine — and the high- way signs saying constantly SLOW, SLOW DOWN, CURVE, CAREFUL, BE- WARE. They had the little metal teardrop held down at two hundred, just “cruising ’er” on the nylon strip de- signed to hold them at four hundred, or, in emergency, better still. “I hope,” he said through his fine white-metal teeth, “that the quota is filled. So much to do tomorrow — and tomorrow.” “Yes!” she said through lips that had been sculpted by surgery until now they re- sembled a red rose bouquet, “so much to do— tonight !” She was his bride of five days. They rolled under the dancing signs where two su- per Whooshies crashed at each other on a ribbon-road of silk until legs and arms piled out and a red fluid filled the multiple lanes. She laughed low and chesty from a larynx that had been done in gold-x against cancer long ago and said, “What’ll they think of next to remind us? Too many of us now, heaven knows. But all the time they keep pleading with us not to kill ourselves.” “If we get by the quota,” he said, “sometime we’ll take a run across on that new Su- per they’re building in the north. They say they really got signs up there!” He eased the little Whooshie up to two-fifty and still they were 66

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just crawling. Two super Speartakes, a dozen or so of the Flashbugs and a hun- dred Windstars swept past them as though they were standing aside. “ I want our next one to be a Caddiscat,” she said. “Everybody’s get- ting a Caddiscat.” He looked at her and thought he detected again something he had feared a long time ago, right at first, ten days ago, when it had started. But in the fogged flush of romance he had for- got. And now after the long five-day courtship they were bride and groom five days. And he had to admit that the nights had all been wonder- ful, with their great love be- tween them, and the novel gadgets and attachments they had both brought to the mar- riage, to stimulate and relax them together. But now that nagging doubt again as he looked at the rather grim set of the red roses that were her lips. Was she just another scheming, ambitious woman? He began to dream of a pos- sibility of her filling the quota, alone. And he felt guilty. But glancing at her as he expertly held the Whoo- shie to a curve above which two purple sign ambulances danced, he had to admit that after the fourth night, even with all the tricks, it had grown a little stale. “Hungry?” She bounced on her white- nyloned bottom in the little THE RELUCTANT IMMORTALS seat of the Whooshie. It was plain that his abrupt question had brought her back from a long way out. “No — no,” she stammered. “I couldn’t eat.” “What were you thinking of, so far away?” THE roses climbed over each other for a little while like a pile of snakes as she licked her lips and could not speak. And when she said, “I was just thinking how aw- ful if they had took only one of us on the quota,” he wasn’t at all sure she was telling the truth. “Was he awfully interest- ing?” “Who?” “The one you were remem- bering, away out there.” The rose bouquet swirled and she was all woman when she said, “You are the most interesting I’ve ever met.” “Thanks,” he said. : “Not as many tricks, may- be. But what you do know, you know better.” “Gee, thanks!” he said. So the little Whooshie rolled on down toward the place where the quota was. The quota man for their dis- trict sat behind a bright orange desk, his horn-rims modern slant and jeweled very nicely. His chair was pale green. On his desk were objects of quaint joy — danc- ing flowers, little girls going to school, cats in the sun, barefoot boys in a melon patch, a mother spreading 67

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rash powder on a dry diaper; above him his ceiling was all pink lights. ‘‘We’re here about the quota,” the man said. “We got our notice for the quarterly check-in.” She nodded in agreement and her lips were a little scared. “Names?” He gave his name; she gave hers. Then the husband help- fully explained how the wife had changed her name but five days ago, and he told loud and clear what her old name had been. Perhaps she was on the list by her old name. “So you’re here about our Emergency Program quota?” The smile that flickered out and. the jut-jawed careful pose reminded a little of glory pic- ture^ there had once been of dictators in the. world. But his .eye,$ were smiling brightly, as he flicked the switch and the list climbed down the wall.. It was plain that he wished this to be, if not a time of joy, at least not a time of scenes, “It is much better than it used to be,” he said as. the list raced op in the wall viewer, “much changed. Some, people are volunteering now , for the Emergency: Program quota. To get a rest from a mate, to relax from a business, or doz- ens of other good reasons. And every volunteer, of course, releases a draftee.” He looked at them as if pleading for understanding.' “It’s con- gestion on the civil highways, 68 ’ » • ’ i really, as much as the. avyful climb of the , rate that makes the Program, so necessary. So maybe when we get more highways things will be bet- ter. When the surface is till taken up, which it will be soon now, there’s no reason in the world we can’t go up- stairs with our tough light alloys and build any number of layers of highways. Fly- ing’s all right, rockets and all, but we’ll always need good old leisurely wheels down there zipping on terra firma.” He seemed to be .keeping up his patter to relax them. THE list flowed on in the walk mile after mile of it, while they watched tensely but could not read the names moving swiftly. The quota man, not watching, twirled ’ half ^circles on his green swiv- el, his finger tips, seeming vto meet around i.some very .defi- nite 3 ball of akv.Hi$v eyes, ^de- tached, were .loafing in some far country, but his attitude otherwise was one of .listen- ing casually ; as vhe* italked. on of the Program? andx why it had to be. * When the*, .sharp pheep came out of the wall, he stopped, the li§t at fopce. There* bracketed by. two green stars, was her name, her name of five . days ago. .“That’ll do . it for now,” he said, big-yoiced and .cheerful, smiling, his eyesihopeipjly at her. from- the .green.' swivel. “Fills the qypt^l ^A^p^ntly your husband has just got out ~ V V *.V ;>» * t.'ivr ‘t'ii-l by David R. Bunch

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on a volunteer, ha ha. You see, I didn’t have to watch the list, because when you spoke your names, the list knew, ha ha.” When the screams broke from her lips and the roses writhed in torture, he took the necessary things from his desk drawer and raced to her. He had seen them do this be- fore, many times, usually from a lack of preparation and gross unfamiliarity with the Program. “It will be the most restful ten years of your life,” he insisted soothingly as he expertly pumped green fluid through a puncture he had made in her left arm. “And once a year,” he talked on as he soothed and petted her with the frozen relaxer pad, “usually in June, in our new improved system, we bring them back and allow them one visitor, the visitor of their choice, if possible. In a very private little cell for a full hour! Now, isn’t that fine?” His eyes leered at the hus- band. “Usually in cases like this there’s no doubt who the visitor will be. Unless of course he too has been draft- ed. But it’s just for the ten years, after all, and then someone else takes your place in this necessary rotation. So much better, we feel, than either of the other two possi- ble ways of solving the prob- lem— drastic regimentation of the rate or outright reduction through perma-rieep, ha ha. And, who knows, with the new building program and a fuller THE RELUCTANT IMMORTALS enlistment in Volunteers for Rate Control, we might be able to reduce the time.” THEN, because of the rate, and the highway condition especially, he led her away, dazed and wooden now from the green fluid and the numb- ing relaxer pad. Her husband of five days, having escaped the draft by the grace of a volunteer, left fast in his lit- tle Whooshie. As he headed north toward the new Super, he waved vaguely in the direc- tion of the place where she would be for ten years. Actu- ally he was so tired of her al- ready that right now he doubted if he would ever be back. But up on the northern Super, and getting a little lonely, he decided it would probably be fun once a year to be able to go back and supple- ment other activities with a wife. But wait! Just as he was wheeling his Whooshie past an animated sign that showed two sports Caddiscats battling m boxing shorts the dread fear seized him anew. With the birth rate what it was and had been and with the high- ways becoming more and more congested all the time no doubt he too would soon be drafted into the Program. There, with the special fluids, to lie like an egg, like a cold stick of wood, like a dead man ...for ten years. . .m a y b e longer . . . maybe forever ... in the crowded earth’s Cold Storage Program! END 69

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IF • Novelette THE DESERT AND THE STARS The Aga Kaga wanted peace — a piece of everything in sight! BY KEITH LAUMER ILLUSTRATED BY GAUGHAft TO

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llT’M not at all sure,” Un- -A-der-Secretary Sternwheel- er said, “that I fully under- stand the necessity for your. • ah. . .absenting yourself from your post of duty, Mr. Retief. Surely this matter could have been dealt with in the usual way — assuming any action is necessary.” “I had a sharp attack of writer’s cramp, Mr. Secre- tary,” Retief said. “So I thought I’d better come along in person — just to be sure I was positive of making my point.” “Eh?” “Why, ah, there were a number of dispatches,” Depu- ty Under-Secretary Magnan put in. “Unfortunately, this being end-of-the-fiscal-year time, we found ourselves quite inundated with reports. Re- ports, reports, reports — ” “Not criticizing the report- ing system, are you, Mr. Mag- nan?” the Under-Secretary barked. “Gracious, no,” Magnan said. “I love reports.” “It seems nobody's told the Aga Kagans about fiscal years,” Retief said. “They’re going right ahead with their program of land-grabbing on Flamme. So far, I’ve persuad- ed the Boyars that this is a matter for the Corps, and not to take matters into their own hands.” The Under-Secretary nod- ded. “Quite right. Carry on along the same lines. Now, if there’s nothing further — ” “Thank you, Mr. Secre- tary,” Magnan said, rising. “We certainly appreciate your guidance.” “There is a little something further,” said Retief, sitting solidly in his chair. “What’s the Corps going to do about the Aga Kagans?” The Under-Secretary turned a liverish eye on Retief. “As Minister to Flamme, you should know that the function of a diplomatic representative is merely to... what shall I say. . . ?” “String them along?” Mag- nan suggested. “An unfortunate choice of phrase,” the Under-Secretary said. “However, it embodies certain realities of Galactic politics. The Corps must con- cern itself with matters of broad policy.” “Sixty years ago the Corps was encouraging the Boyars to settle Flamme,” Retief said. “They were assured of Corps support.” “I don’t believe you’ll find that in writing,” said the Un- der-Secretary blandly. “In any event, that was sixty THE DESERT AND THE STARS 71

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years ago. At that time a foot- hold against Neo-Concordia- tist elements was deemed de- sirable. Now the situation has changed/' “The Boyars have spent sixty years terraforming FI amine,” Retief said. “They’ve cleared jungle, de- scummed the seas, irrigated deserts, set out forests. They've just about reached the point where they can be- gin to enjoy it. The Aga Ka- gans have picked this as a good time to move in. They’ve landed thirty detachments of ‘fishermen’ — complete with armored trawlers mounting 40 mm infinite repeaters — and another two dozen parties of ‘homesteaders' — all male and toting rocket launchers.” “Surely there’s land enough on the world to afford space to both groups,” the Under- secretary said. “A spirit of co-operation — ” {{'T’HE Boyars needed some co-operation sixty years ago,” Retief said. “They tried to get the Aga Kagans to join in and help them beat back some of the saurian wild life that liked to graze on people. The Corps didn't like the idea. They wanted to see an undisputed anti-Concordiatist enclave. The Aga Kagans didn't want to play, either. But now that the world is tamed, they’re moving in.” “The exigencies of diplo- macy require a flexible pol- icy— ” 72 *1 want a firm assurance of Corps support to take back to Flamme,” Retief said. “The Boyars are a little naive. They don't understand diplomatic triple-speak. They just want to hold onto the homes they’ve made out of a wasteland.” “I'm warning you, Retief!” the Under-Secretary snapped, leaning forward, wattles quiv- ering. “Corps policy with re- gard to Flamme includes no inflammatory actions based on outmoded concepts. The Boyars will have to accommo- date themselves to the situa- tion !” “That's what I’m afraid of,” Retief said. “They’re not going to sit still and watch it happen. If I don’t take back concrete evidence of Corps backing, we’re going to have a nice hot little shooting war on our hands.” The Under-Secretary pushed out his lips and drummed his fingers on the desk. “Confounded hot-heads,” he muttered. “Very well, Retief. I’ll go along to the extent of a Note; but positively no further.” “A Note? I was thinking of something more like a squad- ron of Corps Peace Enforcers running through a few routine maneuvers off Flamme.” “Out of the question. A stiffly worded Protest Note is the best I can do. That's final.” Back in til# eorrtdoc, Mag- hr Keith Laeaier

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nan turned to Retief. "When; will you learn not to argue; with Under-Secretaries? One would think you actively dis* liked the idea of ever receiv- ing a promotion. I was aston- ished at the Under-Secre- tary’s restraint. Frankly, I was stunned when he actually agreed to a Note. I, of course, will have to draft it.” Mag- nan pulled at his lower lip thoughtfully. "Now, I won- der, should I view with deep concern an act of open agres- sion, or merely point out an apparent violation of techni- calities. . .” "Don’t bother,” Retief said. "I have a draft all ready to go.** "But how—?” "I had a feeling I’d get pa- per instead of action,” Retief said. "I thought I’d save a little time all around.” "At times, your cynicism borders on impudence.” "At other times, it borders on disgust. Now, if you’ll run the Note through for signa- ture, I’ll try to catch the six o’clock shuttle.” "Leaving so soon? There’s an important reception to- night. Some of our biggest names will be there. An ex- cellent opportunity for you to join in the diplomatic give- and-take.” "No, thanks. I want to get back to Flamme and join in something mild, like a dino- saw hunt.” "When you get there,” said M^g^an* liQpe^yop’ll make TM&oDESEAT; AND THE STARS it quite clear that this matter is to be settled without vio- lence.” "Don*t worry. I’ll keep the peace, if I have to start a war to do it.” ON the broad verandah at Government House, Re- tief settled himself comfort- ably in a lounge chair. He ac- cepted a tall glass from a white-jacketed waiter and re- garded the flamboyant Flamme sunset, a gorgeous blaze of Vermillion and pur- ple that reflected from a still lake, tinged the broad lawn with color, silhouetted tall poplars among flower beds. "You’ve done great things here in sixty years, Georges,” said Retief. "Not that natural, geological processes wouldn’t have produced the same re- suits, given a couple of hun- dred million years.” "Don’t belabor the point,” the Boyar Chef d’Regime said. "Since we seem to bo on the verge of losing it.” "You’re forgetting the Note.” "A Note,” Georges said, waving his cigar. "What the purple polluted hell is a Note supposed to do? I’ve got Aga Kagan claim- jumpers camped in the middle of what used to be a fine stand of barley, cooking sheep’s brains over" dung fires not ten miles from Government House — and up-^ wind at that.* "Say, if that’s the same bar* ley you distill youfc whiskey

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from, I'd call that a first-class atrocity." “Retief, on your say-so, I’ve kept my boys on a short leash. They’ve put up with plenty. Last week, while you were away, these barbarians sailed that flotilla of armor-plated junks right through the mid- dle of one of our best oyster breeding beds. It was all I could do to keep a bunch of our men from going out in private helis and blasting ’em out of the water." “That wouldn’t have been good for the oysters, either.’’ “That’s what I told ’em. I also said you’d be back here in a few days with something from Corps HQ. When I tell ’em all we’ve got is a piece of paper, that’ll be the end. There’s a strong vigilante or- ganization here that’s been outfitting for the last four weeks. If I hadn’t held them back with assurances that the CDT would step in and take care of this invasion, they would have hit them before now." tf^'T’HAT would have been a mistake," said Retief. “The Aga Kagans are tough customers. They’re active on half a dozen worlds at the mo- ment. They’ve been building up for this push for the last five years. A show of re- sistance by you Boyars with- out Corps backing would be an invitation to slaughter— with the excuse that you started it." 14 “So what are we going to do? Sit here and watch these goat-herders take over our farms and fisheries?" “Those goat-herders aren’t all they seem. They’ve got a first-class modern navy." “I’ve seen ’em. They camp in goat-skin tents, gallop around on animal-back, wear dresses down to their an- kles—* “The ‘goat-skin’ tents are a high-polymer plastic, made in the same factory that turns out those long flowing bullet- proof robes you mention. The animals are just for show. Back home they use helis and ground cars of the most mod- ern design." The Chef d’Regime chewed his cigar. “Why the masquerade?" “Something to do with in- ternal policies, I suppose." “So we sit tight and watch ’em take our world away from us. That’s what I get for play- ing along with you, Retief. We should have clobbered these monkeys as soon as they set foot on our world." “Slow down, I haven’t fin- ished yet. There’s still the Note." “I’ve got plenty of paper already. Rolls and rolls of it." “Give diplomatic processes a chance," said Retief. “The Note hasn’t even been deliv- ered yet. Who knows? We may get surprising results." “If ypu expect me to sup- ply a runner for the purpose, you’re out of luck,. From what .fey Keith Manner

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I hear, he’s likely to come back with his ears stuffed in his hip pocket/’ “I’ll deliver the Note per- sonally/’ Retief said. “I could use a couple of escorts — pre- ferably strong-arm lads/’ The Chef d’Regime frowned, blew out a cloud of smoke. “I wasn’t kidding about these Aga Kagans,” he said. “I hear they have some nasty habits. I don’t want to see you operated on with the same knives they use to skin out the goats.” “I’d be against that myself. Still, the mail must go through.” “Strong-arm lads, eh? What have you got in mind, Re- tief?” “A little muscle in the background is an old diplo- matic custom,” Retief said. The Chef d’Regime stubbed out his cigar thoughtfully. “I used to be a pretty fair el- bow-wrestler myself,” he said. “Suppose I go along...?” “That,” said Retief, “should lend just the right note of solidarity to our little delega- tion.” He hitched his chair closer. “Now, depending on what we run into, here’s how we’ll play it...” II EIGHT miles into the roll- ing granite hills west of the capital, a black-painted of- ficial air-car flying the twin flags of Chief of State and Terrestrial Minister skimmed THE bCSERT AMD THE STARS along a foot above a pot-holed road. Slumped in the padded seat, the Boyar Chef d’Regime waved his cigar glumly at the surrounding hills. “Fifty years ago this was bare rock,” he said. “We’ve bred special strains of bac- teria here to break down the formations into soil, and we followed up with a program of broad-spectrum fertiliza- tion. We planned to put the whole area into crops by next year. Now it looks like the goats will get it.” . “Will that scrubland sup- port a crop?” Retief said, eye- ing the lichen-covered knolls. “Sure. We start with leg- umes and follow up with ce- reals. Wait until you see this next section. It’s an old flood plain, came into production thirty years ago. One of our finest—” The air-car topped a rise. The Chef dropped his cigar and half rose, with a hoarse yell. A herd of scraggly goats tossed their heads among a stand of ripe grain. The car pulled to a stop. Retief held the Boyar’s arm. “Keep calm, Georges,” he said. “Remember, we’re on a diplomatic mission. It wouldn’t do to come to the conference table smelling of goats.” “Let me at ’em!” Georges roared. “I’ll throttle ’em with my bare hands!” • A bearded goat eyed the Boyar Chef sardonically, jaw working. “Look at that long- 75

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nosed son!” The goat gave a derisive bleat and took anoth- er mouthful of ripe grain. "Did you see that?” Georges yelled. "They’ve trained the son of a — ” "Chin up, Georges,” Retief said. "We’ll take up the goat problem along wit!: the rest.” "I’ll murder ’em!” "Hold it, Georges. Look over there.” A hundred yards away, a trio of brown-cloaked horse- men topped a rise, paused dramatically against the cloudless pale sky, then gal- loped down the slope toward the car, rifles bobbing at their backs, cloaks billowing out behind. Side by side they rode, through the brown- golden grain, cutting three narrow swaths that ran in a straight sweep from the ridge to the air-car where Retief and the Chef d’Regime hov- ered, waiting. Georges scrambled for the side of the car. "Just wait ’til I get my hands on him!” Retief pulled him back. "Sit tight and look pleased, Georges. Never give the op- position a hint of your true feelings. Pretend you’re a goat lover — and hand me one of your cigars.” The three horsemen pulled up in a churn of chaff and a clatter of pebbles. Georges coughed, batting a hand at the settling dust. Retief peeled the cigar unhurriedly, sniffed at it and thumbed it alight, He drew ^t it, puffed 76. out a cloud of smoke and glanced casually at the trio of Aga Kagan cavaliers. "Peace be with you,” he in- toned in accent-free Kagan. "May your shadows never grow less.” THE leader of the three, a hawk-faced man with a heavy beard, unlimbered his rifle. He fingered it, frown- ing ferociously. "Have no fear,” Retief said, smiling graciously. "He who comes as a guest enjoys per- fect safety.” A smooth-faced member of the threesome barked an oath and leveled his rifle at Re- tief. "Youth is the steed of folly,” Retief said. "Take care that the beardless one does not disgrace his house.” The leader whirled on the youth and snarled an order. He lowered the rifle, mutter- ing. Blackbeard turned back to Retief. "Begone, interlopers,” he said. "You disturb the goats.” "Provision is not taken to the houses of the generous,” Retief said. "May the crea- tures dine well ere they move "Hah! The goats of the Aga Kaga graze on the lands of the Aga Kaga.” The leader edged his horse close, eyed Retief fiercely. "We welcome no intruders on our lands/'1 "To praise a man for what' he does not possess is t<? make him appear foolish,” ftetief * 17 A <f*i! X; . O • i.i.i. i it by K pHh _M»u riot

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said. “These are the lands of the Boyars. But enough of these pleasantries. We seek audience with your ruler.” “You may address me as ‘Exalted One’,” the leader said. “Now dismount from that steed of Shaitan.” “It is written, if you need anything from a dog, call him ‘sir’,” Retief said. “I must de- cline to impute canine ances- try to a guest. Now you may conduct us to your headquar- ters.” “Enough of your inso- lence !” The bearded man cocked his rifle. “I could blow your heads off !” “The hen has feathers, but it does not fly,” Retief said. “We have asked for escort. A slave must be beaten with a stick; for a free man, a hint is enough.” “You mock me, pale one. I warn you — ” “Only love makes me weep,” Retief said. “I laugh at hatred.” “Get out of the car!” Retief puffed at his cigar, eyeing the Aga Kagan cheer- fully. The youth in the rear moved forward, teeth bared. “Never give in to the fool, lest he say, ‘He fears me/ ” Retief said. “I cannot restrain my men in the face of your insults,” the bearded Aga Kagan roared. “These hens of mine have feathers — and talons as well !” “When God would destroy an ant, he gives him wings,” THE DESERT AND THE STARS Retief said. “Distress in mis- fortune is another misfor- tune.” The bearded man’s face grew purple. „ Retief dribbled the ash from his cigar over the side of the car, “Now I think we’d better be getting on,” he said brisk- ly. “I've enjoyed our chat, but we do have business to attend to.” The bearded leader laughed shortly. “Does the condemned man beg for the axe?” he en- quired rhetorically. “Y o u shall visit the Aga Kaga, then. Move on! And make no at- tempt to escape, else my gun will speak you a brief fare- well.” The horsemen glowered, then, at a word from the lead- er, took positions around the car. Georges started the ve- hicle forward, following the leading rider. Retief leaned back and let out a long sigh. “That was close,” he said. “I was about out of proverbs.” “You sound as though you’d brought off a coup,” Georges said. “From the expression on the whiskery one’s face, we’re in for trouble. What was he saying?” “Just a routine exchange of bluffs,” Retief said. “Now when we get there, remember to make your flattery sound like insults and your insults sound like flattery, and you’ll be all right.” “These birds are armed. And they don’t like stran- 77

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gers,” Georges said. “ Maybe I should have boned up on their habits before I joined this expedition.” “Just stick to the plan,” Re- tief said. “And remember: a handful of luck is better than a camel-load of learning.” THE air car followed the es- cort down a long slope to a dry river bed and across it, through a barren stretch of shifting sand to a green oasis set with canopies. The armed escort motioned the car to a halt before an immense tent of glistening black. Before the tent armed men lounged under a pennant bearing a lion couchant in crimson on a field verte. “Get out,” Blackbeard or- dered. The guards eyed the visitors, their drawn sabers catching sunlight. Retief and Georges stepped from the car onto rich rugs spread on the grass. They followed the fero- cious gesture of the bearded man through the opening into a perfumed interior of lu- minous shadows. A heavy odor of incense hung in the air, and the strumming of stringed instruments laid a muted pattern of sound be- hind the decorations of gold and blue, silver and green. At the far end of the room, among a bevy of female slaves, a large and resplen- dently clad man with blue- black hair and a clean-shaven chin popped a grape into his mouth. He wiped his fingers 78 negligently on a wisp of silk offered » by a handmaiden, belched loudly and looked the callers over. ■» Blackbeard cleared his throat. “Down on your faces in the presence of the Exalt- ed One, the Aga Kaga, ruler of East and West.” “Sorry,” Retief said firmly. “My hay-fever, you know.” The reclining giant waved a hand languidly. “Never mind the formali- ties,” he said. “Approach.” Retief and Georges crossed the thick rugs. A cold draft blew toward them. The reclin- ing man sneezed violently, wiped his nose on another silken scarf and held up a hand. “Night and the horses and the desert know me,” he said in resonant tones. “Also the sword and the guest and pa- per and pen — ” He paused, wrinkled his nose and sneezed again. “Turn off that damned air-conditioner,” he snapped. He settled himself and mo- tioned the bearded man to him. The two exchanged muted remarks. Then the bearded man stepped back, ducked his head and withdrew to the rear. “Excellency,” Retief said, “I have the honor to present M. Georges Duror, Chef d’Regime of the Planetary government.” “Planetary government?” The Aga Kaga spat grape seeds on the rug. “My men have observed a few squatters by Keith Laumer

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along the shore. If they’re in distress, I'll see about a dis- tribution of goat-meat.” “It is the punishment of the envious to grieve at anothers’ plenty,” Retief said “No goat- meat will be required.” “Ralph told me you talk like a page out of Mustapha ben Abdallah Katib Jelebi,” the Aga Kaga said. “I know a few old sayings myself. For example, ‘A Bedouin is only cheated once.’ ” “We have no such inten- tions, Excellency,” Retief said. “Is it not written, ‘Have no faith in the Prince whose minister cheats you’?” “I’ve had some unhappy ex- periences with strangers,” the Aga Kaga said. “It is written in the sands that all strangers are kin. Still, he who visits rarely is a welcome guest. Be seated.” Ill Handmaidens brought cushions, giggled and fled. Retief and Georges set- tled themselves comfortably. The Aga Kaga eyed them in silence. “We have come to bear tid- ings from the Corps Diploma- tique Terrestrienne,” Retief said solemnly. A perfumed slave girl offered grapes. “Modest ignorance is better than boastful knowledge,” the Aga Kaga said. “What brings the CDT into the picture?” “The essay of the drunkard will be read in the tavern,” Retief said. “Whereas the words of kings...” “Very well, I concede the point.” The Aga Kaga waved a hand at the serving maids. “Depart, my dears. Attend me later. You too, Ralph. These are mere diplomats. They are men of words, not deeds.” The bearded man glared and departed. The girls hurried after him. “Now,” the Aga Kaga said. “Let’s drop the wisdom of the ages and get down to the is- sues. Not that I don’t admire your repertoire of platitudes. How do you remember them all?” “Diplomats and other liars require good memories,” said Retief. “But as you point out, small wisdom to small minds. I’m here to effect a settle- ment of certain differences between yourself and the planetary authorities. I have here a Note, which I’m con- veying on behalf of the Sec- tor Under-Secretary. With your permission. I’ll read it.” “Go ahead.” The Aga Kaga kicked a couple of cushions onto the floor, eased a bottle from under the couch and reached for glasses. “The Under-Secretary for Sector Affairs presents his compliments to his Excel- lency, the Aga Kaga of the Aga Kaga, Primary Poten- tate, Hereditary Sheik, Emir of the — ” “Yes, yes. Skip the titles.” Retief flipped over two pages* THE DESERT AND THE STARS 79

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“...and with reference to the recent relocation of per- sons under the jurisdiction of his Excellency, has the honor to point out that the terri- tories now under settlement comprise a portion of that area, hereinafter designated as Sub-sector Alpha, which, under terms of the Agree- ment entered into by his Excellency’s predecessor, and as referenced in Sector Ministry’s Notes numbers G-175846573957-b and X-7584- 736 c-1, with particular perti- nence to that body designated in the Revised Galactic Cata- logue, Tenth Edition, as amended, Volume Nine, reel 43, as 54 Cygni Alpha, other- wise referred to hereinafter as Flamme — ” “Come to the point,” the Aga Kaga cut in. “You’re here to lodge a complaint that I’m invading territories to which someone else lays claim, is that it?” He smiled broadly, offered dope-sticks and lit one. “Well, I’ve been expect- ing a call. After all, it’s what you gentlemen are paid for. Cheers.” “Your Excellency has a lucid way of putting things,” Retief said. “Call me Stanley,” the Aga Kaga said. “The other rou- tine is just to please some of the old fools — I mean the more conservative members of my government. They’re still gnawing their beards and kicking themselves because their ancestors dropped sci- 60 ence in favor of alchemy and got themselves stranded in a cultural dead end. This charade is supposed to prove they were right all along. However, I’ve no time to waste in neurotic compensa- tions. I have places to go and deeds to accomplish.” “At first glance,” Retief said, “it looks as though the places are already occupied, and the deeds are illegal.” THE Aga Kaga guffawed. “For a diplomat, you speak plainly, Retief. Have another drink.” He poured, eyeing Georges. “What of M. Duror? How does he feel about it?” Georges took a thoughtful swallow of whiskey. “Not bad,” he said. “But not quite good enough to cover the odor of goats.” The Aga Kaga snorted. “I thought the goats were over- doing it a bit myself,” he said. “Still, the graybeards insist- ed. And I need their sup- port.” “Also,” Georges said dis- tinctly, “I think you’re soft. You lie around letting wom- en wait on you, while your betters are out doing an hon- est day’s work.” The Aga Kaga looked star- tled. “Soft? I can tie a knot in an iron bar as big as your thumb.” He popped a grape into his mouth. “As for the rest, your pious views about the virtues of hard labor are as childish as my advisors’ faith in the advantages of by Ksith Laamsr

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primitive plumbing. As for myself, I am a realist. If two monkeys want the same ba- nana, in the end one will have it, and the other will cry morality. The days of my years are numbered, praise be to God. While they last, I hope to eat well, hunt well, fight well and take my share of pleasure. I leave to others the arid satisfactions of .self- denial and other perversions.” “You admit you’re here to grab our land, then,” Georges said. ‘‘That’s the damnedest piece of bare-faced aggres- sion— ” “Ah, ah!” The Aga Kaga held up a hand. “Watch your vocabulary, my dear sir. I’m sure that ‘justifiable yearn- ings for territorial self-reali- zation’ would be more appro- priate to the situation. Or possibly ‘legitimate aspira- tions. for self-determination of formerly exploited peoples’ might , fit the .case. Aggression is, by definition, an activity carried on only by those who have inherited the mantle of Colonial Imperialism.” “Imperialism ! ,Why, you Aga v Kagans have been the most notorious planet-grab- bers in Sector history, you— you—” “Call me Stanley.” The Aga Kaga munched a g rape. “I merely face the realities of popular ^olk-Iore. .- Let’s be pragitotic; it's* a* matter of historical > associatiom * - Some peopoiercan^grab land and pass it off lightly as a moral duty: THE DESERT AND THE STARS others are dubbed imperialist merely for holding onto their own. Unfair, you say. But that’s life, my friends. And I shall continue to take every advantage of it.” “We’ll fight you!” Georges bellowed. He took another gulp of whiskey and slammed the glass down. “You won’t take this world without a struggle !” “Another?” the Aga Kaga said, offering the bottle. Georges glowered as his glass was filled., The Aga Kaga held the glass up to the light. “Excellent color, don’t you agree?” He turned his eyes on Georges. “It’s pointless to resist,” he said. “We have you outgunned and outmanned. Your small nation has no chance against us. But we’re prepared to be generous. . You may continue , to occupy, such areas as we do not immediately reguire until suck time as. yop’rOigible to make other arrangements.” “And by the time we’ve got a crop growing , out of what was bare rock, you’ll be ready to move in,” the Boyar Chef d’Regime snapped. “But you’ll find k that we aren’t alone !” {{^VUITE alone,” the Aga V** said. He nodded saeely. “Yes, one need but read the lesson of history. The Corps Diplomatique will make ex- postulatory noises, but it will a accept the fait accompli. You, *dear - sir, are but a very small nibble. We won’t make the mistake of excessive 81

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greed. We shall inch our way to empire — and those who stand in our way shall be dubbed warmongers.” “I see you’re quite a stu- dent of history, Stanley,” Re- tief said. “I wonder if you recall the eventual fate of most of the would-be empire nibblers of the past?” “Ah, but they grew incau- tious. They went too far, too fast.” “The confounded impu- dence,” Georges rasped. “Tells us to our face what he has in mind !” “An ancient and honorable custom, from the time of Mein Kampf and the Commu- nist Manifesto through the Porcelain Wall of Leung. Such declarations have a leg- endary quality. It’s, tradition- al that they’re never taken at face value.” “But always,” Retief said, “there was a critical point at which vthe man on horseback could have been pulled from the saddle.” “ Could have been,” the Aga Kaga chuckled. He finished the grapes and began peeling an orange. “But they never were. Hitler could have been stopped by the Czech Air Force in 1938; Stalin was at the mercy of the primitive atomics of the west in 1946 ; Leung was grossly over-ex- tended at Rangoon. But the onus of that historic role could not be overcome. It has been the fate of your spiritu- al forebears to carve civiliza- tion from the wilderness and then, amid tearing of gar- ments and the heaping of ashes of self-accusation on your own confused heads, to withdraw, leaving the spoils for local political opportu- nists and mob leaders, clothed in the mystical virtue of na- tive birth. Have a banana.” “You’re stretching your analogy a little too far,” Re- tief said. “You’re banking on the inaction of the Corps. You could be wrong.” “I shall know when to stop,” the Aga Kaga said. “Tell me, Stanley,” Retief said, rising. “Are we quite private here?” “Yes, perfectly so,” the Aga Kaga said. “None would dare to intrude in my council.” He cocked an eyebrow at Retief. “You have a proposal to make in confidence? But what of our dear friend Georges? One would not like to see him dis- illusioned.” “Don’t worry about Georges. He’s a realist, like you. He’s prepared to deal in facts. Hard facts, in this case.” The Aga Kaga nodded thoughtfully. “What are you getting at?” “You’re basing your plan of action -on the certainty that the Corps will sit by, wring- ing its hands, while you em- bark on a career of planetary piracy.” “Isn’t it the custom?” the Aga Kaga smiled complacent- ly. 82 fey KettJi Uumer

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m Wm#M *' *‘lr HVM * « • ^V-. ■ /&&9Z0F.Sa qsir. ", ^=fiPNlP v f<*£l‘. A • - ' X1 W^mwM wmw'm$ mm*** £ /'t'/f/r THE DESERT AND THE STARS 83

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“I have news for you, Stan- ley. t. In this instance, neck- wringing seems more; in order than hand-wringing.” The Aga Kaga frowned. “Your manner — ” “Never mind our manners!” Georges blurted, standing. “We don’t need any lessons from goat-herding land- thieves!” The Aga Kaga’s face dark- ened. “You dare to speak thus to me, pig of a muck-grub- ber!” WITH a muffled curse Georges launched himself at the potentate. The giant rolled aside. He grunted as the Boyar’s fist thumped in his short ribs; then he chopped down on Georges’ neck. The Chef d’Regime slid off onto the floor a? the Aga Kaga bounded to his feet, sending fruit and silken cush- ions flying. , . ; “I see it now!*’ he hissed. “An assassination attempt !” He stretched his arms, thick as tree-roots — a grizzly in satin robes. “Your heads will ring together like gongs be- fore I have done with you !” He lunged for Retief. Retief came to his feet, feinted with his left and planted a short right against the Aga Kaga’s jaw with a solid smack. The potentate stumbled, grabbed; Retief slipped aside. The Aga Kaga whirled to face Retief. : “A slippery diplomat, by all the houris in Paradise!” he grated, breathing hard. “But a fool. True to your 84 medieval code of chivalry, you attacked singly, a blunder I would never have made* And you shall die for your idio- cy !” He opened his mouth to bellow — “You sure look foolish, with your fancy hair-do down in your eyes,” Retief said. “The servants will get a big laugh out of it.” With a choked yell, the Aga Kaga dived for Retief, missed as he leaped aside. The two went to the mat to- gether and rolled, sending a stool skittering. Grunts and curses echoed as the two big men strained, muscles pop- ping. Retief groped for a scissors hold ; the Aga Kaga seized his foot, bit hard. Re- tief bent nearly double, braced himself and slammed the po- tentate against the rug. Dust flew. Then the two were on their feet, circling. “Many times Havt I longed t?9 btoil a1 ''diplohruft' civet ‘ a slow fire-” the Aga 'Kaga j snatled. “Tonight will see it come to pass V* 1 * ’ y > 1 : • “I’ve seen it done often" at staff meetings,” said Retief. “It seems to* have no perma- nent effect.” , The Aga* Kaga reached for Retief, who feinted left', ham- mered ^a right to the thin. The Aga Kaga tottered. Re- tief measured him, brought up a haymaker. The potentate slammed to the rug — out cold. * * » • 1 * i ' Georges toiled bvtt, sat up. “Let me- at ’the* son* of he mustered, by Keith Laumer

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“Take over, Georges/’ Re- tief said, panting. “Since he's in a mood to negotiate now, we may as well get something accomplished.” Georges eyed the fallen ruler, who stirred, groaned lugubriously. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” Georges said. “But I’m with you in any case.” He strad- dled the prone body, plucked a curved knife from the low table and prodded the Aga Kaga’s Adam’s apple. The monarch opened his eyes. “Make one little peep and your windbag will spring a leak,” Georges said. “Very few historical figures have accomplished anything impor- tant after their throats were cut.” “Stanley won’t yell,” Retief said. “We’re not the only ones who’re guilty of cultural idiocy. He’d lose face some- thing awful if he let his fol- lowers see him like this.” Re- tief settled himself on a tufted ottoman. “Right, Stan- ley?” The Aga Kaga snarled. Retief selected a grape and ate it thoughtfully. “These aren’t bad, Georges. You might consider taking on a few Aga Kagan vine-growers — purely on a yearly contract basis, of course.” The Aga Kaga groaned, rolling his eyes. “Well, I believe we’re ready to get down to diplomatic THE DESERT AND THE STARS proceedings n o w,” Retief said. “Nothing like dealing in an atmosphere of realistic good fellowship. First, of course, there’s the matter of the presence of aliens lacking visas.” He opened his brief- case, withdrew a heavy sheet of parchment. “I have the document here, drawn up and ready for signature. It pro- vides for the prompt deporta- tion of such persons, by Corps Transport, all expenses to be borne by the Aga Kagan government. That’s agreeable, I assume?” Retief looked ex- pectantly at the purple face of the prone potentate. The Aga Kaga grunted a strangled grunt. “Speak up, Stanley,” Retief said. “Give him plenty of air, Georges.” “Shall I let some in through the side?” “Not yet. I’m sure Stanley wants to be agreeable.” The Aga Kaga snarled. “Maybe just a little then, Georges,” Retief said judi- ciously. Georges jabbed the knife in far enough to draw a bead of blood. The Aga Kaga grunted. “Agreed!” he snorted. “By the beard of the prophet, when I get my hands on you ...” “Second item : certain fields, fishing grounds, et cetera, have suffered damage due to the presence of the aforementioned illegal immi- 85

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grants. Full compensation will be made by the Aga Ka- gan government. Agreed?” THE Aga Kaga drew a breath, tensed himself ; Georges jabbed with the knife point. His prisoner relaxed with a groan. “Agreed!” he grated. “A vile tactic! You enter my tent under the guise of guests, protected by dip- lomatic immunity — ” “I had the impression we were herded in here at sword point,” said Retief. “Shall we go on? Now there’s the little matter of restitution for vio- lation of sovereignty, repara- tions for mental anguish, payment for damaged fences, roads, drainage canals, com- munications, et cetera, et cetera. Shall I read them all?” “Wait until the news of this outrage is spread abroad !” “They'd never believe it,” Retief said. “History would prove it impossible. And on mature consideration, I’m sure you won’t want it noised about that you entertained visiting dignitaries flat on your back.” “What about the pollution of the atmosphere by goats?” Georges put in. “And don’t overlook the muddying of streams, the destruction of timber for camp fires and — ” “I’ve covered all that sort of thing under a miscellane- ous heading,” Retief said. “We can fill it in at leisure when //e get back.” “Bandits!” the Aga Kaga 86 hissed. “Thieves! Dogs of un- reliable imperialists!” “It is disillusioning, I know,” Retief said. “Still, of such little surprises is history made. Sign here.” He held the parchment out and offered a pen. “A nice clear signature, please. We wouldn’t want any quibbling about the legality of the treaty, after conducting the negotiation with such scrupulous regard for the niceties.” “Niceties! Never in history has such an abomination been perpetrated !” “Oh, treaties are always worked out this way, when it comes right down to it. We’ve just accelerated the process a little. Now, if you’ll just sign like a good fellow, we’ll be on our way. Georges will have his work cut out for him, planning how to use all this reparations money.” The Aga Kaga gnashed his teeth; Georges prodded. The Aga Kaga seized the pen and scrawled his name. Retief signed with a flourish. He tucked the treaty away in his briefcase, took out another. “This is just a safe-conduct, to get us out of the door and into the car,” he said. “Prob- ably unnecessary, but it won’t hurt to have it, in case you figure out some way to avoid your obligations as a host.” The Aga Kaga signed the document after another prod from Georges. “One more paper, and I’ll be into the jugular,” he said. by Keith Laumer

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44\V7E’RE all through now,” said Retief. “Stanley, we’re going to have to run now. I’m going to strap up your hands and feet a trifle ; it shouldn’t take you more than ten minutes or so to get loose, stick a band- aid on your neck and — ” “My men will cut you down for the rascals you are !’’ “By that time, we’ll be over the hill,” Retief continued. “At full throttle^ we’ll be at Government House in an hour, and of course I won’t waste any time transmitting the treaty to Sector HQ. And the same concern for face that keeps you from yelling for help will insure that the de- tails of the negotiation re- main our secret.” “Treaty! That scrap of pa- per!” “I confess the Corps is a little sluggish about taking action at times,” Retief said, whipping a turn of silken cord around the Aga Kaga’s ankles. “But once it’s got signatures on a legal treaty, it’s extreme- ly stubborn about all parties adhering to the letter. It can’t afford to be otherwise, as I’m sure you’ll understand.” He cinched up the cord, went to work on the hands. The Aga Kaga glared at him balefully. “To the Pit with the Corps! The ferocity of my re- venge—” “Don’t talk nonsense, Stan- ley. There are several squad- rons of Peace Enforcers cruis- ing in the Sector just now. THE DESERT AND THE STARS I’m sure you’re not ready to make any historical errors by taking them on.” Retief fin- ished and stood. “Georges, just stuff a scarf in Stanley’s mouth. I think he’d prefer to work quietly until he recovers his dignity.” Retief buckled his briefcase, selected a large grape and looked down at the Aga Kaga. “Actually, you’ll be glad you saw things our way, Stan- ley,” he said. “You’ll get all the credit for the generous settlement. Of course, it will be a striking precedent for any other negotiations that may become necessary if you get grabby on other worlds in this region. And if your ad- visors want to know why the sudden change of heart, just tell them you’ve decided to start from scratch on an un- occupied world. Mention the virtues of thrift and hard work. I’m confident you can find plenty of historical ex- amples to support you.” “Thanks for the drink,” said Georges. “Drop in on me at Government House some time and we’ll crack another bottle.” “And don’t feel bad about your project’s going awry,” Retief said. “In the words of the prophet, ’Stolen goods are never sold at a loss.’ ” ii A remarkable about-face, ** Retief,” Magnan said. “Let this be a lesson to you. A stern Note of Protest can work wonders.” 87

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“A lot depends on the method of delivery/' Retief said. “Nonsense. I knew all along the Aga Kagans were a rea- sonable and peace-loving peo- ple. One of the advantages of senior rank, of course, is the opportunity to see the big picture. Why, I was saying only this morning — ” The desk screen broke into life. The mottled jowls of Under-Secretary Sternwheeler appeared. “Magnan! I’ve just learned of the Flamme affair. Who’s responsible?” “Why, ah. . . I suppose that I might be said — ” “This is your work, is it?” “Well... Mr. Retief did play the role of messenger.” “Don’t pass the buck, Mag- nan!” the Under-Secretary barked. “What the devil went on out there?” “Just a routine Protest Note. Everything is quite in order.” “Bah! Your over-zealous- ness has cost me dear. I was feeding Flamme to the Aga Kagans to consolidate our po- sition of moral superiority for use as a lever in a number of important negotiations. Now they've backed out ! Aga Kaga emerges from the affair wreathed in virtue. You've destroyed a very pretty finesse in power politics, Mr. Magnan! A year’s work down the drain!” “But I thought — ” “I doubt that, Mr. Magnan, M I doubt that very much!” The Under-Secretary rang off. “This is a fine turn of events,” Magnan groaned. “Retief, you know very well Protest Notes are merely in- tended for the historical rec- ord ! No one ever takes them seriously.” “You and the Aga Kaga ought to get together,” said Retief. “He’s a great one for citing historical parallels. He’s not a bad fellow, as a matter of fact. I have an in- vitation from him to visit Kaga and go mud-pig hunting. He was so impressed by Corps methods that he wants to be sure we’re on his side next time. Why don’t you come along?” “Hmmm. Perhaps I should cultivate him. A few high- level contacts never do any harm. On the other hand, I understand he lives in a very loose way, feasting and mer- rymaking. Frivolous in the extreme. No wife, you under- stand, but hordes of lightly clad women about. And in that connection, the Aga Ka- gans have some very curious notions as to what constitutes proper hospitality to a guest.” Retief rose, pulled on the powder blue cloak and black velvet gauntlets of a Career Minister. “Don’t let it worry you,” he said. “You’ll have a great time. And as the Aga Kaga would say, ‘Ugliness is the best safeguard of virginity.’ ” END by Kaiflt Launttr

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JP # Short Story THE MAN WHO FLEW BY CHARLES D. CUNNINGHAM, JR. The Man Who Flew could not exist — but he had committed a foul crime! CLOUDS hung low over the city, gray and dismal. The shining metal thruway partial- ly reflected their somber visage. A few vehicles scur- ried nervously through the city. Keller turned away from the window dismally. His con- science was bothering him, and it affected his every movement. Looking over his humbly furnished office, he entertained the thought, not for the first time, that he 89

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should change jobs if he want- ed to eat* A buzz sounded — the inter- com system. That would be Sally, his secretary. It was a mystery what she would want. Usually she never bothered him except in case of an emer- gency, and the last client Kel- ler had had dropped his case three months ago. Apparently it was another customer, unlikely as it seemed. Keller heard voices outside, Sally’s irritated and protesting, and a nervous baritone. Abruptly the door opened, disclosing a rugged, bushy-haired C-3 (average in- telligence and advanced ex- tra-sensory perception, but unexercised), who was in a bad state of nerves. He seemed to have forced his way past Sally into the in- ner office. Keller flashed a thought at Sally: **How does he look?** **Not so hot,** she an- swered. **I didn’t bother to scan much — don’t want to lower myself to that depth — but he seems to be a big paver. He’s impatient, though. And he wants everything run his wav.** Oh, fine, thought Keller. My first victim in three months, and it has to be the Big Shot type. He made the usual Q-R opening; curtly and efficient- ly: “Your name?" 90 “Uh — Harold Radcliffe “Why the hesitation?” But Keller had scanned it already. The man was simply cautious. He continued without letting Radcliffe answer: “Age?” 33. “Occupation?” Hesitation : Salesman. “Resi- dence?” After writing this and Radcliffe’s telephone number down, he closed his ‘grimy black notebook and sat back. “And how, Mr. Radcliffe, why exactly did you come here?” Radcliffe, unsure of him- self at first, gathered confi- dence as he noticed Keller’s interest growing. He began: “Well sir, for this job I need one of the best detec- tives— ” he paused at Keller’s grimace — “and since you’re one of the few detectives in the city who can read minds, and the only A-2 ’tec in the state — ” He shrugged, and finished, “I figured you’d be the man for me.” Keller saw that he was tell- ing the truth, after a quick check into the man’s mind. “All right, Mr. Radcliffe. What’s your problem?” Radcliffe seemed to not be able to focus his thoughts. His mind, Keller saw, was a loose stream of un- connected thoughts, trying to merge into a whple. Keller could read no message out of them. He suspected a block — by Charles D. Cunningham, Jr;

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an unusual thing for a C-3, but not impossible* He gave up, sat back and awaited the other's response. Finally it came, jerking Kel- ler out of his chair. "It’s murder, Mr. Keller. The murder of my wife.’' Murder! It was the first suspected murder in thirteen years. Ever since the Ricjards case in '04, peace and tranquility reigned in a calm and placid nation. For thirteen peaceful years there had been no hint of manslaughter other than accidental. It had been condi- tioned out of humans at the prenatal stage, and unless there was a violent, all-en- compassing urge to kill, mur- der was completely out of the question. It was hard to believe. But it was not a lie; no non-tele could block a lie, and Keller scanned the truth in Rad- cliffe’s brain. "Wait a minute, Radcliffe. Are you sure it's not mur- der by accident — unintention- al manslaughter, as the police term it? Or it could be sui- cide. Had you thought of that?” Radcliffe shook his head impatiently. He rose out of his chair, pacing the floor nervously. "It could not pos- sibly be accident. You’ll see that when you investigate the case. Suicide? It’s possible. Anything is possible, I sup- pose, but I would lay any kind THE MAN WHO FLEW of odds against it. We had just been to the theater. We returned to our apartment at about five minutes to eleven. "After undressing and showering, I started to turn in. I noticed a light on in her room— we sleep in separate rooms — and called to her, to see if anything was wrong. There was no answer. "I figured that she had gone to sleep with the light on, and went into the room to turn it off. That was when I saw her on the floor.” He stopped. Keller read grief, fear and love in his memory. "How had she been killed?” "It was a handgun, Mr. Keller. Her face was all blackened and charred. Bare- ly recognizable. But I knew it must be her. Our rooms con- nect, you see. There are two other doors to each room; one to the outside hall, and one to each bathroom. "When she was shot, my door was locked on the inside — triple-locked, I remember, because I felt like being left alone that night. It was locked by chain, bar and bolt. It’s a fairly ancient apartment house. We like it that way. Her bathroom door was open and there was no one hiding inside. The same went for my bathroom. And both hall doors were locked and bolted. "The windows were locked on the inside, and there is no opening to shoot through that would not leave traces. I checked. 91

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“Even if the killer had got- ten in some way or other, there was no way he could get out and still leave the doors and windows locked up tight.” Keller thought, there is one way, Mr. Radcliffe. But he kept it to himself for the mo- ment. HE looked up and smiled as confidently as he could. “I’ll be glad to take your case, Mr. Radcliffe. Of course you want me to spare no expenses,” he added hope- fully. At Radcliffe’s harassed nod, he relaxed. Next came the most danger- ous part of the job. It was a part which had eliminated several competent detectives from their jobs — the Probe phase. This involved plunging into the subject’s mind, and sorting out relevant details which could furnish extra clues. Several Probers had got themselves trapped in the subject's mind, unable to get out because of a mental block or insanity. It might, however, be un- necessary. He flashed a thought to the girl in the ad- joining room: **Sal, should I give him the H-R treat- ment ?** Answer: ^^Emphatically ! He’s hiding something. Not intentionally, but it needs to be uncovered. A superficial scanning of the preconscious doesn’t get the job done.** Keller sighted. The Probe (also called the H-R treat- ment; because a c e r tain -f 92 amount of hypnotism was in- volved) was trying on not only the subject but also the scanner. He said: “Now, Mr. Radcliffe, I’m going to go into your subcon- scious mind and get your im- pressions of last night. I want you to concentrate on...Tt’s say . . . the moment when you saw your wife.” He shut off all of his five senses, and took the plunge. The image formed : Shrieking terror. A tinge of ozone in the air. The Creature creeping up from behind. A beheaded teddy bear lying full length on the floor. A hole in the air near the door, colored red. Floating demon — where? Nonononono! The Creature bending over him. Terror — heat. No! THE MAN WHO FLEW. Melting walls. The door (now violet) disintegrat- ing. The teddy bear shrivel- ing now — turns into a snake — He emerged. Before he could take full control of his body, a thought came : **Rick? How did you come out ?** He flashed her the image. **Lousy. I can’t get a true im- pression-picture to save my life. Just a lousy nightmare, fantasy-symbolism deal. But I did get something out of that mess. I’ll let you know about it as soon as I verify it.** T3 Radcliffe, since, the time when Keller < had * stopped talking until rights now,, aq by Charlcfe IX Cuhitf ngbam Jr;

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Keller opened his eyes and frowned in thought, no time had elapsed. In actuality, the time taken was one and one- half microseconds. Keller flashed : **Sally, tune in on this conversation, please.** “Radcliffe,” he said slowly, “When did you lose your sight ?” The other man sat up rigid- lv, then relaxed. “How did you find out? Did you scan it?” “No. When I was receiving your impressions, I caught an idea of melting walls. Then there were nameless creatures and demons floating around. I examined your senses when I came out, and saw that you were blind. What is it — sort of a sight perception-tuning sense ?” Radcliffe nodded. “I can sense everything except col- ors. Everything seems black, white and gray to me.” He paused wearily. “Otherwise, there’s no difference. No one else knew about it. Not even my wife.” Keller nodded. “Now, let’s try it again. Concentrate on the moment when you entered here and saw me for the first time.” He flashed a thought to Sal- ly. **Those Creatures were his fear of the unknown. He’s got a lot of fright in there. Probably afraid that the killer would jump out at him from some shadowy corner. I don’t quite see how he could visual- #TMC MAN WHO FLEW ize different colors, having never seen them before — but that’s probably my interpreta- tion of them. Here goes.** The image : Heat. Light. The teddv bear rising up again. Fear. THE MAN WHO FLEW. The snake again — coiling — strik- ing— missing. Fleeing. Dying. Melting walls. Voices around him — laughing — shrieking. Colors of the rainbow. The creature d y i n g — dead — dis- solving. No more... Voices again. Talking to him. Telling him — what? His life flashing before him — stopping. His brain — undress- ing? Hole in the air at — the desk? Fear. THE MAN WHO FLEW. Fear-terror- hate-revenge . . . determina- tion . . . ** Sally? Did you catch all that mess?** **Unfortunately.** **Something’s ^wrong, Sally, I should be seeing something akin to the actual events through his eyes. Instead all I get is this meaningless stuff — unless — oh, God, now I see !** Pause. **I wonder who the Man Who Flew is?** ** You’ve got me. And how about the dissolving crea- ture?** **That shows his confir dence in having someone to tell his story to. All his utv* known fear is vanishing.** **And then there’s the hole in the air.** **Yeah, I think TH surface

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again, and try some straight questions on him.** A D C L I F F E,” began Keller, ‘‘you haven’t re- ported this to the police, have you?” Radcliffe grinned. “Hardly. That would start the biggest scandal in years. I want it kept quiet until we found out who killed her.” “Well, we’ve ruled out acci- dental murder. You found no hand-gun in the room when you searched it?” “No firearm of any kind.” Keller nodded. He let his mind drift back over four years — To a time when he was in love with Mildred Simmons and had proposed to her... and she had rejected him, say- ing she loved Harold Rad- cliffe. He had walked away, a bit- ter man. She had had many enemies, he mused, and almost as many friends. He did not know of anyone who knew her who was not either violently for or violently against her and all that she stood for. He looked up. “How old was your wife when she died?” “T h i r t y-one. Two years younger than I am.” “Do you know of anyone who would want to kill her?” It was a routine question, but to Keller it was very impor- tant. 94 “No. I knew many people who disliked her intensely — I’m not denying that — but not to the point of murder. Of course, she wasn’t around me half the time. I might not know.” “Well, Radcliffe, I think that’ll be all for today. Mind if I go with you back to your apartment to look it over?” “I don’t live there any more. I moved out after I had disposed of her body. I couldn’t stand to live there any longer.” Radcliffe shook hands and departed. Keller read confi- dence and positiveness that he, Keller, would come through. Keller was not so sure. He decided to have a look around Radcliffe’s apart- ment. He strolled aimlessly around the apartment for a few moments, pausing here and there to check details which might or might not help him in analyzing the Radcliffes’ character: furni- ture design, carpeting, ther- mostat setting, toilet articles and so on. Then he got down to a thorough examination of the room. There were no secret panels or trapdoors of any kind. So entrance by a hithertofore un- known passageway was com- pletely out. He checked the air conditioner to see if any rigmarole could be fixed up with it to make it appear that by Charles D. Cunningham, Jr;

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the victim had been shot with a handgun, but this, too, drew a blank. After a few more minutes’ examination, he decided to re- turn. On an impulse, he decided to see where Radcliffe had gone. Attuning his mind to the already-recorded pattern of Radcliffe’s brain, he re- ceived direction, distance and motion — acceleration, direc- tion, rate. To his surprise he noted that Radcliffe had turned back and was heading toward Keller’s office again. Hastily, Keller returned to the office before him. IN about twenty minutes, Radcliffe barged in as be- fore. “Keller,” he said, “I think I’m going to be called out of tov/n tonight. So if you want any more information di- rectly from me, you’ll have to get it now.” Keller flashed: **Sally. Watch his conscious thoughts, and also his impressions. I’m going to try some unconscious identification-response. Wish me luck. Or do you want to burrow around in his sub- conscious with me a little more?** **I think I will. I’m actual- ly beginning to enjoy it, to tell the truth.** Keller said aloud, “I’ll go under ^again. That’ll be the last time.” Image : Nonono. Fire. Flame. Gun. F earhateterrorlove. **Radcliffe, I am the crea- ture.** No! Dead. You’re not — I hate you — gone. Disbelief. Hate. No fear. Forgetfulness. Block. Withdrawal. **Radcliffe.** Me. **I’m the melting walls.** Terror? Uncertainty. Inde- cision. Realization. Contempt- pityscorn. Sharp mental block. Withdrawal. **Radcliffe.** Me. **I’m the teddy bear.** (This was, he thought, Rad- cliffe’s wife-image.) Indecision. Realization. Withdrawal. Blank. **Radcliffe, I’m the hole in the air.** But Keller’s reply was cut short by a cry of terror in his brain. **RICK !** It was Sally. KELLER went down imme- diately. **What?** No response. **WHAT ?** Still no re- sponse. Then he could hear her cry — fading in depth — now dying — gone. **Radcliffe.** Mememe. **Sally.** Memeususwetwowetwo. . . It had happened. Sally was trapped in his preconscious, THE MAN WHO FLEW

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absorbed by his dominating mind block. Gone* Forever. Determination, savage and enraged. A desperate shot in the dark: **RADCLIFFE !** Mememememememe . . . **Radcliffe, I am the MAN WHO FLEW.** Nononono. Fear. Terror. Hate. Block. Withdrawal, but incomplete. . . Coming out of his Probe, Keller saw the result of his last implanted thought: Rad- cliffe, now in a tight fetal ball, lay on the floor. His face was absolutely de- void of expression. His con- scious mind was a constant gobble-gobble-gobble. Keller entered the next room, to find Sally sprawled limply across her desk. Mind- less, soulless, as if she had never had a mind or soul— Keller lifted her tenderly onto the floor and chose the *no6t merciful way out, disin- tegrating her body with an atomic gun from the closet. Then, again, the Probe. ♦♦Radcliffe.** Mememe. ♦♦I'm Sally.** Nonono. (Gloating.) Gone- gonegone. ♦♦Radcliffe, where's Sal- ly?** Gone. Satisfaction. Tri- umph. Laughtea, Delirious happiness. ♦♦Radcliffe, I'm everything. Ml I'm the creature. The snake, THE MAN WHO FLEW, the hole in the air, the flames, everything you've hated, feared and dreaded.** Withdrawal. Thunderbolt! More and more now. Frantically, Keller defend- ed himself, throwing up block after block, only to have it torn down by the ever-spread- ing bolts of pure mental en- ergy. Finally he withdrew into his own body in haste, re- alizing that Radcliffe’s con- quest would mean his revival. WHEN he opened his eyes, Radcliffe was sitting in the chair, yawning. Probably, Keller thought, he had no knowledge of his fetal state. Good. “Well, Rad- cliffe,” he said, “I need only one more thing to complete the picture. Now focus again on 11:17 last night, when you found your wife dead on the floor." Image : Fear. Terror. Anxiety. No- nono. Hole in the air. THE MAN WHO FLEW. Pain. Withdrawal. Complete mental block. With a shock, Keller re- alized that in seven hours Radcliffe had been turned into an A-3 — just below Kel- ler— thanks to... Sally. He analyzed the symbols. Impressions: No teddy bear (no real concern for the wife, then). No creature (no more by Charles D. Cunningham* Jr;

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■ ' I , , 1 • unknown fears). No snake or demon or flames, signifying ,evil and terror. Just the hole in the air and the man. who flew. • * ■ Strange... he realized that meant one thing — he had to go down one last final time, — to end it all. . . **Radcliffe.** Me. **Radcliffe, who is Sally?** ' MemeusususWetwowetwo. **Shut ' up! Radcliffe, I know who killed your wife.** Terror. Shock. Ordeal. De- cision.- Determination. Yes. We hear you. **T HE MAN WHO FLEW RADCLIFFE!’ THE MAN WHO FLEW KILLED YOUR WIFE. THE HOLE IN THE AIR IS WHAT YOU SENSED— THE VAC- UUM THAT HE LEFT • WHEJT HE' TELEPORTED ’ HIMSELF 'OUT' OF ’ THE THE MELTING WAT/LS ARE. RADCLIFFEi THE Walls ■ th at couldn’t HOLD THE ' MAN WHO FLEW— 'TlfE *MAN WHO KTLLfeD YOUR WIFE.** **R* AdCLIFFE, who KLlEE'd your Wife? WHO K I L L‘E D YOUR Wife With that HANDGUN, ‘AND THEN apparently DIS- APPEARED INTO THIN • AHR ?** *'v Nonono... - v- »-v • H J ( -a .. S' * - ' THE MAN WHO FLfcW **IT’S ME, RADCLIFFE. I AM THE MAN WHO FLEW. HOW ELSE WOULD I KNOW THAT IT WAS AT 11:17 THAT YOU FOUND YOUR WIFE DEAD? HOW ELSE COULD I GO FROM HERE TO YOUR APARTMENT WITHOUT KNOWING IT WAS RAINING?** Youyouyou . . . **THAT’S RIGHT, RAD- CLIFFE. BUT IT’S TOO LATE NOW. ISN’T IT? YOU’RE GONE, AREN’T YOU? NO. RADCLIFFE! DON’T! NONOnonono. . . Radcliffe. ..** Memeusus. . . Wethreewethreewethree . . . END NEVV EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS, reprints Jlhistroted by MaMon Btafoa": MOON , MEN (formerly Maop Mnid). MONSTER MEN. FIGHT- ING MAN ' OF MAR'S.!’ & books now jpadv at $2.75 each. AT tHE'; E ARTH’S" GOTtH. ' PKR- IjUCIDAR. . LAND THAT. TJMK FORGOT. TANAR OF PELLF- OTDAR. the*e 4 books due A,uarust 1982 at $2.75 each. ' APACHE DFVlL. C A-V.K GTRL. MAD KING. PTR \TES OF VE- NUS, THE TARZ'AN TWINS, these 5 books due October 1962 at $2,75 each. ETERXATi TiOVE. iGODS OF MARS. THE MITGKE11. Ol’TLAW OF TORN. TARZAN AND THJ3 LOST KMPJRi:. . thesf ( 5 books due November 1962 at $2i75 each. Order now for shipment ers re- ceived. More forthcoming titles listed in, our GAhAXY ad-. Prices F.Q.B. , Brooklyn. N Y. JAY’S CORNS* 6401 24th Ave. .. 'Brooklyn N. , Yr . ; • r 1 1

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IF • Feature THE POPOFF BY THEODORE STURGEON WE are an inveterate, habitual, addicted radio listener: were you able to ab- sorb all that passes through this wrinkled bearded jelly as it crystallizes these syllables on the paper for you, you might be hard put to it to separate the science, science fiction, science-fantasy and aheer opinion which is intend- ed for you, from the cascade of cacaphonies cavorting co- incidentally amongst the self- same cerebral viscosities. Working without the radio long ago became a total im- possibility, and others beside ourselves have assigned vari- ous reasons to this. One says we set up a barrier of noise between us and the world, and then mentally tune the noise out, leaving us a species of tomblike (or womblike) privacy. Another says chronic radio-listening is due to anxiety: it indicates that we want to be forewarned when the whole shebang whee- bangs. Still another suggests that given a choice between work and distraction, we probably prefer distraction and use the perpetual purr as instant interruption, as con- venient as our omni-present coffee automatic pot. We know, of course, which of these analyses are correct: they all are. There is, howev- er, another reason not readily apparent unless you see our personal cave for yourself. For attached to the ubiquitous radio is a tape recorder, also always in the "on” condition. A function switch ties in the radio, a microphone, the tele- vision and the intercom to the

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house; the recorder is there- fore a p.a. system and a sec- ond speaker, or poor man’s stereo. However, to record anything of interest to self, wife, friends, children or lo- cal organizations, all that is needed is to reach out and pull the handle. A surprising potpourri gradually gathers on the tape, until at last it is full and needs to be erased. Wiping the tape is always an interesting duty. Among frag- ments of battle between Jack Paar and William F. Buck- ley, a couple of long cadenzas from a bass-player named Slam Stewart, a thumping at- tack on the United Nations by an organization called Lifeline, an extemporaneous bed-time story by our 5-year, old about a duck who liked horses so much she ate three before lunch and our brother arguing with Lester del Rey about intelligence tests on an all-night talkfest called The Long John Nebel Show; amongst all these and others, then, are snatches of overseas radio — Prague, Rome, Saudi Arabia, Ecuador and Radio Moscow. Radio, you know, (and if you don't, Moscow will often inform you) was invented by a Russian named Popoff. Whether Popoff ever heard of Marconi, Hertz, Arm- strong, Edison, Crookes or Sarnoff is not known. That Radio Moscow never heard of them is certain. Anyway, they put put a monstrous signal on THE POPOFF seven frequencies or more, and they let you in on won- derful worlds of science, of fiction and of fantasy. Their tone is that of rectitude and certainty. You’d think from listening to a single program that never in life had they contradicted themselves. WIPING the tape one day in May, we ran across one recording we’d like to share with you, because per- haps you’d like to venture an opinion as to whether it’s sci- ence, science fiction, just plain fiction or fantasy. We wish we could share the voice as well. It is female, well modulated, with an al- most indescribable slight ac- cent. Know how certain Eng- lishmen speak without mov- ing the upper lip? .This gal sounds as if she doesn’t move her lower lip, and we’d love to see how she does it: “Now we’d like to tell you how Soviet Scientists pro- pose to de-charge the radia- tion zone around the earth for purposes of space flight. Until recently it was believed that the principal danger to space flight was collision with a meteorite. However, the most recent research has shown that this danger was overestimated. However, an- other danger has become ap- parent. That is the radiation zone around the earth con- taining the high-energy parti- cles known as protons. Au- thors of science fiction in de- 99

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scribing their heroes’ flights through interplanetary space often write of their attempts to protect themselves from this danger. As a rule, the methods used are on the prin- ciple of creating a powerful protective field around the rocket. This is not the best solution of the problem. A better idea is to do away with the radiation altogether, thereby changing the condi- tions of space flight. Such a proposal is based on perfectly practical calculations... The radiation zone. . .is created by the very same protons which are the basis of hydrogen atomic nucleus. They need only to be supplied v/ith elec- trons to be converted into electrically neutral atoms. These will not be subject to any pull by the earth’s gravi- tic field and will become rap- idly diffused throughout space. Electrons can be sup- plied by [sic] the protons in the radiation zone by using what is called an electronic cannon which, as it were, fires them at great speed in the required direction. An electronic cannon with a ca- pacity of only fifty kilowatts could do away with the radi- ation zone in 24 hours. The electronic cannon could be placed best on an artificial satellite and supplied with energy from solar batteries, and since the radiation zone apparently is capable of be- ing restored, the cannon would have to be put in ac- tion periodically by signals from earth.” Now the Popoff (a term of endearment used slangily by Russians, as once we referred to “the Marconi”) here per- forms some fantasy greater even than the fact that it nev- er heard of Van Allen either. For at this writing, the news is full of Russian objections to our high-altitude atomic tests over* Johnson Island. And one of the reasons for their objection is — and we as- sure you, it’s as flatly, as positively stated as any of the above — that their calculations show that such explosions could damage the belt! What is it in the Commu- nist mentaliiy that makes it behave with such transparent childishness — the childishness which always wins in its re- ports of its adventures, which actually believes that its lis- teners selectively forget the lies and the contradictions, and is so sure that they can really see pictures drawn with all light and no shade? The worst of our comic books tell this sort of story. Some view-with-alarmists point out that Soviet radio, in sheer coverage, outpoints us 12 or 14 to 1, and that they spend more money jamming our broadcasts than we do in sending them. Maybe on so- ber second thought we should leave them to it. All we need to do to reduce their propa- ganda to zero is to list to it. END 100 by Theodora Sturgeon

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IF # Short Story Everybody likes fried eggs for breakfast — but would a chicken? TOO MANY EGGS BY KRIS MELVILLE /^OXE, an unusually phleg- matic citizen, came to buy c the new refrigerator in the usual fashion. He was looking for a bargain. It was the latest model, fresh from the new production line in Los An- geles, and was marked down considerably below standard. The freezing compartment held 245 lbs. of meat. “How come so cheap ?” Coxe wanted to know. * "Frankly,” the salesman said, "I asked myself that. Usually there's a dent in them or something, when they have that factory tag on them. But I checked it over and I can't find anything wrong with it. However, she goes as is.” "At that price,” Coxe said, "I'll take it.” It arrived, refinished in a copper color to his specifica- tions, the following Tuesday. It was plugged in and operat- ed perfectly. He checked it out by freezing ice cubes. Wednesday evening, when he opened the door to chill some beer, there was a pack- age in the freezing compart- ment. He took out the pack- age. It was some sort of plastic and appeared to contain fish eggs. Coxe had not seen fresh 101

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fish eggs, considered by some a delicacy, for a number of years. He chilled the beer and fried the eggs. Both tasted about right. The following Friday, his girl friend came over to fix dinner for him, and when she looked in the freezing com- partment, she said, “What’s this?” . “Fish eggs,” Coxe said. “How many of them?” “Two packages.” “We’ll fry them up for breakfast,” he said. Saturday morning, there were three packages of eggs in the refrigerator. “Where do they come from?” his girl friend wanted to know. “They just appear. I ate some and they’re very good.” She was reluctant, but he talked her into preparing a package. She agreed they were very good. “What are you going to do about it?” she asked. “I don’t think there’s any- thing to do about it,” he said. “I like fish eggs.” On Sunday, the package they had eaten Saturday had been replaced. They were coming in at a steady rate of one a day. Coxe cooked a package for breakfast and took the other two to his parents. By Tuesday, he was getting tired of the eggs, and by the end of the week, he had four more packages. He succeeded in giving two packages to the neighbors. At the end of another week, he had eight packages. He explained to his girl friend. She suggested they visit all their friends, leav- ing a package with each of them. At the end of another two weeks, this method for dis- posing of the eggs had worn thin. They finally managed to give the last two packages to the landlady. At the end of still another week, there were seven more packages. Otherwise, the re- frigerator was a good buy. Coxe calculated that, at the* present rate, had he left the packages in the compartment, it would have been filled by the end of the month. He felt * that once that point was reached, the eggs would stop coming. Should this prove to be incorrect, he was prepared to arrange for some method of commercial distribution for the product. On schedule, the eggs stopped coming. He waited two days. No more came. It was over. He ate the last package. THE refrigerator worked perfectly, and, he began to stock it with things freezers 102 by Kris Melville

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are conventionally stocked with. It was almost two weeks af- ter the last package had ap- peared, early one Sunday morning, when the doorbell rang. At the door was a small, nondescript man with a vaguely — and really indefin- ably— unpleasant aspect. His head was bandaged. “Mr. Coxe?” he asked. “That’s me.” “May I come in?” “Come on.” The man seated himself* “Something terrible has hap- pened,” he said. “A horrible mistake has been made.” “I’m sorry to hear that. You look as if you were in an ac- cident.” “I was. I’ve been in the... hospital. .. for nearly two months. But to come to the point, Mr. Coxe. I've come *&bout the refrigerator you re- cently purchased. It was a special refrigerator that was erroneously shipped out of the plant as a second. When I didn’t come in, it got shipped out and sold.” “Good refrigerator,” Coxe said. “Perhaps you’ve noticed... ah. . .something unusual about it?” “It runs okay. For a while there were a bunch of pack- ages of fish eggs in it.” “Fish eggs!” the little man cried in horrot. After he had recovered sufficiently, he asked, “You dp, of course you do, I’m sure you still have all the. . .little packages?” “Oh, no,” said Coxe. “NO? Oh, my God. What did you do with them, Mr. Coxe?” “Ate them.” “You. . .ate. . .them? Ate — ? No. You didn’t. Not all of them. You couldn’t have done that, Mr. Coxe. Please tell me that you could not have done that.” “I had to give a lot of them away, and everybody said they were delicious. And really... Uh, Mr.—? Mr., uh. ..” The little man got unsteadi- ly to his feet. His face was ashen. “This is horrible, hor- rible.” He stumbled to the door. “You are a fiend. All our work. . .all our plans... and you, you...” He turned to Coxe. “I hate you. Oh, I hate you.” “Now, see here.” “...Mr. Coxe, you’ll never realize the enormity of your crime. You've eaten all of us!” With that, he slammed the door and was gone. Coxe went back to the other room. “Who was it, honey?” “Ah, some nut. Seems he had first claim on the refrig- erator.” “I’ll bet it was about the fish eggs.” “Yeah, he wanted them.” “Oh, dear. Do you think he can do anything to us?” “I don’t think so, not now. It’s too late,” Coxe concluded. “We ate them all.” END TOO MANY EGGS 103

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IF 9 Novelette THE DRAGON-SLAYERS Got any dragons to kill? Here’s the fastest — and wildest — way! BY FRANK BANTA IN a gleaming chrome and glass federal building lo- cated at the center of Venus- port, Division Chief Carl Wattles wearily arose from his office couch. He had been taking his usual two-hour, af- ter-lunch nap, but today it had brought him little re- freshment. Earlier he had re- ceived an unexpected report that made sleep impossible. “John?” he mumbled. John Claxson, the generous- ly padded assistant division chief, stopped drilling out his earwax but did not remove his feet from the blotter of his desk. “Yeah, Chief?” “I’ve heard from the Ken- tons again.” “I thought something was deviling you, the way you was carrying on in your sleep.” He raised thick eye- brows. “Is their production down again?” *4Worse than that, John. Kenton has had the gall to request time off to build a new house!” 124 “No! I can’t believe it.” “I can’t either, John. They know it’s not in the Manual.” “Certainly it’s not, Chief. The nerve of those people wanting to do something that's not in the Manual !” “People like us wrote the Manual, John,” the Chief add- ed with simple modesty. “That is why it is so good, good, good.” “I know,” said John, accept- ing the weight. Then he com- plained bitterly, “Wanting to build a new house ! They are supposed to do personal stuff at night, of when it's rain- ing. The Chief allowed his rage to climb. “They’ve got noth- ing to do but go out into the jungle and pick a little old bale of pretzins every day, but do you think they are go- ing to do it? No. They want me to go and do it for them!” “You can’t do it, Chief!” protested John. ■ M Y ou know I can’t/ J ohn,” agreed ■ Wattles • as he

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stretched. “I got all I can manage right here. More/' “What you got to do. Chief ?” John asked curiously, forgetting caution for a mo- ment. “Plenty !” retorted the Chief. “I guess you have at that,” John admitted, getting back aboard. “Time was,” brooded the Chief, “when that Kenton was a fair pretzin finder. But all he can think of to do now is to find excuses to goldbrick. Wait until he sees the stiff memorandum I’m sending him. . .” BLISS Kenton had not gone far from their Venusian jungle cabin that morning be- fore the vacuum snake hung one on her. The thick, two- foot-long pest lay very still on the ground, and she only got a glimpse of it before it jumped. Out it whipped to its full, slim, six-foot length and wrapped around her throat. Fangs struck, and in three seconds — with a loud slurp — it had withdrawn a quart of her blood. Then it unwrapped just as swiftly as it had come, and leaped into the cover of the jungle. The hefty young matron wobbled back to the cabin. “Pole !” she called as she hurried ip. “I've been slurped!” “Again?” her lanky husband asked, looking up from the reports on his desk. “I’m so sorryf Pole," sha said contritely. “Well, sit down and start recovering, Bliss,” he said in a kindly manner. “You can't pick any pretzins today.” “But I wanted to pick pref- zins, Pole. Darn that vacuum snake and his fast draft.” “I just hope the neighbor- hood dragon doesn’t come around while you’re in that weakened condition, Bliss,” Pole worried as he totaled up the month’s production on his reports. He decided, “I had better take time off from pretzin hunting today so I can be handy to help you with your getaway, if need arises.” “Oh, the dragon never both- ers us,” Bliss said uneasily. “He has gotten close enough to burn up several of our pretzin patches, though. He may get to this cabin some day.” “He doesn’t mean any harm,” defended Bliss. “I’m sure he wouldn’t want to eat us. They are known to be strictly vegetarians.” “No, he won’t eat us. He’ll cook us, unless we can run away fast enough — but he’ll never eat us.” They heard a faraway sound. “What is that crisp crack- ling that sounds like a dank forest burning?” wondered Bliss. Pole scrambled to the door, “The dragon is coming! He’s headed straight for this cab- in r THE DRAGON-SLAYERS J2S

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“Shall we be going ?” asked Bliss, grabbing her clothes. A few minutes later, at a distance of a thousand yards, Pole and Bliss, loaded with all their portable possessions, watched their cabin burst into flames as a roaring, forty-foot lizard, with fifty-foot flames gouting from his mouth, am- bled through their clearing. “There, he’s gone,” said Pole as the dragon passed on. “I’d better put out the fire.” Dipping water from a near- by pond with a bucket, Pole had, after fifty-three fast buckets, a blackened ruin of what had formerly been their rude jungle cabin. Pole moved a new, nearly finished split-pole settee he had been working on back in the jungle to their front porch. As they seated them- selves, he complacently sur- veyed the slits burned be- tween the charred boards of the walls and roof. “The roof will leak a mite when it rains, but it will let in ^ts of light,” he observed optimistically. “There’s nothing like lots of light,” Bliss agreed. “Charcoal is healthful, too.” “It absorbs poison like no- body’s business !” “However, since it rains every day on Venus we will have to have a new cabin.” He sighed resignedly. “And you know what that means : Low- er production, fewer of the magical, antibiotic pretzins. I’d better radio the Division Chief” AS the jet plane flashed across their vision, the Kentons saw a tiny bundle drop from it. Pole ran out into the jungle and was un- der the parachute when it landed. He came back into the clearing unwrapping a pack- age. “It sure was thoughtful of Mr. Wattles to answer so fast,” said Pole, as he opened the little package. “And will you look here in the middle ! He even sent us a present!” “It’s a beautiful, plain white, rectangular carton of approximately three by seven inches,” she said breathlessly. “But we mustn’t be selfish,” Pole reminded hastily. “Let’s see what Mr. Wattles has to say in his memorandum here first.” They both read the green memorandum. To: Napoleon B. Kenton, Special Agent, Pret- zin Division, Venus From: Chief, Pretzin Di- vision, Venusport, Venus Subject: Personal Prob- lems of Special Agents In a radio message dated January 25, 1982 you related certain per- sonal problems you were experiencing, and you stated that delays might be encountered in your harvesting of pretzins. regret your difficulties.* However, it is believed 126 by Frank Banta

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these misfortunes may be overcome during leisure hours and should be soon resolved without loss of a measurable part of your productive time. Pole interrupted his read- ing to beam at his wife. “He's sorry for us, Bliss, and he hopes things will be better for us soon.” “Isn’t he the nicest man?” They read on. In your radio message you refer to difficulties you are having with a snake and a lizard (which you colloquially refer to as a dragon). It is be- lieved that the enclosed package, serial number 93G-18, will cope with the matter, and that no fur- ther report will be neces- sary with respect to snakes and lizards. Carl Wattles Chief, Pretzin Division Eagerly Bliss Kenton opened the plain white carton bearing the serial number 93G-18. She slid out the two and three-quarter by six and one-half inch fumigation bomb can. Bliss read the label. “ ‘Liz- ards and snakes go ’way and stay. Only $1.19 F. O. B. U. S. A.’ Why, it rhymes!” she said, a wondering smile lighting her face. “Does it say how long the lizards are that go ’way and THE DRAGON-SLAYERS stay?” Pole asked anxiously, thinking of the neighbor- hood's forty-foot hellion. “All lizards, it says. And only $1.19. “Good ! But how about snakes that can jump ten feet and wrap around your throat?” “I read that wrong,” she amended. “All lizards and snakes. And only $1.19.” “I’m glad,” said Pole, chok- ing up. “The Division Chief has been thinking of us,” said Bliss, wiping away a tear. “He knows we field person- nel have our problems.” “He knew just what we needed,” lauded Bliss. Pole looked up from the canister as he heard a sound. “And here comes the dragon back! Our lizard repellent ar- rived just in the nick of time !” Down the rain-forest aisle the roaring mammoth rapidly waddled. Its flames — even longer than its body — with- ered into blackened ruin all that stood before it. This time, instead of snatching up their possessions and fleeing to safety, the Kentons stood their ground with their pock- et-size fumigation bomb that had been designed for pocket- sized lizards. When the drag- on was within throwing dis- tance, Pole flipped on the spray jet of the tiny bomb and threw it as straight as he could. Then both of them sped away, leaving all their pos- 127

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sessions at the mercy of the advancing, ravening flames. . . Pole! Isn’t our new V-J home just the dandiest that a Venusian pretzin-gath- ering couple ever had?” “It is dandy,” concurred Pole. “Who’d ever have thought we would have a cab- in that was only an inch thick, and yet was absolutely water tight?” “The table makes a dandy smokestack too, when it’s propped up. Fireproof.” “How about the mouth when it’s propped open?” challenged Pole. “Who could beat a front porch like that?” “You can’t. You just can’t!” “Correct.” He ruminated, *We’d never have been able to cut the hide. Not a tough, inch-thick one like this one.” “I’ll never get over the way you gutted the dragon. You cut him loose inside, just be- low the tonsils — ” “And after I lassoed them, I gave a run — ” “And all his guts came stringing out!” “Had him cleaned to the bone within an hour ! i d Pole proudly. “We would never have had it so good if it hadn’t been for Mr. Wattles’ helpfulness,” reminded Bliss. “That fumi- gation bomb, besides making a horrible stink — ” “ — explodes when it enters a dragon’s flaming mouth — and blows his methane tanks.” END AT LAS' I ! V \Ii.A Li L TO jp the LIMIJO IT LLUn LI • W 'QUANTITY, ' "ifOiLiOi-T OK w/ i HI. SCTJLLT LOTT MISS % OLT - OKLEil A TOIL' TODAY C >i I l;e screen is. a unique new* ihagazint; made for those who the. -art -of .motion - picture phantasT v Tow in.'its-fi rM issue / LTorrOrs " contains- hia n \ photo s aVt ic.it s and otlYer-'lite ms never 'before Ixphii.Hhed.. If you. enjoy ..'something, out ; >,f l.Ut* orciinary, s.end your name and add res.-. aloSlU v- ith$ . 50 to Mr. Ahx- ardor Soma.' Publisher, Horrors Of ho- Sore'eft r, i<j rrhion Ave. Brooklyn en h < v by Frank Banta

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IF Feature t i HUE and CRY Dear Editor: *' ' and practices the art of hunt- I would like to congratulate ing to the ultimate degree. He you on an excellent issue — cover to tover. And 'speaking of covers, this is the nicest one I’ve seen yet this year from anyone. More of this sort, please, please? Enjoyed the* editorial no end. All interesting ideas. I will say however that it will remain ever incomprehensible to me that anyone ( especially Schweitzer) should think that the mass of people were think- ers and for some reason had given it up. Fat chance. - Pat McLean P.O. Box 401 Anacortes, Wash. ♦ * * Dear Editor: I would greatly appreciate your help in running down the title, author and publisher of the story I have outlined below. (I might add that this story is being considered as a feature fijm and the author would benefit greatly if the film yrene.) \ X A mari lives on an island. hunts live men. He gets his prey, as I remember, by caus- ing shipwrecks on the island. An elaborate hunt is arranged with the victim given various aids, such as a knife, map, etc. As I remember, the hunter uses bow and arrow; and I be- lieve too that dogs are used in tracking the victim. William Howell 8240 Babcock Avenue Hollywood, Calif. * Any long-memoried read- ers care to help out on this one? — Editor. * * * Dear Editor: In your magazine you have been running a series of Keith Laumer’s “Retief” novelettes. Can you tell me which issues contained them? Tames P. Jackson R. D, #1 Danville, Penna. * Every issue from Septem- ber 1961 to date had a Retief novelette. More upcoming, though not in every future is- 129

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sue (next Keith Laumer story will probably be a non-Retief novelette, The Long Remem- bered Thunder.) — Editor . * * * Dear Editor: I have just finished reading Jots and Tittles. That Stur- geon guy sure has an imagi- nation ! Maybe, maybe, may- be.. . but don't get me wrong. He's one of my favorite writ- ers, and he is feature editor of my favorite science fiction magazine. To prove what I said about If being my favorite maga- zine, I am sending a check for a subscription with this letter. Kent McDaniel 620 Metropolis St. Metropolis, 111. * * * Dear (?) Editor: How come the Groaci illus- trations for the Retief stories in the July & March issues are completely different in appearance? Jack Baldwin 405 N. Alisos St. Santa Barbara, Calif. * Because we goofed and gave the stories to different artists. We’ll watch that. — Editor . * * * Dear Editor: Leaving aside Unbreakable Custom, why is it universal in sf magazines to put the title and author of the story run- ning at the bottom of the 130 page, instead of at the top where it would be easier to read? 2. What is the significance of the “K" on the cover near the price? David B. Jodrey, Jr. JAPO Box 38, FPO 510 New York, N.Y. * (1) Well, it seems to us to look better that way. Any- body else have a strong feel- ing? (2) “K" stands for our distributor, Kable News Com- pany.— Editor . * * * Dear Editor: Why did you take away the book review column, and why can't we have it back? I think it is something that most SF fans appreciate. Why not have the fans write in their opin- ions on the subject?” Paul Brague Box 12 Eldred, N.Y. * * * Sorry to be So brief this time — no room! We’ll try to do better next issue... in many ways. . .you'll see some changes in If that we think you'll welcome in near-future issues. . . By the way, our “first” story for the month is Charles Cunningham's The Man Who Flew . Next issue we intro- duce another new writer, Gary Wright, with a novelette we like very much indeed. — The Editor. / j * -- HUE AND CRY

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