Other Worlds December 1952

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TAVER

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Kickdsodimiagea || | O clear up vital statistics first, I a was born in Des Moines, Towa, in 1928, which makes me 24 years old, and technically a Midwest- erner, although I’ve seen very little of the Midwest in recent years. After high school I entered Rutgers Univer- sity (taking a couple of years out for the Navy) for a Bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences. From there 1 went to the University of Pennsyl- vania where I am now in my. second year of medicine, happily and very recently married, studying and writ- ing like mad, and wondering why days don’t have forty hours in them. No. 8—Alan E. Nourse I began writing for the Rutgers literary magazine ANTHO, and moved into the position of Associate Editor. About this time [ started reading science fiction like a man possessed; encountered friends who led me down the primrose path, and ended up the most incurable type of stf addict —the kind that has to write it as well as read it! . Although People Who Know tell me that I’m all wrong, I use a very personal criterion for the kind of science fiction stories I write: namely, I write the kind of stories that T like to read. It’s hardly an infallible sys- tem, but it’s fun that way.

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OTHER WORLDS = | STORIES DECEMBER The Identity of Sue Tenet ccsccccsssecceeeee 6 1952 Fronk Patton (19,000) Q-B-B. a4 ~ ISSUE No. 24 Alan E. Nourse (10,500) Patent Medicine ......-seceesceecescsrceecsers 10 William C. Bailey (8,000) i b EDITORS Lost Continents WI... . cece cece eseceeeees BB L. Sprague de Camp (8,500) fei) Pashia Beyond the Barrier ..108 Richord S. Shaver (Pt. 2 — 15,000) . Bea Mahaffey ei Space Opera .........ccccvecceccecccccccceres ISB Chorles T. Webb (500) FEATURES ART DIRECTOR Editorial... Mase Oe cen ucaisaine ah Malcolm H. Smith The Man From Tomorrow .......0.e-00000-0++- 141 Sun Bothers of Eros ........2eeseecececeeeeeees Personcls... 2. Bicesscccccccccenceccccccs Front Cover: [PEEPS ee ae spite tag Back Cover: ‘Other Worlds Book Shelf ..............160 ‘Robert Gibson Jones On Sale the First Week of Every Month CLARK PUBLISHING COMPANY, 806 Dempster Street, Evanston, Illinois Entered as second-class matter at the Post Office at Evanston, Illinois. i i Chicago, Ulinois. Printed in U.S.A. by the W. F. Hall Printing Comp Distributed by American News Company, Inc. of New York. No responsibili unsolicited manuscripts, photographs or artwork, Return envelope and gu 4s required. Basic rates for accepted material, le per word. Advertis Subscriptions: 12 issues, $3.00; 24 issues, $6.00. al entry at jicago, Iinois, is undertaken for ient return postage rates at request.

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Y THE time you read this it J i] --« -CGtorial--: ‘s B will be too late. It will have been written... . Have you ever written something you’ve regretted, later? Like a Tru- man letter, or a Hamling editorial, or a check on a bank where you have no account? Well, many times we’ve written editorials we've regretted. The reason wasn’t what we said, but what we didn’t say. Funny how easy it is not to say anything, no matter how many words you’ve put on pa- per. But then again, saying something that actually means something some- times puts you on the spot. Like for instance passing on a bit of gossip, or slapping somebody a little low on the shoulders, friendly (?) like. You know, we’ve tried hard to be friendly with everybody. And our success has been remarkable. We’ve been up to our ears apologizing to people ever since we were born. To be blunt about it, we’ve had remarkably little tact. Tact. . . Somehow it seems to the brash to be just another syno- nym for weak-gutted. People are al- ways “standing up for their rights.” And to do that, sometimes you have to tell the “truth”, Shutting up doesn’t seem to be a virtue. But you can’t shut up in an editorial! How, then, do we accomplish a mir- acle—be tactful, be forceful, be right, and not be a puling idiot of a child who ought to be spanked? Maybe you're wondering what brought all this on? Well, maybe it’s a realization—a realization that, has come to us because we took a long look at the newsstands and suddenly realized there are’ dozens, scores of science fiction magazines on the stands—that suddenly, as if over- night, science fiction has become a GIANT. Used to be Westerns out- numbered all other magazines on the stands. Now, believe it or not, they have competition. There may even be numerical superiority in favor of the. science fiction magazines, al- though we haven’t actually counted. The statistic actually isn’t too im- portant—but what’s important is that there are a LOT of us now. We're aa BIG piece of the American Scene. So big that we ought to quit acting childish. No, not mature, or “adult”, or sophisticated. None of that stuff. Just calm, ordinary, everyday grown- up. Respectable—like flying saucers. People (like myself) are inclined to go through life looking into the mirror of self-importance, until they get the idea that they are just about the only . . . no, if I say pebble on the beach, I’ll shoot myself!—the

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EDITORIAL 5 only ego in the bunch. The only “person”. All others are overshad- owed. It’s that great big demon called “self” (or as some put it, the Satanic Impulse Incarnated). How’s that for a “phrase”? Yup, you're right, THERE’S an example of what we mean! Satanic. Impulse. Incarnated in- deed! Who do I think I am, to sling stuff around like that, and then look covertly at my readers to see if they admire my ‘‘cleverness”’? x To be brief, the conviction that came to us as we looked at this vast mass of science fiction was that we were no longer “freaks” but just peo- ple, and as people, deserving of the respect and dignity all people de- serve. Not any particular people, but the same old people we’ve always had around, and who have made the hu- man race what it is—a. bumbling, good-natured, happy-go-lucky group which seems to possess the knack of doing the wrong thing in the most places. True, we go about declaim- ing that this is the fact, and bemoan- ing it, but mostly we bemoan the other guy. When he steps out of line, ‘we get out our yard-markers and put him back to fourth down! In looking over this vast mass of ‘science fiction, we found out a re- markable thing—it was GOOD. All of it. Could be better, of course, but it was good. And all the people in it were good. They HAD to be to achieve this grand result! You know, as we stood there at that newsstand, we felt proud. We felt especially proud of the fact that we were one of many. That there were lots of guys like Gold, of Galaxy, Campbell of Astounding, Browne of Fantastic, Hamling of Imagination, Mines of Startling, Del Rey of Space, and so on, down the line. Not great guys; but real, sincere guys. Not stuffed shirts, or jerks, or idiots, but real, sincere guys. Guys millions of readers LIKE. So MANY guys! Well, you know now why we feel small. We have been writing editor- ials for years, trying to imply by our own conceited manner of writing, that these other guys just didn’t have it. Not deliberately, we hope, but maybe it was pretty apparent to our readers. Well, go out and take a gander at those newsstands, and you'll realize the truth, . .they DO have it! All of which means that we’ve got our work cut out for us. We’ve got to convince ourselves, now, that we're a part of this passing parade. We've got to attain the real sincerity we've been talking about. And what better way than to point back at our past with anything but pride? When we plug OTHER WORLDS, we ate actually plugging all of sci- ence fiction. We think we're a part of it. And since it’s now sucha broad field, there just isn’t any peak for any one magazine or editor to stand on and take the plaudits of the multi- tude. Which brings us to something we've begun to suspect about the United Nations. .. Isn’t it true that the people in the United Nations, the ones who keep on stressing the phrase “citizen of (Continued on page 107) —

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The IDENTITY of - SUE TEN By Frank Patton What would you do if you suddenly “awoke” to find you remembered nothing — except that you were a murderess—in a strange body? »

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Mlustration by H. W. McCauley

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8 OTHER WORLDS HE was nearly replete and re- stored, her nude body humming with vital energy, when the power pack blew. The wild surging of unpolarized electric power nearly killed her before she struggled out of the wet harness of fine metal web- bing. Naked, she staggered across to the main switch, cut off the current that agitated the fluid in the tub to a mad froth. She stood shivering, trying to col- lect her shattered mental bearings. But—the damage had been done. Somewhere in the infinitely complex neuron network of her brain an im- portant connection had burned out under the sudden overload. She did- n’t even know where she was! She stared into the full-length mir- ror, beside which hung the freshly pressed uniform of a . . . what? Whatever rank she had held, she couldn’t recall it! Dazedly she sat down on the three-legged metal stool, ae with the objects lying on fe low table before it. They had obviously been placed where she could see them during her. . . bath? A strange bath that was! In a fluid not water, wearing an electrical_met- al harness that had robbed her of her identity! She looked blankly at the harness of woven wire and the full-length tub of blue fluid. She picked up the objects on the table one by one: a ring, the “green stone cut intaglio with a bafflingly familiar design—a stylized hornet; a small, gray, cloth-covered book which she opened. It contained her own handwriting; she made sure by using _the pencil attached by a tiny gold chain, Names, addresses — scores of them. Men and women, and after each name was a little fleur-de-lis, or a darkly penciled triangle. Running her eyes over the names, hoping her memory would catch some familiar hook to hang her identity upon, she sobbed in despair and terror. For all the names and addresses meant to her, they might as well be a list of eee ‘ A voice called from beyond the closed door: “Have you gone to sleep in that vi-eng unit? I’ve read every silly interview in this Tele- fan magazine, I’ve even memorized the recipes!” Tt was a male voice, biting, im- patient, a very dislikable voice she decided. It would not be hard to kill him, when the chance presented. She sat there, studying the sudden impulse to kill in her mind, amazed at the intensity of it, increasingly aghast at the character of this strange person she had become who could calmly contemplate murder. For some reason, still beyond grasp of her memory, she knew she was going to kill that man waiting so impatiently! So, she was either a murderess or a ~ould-be murderess! Frantically she searched the blank pages of her numbed mind for other, similar thoughts. But —for all she knew, she might have killed dozens of men! With growing horror she stared down’ at the names in the little gray book, suddenly grown ominous and heavy in her damp, chilled hand, They might be ‘names of victims or

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* THE IDENTITY OF SUE TENET GRAM: of victims-to-be, or both! She stood up, examining herself sharply in the long mirror. She called out: “Be with you in a min- ute or two—” as she stepped close to the glass, running her hands up over her sleek flanks, over her flat, clean stomach, touching her firm, round breasts. The long curves of her body were extremely beautiful, if too muscular. She could find no complaint with the care her unknown self had taken of her physique. Quite the reverse, she must be a very active, athletic sort of person. Her face, a bewildered-eyed stran- ger’s face, was made particularly ~ strange to her because the skull was smooth as an egg. The balanced neck, holding the small head so proudly and defiantly, as if facing peril had become a habit, told her she was a stubbornly courageous person, The full, wide-lipped mouth, the little scar on the high curve of the cheek- bone .. . startled, she looked closer. There was no scar! The smooth planes of her pale cheeks ran un- broken by any blemish, up into the tiny dark points of almost invisible hair-roots. Small ears, with long lobes pierced. She fingered the tiny holes idly. Strange they should be pierced. She was sure they had never been pierced . still she knew the ears did not seem her own. without ear-rings. It was confusing, trying to recall things, like trying to move a limb after amputation. _A good enough face, probably beautiful under -the right circum- stances. A woman could do a lot with that perfect cheek line, the delicious round point of the chin beneath the curve of sultry, generous ‘lips. A nice mouth, a mouth that liked life and people and love . . . It told her too, that face couldn’t pos- sibly belong to a murderess. BSENTLY she began to slip on the sheer underthings, the stock- ings that were not stockings, but a ballet .dancer’s sheer, waist-length tights. Funny thing, a woman wear- ing a dancer’s tights for stockings. She must be a dancer—yet the rest of her clothing didn’t agree with that impression. The plain uniform skirt of burnt-orange with a blue side- stripe—was not a skirt. It was a pair of breeches, and she found herself slipping them on with the ease of long habit. Her hand went automatically to the little, concealed pocket where a tiny shocker snuggled flatly, felt re- assuringly of the fine chain that hung inside the waistband, by which she could pull the shocker into her hand without a fumble. The little thing would immobilize a man with one/ touch of the beam; a silent click and he would melt down into inert flesh. How did she know that and still not know why it was there? The uniform blouse of gray looked too tight. Her breasts would never fit inside that . . . She held it up, found the breast-band inside which obviously was to compress her too obvious charms. She slipped it on, snapped the band tight around her bust.

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10 & A mannish tie completed the erasement~of her most easily dis- cerned difference from the opposite sex, The well-pressed jacket with the padded shoulders fit to perfection. The silver braid on the shoulder was meaningless to her, though she know it should tell her rank. Bending forward, she rubbed her still damp scalp with a towel, then picked up the tiny, soft, blond wig. She slid it on with the ease of long practice, molded the edges into in- visibility on her head with swift dabs of paste from a jar. What in Heaven was she doing, making up like a man? The little golden mustache. was as difficult as false eye lashes, but no more so. It gaye her a dashing, deyil-may-care masculinity. She could love a man with a mustache like that! Suddenly she shuddered with revul- sion. She kad loved him! That wig had been the human scalp of a man! The mustache itself was complete with the skin of a dead man underneath! A man it seemed she must have killed? Impossible! But the evidence was there; she did not have to tear the revolting scalp off and examine it. She knew! “Clare” set the officer’s cap on the shining scalp of cropped golden hair with a sharp tap; just enough of an angle to be the real “Haber’s” rakish self, and her heart was turning over inside her knowing she had loved Haber, was now impersonating him. There was a horror and a fear in her ' with the knowing, but the curtain of her memory would lift no further. OTHER WORLDS Swiftly she pocketed the loose change lying there, the roll of green credits, the phial of transparent poi- son capsules, almost invisible in their terrible deadliness inside the little spring-top bottle. Just a touch, and one of the unseeable little deaths would slip into her palm. Deaths, each one could be! Probably would be, if she didn’t stop this creature she seemed to be. With cold fingers she buckled the holster about her slim waist. Cau- tiously her hand touched the butt of the weapon. She drew it out, pon- dered the exquisite design on the sil- ver buttgolates, the mysterious dou- ble cylinder, the deadly looking muz+ zle. She hefted it gingerly, noting the perfect balance. It was an expensive, beautifully “designed weapon. But what in the world was it? She'd never seen one before. She stepped into the soft brown boots, tugged them up about her capable calves. Swe Tenet liked boots like that .. . Ah! There it was—her own name. But once more her mem- ‘ory balked. That was all. She knew her name, nothing else. Disappointed, she turned for a last over-all inspection of her bewil- deringly masculine regalia. Appar- ently she was a woman who habitual- ly masqueraded as a‘man; she knew how so well! Everything looked all right. She pocketed the little gray book and put on the strangely alien green ring. She walked to the door and opened it.

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THE IDENTITY OF SUE TENET il HE man on the chaise longue dropped the magazine, stood up, buckled his own holster about a similarly uniformed waist. His voice was steady, a deep but cold mono- tone, and Sue noticed that his ex- pression was a kind of vacuous, emo- tionless mask. She was unable to relate the mew expression on his face with her past experience. She was lost in a daze of wonder, unable to remember why she was here. The man was saying in-a voice vaguely and frighteningly familiar, like her own voice coming from another, a voice she knew she must obey, would obey, Aad obeyed since time be- gan’... “We're scheduled for an operation in fifteen minutes. I’ve hired a sea- sled for the job, one of those with helicopter. blades for limited flying. Out next move must be to eliminate - Kyle Renison. Do you understand?” _ The man’s eyes glittered on her with a curious golden flickering in their black depths. She felt he was not at all sure of her, was only testing her out to determine her re- actions and her obedience. She felt he must know she was different, but could not analyze why he should know anything had happened. She did not answer, her eyes refusing to linger on the singularly frightening face. She preceded him through the door and he locked it behind them. As they moved down the corridor to the street, the man said: “You will obey me, just as before?” _* Sue glanced at him; His voice had once been her own! More confused than ever, she replied with an in- voluntary reaction: “I will obey, Master, just as before.” Before what? Before the change in her bath! Before she had been he... Before something of him had been her... She reeled dizzily, trying to under- stand the complexities her memory was trying to thrust out at her, but so bafflingly as to be incomprehen- sible. The man was nodding, “That is good. I was not sure your’ nature would still coincide with my will, now that I have been forced out of your body and into this revolting male’s. Obey, and I will reward you. . TI don’t understand the strange thing that occurred in your body in the vi-eng bath, or I would never have taken the bath. However, it shall change nothing.” Inwardly Sue rebelled, her mind almost shouting: “That’s what you think, stranger! There’s been a change in me, never fear, and I un- derstand it less than you, but when I do understand it...” Why was she so angry, so seemingly outraged? What, imposition, so personal so in- timate had he, no, it, made upon her? Inner mind raging, Sue walked calm- ly beside the man, schooling her ap- pearance to acquiescence, her face registering only mild, unthinking ac- ceptance. * * * YLE RENISON, taking his usual late afternoon solitary walk along the seawall of Kingsend, watched the sea-sled windmill down,

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12 OTHER WORLDS circle, lax] on the long, soft swells of the bay. Some silly stranger who didn’t know it was dangerous to monkey around the seawall here near the palace. The mid-afternoon express flyer was due to zoom out of the underground hangars, through the big sea-gate and take off across those same swells! The airwash alone would overturn the sea-sled. If the rockets didn’t burn them to death, the racket they made would scare them out of their wits. There was nothing he could do, he realized. If he waved, they would probably pull in closer to see what he wanted. Per- haps they’d move aside, now they’d landed... But they were scudding in closer, skipping from wave to wave, com- ing fast, right toward him. The man was monkeying with a small black mechanical device. It reminded him of his secret model of the Hammer! But that was a silly notion; the in- vention was safe in the Prince’s vaults under the palace behind him. Quite suddenly Kyle decided it might be better to listen to his silly thoughts than to be dead. He turned and leaped from the top of the wall to the green sod twenty feet below, on the city side. He was out of sight of the pair on the sea-sled now, and he landed on all fours, scuttled along the bottom of the wall, straightening and running hard. His head twisted back to watch as he heard the fa- miliar hiss and sudden blast. Impossi- ble, but... Three separate jagged bolts licked across the top of the wall he had just \ vacated. The light was blinding. The. air crashed back together with a sul- len, deafening thunder. Where he had stood as the man took aim was only a ten-foot smoking gap in, the smashed seawall. The Hammer was an excellent weapon! Kyle, running hard toward the pal- ace across the open lawn, realized that far better, now that his inven- tion had been used against himself. But how had the model gotten out of the vaults and into a stranger’s hands? Somebody was going to get their ears burned! He had an idea he would have to choose between telling the Prince what he thought of him and keeping his job. Was the Prince trying to have him killed with .his own invention? It didn’t make sense. Not Sten Rysto, the young ruler, his sister’s husband! But if not that, then what had hap- pened to give the Hammer into an assassin’s hand? It wasn’t like Sten. He had known him all his life. It was out of character. Nevertheless, he had to know... Swiftly he threaded his way through the under-corridors, up the wide, ornate stairs into the old palace itself. The Prince was probably clos- eted with some of his councillors, at this hour. Behind him he heard the roar of the express. Undoubtedly his would-be killers had departed, else be killed by the express. They had known where to find him, precisely; would know when the express was due...

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} THE IDENTITY OF SUE TENET S he expected, he found the Prince with his five councillors and his wife. He strode angrily up to face the ruddy-cheeked, youthful scion of the old and noble Rysto line. “What have you done with the Hammer?” he demanded, anger and shock making his voice hoarse. The Prince looked surprised, and confused, “I meant to tell you to-- day,” he said. “That’s why we were having this meeting.” “You meant to tell me what?” Kyle’s voice became low and tense. “T’ve arranged to finance our needed increase in armament. I sent Captain Haber—remember you ask- ed what became of him?—to. find out ‘what he could raise on the sale of the Hammer. I sent him to the » other side of Sirius, far enough that it is certain the thing will never be used against us. We should get “enough out of it to stock our treas- __ury as well as our arsenal for any eventuality that may arise.” -Kyle’s greatest.fear was being re- alized, he understood swiftly. This _ youngster, who ruled in place of his Super-annuated father, the old King, had become over-ambitious. In pos- _ session of the Hammer, it had become possible to smash any resistance from his neighbors, change Lansea’s lim- ited monarchy over Subjects who could overthrow him any time the whim struck them, to an absolute empire over the three worlds. Why else would he want new armaments on such a vast scale? There was no “eventuality that’ might arise... !” Kyle suddenly felt consuming an- 13 ger. The Hammer was his own inven- tion, a gift to his country. This smiling pipsqueak on the big chair behind the council table had no right to sell it without first consulting him! Kyle slowly removed the decorative small sword that marked his honorary rank as a Captain of the King’s Guard. He seldom wore uniform any- way, he found himself thinking as he flung the sword down across the table with a bang. j “T guess that does it, your High- ness. You might as well know where I stand. I don’t like things I give to my country. to be traded off without even consulting me. The Hammer was to be used only to protect Lansea and the three worlds, and for no other purpose. I didn’t want my work to be responsible for deaths through all the known universe. Now it will get into the hands of every would-be warlord, soon or late. Goodbye!” As he turned away, he remem- bered what he had come for, turned back suddenly, his face still flaming with anger. “You have barely com- pleted the sale of the Hammer, to a remote buyer, when, not fifteen min- utes ago, somebody focused it on me from over the seawall. There’s a nice big gap.where the next tide will inun- date your lawn, Highness.” Kyle gave the title a sneering emphasis that brought a dark flush to the Prince’s already florid features. The Prince leaped to his feet, his brown eyes amazed, his handsome face portraying mingled anger, em- barrassment, confusion. “Kyle! Captain—man! The Ham-

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14 OTHER WORLDS ; mer isn’t sold yet! Haber only went to find out what it’s worth in trading credits. I meant all the time to dis- cuss the matter with you before the deal was actually made, but I wanted figures and facts to show you, to over- come your objections. Clare Haber was a close friend of yours, would be the last man to betray you. If someone is using the Hammer, try- ing to kill you, it’s without the knowl- edge of either of us!” Kyle’s disbelief showed on his face. He turned away, his heart heavy with a sense of betrayal that no words could dissipate. That weapon could ‘have meant certain security and peace for Lansea, Instead it was al- -ready in the hands of murderers, was going to mean new wars across the galaxy as its “tise spread. Only by harsh discipline and extreme care could they have kept its existence a secret. Yet, the ambitious young Prince, usurping his father’s powers, had flung it out. into that whirlpool of greed, the crushing, warring rivalry of the big factory planets who owned the starships, exploiting and spoiling wherever they touched. But before he could stalk angrily from the room, he saw his sister, Alfreya, moving to intercept him. His heart hurt even more, for she must have known! Her husband, Prince, told her everything, usually. Yet she had not told Kyle what was afoot. This conspiracy against him of the two he trusted most gave him a deep nausea. He listened to her voice with difficulty. “Kyle, wait! We didn’t tell you be- the * cause we knew you’d object. We wanted to do the best thing for Lan- sea, for the people. There’s so much the traders can give us! We “wanted to show you their offer before you re- fused the idea, and we didn’t want everyone knowing. We kept the se- cret, knowing it might hurt you, but waiting for Haber’s return. Only the Prince and I knew where he was going, or why. The fewer to know, the safer for all.” Kyle thrust her aside with a slight push, went past her as if not recog- nizing her, not hearing her. He was about to make his way out of the room, but the picture of his sister’s face in his mind held him there, with his back to the ruler. His effort to hold his temper, to think clearly, brought the veins out on his temples, caused the muscles on his jaw+to quiver. He turned jerkily to the Prince. “You could tell a woman your se- crets, but not me! I only invented the Hammer. I’ve no right to decide what’s to be done with it. You're not fooling me, Sten! You mean to have the traders equip you to take over the three planets under one rule, and that yours! You know I’d find a way to stand as a barrier, to thwart you. Well, have your damned war, butcher your neighbors, destroy the fifty years of peace on the three worlds! I hope you get your bellyful! I hope you stick to the advice of women, too, It'll make your success certain. Goodbye, you would-be Emperor. You can start counting your enemies now—with me as the first on the

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vb. THE IDENTITY OF SUE TENET 15° fist” your sword! It ‘will be waiting for Renison, beside himself, turned a bitter face to his sister’s stricken countenance, standing beside him like a beautiful statue, her cheeks pale as death and her blue eyes full of hurt and held-back tears. “As for you, Alfreya, you’ve work- ed against me for the last time. You're no sister of mine! I’ll change my name! I hope I never have to look at you again.” He took another long stride toward the big double doors, but Alfreya seized his arm, held him, her voice shaking with emotion. “You don’t understand, Kyle! You’re jumping to conclusions, and they’te as wrong as they can be. You just don’t know the circumstances, Hannigan said the 1 _ Hornet would get the plans from the shops one way or another, sooner or later. This was the only way we could really make sure Lansea’ got _ adequate protection from the Hor- net!” Kyle laughed bitterly. “The Hor- _ net, the Hornet! That bugaboo! He’s nothing but a ghost. a tale with no _ substance. There’s no reality behind the things that attribute to his work. So Hannigan knows, too. But not _ me! Well, how would you like it_if I looked up this alleged Hornet, and roused a Hornet’s nest around your ears? How would you like that, my so-called friends!” He ‘tore his arm from hor grasp, ___ wheeled, strode away. The Prince held out one hand in an ineffectual gesture, _ then called out: “When you cool off, _ Captain Renison, come back and get you. I need you more than ever nowl Haber is overdue... . ” But Captain Renison was gone, and his-sword lay on the ornate royal council table. Beside it lay a medal the Prince had just had struck for him, but hadn’t time to bestow. It stated: “Tor services vital to the se- curity of the sovereign state of Lan- sea the noble Captain Kyle Renison is given the rank of Baron and lands equal ‘thereto, unto perpetuity.” The Prince looked sadly at his queen, sister to the angry man whose scornful words still hung on the air like the smell of sulphur. The tears - ran down her face unashamedly. One .of the five bearded old men about the council table coughed, blew his nose loudly. rage, ee UE TENET and her cruel-eyed* companion in the sea-sled watch- ed the big gap the beam weapon called the Hammer had knocked from the massive stonework of the seawall. “He’s gone, damn the luck!” com- plained the man. Sue wished she understood what was going on, where her sympathies should lie. She tried an indirect ques- tion: “You didn’t bring me along just to watch you practice ‘nocking holes in walls? So you missed htm? So what?” “So you'll have to kill him later, my dear. He was a friend of Ha- ber’s. Your get-up should gain his confidence long enough to... ” the

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16 OTHER WORLDS man gave her a look which explained his meaning fully. The shivers ran down her back at the sudden venom in his glance, the cruel meaning, at the strange kind of vaunting evident in his bearing. Shuddering inwardly at the mat-— ter-of-fact voice in which he an- nounced that she herself would pres- ently murder the man who had es- caped, she considered it was no time to expose the fact she didn’t even know her role, or the name she was supposed to go by. It wasn’t Clare Haber, because Clare Haber was dead. Yet, strangely, she seemed to be Clare Haber. It was all so con- fusing . . . Whatever desperate game she had gotten embroiled in, she would get have to wait till the in- formation came out spontaneously. She could guess what this hard-faced creature would do with a useless bur- den. Even the waves slapping the bottom of the sea-sled were ominous to hear, for she realized that if the man knew the situation, it was most probable that he would just push her overboard-and forget her. « The sea-sled lifted from the water, settled a few minutes later into a lagoon where dozens of the things were parked in rows along the bank. | They got out, the man gesturing to an air-cab cruising by overhead. “You'll have to attend. the palace reception tonight, Sue, because Ha- ber is already fwo days overdue, and we don’t want to_arouse sus- picion, You will carry off the imper- sonation perfectly. There’s no point in waiting. You might just as well step into Haber’s place now as later. It’s the only way we can make sure that there are no copies of plans for the Hammer lying around to escape our destruction. We’ve got to wipe out Renison and every bit of informa- tion about this weapon. Everything depends on it. We've worked too long to slip up on it now.” So her name was Sue! Interesting, but it didn’t tell her a thing. Her memory was stirred no further. The man went on talking, and she brought her attention back with an effort. “ . .. closely, and I'll brief you. I drop you off at the palace entrance. You walk in as if the place belonged to you. You'll probably be taken at once to Rysto, and you will tell him that the model was approved by The ~ Traders’ Board of Inspection, that the demonstration was successful. You know what the Prince expects from the Traders’ Interplanetary Bureau of Credit for the weapon. Tell him the model was seen by no one but the agent who approved fhe transaction, and the demonstration was seen by no one but the Board. Make sure he be- lieves the deal was made exactly as he outlined it to Haber . . . how much easier this would have been if I could have retained my original hold on feds body! That damned bath . The man paused, looking at her questioningly. “T’ve got all that,” murmured Sue, as if she’d heard it a dozen times before. “Tell Rysto you are to take the complete data and plans and pro-

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wr * THE IDENTITY OF SUE TENET 17 — duction details to the agent on Sair. He will turn in a requisition for the complete list of materials requested, which list has been gone over and approved. The agent is to give a re- ‘ceipt for their cost, marked paid Sue looked out of the window of the air-cab at the peaceful city glid- ‘Ing beneath, wondering how long before the place fell before the efforts of such men as this one beside her. With divided attention she listened as his voice went on. “The whole idea, Sue, is to get all the data they have in their hands, and leave. Bring the model away with you, say the agent asked for it. Tf you get a chance at the reception fonight, make an appointment . with Renison. I doubt they could build another Hammer with Kyle Renison out of the way.” He laidyemphasis on the last words, Sue looked at him hating the sharp jaw, the arrogant beak like a curved sword bisecting his wide cheekbones, the thin, slightly smiling lips, the dark tongue that licked perpetually out\like that of a lizard, the hard, _ black eyes that stared at her without a single emotion ever showing about them. She hated the wide muscular shoulders that gave the lie to the im- - pression of ill-health conveyed by the lean, pallid face, If would be. so easy to kill him when the chance presented ‘itself, she thought again, _ without revulsion atthe idea this time. “The Prince will be glad to see Haber alive. Be sure not to betray your sex if he embraces you. He’s demonstrative and he liked the young officer. Haber was one man he trusted above all others. He knew him well. So don’t talk any more than you have to. Your voice is good, and I’ve made it almost a perfect imitation of Haber’s, just as my present voice is —key your ear to it. “Also, there are rumors that young Haber had _ several lights-of-love among the palace ladies, high-placed women, wives of dignitaries who should have known better. If some- botly’s wife or daughter tries to in- vite you into her boudoir during the evening, plead illness or fatigue. Don’t be left alone with any woman longer than you can help. Their eyes are too sharp! Just keep circulating, and leave as soon as possible, I'll be on hand to pull you out of any situa- tion that might give you away.” UE could hardly listen to the low- pitched voice, so low that the cabbie behind the protective shield of the cabin could not overhear. Clare Haber was a dead man’s name, and she was wearing his shoes! A dead man’s shoes and she was sup- posed to know enough about him to act like him perfectly: With a chill she became aware of the blond’ wig against her skin. Haber’s own skin! And she had killed him herself! But no! It had been her mysterious alter- ego. A shudder of nausea ran through her; her stomach knotted in complete refusal of the monstrous plans of this man, He had pulled a little vial from

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18 his vest, similar to the one she had in her own pocket. “If you get a chance give Alfreya one of these. I'l try for Rysto. Most of them will have to die later anyway. It could save us a lot of effort to get rid of them right now...” She was thinking: whatever had brought her under this man’s sway in the past, she couldn’t go on! In her mental condition of confusion, she was sure to betray herself. As a spy she would automatically be con- “victed and executed. Her mouth opened to give an emphatic objection to the projects he seemed to accept as simple, natural deaths . . . and the grim fact of that face of his warned her, closed her mouth. Suddenly she knew something else. It had been he whom she had been! But he _ thought she was still in his mental grasp, as her body had been before the strange bath had somehow chased him out. That meant ... She almost gave herself away as she stared at his expressionless face with new interest. ‘The man beside her was not the man he’d been when he had been waiting for her to finish her bath! He was— whatever it was that she had been before the bath. Then who was he? ~Or did it matter? He—she—it .. . it was all so confusing . . . had decided to kill him already. Was he as good as dead now? There would be no electric bath to bring him back to his own body! She couldn’t tell this monster the truth now. He would simply kill her and go on with his plans anyway. Maybe, if she played her role to its OTHER WORLDS end, she could somehow circumvent his plans. Her own life meant noth- ing anyhow, if she could not remem- ber more than her name. The air-cab began to settle, and her arm jerked nervously from the mounting tension within her. The man looked at her sharply. “(No time to have nerves, Sue. Rysto will ask what makes you nervous. He might suspect...” She shifted in her seat, leaning against him heavily. Unconsciously she found the little shocker snapping from its concealed pocket into her nerveless hand—it must have been habitual movement taking prece- dence over her conscious control, due to her confused state of mind. But now that it was in her hand, she pressed the flat nose of the little weapon to his neck, pressed the trigger. ; The man stiffened with sudden, horrible jerks, an iron-hard series of muscular cramps passed over him, leaving him sitting there like a man turned to metal, quivering slightly. His agonized eyes rolled. helplessly. He was as ugly a sight as she could stomach. She turned her eyes*away from his face. Swiftly she went through his pockets transferring the - contents to hee own. She’d have to examine them at her leisure. She leaned forward, touched the: cabbie’s shoulder.after pressing aside the little hinged window of plastic. Not trusting her voice to sound mas-’ culine, she pointed down to the’ streets sliding below. He nodded; the air-cab sank swiftly down. As it lit

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78 a on the green turf beside the walkway, her confidence came back, and gruffly she explained. “My companion has had an epi- eptic attack. It’s a mild recurrent ittack he has once in awhile, nothing serious. But it means I will have to “change my plans. Will you take him to this address—?” she handed the cabbie a card she had taken from the “man’s pocket. She hadn’t the faintest idea whosé address was on it, but it would serve to get him out of the way. She hesitated, fumbling with the “green credit notes in her breeches pocket. She had no idea of the value f the notes, or what the cabbie ex- yected. She peeled off two, handed them to the man without glancing at ‘them. He looked startled, but she kept her eyes away from his, knowing ‘she had overpaid him, not knowing what to do about it. Perhaps, if she scemed to have made a mistake, his upidity ... _ The man put the bills in his coat pocket, saying hurriedly: “Sure, of- cer, I'll tend to your friend. Don’t jorry about a thing...” " She stepped from the cab and he ifted it out of sight so quickly she new he was afraid she’d discover the “mistake she’d made in the amount she'd given him. Those credits must ct a lot of buying power. Not like .,... her mind fumbled with a "vague enernory of another roll of bills, ‘comparatively worthless, and of ex- etisicing them for a tiny basket of “food. But the memory faded before she could pin down the details, THE IDENTITY OF SUE TENET 19 She’ turned away, starting off with a brisk stride. Suddenly she realized her hips were swaying. How tell-tale the motion must look! She stiffened, paused, started over with a military heel and toe action, some dull mem- ory repeating tonelessly in her mind: “ ... a little more pigeon-toed, not such short steps...” A tall, uniformed figure loomed suddenly from the gathering dark. A heavy hand gripped her staggeringly by the shoulder, “You ingrate! What did you mean by taking off without a word to me? You knew bloody well it was my invention!” UE looked at the heavy, muscled throat, her eyes somehow refus- ing to rise higher. She forced them up, up to the big, ruddy and angry face, handsome as the Devil, with heavy golden eyebrows shading the deep-set green-blue eyes. It was a face with flushed and angry cheeks that she knew was usually. kindly, a face she could want to see very much, She couldn’t stand the strain any more. Inadvertently she put out a shaking hand to his arm to support her quivering knees. He looked such an honest, reliable sort, even if he was angry, even if his eyes did bore into hers as if he hated the sight of her. She found herself mut- tering, whispering, words tumbling over each other desperately. “I’ve got to talk to someone; you'll have to do. I know you're my friend; and I’m sick, I need you. Can we go somewhere for a drink? I need

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20 a drink . . . what is this place?” The big blond face lost its flush of anger, a sudden sympathy strug- gling to replace it. Concern spread over the big-boned features and a huge hand gripped her hard. “What’s happened to your voice, man? You sound like you’ve been through Hell! Don’t tell me any- thing could happen to take the gin- ger out of Clare Haber? I never knew you to have any emotions but a thirst for anything to vary your fare of excitement. Sure, I’ll buy you a drink, just to find out what you did with the Hammer!” “T know what happened to the Hammer,” muttered Sue. “But I don’t know how it happened. I don’t even know my own name, for sure. T'll tell you all about it, but get me under cover. I’m scared... ” The big man kept his grasp on her arm, piloted her along at a rapid pace, talking. “Til take you to my quarters over on-the square. We can be alone there, and it’s only a_half-block away. No one’ll notice us in this gloom. The lights aren’t on yet.” Sue said no more until.they had reached the sanctuary of the officer’s quarters. It was a huge single dwell- ing. She wondered idly what he did to make use of so much space. As. he let her in to the front door, the ques- tion was explained, for the whole first floor was taken up with a clutter of gadgets and machinery, mostly in a state of disassembly. Some of it was only half out of packing cases, the rest inexplicably dismembered and ly- OTHER WORLDS ing about in a jumble. He led her through the maze without comment, seeming to think she knew all about the place, and up a flight of stairs to the second floor. Here she found a luxuriously furnished apartment, a man’s place with the skins of jaguars, leopards, the gray wolf of Wancir, and animals whose skins she had never seen be- fore, littering the floor in lieu ‘of rugs, thrown over big chairs, tacked on the walls. It was evident, even” without considering the racks of rifles and other antique arms over the wide fireplace, that this man was an in- veterate hunter and collector of fire- arms of all kinds. She could only guess at what the insane assembly of apparatus on the lower floor meant in his pursuits, unless he was a gadget collector whose efforts were aimed at having one of everything the mind of man had ever produced. HE big man closed the door, put his back to it. Sue walked across the fur-littered floor, sank weakly — into the depths of a huge divan cov- ered with a great white fur of what animal she did not know. The weak- ness left her limbs after a long mo- ment, during which the officer just stood there, his back against the door, watching her without expres- sion. Then he paced across the room, swung-about, paced back again, his big hands clenching as if some intense thought gave him pain. \ “Why did you do it, Clare? I gave them the Hammer, and they, and you, sell me out without a word! {

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The three people on earth I love Fi ‘and trust, and they betray me!” _ Sue looked at him blankly. Her lip quiyered, her mind weary of puz- a “gles. She felt the tears on her eye- j i ~ Tashes and surprised in her vague mist of thought a strong desire to be a woman, to be gla’ she was a woman : and could leave her troubles to some ' man to solve. ' Slowly her lips moved, against a _ powerful fear impulse, and she man- ’ aged to say: “I’m not. Clare Haber! 1 don’t know what you're talking about!” With her hands still trembling a little, she fumbled a cigarette from he plastic box on the table, man- aged to light it. Not until then did ‘she glance up to see what impression her. announcement had made on him. _ He was standing there glaring at her like a crazy man. The words ‘came out in a torrent—angry, hurt words. “I’ve been through a lot to- day, Clare. I can’t stand any jokes ii ‘Tight now! I want to know what _ you’ve done with the Hammer, and ~ Idon’t want any damned jests! I’ve just given Rysto my sword. I’m through with Lansea for good. But before I leave the planet, I want to know what you three are up to, and ‘why you betrayed me? I might want to enlist with the Hornet myself! He hy ‘might at least give be a square deal. Ds Bent more than Rysto gave me!” | Sue blew a ring of smoke from the cigarette toward him, ‘smiled slightly at his somehow very boyish and ap- _ pealing attitude. She was more her- - self now; the stranger’s confused THE IDENTITY OF SUE TENET 21 mental attitude steadied her. She was aware that her own thoughts were less clouded with emotion than his, what there were of them. The fact gave her confidence. That and something the word Hornet had suggested. “I’m not Haber, and I can tell you’ that you do not want to go to the Hornet. I just quit the Hornet my- self, I hope permanently.” The officer seemed goaded to great- er fury by her calm, “You lie!” he snapped. “The Hornet is a fiction, a monster that doesn’t exist. If he does, he isn’t what some say he is.” He bent over her, gripped her shoul- der until she nearly shrieked with the pain of his steel fingers. “You sold-out the Hammer to the Hornet?” he said hoarsely. “The Hornet has the Hammer?” She was unable to answer against the fear of his fury. He shook her, snarling. “Your silence is an admission! You sold out to the Hornet, and you dare to come to me as a friend! Haber, I’m going to kill you! With these two hands I’m going to choke the life out of you, here and how!” Desperately she tried to wriggle from his grasp, Why did this thing keep getting out of hand? All she had to do was tell him who she was ... but she didn’t even know for sure. The big hands closed about her throat, she felt the crushing force. Only one thing could save her — prove she wasn’t Clare Haber, the man whose hair and mustache she wore. Weakly she tore at her jacket and loosened the mannish shirt, then,

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22 OTHER WORLDS with a convulsive effort she threw her- self back, spread the jacket wide. R an instant the pressure from his terrible hands increased, then the awful grasp relaxed and he stum- bled back, reeling, numbed into com- plete confusion by the revelation of her sex. : With nerveless hands she massaged her throat, gasping and choking. As her breath returned, she saw that he had stumbled back over a big leather hassock and was sitting on it, still staring at her bared bosom. With some impish impulse to complete his discomfiture, she stood erect, tugged off the blond wig, shook off the jacket ~ and shirt, ripped off the mustache, then spread her arms wide and made quite she he knew she was not Haber. She had grown to hate the thought of that name. “Now perhaps you will let me ex- plain myself, Mr. . . . whatever your name is.”’ She stopped as a new realization struck her. “You must be Kyle Renison, the inventor of the Hammer!” He shook his head like a swimmer coming up‘ from a dive. “Well, for the love of Hannah! The coxscomb is a woman! And I never knew...” Irritated at his stupidity, she rap- ped out: “Wake up, you silly jackass! IT am not Haber. I was never Haber. I never hope to be Haber. I don’t know my own name, but it is certain- _ ly not Clare Haber. If you will come to your senses, I’ll try to tell you what I know—what little there is to tell that makes sense.” “And such a damned pretty woman too.” 2 She slipped on the shirt, ignoring him for a moment. But she did not snap the tight band in place again. She slid down onto the divan, the weariness sweeping over her in waves, Stumblingly her voice began her ac- count, and as’she spoke, memory was seeping back into her being, so that even her own voice held wonderment as it went on. “Up to this minute I didn’t know who—or what—the Hornet was. My mind is numb, like a limb long un- used, but I think it will get better quickly. I only know that I was dancing, somewhere, when he—it— ~ came. I can vaguely remember a glit- tering mist, a strange vibration, hum- ming electrically. It hovered over me, settled about me, entered into me. Since then I remember nothing. “But today I suddenly found my- self in a strange room, standing shiv- ering beside a strange bath of blue liquid ‘and an electrical web of wires. I had apparently been in the bath, been shocked by some energy that had gone wrong. I knew that I had nearly been killed. I was standing — naked, as barren of memory as a new-born babe. I didn’t know my name, didn’t recognize my body, did not even know the use of the various things about me. Apparently my clothes were beside the bath. They fit” me, they weré a man’s clothes, and they were obviously a disguise my body used regularly. I didn’t know - how the weapon in my _ holster worked. I knew only that T yas alive,

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THE IDENTITY OF SUE TENET was a female, and spoke in a man’s voice, ’ “I put on the clothes because it seemed that it was the natural thing to do. My hands went through mo- tions evidently practiced, but totally new to my mind. Outside the door of that room a voice, identical with mine,/ urged me to hurry. Finally dressed, I went into that room and found . . . him!” She shuddered at* the recollection. F “Even then I had the eerie feeling he wasn’t human. Then began a confusion in my mind that hasn’t- cleared up yet. He said he’d been me, that I was Sue, and also Clare Haber, that Clare Haber was dead—” Kyle tensed. “Dead!” he said. “Who killed him?” Sue’s face grew pale. She faced him, lifted her chin, “I suppose I did,” she said. “In fact, I know I did, while the Hornet had possession of my body!” He glared at her, his fists clench-_ ing and unclenching, but he made no move to get up from the hassock. “Go on,” he said hoarsely. “You are being very interesting, but I warn you, unbelievable.” “How can I expect you to believe,” she murmured in horror, “when I myself cannot’ bring myself to be- lieve what my memory is beginning to tell me? If I am to believe that, 1 have killed many men, poisoning them while I charmed them with my body...” She slumped down and put her face in her hands, and sobs of terror 23 shook her shoulders as the memories flooded in, But he remained seated, impassive, still staring at her with complete unbelief written on his face. She went on: “I have not really been alive. It seems that I have been waiting, like a soul in a grave, waiting for life to start again. And now that*it has, I cannot remember who I was. I remember a name, yes. I was Sue Tenet, I believe I am Sue Tenet. But who was she. I can tell you nothing more about me. “But I can tell you two things im- portant to you. One, the Hornet is not a human being, but some alien creature of pure force. Two,’ the Hornet means to destroy human rule here, and use the people of these three worlds for his own purposes.” Her voice stopped, and they sat looking at each other with a kind of mutual animosity; she angry at his unwillingness to accept the story she had told him, as expressed by his un- believing face; he by what he con- sidered her clumsy effort to lie to him. “All right,’ she flared at him. “Believe what you will—but the least you can do as a gentleman is get me that drink you promised me!” He flushed, got to his feet. “I need one myself,” he said briefly, going to pour it. He returned in a moment carrying a brimming glass with a square of ice tinkling in it. She sipped the liquid, her eyes watering with the sting of it. In a moment she felt the glow of the liquor in her stomach, her blood began to flow normally again, and her trembling nerves relaxed.

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24 66 OW did you get here?” he asked. “Might as well em- bellish the story. If you're telling ~anything of the truth, you'll be con- sistent. If you talk lorig enough with- out tripping yourself up...” “How can I be consistent when I can’t even be sure of my name?” she Snapped. “But I came here on a sea-sled, and to the street where you found me in an air-cab...” “Some one shot at me from a sea- sled this afternoon!” he interrupted suddenly. “I was on the sea-sled that shot at you,” she continued, her mind fumbling blindly, wishing instantly she hadn’t said it. The anger began to flush his cheeks again,.and he put his glass down abruptly, and his fingers twitched. She went on hur- riedly. “With the man who was wait- ing for me to finish that strange elec- trical bath—he called it a vi-eng ...” He snorted, sardonically. “If you were taking a vi-eng bath, you need- n’t act so innocent...” “Why? What does it do?” “Do?” He stared at her, flushed again. “Never mind what it does . .. if you don’t know, which you should, having been in one!” “T told you I don’t remember any- thing prior to finding myself stand- ing beside it.” “Go on,” he said. “Say that enough times, and I'll begin to believe it.” “The man outside my room seemed to think he might not have control of my mind, be able as before to com- mand absolute obedience. So he seemed to be testing me. Because I OTHER WORLDS was in such mental confusion, I pre- _ tended to agree with everything he said. I was desperate for any clue that would tell me what I was, where I was, and who he was, and so on. To test me, he said, we were to go on a sea-sled somewhere and kill a man named Kyle Renison, inventor of something he called the Hammer. I didn’t know what the Hammer was until he used it. He had it right in the sea-sled.” “For a woman who wants to live, you aren’t telling a very sensible story,” he reminded her. “But da. ; you're not so dumb at that . “You mean, if the lie is big enough...” “Something like that. But so far, in the matter of the sea-sled and the attempt on my life, you’re strict- ly on the side of truth. For that » reason alone, I’d be willing to believe you. Another is the stories I’ve heard of the Hornet. You have come closest to making sense out of them.” 4 “Telling the truth to you is dan- gerous,” she said. “Maybe if I went on, you’d kill me anyway.” ne “Don’t worry, I don’t kill women.” She felt. of her throat and mut- mured, “My throat will be sore for weeks,” He laughed suddenly. mistaken identity,” he said. She laughed too, then picked a the blond wig. Unable to repress a shudder, she thrust it into his hands, Her voice took on a harsh note of horror, “All right, then. That, I’m sure, is the scalp of Clare Haber, The mustache I was wearing is also. “Case of.

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THE IDENTITY OF SUE TENET 25 ws I suspect that 7 poisoned him, tt J scalped him, that J tanned the skin, and that J practiced for ‘months to pass myself off for him— ‘and when I did it, 7 was the Hornet. ‘Now, with that horrible lie, you may ‘want to kill me, woman or no! Oh, ‘if it only was a lie!” Suddenly she ‘broke down, and once more her ‘shoulders shook with the horror that was in her, and dry sobs of terror shook her. _ Suddenly his arms were around ‘ber shoulders protectingly, and his voice rumbled in dismay. “Stop ‘it,” he said. “Don’t say another word. AUnless you can lie! I’ve had enough of the truth! Enough to believe you the hilt.” down on the white fur. He released her awkwardly, and sat beside her, staring at her. He was so tall, beside her, that he looked down at her. ‘Forgive me,” “she said. “I’m just “so scared . “How'd seh get away from the Hornet?” he asked suddenly. _ She showed him the little shocker. ith this. I just pressed it against 1 in the air-cab and pressed the rigger. Then I had the cabbie take 1 nim to an address ona card I found hing serious, and that he’d be all Bats?” “Do you remember the address on the card?” __ She shook her head. “TI never even ‘read it, except to note it was an ad- ” "She relaxed, letting her hands sink © “What was the number of the cab?” “T don’t know that either.” He exclaimed in vexation. “Just like all women!” She looked up at him, almost in tears again. She put her hands to her smooth-shaven head, at which he was glaring from his height. “T-tell me,” she said pathetically, “is... is a bald woman as attrac- tive as one with hair on her head?” ~ For an instant he looked down at her in surprise, then suddenly he_ grinned. His big square teeth were surprisingly white in his tanned face. His expression told her all doubt of her had been removed. He looked at her head critically. “If you want my personal reaction, it’s a damned in- triguing innovation. But I hate to think of the stubble when you let it grow-again! Ugh!” She rubbed her hand over the smooth scalp in alarm. “It hasn’t begun to grow yet?” she asked. “I could have it depilated...” “Why?” “T . .. I didn’t like the sound of that ‘ugh’,’ she said lowly. He laughed, then turned serious, his eyes on hers showing an intimate new acceptance she found very pleas- ant. “We don’t have time for this! That fiendish friend of yours -is liable to recover from his shock treatment and set out to do some of the things you were supposed to help with. By the way, what were they outside of killing me?” She told him all the Hornet had said to her in the air-cab. He whis-

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26 tled. “He really means business, doesn’t he! We’ve got to stop him!” He got up, stood before her, thinking. “How can you stop a thing like that?” she asked faintly. He snorted. “I don’t believe he is a ‘thing.’ I think this invisible creature is a delusion, born of the shock of the vi-eng unit short cir- cuiting. I think when you learn the truth, you'll find you worked for a gang of murderers and cutthroats under threats. I could have your friend picked up, if I hadn’t thrown up my commission this afternoon. I’m sorry now, but what’s done is done. I can’t turn back...” She asked, “Why not? Changing you mind is legal, isn’t it?” He looked at her, as if plunged ‘into deep thought by her words. A thought struck her, too, and she trembled. “Maybe you're right,” she said. “But if this Hornet .memory I have is a delusion, I’m mad! If I’m mad, I’ve been a tool of a gang; someway, and can’t remember what has happened. If I killed young Haber...” her voice dropped into a hopeless resignation to an impossi- ble situation. “If I am that kind of thing, 1 hope I never remember what really happened!” He stared at her. “Tm scared!” she said. “Very frightened. I could still be shot for having Haber’s clothes, for being a spy. I don’t want to be given the third degree for something I can’t even remember, which somebody else may, if it’s true. How could I deny it, even if I wanted to, if you're OTHER WORLDS right?” His big voice became reassuring. “Don’t worry. You'll not fall into Hannigan’s clumsy hands if I can help it. He’s our Chief of Intelli- gence and I’ve always felt distrust of him, Chiefly because of his stories of the Hornet, fantastic things, al- most as fantastic as yours...” He stopped speaking and looked reflec- tive, frowning slightly. He looked at her. “I don’t know...” he be- gan. Then abruptly he turned and switched on the visiphone against the wall. As he dialed a number, she got up suddenly, moved out of range of the pickup eye above the visiscreen. ' N the screen a whirl of rainbow colors showed the ‘screens syn- chronizing. From the kaleidoscopi¢ display a woman’s lovely face came into view suddenly. The lips moved, the machine said: “Kyle! My broth- er! I knew you couldn’t go through with it. We love you, Kyle! We were only trying to spare you unnecessai worry and strain...” f Kyle interrupted. “No time for that, Sis. Will you get over here right away? I’ve something important to show you. It will change the whole picture for us. Something damned important, Alfreya. Hurry!” He broke the connection. | | | | | | ) | : Kyle picked up the blond scalp, from the chair, handed it to Sue. “Prepare to receive visitors as Cap-_ tain Clare Haber,” he said. Sue put ‘on the wig, shuddering as the cold, dead skin of the human | 4

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touched her scalp. Her lips ted into an involuntary grimace horror as she faced the mirror, ting the grisly thing into place. Then she affixed the mustache, re- ioved her tunic, and rearranged her ‘ Beerayed blouse, careless of Kyle’s tent gaze beyond a slight reddening | her white neck. Swiftly she bound r full bosom into mannish appear- ance with the strap and replaced the .. “T hope you don’t have to wear tt much longer,” Kyle said, “I ust admit that I like you as you tally are much better. Now that ve got time to notice, I’m beginning get impressed with your looks.” “J wish I didn’t have them!” she Said furiously. “Why?” He looked at her with onishment. “That memory of mine—that re- embers only so- little—does re- ‘ind me how many men haye died use they noticed the same things now do!” All at once she was on verge of tears once miore. ‘He leaped to her side, grasped her is arms and shook her gently. e, enough of that. How can tain Haber convince a woman he man, with tear-stained eyes?” - “Tt is necessary?” He shriigged. “Maybe not. I hope don't have to use you as any er decoy. But how am I going convince Alfreya of your story thout first showing her something usual?” “Wouldn’t she believe you?” “Me, yes. But I want her to be- THE IDENTITY OF SUE TENET 27 lieve you!” She looked at him bleakly, “Again, is that necessary?” He considered her a _ minute,. “You're sure in a black mood,” he said. “Look at it this way. You've won me over, and maybe we can do something to uncover the gang back of you. If it is a gang... And in that event, you'll be clear, I guar- antee it. And if it is that fantastic soul-stealer, the Hornet, as you be- lieve, it may be that the entire re- sources of this planet may be able to do something about it.If it wasn’t for Hannigan’s fantastic reports of the past...” “Then you do believe my story, and not your theory of a gang who has used me as a hypnotized slave?” He grimaced. “Against my common sense,” he said. “Maybe /’m being hypnotized too—by your beauty.” She winced and he looked annoyed at his lack of tact. a arrived at that mo- ment, and as she swept in, Sue looked at her with interest. She came in without ceremony, evidencing that she was accustomed to visiting her brother. She was perhaps twenty-five, perhaps thirty, strikingly handsome in the same big-boned way that was her brother's. She halted in the doorway, clasped ~ her hands together in delight. “Clare Haber! Now, here’s an errant mes- senger with some explanations worth hearing! Man, we’ve been worried sick ever since you left, thinking some leak might have given away the

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28° walue of the object in your baggage!” “Some leak did!” said Sue, in Haber’s voice. Alfreya turned to Kyle, noticed the unsmiling, grim face turned toward her. “Oh,” she said, disappointment in her face. “I had the instant hope when I saw Clare that you had been wrong about being fired upon by the Hammer. Then a peculiar look came over her face and she turned back to Sue. She moved between Sue and Kyle, peering closely at Sue’s face. But Sue beat her to it, realizing it would be better if her first impression were of voluntary exposure of the deception. She reached up and pulled off the wig. “Ah!” said Alfreya. She rubbed her eyes with one hand, then sat down suddenly. No one spoke for several moments, then Alfreya ejacu- lated: “A woman!” “You're pretty good, Sis,’ said Kyle. “I had to see a lot more than a bald head to realize that fact.” Sue’s bald head turned pink, but no pinker than her face. Kyle sat down, while Alfreya got up and walked over to Sue. She reached out and touched Sue’s cheek with a fingertip, then her shoulder, noting the padding, turned her about like a woman buying a dress on a model. Then her eyes went to her brother’s face, completely puzzled. “Naturally I need a very good -ex- planation of this fantastic deception,” she said. “Kyle looked at Alfreya somberly. “This is going to be rather hard to swallow, Sis. But maybe if you re- OTHER WORLDS member some of the crazy reports Hannigan has made to us about that mysterious entity called the Hornet, you may be able to gather some of the loose threads together ... ” “The Hornet? A ghost! A myth! A phantasy in the minds of the su- perstitious natives of the moons of — Wancir!” 4 He winced. “I was afraid you'd i look at it that way.” “Tsn’t that the way you’ve looked. : at it?” she prodded him, pa “Oh,” he said. “Ribbing me, eh? — Well, maybe you aren’t so hard to * explain to at that.” Kyle looked at_ Sue. “Neither of us know, exactly, Sis. She had an accident while in a vi-eng conditioner...” : Alfreya’s eyelids went up, and then dropped again as she noted no reaction from Sue. She looked a bit more puzzled. But Kyle blushed for Sue. He has- tened on, flustered. “The unit over- loaded her mental circuits, blew a — fuse, so to speak. She lost her mem- ory. She doesn’t even know her own name, for sure. Circumstances bear out that part of her story ... But she had a kind of delusion of an in- visible being called the Hornet pos- sessing her, driving her from her body, using the body for many months. She’s sick, scared—she needs help.” He paused a moment, then plunged _into it. “What tops it is the fact that her wig was manufactured from Haber’s own scalp. When our en- emies begin scalping our top dip- lomatic men, starting with our most

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i fant tactician, we’re in trouble! he may be an agent of the enemy, hoever he or they may be, but she t a willing one. We're in deadly eril right now!” “Will you help us hunt your fiends down?” asked Alfreya of Sue, - “Pll do what I can,” said Sue. “But you may not like the result if we are successful—and I don’t see how can fail to locate the Hornet. He d he would kill you all—and no oubt that now includes me.” ‘Alfreya went to her, clasped her rmly in her arms, giving for the t time the acceptance she had ntally given almost from the first. ‘ou come with me. I once lived e with my brother; some of my ings are still here. I can get you ome woman’s clothes, although they will be too big. We'll find something ® fit you tomorrow.” jue brightened and Alfreya looked her approvingly. “You're a pretty hild,” she said. “What is that name uu remember?” “Sue Tenet,” said Sue. “I’m not n sure of that...” _Alfreya cocked her head on one e. “Are you a dancer?” she asked ibruptly. ue looked her astonishment. “Why 1 I remember dancing .; . ” “You are Mazarinda, of the Bal- t! So that is how Haber fell into clutches of the Hornet! He was ut when he came back from his mis- nm. It was his secret, and he told ly me about it!” THE IDENTITY OF SUE TENET 29 found herself wrapped in Alfreya’s arms. As she began to weep, uncon- trollably, Alfreya and Kyle looked helplessly at each other. 66 YLE,” said Alfreya, “you’d better call Hannigan. Get him over here so we can begin the search for the Hornet. We’ve got to find him! And the rest of his gang!” As she left the room with Sue, Kyle turned to the toggle switch of the visiphone and flipped it open. In sec- onds the visiphone screen began its warming up display of chromatics, and then Kyle dialed a number. A burly, red-faced figure appeared on the screen and an incisive, rasping voice barked out suddenly, “Who’s calling? What address?” Kyle stepped in front of the pick- up eye, looked into it grimly. “This is Renison, at home. Something bad’s up, Hannigan. A group of spies headed by the Hornet has stolen the Hammer, killed Haber, and they are now making plans to destroy the plans and kill everyone who has any knowledge of the Hammer. If they get away with it, it’s the end for the three planets!” “A lot more than that!” came the Tasping voice. From the visiphone came the sound of barked orders. Then the voice directed at Kyle again. “Any clues?” “Yes. The Hornet himself was knocked out with a shocker by a woman agent of his, who broke his hypnotic control and escaped, and he’s been taken to an unknown ad- dress in the ctty by an air-cab driver.”

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0 OTHER WORLDS “Good! I'll get the driver easy enough. If only our quarry stays at the address long enough for the driver to get us there . . . ” Hannigan’s voice was gone, and*his image with it. He had gone into the rapid-fire action characteristic of him, neglect- ing even to sever the visiphone con- nection. ANNIGAN arrived at Kyle’s Jaboratory with a very perturb- ed look on his face. He listened gravely to Kyle’s story, then accom- panied him up to his apartment. He spoke: “I have a lot of highly un- reliable information about the Hor- - net, and it’s quite fantastic. Maybe it’s a red herring type of informa- tion, I don’t know. But if that dame with your sister is one of the Hor- net’s agents, hypnotized or not, I’m going to have some very serious dis- cussions with her...” Kyle «shook his head vigorously. “Oh no you don’t! She'll stay right with Sis till this is cleared up. She’s no criminal. She’s a victim herself. Moreover, she’s sick. She is suffering from amnesia, and she has delusions. She thinks the Hornet is an invisible being that lived inside her, possessed her body, drove her own entity out. She didn’t know her own name till Sis called her Mazarinda.” Hannigan looked startled. “Ma- zarinda! Working for the Hornet? He doesn't care who he picks on! So poor Haber stopped in to see his lady love before he left on his long trip—and that’s as far as he got!” Kyle looked at Hannigan curious- ly. “Sis thinks she’s the only one who knew about Haber and Mazarin- CTE Paes Hannigan grinned. “I know lots of things people don’t think I know. That’s why I’m head of Intelligence.” The Police Chief rubbed his massive red nose and his little blue eyes squinted up at Renison’s green ones. He gave a little cough. “Has it oc- curred to you,. Renison, that your permier danseuse might be a lot safer with me than mingling with your highbrow friends? They might kill her, if they know she can identify some of the gang.” 7 Kyle~held the man’s eyes, his smile unchanging. “No go, Hannigan. I know your methods. She’d be likely to die with you, from too much ques- ~ tioning! Besides, I’m convinced of the truth of her story, and no amount of questioning would help if that’s the case.” Hannigan’s eyebrows lifted. “You believe her story of the weird force taking over her body and expelling her own ego?” “You've said things alnrost as fan- tastic concerning the Hornet,” said Renison. “By the way, what Was your source of these amazing claims?” by “My secret,” said Hannigan. “What kind of an Intelligence head would I be if I didn’t haye sources?” “Then let’s prove how good you are, and find the Hornet before he comes out of the effects of the shock~ er treatment Miss Tenet gave him.”

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JHE notables of Mea forming _ gathered room behind the thrope room of palace. At the table head sat the nce, his cheeks pale, his lips set in stubborn lines. Kyle, too nervous : it, strode up and down the room “the Prime Minister sat beside e visiphone, waiting for a report. ‘Until we hear from Hannigan, ere’s little we can do,” said Sten sto. “We're up against the fact we don’t know whete the Hor- t bases his operations. It’s well _ known, according to Hannigan, that e have been secret groups form- with a hornet as ‘heir emblem, n all three planets. Especially on fancir, the water world. Now we'll ve to*grub them all out and de- them, And we can do it with Hammer, when Hannigan tells us here to strike.” _ “Where is the man?” asked Kyle : noyance. “Is he out personally ing cab drivers...” Of course not,” came Hannigan’s ming voice, rasping at them from doorway. “I’ve just come from address the cab driver gave . . ?” Sten Rysto rose in yle looked at Hannigan. “You're “ill looking for him.” &No, » Sten Rysto bounded to his feet. ‘Why? Man, why?” His face was picture of perfect surprise. Kyle Renison’s brows lowered as he star- / THE IDENTITY OF SUE TENET 3t ed at Hannigan in consternation. Also there was puzzlement there. .Hannigan wasn’t given to such dra- matics. Undoubtedly there was some- thing more to be said, and Hanni- gan was trying for effect. “There must be more to say,” Kyle remarked. “Of course there is,” agreed Han- nigan. He had a strange aura of com- placency about him, an air of self-ton- ‘fidence that was not like the usual demeanor of the Chief of Lansea’s Intelligence Service. Usually Hanni- gan was a gruff, rasping, dissatisfied- with-everything personality. “Out with it, man!” said Rysto. “This is a serious matter, and we've not time to waste with words.” “T didn’t catch my bird, but I did find out where he’s gone, and how to get him—this time for good!” Sten Rysto stood for an instant more, then sank back into his chair in relief. “That’s better,” he said. “And where is this Hornet person?” “On Wancir, the Water World. He’s made it his base of operations, and I’ve got his headquarters pin- pointed. We're taking off with the whole fleet immediately, with every Hammer that’s been made so far, and blasting it out of existence!” Kyle’s eyes suddenly narrowed and he sct down too, silently and warily, watching the Intelligence Chief. Sten Rysto sat with open mouth. “You sure of your information?” “Positive. I'll prove it by bring- ing back the goods. All I need is your order to ready the fleet, and we're off.””

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32 “The order is given!” snapped Rysto, jumping back to his feet. “And the sooner we take off, the better. I’m not much to stomach battle, but I won’t rest until that mysterious body and power thief is a corpse!” Kyle opened his mouth to say something, but before the words could come out, a tremendous roar came from outside the palace and the building shook. “What’s that!” asked Sten Rysto in sudden alarm. Together with Kyle, he rushed to the window. Outside a tremendous black cloud spurted skyward, hung lazily, growing huge and black like an instantly created thundercloud. A shuddering series of heavy concussions shook the palace again, and explosions thundered in their ears. Rysto cried out: “The weapon shops! The Hornet hasn’t gone, Hannigan! He’s gotten the weapon shops, and the plans he wanted!” Hannigan faced the ruler as he whirled about. “Not the Hornet, but a time bomb,” he said. “I didn’t expect that, I'll admit, but I’m posi- tive the Hornet has left the planet .-.” He produced a series of photo- graphs from his pocket. They were still damp. ‘These are from the ob- servatory. Take a look at them...” Kyle grabbed them from Hanni- gan’s hand, stared at them. They . showed a long, slim object, plunging through space, undeniably a space- ship—but of a strange appearance, even in the photo. The nose of it was surrounded by a flickering ra- ° OTHER WORLDS diance, as of radioactivity, a halo of force like nothing he’d ever seen be- fore. Rysto, looking over his shoulder, said: “That's like no ship I ever saw before.” “Yes, and that’s my proof. It was | taken early this morning, just be- fore I pulled my raid on the Hornet’s temporary hideout. If you doubt my _' word, call the chief astronomer ... ” “I don’t doubt it,” said Rysto. “Let’s get that fleet under way. We've got to get this thing before it gets us!” “We'll need every punch we've got,” said Hannigan. “Every Ham- mer completed and installed: And Kyle should go along, too. He knows » most about the Hammer, and how to. use it effectively. I’m not sure of what we'll find on the Water World, and what we'll have to do to make the Hammer most effective there.” “Of course he'll go,” said Rysto. “We'll put every bit we have into this attack. If we lose, we'll be fin- ished...” Once more Kyle opened his mouth to speak, then a peculiar look crossed his face, and he clamped his jaws tight for a moment. Then he spoke: “Of course, I’ll go,” he said. “And don’t worry that the Hammer won’t do the job—if Hannigan has the Hor- net’s base pinned down as he says.” “You'll captain your own ship, the Star Swan,” said Rysto, “Hannigan will take command of three of the remaining six ships, and I will head the other three.” “And the sooner we take off, the

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a better,” said Hannigan meaningfully. Kyle saluted, whirled on his heel, and left the palace. But once outside, ne did not head for the great naval spaceport, but instead turned toward the summer home of his sister, Al- ; freya vee TLJE found Alfreya with her arms - around a weeping Sue Tenet. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “She just remembered some more of her past while possessed by the Hornet, and the experience has shaken her.” Kyle looked pained, but he said: ‘T’ve no time now for talk about it, cause something important has “You mean the destruction of the weapon shops?” “Not that, alone. But Hannigan says he knows where the Hornet is, and his base, and he’s persuaded ten to attack with the whole fleet and all available Hammers. I’m to “command the Star Swan. We will take off within hours, I’m afraid.” _ “Why are you afraid?” - “Because I think Hannigan’s a traitor—is working with the Hor- net!” Alfreya logked shocked. “Oh, nol ot Hannigan. He’s the soul of loy- ty. Rough and rasping, but not a traitor!” * Kyle looked grim. “The only way can prove it is to go with the fleet and watch for treachery. If it de- _velops, maybe I can do something ot it.” Sue Tenet drew away from Al- THE IDENTITY OF SUE TENET 33 freya now and rushed to Kyle, flung her arms around him. “I can remem- ber now, Kyle! The Hornet is not a human being at all! You were wrong in telling me I had delusions from shock. He came to me as I was dancing, as a little, burning cloud of dusty blue radiance. His touch was pleasant, but . somehow _ terribly frightening, like a pleasant, but dead- ly poison. He liked me, settled into me, took over my body. There was. nothing I could do about it, and soon I began to slip away, further and fur- ther into the background, until I be- came only an observer, detached and distant, it seemed, yet still some- where in my body, but helpless to , control it even the slightest bit. “Then I lived, a stranger in my own body. It belonged to him. My will was not even used. It began to. atrophy. I remember how I used my body to lure many men into death traps, to help the Hornet set up his base of power here on Lansea. I re- member Clare Haber, how he loved me. I didn’t love him, but the Hor- “net made my body respond to him, and the night he ptoposed to me ... ” Sue’s voice broke, and tears came afresh. : Kyle tried to disengage her cling- ing arms from him, but she clung tightly. Her voice went on, becom- ing more hysterical now as new mem- ories flooded in*on her. “I. murdered’ men with poison! And at last, I was supposed to mur- der you, Sten Rysto, and Alfreya ... it all comes back to me. But then, in the vi-eng bath, the ‘short circuit

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34 OTHER WORLDS drove the Hornet from my body. He is a sort of fluid energy that lives in a fluid environment. In the body, it must be the blood . . . After that I was free! The energy drove his strange corpuscles from my _ body. ” Kyle tore her arms from about him, thrust her back into Alfreya’s care. “Take care of her. Give her a sedative. I’ve got to go. She’s given me the clue I need . . . and I’ve got _ to work on it before we go to attack the Hornet’s base!” Without further attention to the two women, one distraught and al- most hysterical, the other puzzled, afraid, and vastly saddened by the terrible events transpiring about her, Kyle rushed off. * ok O* T the spaceport, the Star Swan became the center of the activ- ity of some two hundred mechanics, busily installing apparatus strange to the warship in her weapons sec- tion. Giant generators were hooked up, supplying far more power than the Hammer armament the ship car- ried required. A huge tank of blue fluid was installed, and placed in it were a series of fine-mesh copper screens, connected to the generators. These in turn “were connected to the gleaming snouts of ordinary ray- cannon barrels, and» equipped with spray-type nozzles. Then, this sec- tion of the weapons deck was sealed, and Kyle Renison himself took the keys. An hour later, the seven ships of the Lansea space navy took off for Wancir, with Hannigan’s ship in the Jead and Kyle’s Star Swan taking up the rear, not without prearrangement on Kyle’ 's part by the simple expedi- ent of making his first take-off at- tempt a false one, necessitating an- other too late to take anything but the rear position in the armada. *_ * * ANCIR was a water world in truth. As Kyle’s ship neared it, it became evident that it was a vapor-wrapped world of gigantic seas, with here and there a group of tiny islands, with mountain peaks jutting from the waves. Nothing lived on the seas or in them except monstrous salamander-like creatures as large as whales, and on the southern hemi- sphere, where the greatest number of islands, bleak and forbidding, rose from the sea, nothing lived but in- sects. It was in the northern hemi- sphere that the human colonies were, cut off from the south by the almost impassable seas of the Water World. As the fleet screamed into the at- mosphere of the southern hemisphere, radio contact was established between the control rooms of the seven ships. Hannigan’s rasping voice cut from the receiver into Kyle’s eats like a knife. “The Hornet’s nest is somewhere among these islands, in.a large peak, which has been hollowed out by the action of the water millions of-years ago. Inside, I have discovered, is a fleet of ships. If they are permitted to be armed with Hammers, our bat-

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THE IDENTITY OF SUE TENET tle will be lost. But now, we have a chance to wipe them out.” “How are you going to find the right island?” came Sten Rysto’s voice. “All we have to do is drop a bomb near the suspected location, and there are only two or three which could possibly be the correct location, and his ships will swarm up to repel our attack.” “Let’s get to it, then,” growled Kyle. For answer, Hannigan’s ship dove down, loosed a bomb on a large is- land topped by a gigantic peak. Kyle watched from his vantage point at the rear of the fleet, and was per- haps the first to see the opening in the mountainside from which the nose of a space ship peered. Then, as it came screaming up on a pillar of flame, Kyle Renison sent his own ‘craft roaring across Wancir, away from the tiny island. Then, making a great curve, he came back in. “What’s that crazy maneuver?” asked Sten Rysto, over the radio. “Just backing you up, in case,” said Kyle cryptically. “Tn case’ of what ... ?” began Rysto, but in that instant, he learned what. Out of the rising ship came a strange blue radiance that dissolved suddenly into a swarm of thousands of little clouds of light that moved through space exactly like a swarm of hornets. They headed for Rysto’s six ships with incredible speed. With a curse, Sten Rysto ordered his ship into attion, and the brilliant and deadly bolts of the Hammer 35 streaked down. Where they passed through the oncoming swarm of lu- minous hornet-lights, they caused a ripple of movement, a slight devia- tion in their course, but when they hit the rising Hornet ship, it exploded in a coruscating shower of fireworks that sprayed down on the mountain in a rain of fire. Then the luminous hornet-swarm reached Sten Rysto’s ship—and the other five ships an instant later. There was an instant as the hulls glowed with lumination as the Hor- nets passed within, then the radi- ance was gone. In close, perfect formation the fleet of Sten Rysto sped down toward the mountain cave and swept into it, to disappear inside; Kyle Renison had no time for emotion, or for attack. His radar showed quite plainly the side of the mountain into which the fleet had swooped like homing swallows. His dive toward the same spot was un- calculated, almost a reflex of anger. His orders to his crew were: “Blast that cavern shut, every Hammer on that mountainside until the opening is buried!” In the ensuing minutes, Diente 4 of tons of rock effectively sealed the cavern opening. And then Kyle, with- drew into space to think, and to plan what he would do next—if there was anything to do! +~_* * ACK on’ Lansea, two stunned women stared into the television screen that*revealed the disaster that had overcome Sten Rysto and his _

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i 36 OTHER WORLDS fleet. Sue Tenet, wearing a becoming black wig, was sobbing. ‘You see, the Hornet is not human. He is a strange form of energy from outer space. He is perhaps the advance guard of a strange form of liquid light that has life, and which breeds in the bodies of its victims. I seem to know a great deal about the Hornet and his civiliza- tion, something impressed on my memory cells by association while I was under his control. It seems to me it is this way—the Hornet is sexless, but in each victim, some little por- tion remains, even when the victim is dead, which grows and becomes another Hornet. But they cannot take over our mechanical world with- out slave bodies to occupy. You have just seen that the Hornet now has many slave bodies, and many slave ships, and worst of all, all our Ham- mer weapons, When they have com- pleted control of their new hosts, the big attack will come. And once they gain control of a planet, we will all be mindless slaves, robot bodies with our souls driven into a tiny corner, helpless and trapped.” Sue Tenet turned away from the television screen, her face buried in her hands in her grief. / Alfreya switched on the space radio and called repeatedly into the void. “Kyle! My brother. Can you hear me? Kyle...” ion ) YLE, deep in thought as he hovered just beyond the atmos- phere of the water world, became aware of the insistent signal from the radio, indicating that the wave band was being activated. He snap- ped the set on, and heard the faint voice of Alfreya. “Yes,” he answered. “JT am listening...” “We saw...” said Alfreya. “Sten is gone, and Hannigan...” “You mean the Hornet . . . Han- nigan was the Hornet,” said Kyle, “T suspected it when he first came- back from his raid on the Hornet’s hideaway. He conducted a raid, all right, but it was the Hornet who came back, in Hannigan’s body. And now he’s got Sten and all the crew of those six ships. Each and every man is now another Hornet, and -sooner or later they’ll come-out of that mountain...” “Kyle!” came his -sister’s voice. “You can’t fight them alone! Your weapons will be useless against such a thing as Phat. The Hornet is an energy parasite, and not vulnerable to physical weapons such as the Hammer.” ~ “Tt’s our only chance,” said Kyle hopelessly. “I’ve got one weapon, a revamped vi-eng unit, stepped up a thousand-fold. I got the idea from: what Sue told me about how the unit chased the Hornet out of her. I’m going to wait for these things to come out, then I’m going to give them a vi-eng bath they may not find to their liking.” “They are too many for you,” said Alfreya. “But if you can hold out until help comes... ” “What help is there?” “Kyle, as queen of Lansea, I know a few things you do not. One is that

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we are members of a Federation that Spreads through the galaxy. There is a battle fleet of thousands of gigantic “such as this weird energy thing from deep space. It will take several weeks for them: to get here, but I am calling _ them in.” “They'll do no good, without such armament as the vi-eng bath,” said i Kyle in sudden hope. Listen! Sis, “can you take down some complex mathematics and relay it with your call for help? Tf those’ battle wagons can build vi-eng projectors as they come, they’ll have a weapon to drive _ the Hornets out, and thus have some ‘chance—but more, they must devise a vi-eng met to capture the Hornets after they are disassociated from the bodies of their slaves. Here’s how it ight be done ... .” Rapidly he began reeling off an array of figures until a despairing voice came from the radio. “Kyle! I can’t make sense out of hat! I’m not a scientist, like you. I’m going to call the Federation and Il them what they face, and trust to their scientists to devise some- projector. Then tell them they'll need a net thousands of miles in di- “ameter to imprison the.Hernets. The ~ rest will be up to them. I hope their science is as great as their Federa- tion.” “Tl do it,” said Alfreya, “and do ‘ships, ready for real emergencies, ~ THE IDENTITY OF SUE TENET ; 37 your best, Kyle, to hold them until help gets here.” She broke the con- nection, * * O* WO weeks later Kyle’s vigil over the blasted mountain came to an end. Like a volcano the mountain erupted, and the cavern was blasted open from the inside. Up from the depths came three of the ships of Sten Rysto, and they drove directly toward Kyle Renison’s Star Swan. Kyle shouted into the intercom and alerted his crew, then shut his lips grimly and turned his ship to- ward the coming battle, in his heart a silent prayer. As he had hoped, the adapted vi- eng unit was a surprise to the Hor- net, and as the four ships closed, he went into action, firing all his Hammers in unison with the vi-eng projector. One of the Hammers jolted its deadly bolt into the belly of the first attacker, and the ship exploded. But as it tumbled down, blue radi- ances began to escape from it. How- ever, they seemed tiny, and they fled back down into the mountain. “Young ones!” muttered Kyle. Now a bolt from Kyle’s ship struck another of the enemy, and it stag- gered, veered away crazily. Then a flash came from the third ship, leap- ing toward the Star Swan like the lightning of doom. It struck the ship on the nose, blew it- off. In his con- trol room, Kyle found his ship unan- swerable to his commands, the con- _ trols ripped away. But he fired his vi-eng projector and saw the third

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38 OTHER WORLDS enemy ship bathed in the violet glow of the vi-energies. Then as he drifted helplessly, he saw dozens of tiny blue radiances drift through the hull to speed through space teward the Séar Swan. In a matter of minutes they would reach the ship, and the Star Swan’s crew would follow Sten Rysto into the mountain, slaves of the Hornet. Desperately Kyle raced to the weap- ons room, obsessed with an idea that had come to him almost too late. On his way he yelled for the crew, and they came with him, eager to devise something to protect them from the onrushing Hornet menace. Kyle roared at a big, hairy-armed lieutenant: “Our only hope—short that vi-eng unit into the hull! Then turn it on. We'll all get an experience we won’t forget, but it may save our lives. Those three ships are out of commission ... ” Together they wrestled with the projector, wrenched it from its mounting, turned it on the hull. Then Kyle turned on its energies. In- stantly the hull was bathed in the violet light, and instantly he and his crew felt the exhilarating effects of it. “So this is a vi-eng bath!” he ex- claimed. “No wonder they are taboo among polite society!” In spite of the ecstasies pouring along his nerves, Kyle raced to the port and looked out. Surrounding the ship were the blue radiances ‘of the Hornet swarm, but they were baffled. Those that approached the ship too closely shuddered, and reeled back. And some that touched, re- coiled as though maddened and streaked back toward their mountain cavern, far below. But, then, from the second ship, drifting silently in the distance, came a darting lifeboat, and as it neared, Kyle saw seated in it the familiar’ form of Hannigan, the Intelligence Chief. “Here comes trouble,” said Kyle to the hairy lieutenant. “And we can’t shoot back. Our main control§ are gone, and that includes the Ham- mers.” “He can knock out our generator,” said the lieutenant. “It’s unworkable without the outside pickup... ” “Get your space helmet,” said Kyle. “And get one for me.” “What are you going to do?” “Go outside and get him!” The Lieutenant secured helmets from the locker and the two donned them. Then, proceeding to the bomb- bay locks, Kyle opened the inner lock and stepped inside, followed by the Lieutenant. They closed the lock behind them. _ “Now,” said Kyle, shouting loudly to carry his voice through the helmet, “we'll open the outer locks, and Pll go outside. You hold onto my hand, until I get free of the lock, then I'll try to get him with my hand ray be- fore he gets that pickup with his life- _ ship.” The lieutenant looked grim. “Good luck, sir. Pl hang on tight.” Kyle operated the lock mechanism and it opened. Then he dropped through, grasping his lieutenant’s hairy arm with a wrist-grip. Outside

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he saw the tiny life-craft rushing up oward him, Hannigan’s face visible in the plastic cowl, twisted in a strange grimace. _ Kyle aimed carefully, fired his “weapon. An exultant exclamation _ came from his lips as the ray found ‘its mark. Hannigan’s body slumped _ down, and the lifecraft veered away and shot toward the planet below. But out of the ship came an angry ue radiance that arrowed up toward Kyle. “Pull me in, quick!” yelled Kyle, _ but before the lieutenant could obey, _ the blue Hornet-radiance arrowed up past him, into the hairy arm project- ing from the bomb-bay port. Kyle ' felt a strange tremor in the hand that clasped his, then felt himself drawn in. Looking up into the lieutenant’s ‘ eyes, he saw.a strange blue radiance flickering in their depths, and on the -man’s face a sardonic grin. Kyle whipped up his gun and fired, drilling a neat hole directly between those yes. _ But before he could reach the _ metal of the ship, to make contact, in _a desperate attempt to open the inner port before the Hornet could make ‘another transference, a blue flare leaped out at him, grew larger, en- gulfed him—and he sank down, down, into a lethargic nothingness ‘where existence seemed a small, fu- tile thing. _ Blackness encompassed him... * * * ae 4 YLE RENISON moved in a gray haze of obedience, ex- THE IDENTITY OF SUE TENET 39 plaining and teaching the glittering entities the construction and opera- tion of his deadly Hammer device. Flitting all through the cavern was a glowing swarm of the Hornets, little ones, larger ones, full-sized ones and the giant ovoid of the Honored First. Here and there stood the men, wait- ing motionless for their occupants to return; or busily writing, drawing, constructing as they taught their young occupants everything they knew. Kyle Renison tried very hard to extract. from his own inhabitant some understanding to print upon his own slack, helpless mind a com- plete picture of thé inherited memory pattern which was the individual Hornet’s structure of instinct. He succeeded in part, and the shock of fully understanding the tremendous mental resources of theseimmature, weeks old creatures was the dead, venomous taste of utter defeat. Man would never be free from things like this, Man as a race was doomed! Subconsciously, in his association with the entity of the Hornet. Kyle was aware of its memories, and un- derstood where it had come from, and why. The Hornet had lost the Swarm, somewhere between Coma Berenice and Denebola. He had been very sick for a long time, his mind refusing to function in the absence of contact with the Swarm mind, For one who had never functioned as an individ- ual, but only as a unit of the greater Swarm mind, being lost in space was no joke. He needed life, other life,

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40 as a baby needs a mother, as a man needs food. The nearest habitable planet was one of three little worlds circling a small sun for which he had no name. He came down out of space like a whirling ball of thistle-down, glit- tering with the suspense of discovery, and was hurt when no one even no- ticed him, Apparently the tenuosity of his body was such that their eyes refused to see him! For days he had hovered about, vastly intrigued by the simple- minded solid creatures of flesh and blood. He wa§ both disappointed and elated to find these strange creatures absolutely without conscious race memories. Elated because their abys- mal ignorance left-them helpless prey to his need for hosts to supply his life-hungry body, disappointed be- cause their minds were empty of knowledge of their own race’s past, There rose in him a terrific ambition, a great pride, a constantly mounting tension arising from the vision of conquest of this new world and of growth of his own seed into a new World Swarm, The possibility of himself father- » ing a new type of Swarm from these simple _ two-legged. units aroused within his ego-center desires such as no other of the supporting units of the Hornito had ever been allowed to entertain. To toy with these crea- tures, master of their destinies, to create from them such an organiza- tion as would astonish the others of -their race for endless generations to OTHER WORLDS come... The Hornet had set about his new plans with all the skill of his tremen- dous and ancient inheritance. He had been attracted to one entity especial-_ ly, a dancer named Mazarinda on the stage bills, who danced a dance called the “Firefly.” Perhaps it was the dance that intrigued him. But as the dance came to a climax on one per- formance, the Hornet had quite sud- denly sank into the dancer’s body, and she had faltered, stumbled, then suddenly gone on-in movements in- comprehensible even to herself. She had found herself dancing with super- human ability and imagination, and she had become the darling of Kingsend. The Hornet, intrigued with the weird differences of this unusual host, experimented with the control of her singularly graceful limbs, and above all with the complete novelty of being a woman. For the Hornet had been a sexless creature. The functions of child-bearing and of fecundation had been pre-empted by the Swarm Queen and her chosen consorts. Now he had acquired, at one fell swoop, both sex and a will of his own. In this new power the full plan of conquest had been born in the mind of the lost Hornet. And now Kyle Renison, Sten Rysto and the warriors of the battle fleet of Lansea worked mindlessly to further the ghastly conquest of the Hornito, But, as they worked, the fleet of the Federation reached Lansea .. . pica So |

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YLE RENISON’S mind was completely submerged as the _ Bleaming ships flashed into sight above the cloud layer of the Water World, like arrows of deadly fire from nowhere into instant, terrific power. They moved in swift, complex ma- _ heuvers, in complete radio silence, trailing strange, shimmering nets of ‘ gossamer metal, weaving back and -forth above the mountain beneath which the Hornet and his new hornito busied themselves, readying them- selves for the general emergence which their plans entailed, readying _ for complete Empire over all Wancir under the First One, and then over Lansea and Sair. ' The strange shimmering _ nets _ spread and joined magnetically above the mountain, became a vast sheet of crackling fire as cables joined the net to the atomic generators of the _ mighty Terran Federation warships. The electrified web of vi-eng force settled gradually down over the mountain of the Hornito, glowing and crackling with a seeming sen- ‘tience and writhing animation of its ____ Riding one of these huge steel-clad _ arrows of fire was Sue Tenet, thrilled _ to the core with the snap and preci- _ sion of the blue-clad figures hastening _ interminably about the complex cor- ridors, thrilled with the handsome, __ alert young faces on every side, thrill- ed with the military power expressed in every glance and’ low-muttered ~ command from the officer at her side. For she was on the bridge, not by permission, but by command, and ” THE IDENTITY OF SUE TENET 4l her suggestions as to the nature of the weird creature that had invaded her body and mind, her explanation of the accident that had driven him out, had been the base upon which the web had been built and the na- ture of the force pouring through it deduced. When they were ready, a ray simi- lar in nature to that constructed by - Renison from the vi-eng unit lanced down toward the chaotic jumble of boulders marking the shattered open- ing into the mountainside. Back and forth the lance of humming power played, and from within the cavern came an answering buzz of irritation, of questioning—and out from the mountainside poured an angry swarm of radiant and glittering vitality. Inside the cavern Renison’s crew stood beside those of the ships of Sten Rysto, empty of memory, empty “of their inhabitants, waiting for life to begin again. Stupidly they looked about, wondering . Out from the blasted side of the mountain streamed the gleaming cloud of young Hornito, up—up, a storm of humming anger, of vindic- tive intent, determined to stop the pain of the vi-eng ray that the lowly four-limbed race had dared to bring against them. Up, into the dimly glowing mesh of electrified metal fibres, and the whole. net leaped and tugged and jerked as they strove to pass through and reach the men in the ships be- yond. Back and forth beneath them passed the diving fighting craft, each towing a cable made fast to one rim

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42 OTHER WORLDS of the great net. Like a purse seine, the edges curled, came down in long curves, tugged together—became a great sphere completely enclosing the maddened creatures of energy from the depths of space. Their terrific speed, their fright- ened strength, their immense store of inherited memory — nothing could serve them now. Down into the sphere of metal mesh lanced the huge vi-eng ray, slashing at the darting, desperate mass of blue energy. Slow- er, slower, weaker, became the gyra- tions of the great sphere, of the net. The walls of metal mesh lumped out here and there as they dashed against it in maddened attempts to escape the ray. Tighter and tighter the net closed about them, smaller grew the space in which they might dart to elude the ray. Dimmer grew the blue glitterings inside. The fish had been taken. Puzzled, Sue watched on the great screens of the battleship’s bridge, watching one big craft take aboard a Cable bigger than the little cables that had been used to draw the trap together. She clapped her hands. “Now the Hornet knows what it feels like to be a captive. If I could only hear what he is thinking!” What puzzled her was the evacua- tion of the big cruiser, which was emptying men into a dozen waiting lifeboats as it gathered way Slowly outward into space, the great, glow- ing net of steel towing behind awk- wardly. “What are they doing?” asked Sue. The officer beside her turned, wip- \ ing his brow with a limp, wet hand- kerchief. “We don’t know enough about that kind of being to open that net in this galaxy, Miss Tenet. That ship is under automatic control, emp- ty of humans. That net is going to be towed until the ship runs out of fuel, straight out of all human ken, I hope. It should coast on until the end of time, barring collisions. I for one want to hear no more of any. of your Hornets, young lady. If that ma- neuver had failed, if our timing had been off, if they had not been inside that cavern ... It could well have meant the end of mankind. I doubt if we’d have got a second chance at them.” Sue raised on tiptoe, kissed the of- ficer on the cheek. “But you did suc- ceed, and I think the Terran Feder- ation space navy is the greatest thing I’ve seen. I'll never forget this ex- perience.” ; The officer smiled a little wearily. “T’ll never forget it either, I can tell you! We were just lucky. Lucky that you and your missing Captain Reni- son were able to give us a clue to the only possible attack against these things. That particular beastie was unknown to Terran science, and it is still unknown. We may not be through with them, and it won’t pay to forget what we’ve learned here.” *_ * * ACK in Kingsend, Kyle Renison was rather astonished to find himself installed in the palace prop- er, particularly as he did not even — remember the place, He was even

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astonished when his sister swept her eyes glowing, to kiss him artily. .” he began, “You will, dear. You’re the newly appointed governor of the Terran province of Lansea. When you get your wits back, you’re going to be a very angry man. But heavens knows I didn’t want the job, and you couldn’t help yourself, so I sug- _ gested your name. Sten was dead, along with a few of the others, when we found you. Later on, there’ll be an election, and I could guess without an effort who they'll elect. You. And 'm free to do what I please again. ‘0 more government functions, no more playing great lady of the land » _ “T don’t know what you're talking about,” muttered Kyle. “And though you talk gaily, you seem sad. Is it because you have put one over on me, or is it because you knew this Sten you are talking about, who is dead?” _ “You will remember, soon,” shé said gently. = Sue, coming in from a series of _ rather strenuous farewells to several parting officers of the Terran Fed- eration fleet, slid down on the seat beside Kyle and took his hands be- tween her own. Her voice was a mix- THE IDENTITY OF SUE TENET 43 ture of impishness and glowing grati- tude. “Now that you're in no condi- tion to know what it’s all about, I’d like to ask "you a question, Mr. Renison.” Kyle smiled a little foggily. “If I know any answers, dear girl, I’m sure I'll give them to you.” “Will you marry me?” asked Sue. Kyle looked at Alfreya, his brow knit with puzzlement. Alfreya moved toward the door. “Say yes, you fool! You may never get a chance again, I guarantee you won’t regret it!” Kyle grinned, nodded his head. “So far as I know, I’m favorable. But what’s your name?” Sue kissed him gravely, muttering: “T can’t have you going around among all these palace cats not even knowing your own name. Anything can happen. Now remember that you’re my fiance, We'll wait until you’ve recovered your memory for the wedding, but meanwhile, you’re protected. You let me know if these women even look at you.” Kyle nodded drowsily. “I'll tell them I’m your fiance, but I don’t know your name. Suppose they ask?” Sue relaxed into his arms and said: “Just point. I'll be around. And say: ‘The future Mrs. Renison, over there.’ ” THE END ail

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A smoothly-run communications system held the Interstellar Union to- gether, and when messages suddenly began coming through delayed or garbled — if they came through at all — Hanson found that he had a tough job on his hands. And one that had to be solved quickly before the Arcturians could take advantage of the Union’s weakness. 45

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46 HE message came through to IT secu 89 Galactic Communi- cations substation on Arcturus VII quite routinely, and was shifted with hardly a glance into normal pro- cedure channels, First came the reg- ular warping-in Q-signal, notifying the relay operators to stand by for a message through the Warp; then the message followed, on a low-priority channel, as simple and innocuous as any of the eighty-thousand messages from the Warp that reached Arcturus VII every month: HQ ROCKET LANDING ARCT VII ATTENTION: PREPARE BERTHING FOR SOL Ill LIGHT PASSENGER CRUISER STAR KING: ARRIVING IN SECTOR V WARP 0722: CAR- RYING ARCTF VII EMBASSY RELIEF FROM SOL III: AT- TENTION DIPLOMATIC HQ FOR MEETING: REPEAT: WARPING IN SECTOR V AT 0722: STOP The message came in through the tape relay; the operator clipped the tape into the teletype, and shuttled the routine four copies through dis- tribution without a second thought. Notification of the arrival of a ship through the Warp was normal pro- cedure; since the Arcturus VII Rock- et Landing was the busiest in Sec- tor II of the system, berthing for incoming ships there was necessarily tight. Advance orders were always sent to make safe berthing for an In- terstellar flight. At Distribution the tape message was channeled to Rock- et Landing HQ, who had the head- OTHER WORLDS ache of clearing a berth for the ship, speeding up or cancelling any flights to conflict with its arrival, and ar- ranging for a meeting party. Since the regular flight to Arcturus V was scheduled to leave at 0617, an hour before the Sol IIT ship was due, a brief call from HQ cleared the berth- ing place for the incoming Star King, and Rocket Landing HQ sat back to relax. . They didn’t relax for long. Un- believably, the Star King was sighted from the Warp at 0600, a long, gleam- ing sliver of silver in the sky, roaring in on its powerful atomics after leay- ing the Warp, settling down with re- lentless speed towards the berth that was not yet cleared by the Arcturian flight. The Star King was an hour early— ai Control Tower screamed a warn- ing, watched in horror as the sleek Sol IIT ship failed to check its course, approaching trancelike through the bright sky. Frantically an emergency blast order shot down to Berthing, and the squat, clumsy Arcturian ves- sel in the berth bellowed flames and rose like a startled hen to avoid the oncoming liner. But: the Star King came in too close, decelerating des- perately, gyros shaking the huge hull, swerving it from its normal landing curve into a jagged spiral to avoid the small, squat vessel, and finally screaming frantic crash-landing sig- nals to the tower below. But the signal was too late; from the Control Tower they watched with opened mouths and horror-filled eyes as the slim vessel from Sol III struck

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the small, compact Arcturian broad- ide, splitting open at the seams, ex- loding in long brilliant streamers. of golden atom-fire, wrenching them- ‘selves and the Arcturian into a flam- mass of twisted wreckage far be- yond the gravitational attraction of e planet, sliding into a distorted orbit, and drifting out, finally, a heap of burned wreckage and _ twisted, fused metal for the crews to trace down and salvage many days later. In the Control Tower, men stared at each other, and back at the night- ‘mare in the sky. Hanson, the new Chief Communications Coordinator ; from Sol III, tore himself from the "observation port, and snatched a tele- _ phone from a gaping-mouthed opera- tor. “Rocket Landing,” he snapped. “Send back a repeat run on the Cen- al Communications message that t came through.” He ran a hand ‘through his sandy hair, the horror of the explosion still bright in his es. Impatiently he stared out at the Rocket Landing honeycomb as the Arcturian operator in HQ peeled the copy from the files. “Something is ‘way off here, Hanson,” the Arcturian ned in his softly muted voice. “The ge specifically states that that “ship would arrive at 0722. It warped ‘in over an hour early.” Hanson _ swore. Carefully he checked his own tape file.-The mes- “sage was there, in duplicate, just as it had warped in. He grabbed the telephone again, and dialed Galactic - Communications station, his hand trembling. “Got the original tape on that Star King message?” ‘he Q-B-B ae snapped. “Yes, sir. Just as it came in. Shall we hold it?” “For dear life. V’ll be down in a moment.” Slamming down the receiv- er, he elbowed his way to the door, ran up the narrow stairwell to the roof of Control Tower, and slipped into the small cockpit of a shuttle car. He set the dials, and instantly was zooming.across the barren Arc- turus VII landscape toward the city, his mind racing angrily. The ship hadn’t madé a mistake—there was no chance for mistake in Interstellar travel with the Benson warp. As the shuttle skimmed along, Hanson scowled out the port without seeing, his stomach knotted in apprehension. Something: had gone wrong, some- where, frightfully wrong. An hour’s error in Interstellar flight arrival was impossible, unheard of—a message from Central Communications, light years away, could have warped through in a matter of minutes if there had been trouble, and Berthing could have been prepared for emer- gency handling. There had been no such warning—just the routine noti- fication. But an hour’s error simply could not occur, not with the Benson warp. A ship left a destination with no possible way of losing time until it warped in to whichever star system was its destination—the Warp was that certain. And messages were even more cer- tain— But the Central Communications message had said 0722, and the ship had arrived over an hour early, ex-

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obey 48 OTHER WORLDS pecting a berth, and finding none. Hanson took a quavering breath, and shut his already tired eyes. An hour’s error, and two ships blown to twisted wreckage before his eyes. And he'd have to explain it to the Arcturian Council. His stomach knotted, and he felt suddenly ill. It couldn’t hap- pen—but it had. And of all places, on Arcturus VIT— Galactic Communications stood up in the city like a flat oval tower. The shuttle car gently slid into the entrance port, hissing in deceleration, and Hanson clambered down to the platform, his face grave. He was a young man, but he knew his Rocket Landing, and he knew his Communi- cations, That ship hadn’t been wrong. The error had been in the message. Somehow, a false message had slipped through. > He crossed swiftly through the buzzing confusion of the Communi- cations room, and down into the sound-proofed office, At the door he met his undersupervisor, an Arctu- rian, staring at him with cold yellow- eyed anger. “What about that message?” Han- son snapped, before the Arcturian could speak. “Nothing here to indicate,” the Arcturian said, an indignant whine in his soft, musical voice. “There was no error on the Arcturian end. Rock- et Landing got the exact message that warped in from Sol IIT.” He wrinkled his greenish face in the Arcturian equivalent of puzzled anger. “The message was wrong when it came through.” Hanson took the tape, checked it carefully. There was no doubt. The message had read “‘warping in at 0722.” Hanson checked. the coding, and began to rewind the spool witha tired sigh. It was 0759 when the sec- ond message came through. The Arcturian took it, and crossed the room ‘to Hanson, spitting Are- turian expletives at the amazingly rapid rate his race used when excited, his bland, unhuman face tight, round eyes flat with anger. “‘Read!” he hissed, passing the tape to Hanson. Hanson read, his eyes suddenly narrowing as the blood rushed to his face. “My god, they’ve gone crazy!’ he choked. “A four-priority on some- thing like this—” The message was short and suc- cinct: CORRECT WARPING TIME FOR SOL III STAR KING TO READ 0600 NOT 0722: STOP It was short, and succinct. And two hours late. q Hanson whirled to the teletype desk, eyes blazing. “Send . word through to the operators,” he snapped - at his assistant. “Tell them to pre- pare to shut down Channel 473. Then take care of the report and put through an emergency check to Ga- lactic Central.” His eyes narrowed as he turned back to the teletype. “And I'll post for an immediate in- vestigation to the Grand Interstellar ~ Council. With a One-priority on that — message, there wouldn’t have been an accident, But somebody gave it a Four—” Carefully he began punching the

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- tel letype keys as the Arcturian went _ out, punching the tape to close down “the channel through which the mes- sage had come. With a Centralized and efficient Central Communica- tions, there should be no source of etror, no interference, no sabotage, © no mechanical failure. He scowled heavily and tapped out the message in cold anger, a chill of fear and apprehension .in his spine: QBB—REPEAT QBB—REPEAT ~QBB—WE ARE SHUTTING ‘DOWN CHANNEL 473: RE- QUEST IMMEDIATE CHECK THROUGH CENTRAL AT _ LUNA CITY: QBB—REPEAT QBB—WE ARE SHUTTING — DOWN— UT I tell you, I’m an engi- 4 neer, not a detective!” Jere- my Hanson stared down at the small viry man behind the desk, his eyes 4 wide with surprise. __ .\Fritz Hebel smiled back, rubbing chin with narrow, delicate fingers. mess and precision, Hanson lought—the small compact figure, ora, coolness in his grey eyes, at dee and said quietly: “That's quite true—you’re an engineer—but you're also angry. I think we need an angry man for this job.” _ _Hanson felt his face flush hotly, and his eyes flash: “There was no excuse for that Star King accident,” he snapped. “It was either negligence, Q-B-B 49 or incompetence, or sabotage,. and there is no room for those things in Communications.” Hebel nodded, his cool grey eyes bright. “Exactly! There’s no room for it—but it’s there. Negligence, in- competence, sabotage—I don’t know which.” He rubbed his hands ner- vously. “But I do know one thing. Something is going wrong in Com- munications. That’s why I called you back here to Terra.” Hanson looked at him sharply. “But why me? You've gota Security organization to check trouble—” Hebel looked at him guardedly. “You know Communications as well as anybody in the Galaxy. And you’ve got a lot to gain by finding the trou- ble. The Arcturians are angry, Han- son—they want action.” He smiled a little, and looked Hanson straight in the eye. “Anyway, you’ve done investigation work before. Like that little job three years ago on Cen- taurus III—” Hanson’s face darkened. “I didn’t think that was even mentioned in my record.” “You did the work, didn’t you?” “Oh, yes,” said Hanson, hotly, “I did the work, all right. Only the blonde harpie I was working with stole all the credit, and nearly had me on the rack for treason in the bargain.” Hanson stared at the bright oval of sunlight from Sol coming in the window of the spacious office. “T’d never want a job like that again, not for anything.” Hebel was silent for a lopg mo- ment. He walked to the oval window,

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50 OTHER WORLDS staring out across the city of New Denver to the far distant rim where the Rockies almost touched the sky. “Hanson,” he said softly. “Some- thing’s gone wrong. with Central Communications. The Interstellar Union is in trouble. Terrible trou- ble, Hanson—” Hanson looked up, feeling a chill run up his spine. “What do you mean? Just a couple of ships blown up.” Hebel shook his head. For a.mo- ment he was silent, rubbing his hands together thoughtfully. Then he said, “Back in the old days, there wasn’t any trouble with Communications. In 2180 or 90, Sol was just getting its own planets explored and colonized. Sol III led the way—she had the tech- nology, and all the communications equipment on hand from the great wars a century or so before. In the early days the traffic was simple, and normal equipment could carry the load, until Benson discovered the Warp principle that sent men to the stars. Arcturus and Vega and the Centauri—practically any place in the Galaxy, and beyond, too, when they were ready to go. So men went to the stars, and found other planets, other intelligent life. And commerce began to grow, commerce on an un- heard-of scale. The great organism of the Interstellar Union began to de- velop,. slowly at first, then faster and faster. And like any other em- bryo, the first part of the organism to develop was the central nervous system.” “Communications,” said Hanson. Hebel nodded. “Centralized com- munications. The system was very sloppy at first—a loose, disorganized network of radio-teletype Communi- cations, slow, unreliable. They hadn’t thought of using the Benson Warp for short-wave transmission, There was no central clearing house, no sort of efficiency. The Interstellar Union finally was set up under the Galactic Grand Council when the combined military groups had smashed the Arc- turian invasion of Vega thirty years ago and forced Arcturus into the Union. From then on development of the Union demanded an efficient, cen- tralized Communications system.” Hebel pulled thoughtfully at his cigar. “Luna City was built,” he said after a pause. “Sol III had the equip- ment. It was the logical choice for a Central Communications. From one end of the Galaxy to the other Cen- tral handles messages: receives them, codes them, relays them, routes them, assigns them, sees that they get where they are going at the greatest pos- sible speed. Just as commerce and economics became the Union’s life blood, Central Communications be- came the life-force, the brain, the central nervous system. The Union has grown in strength, constantly ex- panding, and every planet of every star has enjoyed its benefits. There is no area in all Interstellar civiliza- tion that does not depend on Central Communications for its life force. We and the whole Galaxy depend on it the way you depend on the working of your own brain.” The room was dead still. Hanson ,

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looked at the Security Chief, a small knot growing in his stomach. “What are you getting at?” “When your brain stops working, you die,” snapped Hebel, his voice sharp in the stillness. “When Central Communications stops working, our civilization dies. When Central Com- munications breaks down, the Inter- stellar Union is finished, a shambles, a wreck,” } His voice cut off, sharply, and he sucked in a nervous breath. “It’s hap- Bs pening, Hanson,” he said softly. _ “Somewhere, somehow, slowly and insidiously, Central Communications is breaking down!” Jeremy Hanson lighted a cigarette with shaking fingers, the knot in his stomach tight. “Then the Star King wasn’t the first trouble,” he said dully. “Not by a long shot. It’s been growing now for the past two years. Tf it’s sabotage, it’s a very clever job—so very subtle that it seems im- possible. The messages aren't com- i through right. They come rough incomplete, or garbled, they come through on the wrong priority scale, they are réturned to the sender ith out-of-order signals, or QBB’s, and then, when they’re returned for alternate routing they disappear en- tirely. Mistakes, fatal mistakes keep happening, time after time. Vega III, for instance, had a serious polio epi- -demictlast year. You know how frag- ile and vulnerable the Vegans are. It\was like a plague, killing them off like flies. They used up their supply of antitoxin in the first three days, QBB. 51 and sent out a call for more from the suppliers. The message went through Central, and the serum was missent three times before it finally got to Vega III. Half the population was dead by then. Long shipping or- ders are sent through, tying up a channel for days, while high-priority crash warnings are held up three and four days in transit, and nobody can tell why.” Hebel sighed tiredly. “And now the worst thorn in our sides is getting troublesome. Your friends the Arc- turians seem to be rebelling whole- sale against the Union in general, and Communications in particular. They don’t care a hang about the Star King; one ship from Sol TI is a matter of extreme indifference to them. But they lost their own ship in that crash, and they see it as an opportunity to revolt against the whole system. The system is crum- bling, and somewhere, there is an answer. Something is happening in Grand Central Communications in Luna City that nobody, not even the supervisor there, can spot, and it’s tearing the Interstellar Union apart at the seams.” Hebel looked closely at Hanson. “You wanted an investi- gation. I’m asking you to make it, a thoroughgoing, inside-out investi- gation, by a man who knows com- munications inside out. I think you’re the man.” 7 Hanson stared at the shiny desk top. Finally he said, “What about Forhan? He’s the top man at Luna City. What does he think is wrong?” Hebel shook his head, grey eyes

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52 \ OTHER WORLDS troubled. “John Forhan is the best man in Communications. But break- down or no breakdown, there are still eight hundred thousand messages go- ing through Central Communica- tions every day, and Forhan has to keep them going. He can’t help us, and he’s told us so point blank. The pressure of the place has him nearly crazy as it is, and there’s no one qualified to replace him for more than a short time. He’ll cooperate with you, but he won’t be able to give you any time. The investigation will be up to you.” Hanson took a deep breath. “I don’t like it,” he said, tiredly. “I couldn’t take another deal like Cen- tauri IIT. I just couldn’t take it—” Hebel watched him, grey eyes cool and careful. “We need you badly, Hanson. More than. you think. And you'll have—” he hesitated imper- ceptibly—“full authority on the job. Ivll be up to your judgment. Now what do you say?” Hanson grinned sourly. “I'll prob- ably wish I hadn’t,” he said, “but Tl take the job.” ALACTIC Central Communica- tions lay in the exact center of Luna City, a gigantic, efficient, pul- sating, smoothly-running madhouse. The building stdod separate from the crowding modernity of the city, the smooth curve of its white walls rising a thousand feet above the skyline, sweeping up and up to the rounded dome at the top. Though truly an architectural dream, Galactic Central Communications was primarily a functional building, housing the heart of Communications of a dozen star systems, the hub of all com- munion in the vast Intersellar Union. Spreading out from the sweeping curves of Central, Luna City fanned for miles under the heavy plastic pressure dome, a city of curves and terraced gardens, curiously incongru- ous among the cascading jagged peaks of the crater around it, an arti- ficial city on a barren world, the mechanical center of a billion buzz- ing messages. Jeremy Hanson rose early the day after his arrival at Luna City, stretched, and viewed uneasily the curving sweep of the bedroom wall, the oval port in the center looking out onto the Fifth level boulevards. Something was missing from the pic- ture somewhere—in spite of Hebel’s sincerity, and the historical pep-talk. Galactic Grand Council did not dele- gate almost dictatorial authority to obscure communications officers. He scowled as he buzzed for breakfast, and stepped into a shower-shave unit, relaxing in the tepid water, as his face was cleared ultrasonically of the scratchy two-day stubble. He could probably thank the Arcturians, with their typical single-minded selfish- ness, for the job. They were venom- ously bitter that one of their own precious craft should have fallen vic- tim to the bungling of Galactic Cen- tral Communications. Hanson sighed, slipped into his clothes, and stepped into the bedroom, where his “‘break- fast was waiting. Whatever was miss- ing, he thought, he’d learn soon

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Q-B-B 53 enough. He learned all too soon. She was sitting on his bed, nonchalantly drinking his breakfast coffee, blonde hair curled about her ears, and he felt the knot tighten almost to sick- ness in his stomach. He saw it clear- ly now, the whole investigation pic- ‘ture, crystal clear—too ey clear. “Marly!” She sat languidly on the bed, sip- ping the coffee, and she glanced up at him almost as languidly through long-tyelashes, half laughing at him with her cool grey eyes, studying his carefully blank face for a moment, then smiling warmly. “Don’t say it,” _ she said, moving to her feet. “Just Pithink it. You didn’t really think; that -you’d have a free hand in this, did you?” _ Hanson didn’t return the ‘igmile, “Put down my coffee,” he snapped, his eyes heavy with anger, “and get out of here. If you or Hebel think YU work with you again, you're crazy. I had enough last time.” : She walked over to him, her small lithe body swaying in a far from Official manner, blonde hair done back in the loose easy way he used to love. “I see you’ve shaved, Jerry,” she smiled, ignoring his remark. “This must be a very special occa- sion.” In her warm, smiling face only her eyes were not smiling, the cold, calculating'grey eyes. She reached up and kissed him easily on the cheek. “Communications service has done nders for you, Jerry.” The same old Marly Norgaard, Hanson thought to himself bitterly. The same smal piquant face, the same full lips, the same compelling feline grace when she moved, the same unspoken but ever-present knowledge that whatever she wanted, her very femininity would get it for her—and most aggravating, the same small corners of smile that told Han- son that she knew she still made blonde music run through his head. He scowled at her blackly, feeling his ears go red. “Damn you,” he said coldly. “You got me assigned to this job.” ; Her face fell, almost sincerely. “Jerry,” she said. “You know we can work together, and do a good job.” She watched him in growing alarm as he stalked across to the visiphone, began to dial for a Sol III channel. “and if you’re thinking of ringing Hebel and calling it off, you’re wast- ing your time,” she added coldly. “You won’t get anywhere trying.” He whirled on her as if he had been stung. “Look,” he said in a choked voice, “I’ve got a job to-do, I don’t need you, and I don’t want you, either to help, or to cut in on the glory.” Her smile faded, leaving her face curiously lifeless. “Jerry. I got you this job because I wanted to make up a little|for that last time. This Communications business is deeper than just machines, Jerry. You'll need a.psychologist, and a diplomat to help you. I’ve had plenty experi- ence as both.” There was a fire in her grey eyes. “It’s big, Jerry. Let’s patch it up between us, and get to work.”

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54 Hanson looked at her, bitter mem- ories racing through his mind, mem- ories of double-dealing, of promises ignored, and subtle but ever-so-effec- tive back-stabbings. Memories of Marly Norgaard’s cold, ambitious climb up and up in the political net- work of the Interstellar Union, of her absolute ruthlessness to gain her own ends. She hardly looked the part, this sweet-faced, sensuous girl he had once loved. For a moment the plead- ing in her eyes, the deadly sincerity in her voice caused him to waver. The overpowering awareness of her as a woman swept through his mind like a breath of jasmine—and then his eyes narrowed. i “What's in it for you, Marly?” He saw it then, in her eyes. A brief flicker as the veil inadvertently dropped, and was drawn back tight- ly. Her eyes flared wide for a mo- ment, and her nostrils tightened be- fore she gained control. Then her jaw relaxed into a warm, almost naive smile“‘For once, Jerry, I’m not in it for anything. I was assigned to the investigation, and I knew I could work with you, to spot the trouble before the Union explodes in our faces. I know that nothing can beat us, if we quit fighting each other.” She watched him, eyes pleading. “Trust me, Jerry. I’ll play square.” \ He looked at her for a long mo- ment, his face like stone. Then he exhaled the faintest whisper of a sigh. “All right, Marly,” he said. “I'll work with you.” He saw the brief flicker of cold triumph in her eyes, quickly veiled, and his stomach tightened. OTHER WORLDS “But one thing you’d better under- stand first—” “Anything, Jerry,” she said. “Pll work with you,” he said soft- ly. “But I'll never trust you.” HEY caught the shuttle car on the Fifth level, and settled back in the airfoam seats as the little mon- orail swished rapidly down the spiral to the lower level transport lane and buzzed on through the outlying city toward Galactic Central Communica- tions. ‘“Forhan is expecting us,” Han- son remarked. “I gave him a call before we left.” She nodded thoughtfully. “I hope we don’t have trouble with him. I’ve heard that John Forhan is no pansy to deal with.” Hanson looked at her sharply. “What’s your plan of approach on this?” he asked suddenly. “We might as well be methodical. The messages are coming into Cen- .tral right, and going out wrong. As Hebel put it, the brain isn’t func- tioning right.” She paused, bringing a small notebook from her pocket. “Central Communications is divided into Operations, Maintenance, and Personnel. The Operations and Main- tenance are your job. You can check them thoroughly. I’ll work in Person- nel. I’m particularly interested in Psych division up here.” A few moments later they were ushered into the large vaulted office in the Central Communications building. The messenger who had met them on the platform said, “Mr, For- han is Inside now, but he'll be with

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_ you soon.” They took seats and waited. Fill- ing one wall was a mammoth space- chart of the Communications net- work of the entire Galaxy, a myriad of intricately connected lines cover- ing every section of the chart. A spe- _ cial series of tape-relay banks lay against another wall, and a small P radio-teletype stood at the massive desk. Hanson looked about the room wonderingly. “This whole setup was Forhan’s work, wasn’t it?” Marly nodded. “He was the or- | ganizer. Before he .started- beating ) the drum for a central clearing house and consolidation of communications, _ the system was a mess. Forhan fought tooth and nail to tear the old, anti- t “aus relay stations down, to break up the dozens of little, independent networks that criss-crossed the Gal- axy. They were clumsy and ineffi- cient, and they blocked the growth “of Interstellar Union. Forhan finally won out against the small concerns, and the Arcturians, who were opposed : pe the Union from the first. And For- han has handled Central ever since.” A sudden roar burst into the room _ as a heavy door opened to admit a 4 ‘man in an outlandish face-mask. The door slammed shut after him, swal- ; owing the noise as abruptly as it had appeared. The man was a giant, his body almost cramped in the ample office as he dropped the mask from his face, and looked up at his visitors angrily. “I’m Forhan,” he growled in a rich bass. “You're the people - from Security, I suppose.” His uncordial voice was cut off by . : } Q-B-B 55 the jangling telephone. Forhan took the receiver, pushing the heavy shock _ of iron-grey hair out of his eyes as he talked rapidly. “I'll be back In- side in five minutes,” he said to the telephone, finally. “Hold it until I get there.” He turned his attention back to Hanson. “Now, what can I do for you?” Hanson looked at Marly. “We'll need your cooperation, Mr. Forhan, in checking over the working of Cen- tral. We’re trying to spot the source of the errors that have been coming out of here—” He knew he had made a mistake before the words were out of his mouth. “Damn Hebel!” Forhan grated, his face stormy. “I don’t have enough trouble keeping this place going,’ I have to play games with Security too.”_He glowered and sank wearily into his chair at the desk, tired lines ‘about his eyes. “Sure,” he said sar- castically. “Go ahead and investigate. Do anything you like, I won’t stop you. But I'll tell you right now that you're wasting your time.” Marly looked at him sharply. “How do you mean, wasting our time?” He made an angry noise in his throat. “You're looking for some- thing that isn’t here,” he said sourly. “Tf there’s a breakdown in Interstel- lar Communications, it isn’t here in Central.” He started to struggle back into the headgear. . “There’s got to be a breakdown in Central,” Marly snapped. “Pride is one thing, Mr. Forhan, but let’s face facts—”

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56 OTHER WORLDS The huge man whirled on her sav- agely. “All right,” he snarled. “You say there’s a breakdown, you find it: I can’t find it—” He snatched up the telephone angrily, shifting his atten- tion from them as completely as if he had left the room, “Marly!” Hanson hissed in an un- dertone. “Don’t be stupid! You won’t get anywhere by getting him sore.” Her face was angry red. “The nerve of him! Trying to palm that stuff off on me, this business that every- thing is going along fine. He’s been feeding that to Hebel for the past two years. Ill fix his—” “You won’t fix anything,” Hanson cut her off. “Shut up and let me handle this.” His eyes were sharp, staring straight at her angry grey ones. For a long moment she stared defiantly, then shrugged her shoul- ders indifferently. “Do it your way,” she said. Forhan was replacing the receiver when Hanson stood up. “Look, Mr, Forhan. We don’t want to hinder your work in any way. We know you're rushed—why don’t you take me Inside with you now, and let Miss Norgaard run down to Psych divi- sion?” Forhan straightened his mammoth shoulders, and threw Jerry a grate- ful look. “Good idea,” he said, more softly. “You’re name’s Hanson? Glad to know you. I’m ready to go Inside now.” Hanson winked at Marly and stripped off his jacket. “I'll see you later,” he drawled over his shoulder, “after I get through talking to Mr. Forhan. Get what you can at Psych. And keep cool, girlie, keep cool.” He grinned at the venomous look he received, and turned to Forhan. *Let’s go,” he said. John Forhan punched the fuition to open the heavy door to the Inside. HE racket was deafening. As For- han opened the soundproofed door the noise swelled out in an al- most overpowering wave, a nerve- shattering combination of clatter, click, buzz, and vibration. Hanson’s face went white for a moment under the impact of the powerful wave; then he clapped his hands involun- tarily over his ears, dulling the noise only slightly. He shook his head, and tried to yell at Forhan, but the throb- bing racket swept his voice away un- heard. Forhan motioned him over to a rack near the door, Slipping down a small instrument panel, he drew out one of the curious masklike ar- rangements he was wearing, and slipped it over Hanson’s head, clamp- ing the ear-pieces deep into his ears, and adjusting the nose-piece care- fully. The heavy well of sound sank down to a gentle persistent hum, and Hanson felt his taut nerves relax, “That was awful!” he breathed. “Why can’t they soundproof this place?” Forhan’s voice grated through his earpieces. “Can’t be done. Just too much noise.” He grinned sourly. “But the mask is mostly for super- sonics. A couple of days in here without a mask, and you'd never hear or smell again, Tears nervous \Q

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. Q-B-B 57 tissue all to pieces,” Together they turned to look down the long Central Communications room, It extended unbroken fer near- ly a mile, block upon city block of gleaming panels and clattering tele- - types, as far as he could see. The Machines were arranged in huge “banks along the walls, row upon row of sheaves running down the middle of the room, a weltering hive of frantic activity. “This is it,” said Forhan. “A mes- sage coming in from any point comes up from the ‘stacks’ down below into these relays. Here it’s coded and routed, and sent back to the trans- mitter banks; and whiz! There it is.” Hanson watched the insane activ- ity, wide-eyed. He was acquainted with the smaller sub-stations, the easy, quiet work there. Here the ac- tivity, the noise, the insistent, ag- gravating, nearly-audible supersonic vibration gave the place an air of impossible complexity and confusion. Somewhere in this room, he thought, Somewhere, an insidious breakdown is underway, growing, accumulating, eating out the heart and brain of Interstellar civilization. Something, somewhere— ; . Forhan motioned to him, and they walked slowly down the. crosswalk between the panels, Several hundred feet down, on the outgoing side, a Series of panels were quiet, lights out, the casings and soundproofing lying out on the crosswalk, while three men worked busily inside. Han- son strolled over, watched the men as they worked, removing tubes, teazing out wiring. He looked at For- han. “What’s this?” Forhan shrugged. “A new channel going in,” he said, indifferently. “They’re always doing this.” Hanson raised his eyebrows, “Where is it going to?” “Vega V. Word just camé through a month ago that they needed four new channels. So we have to rewire all the panels that cover the Vega system,” iS Hanson gaped. “But you must have the whole Vega channel closed down!” “We have. The panels here can handle just so much volume. When they get overloaded, and a new chan- nel has to go in, we have to close down the whole channel for rewiring. You know what a mess that is, and then they have to rewire all the cal- culator relays down in the ‘stacks.’ That’s where the messages are re- ceived and stored, waiting their turn on the machines up here.” He grin- ned. “Brother, if this is a mess, that’s a regular madhouse!” “But what does Vega do for Com- munications while all this is going on?” Forhan shrugged again. “Priority material goes through other channels and substations. It gets to be com- plicated, especially with a dozen re- pair jobs going on at the same time, But at the rate Communications is growing, it can’t be helped. New planets coming in all the time, old planets overloading, and needing new circuits and channels.” He looked at Hanson belligerently. “It’s a credit

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58 OTHER WORLDS to Central that we handle it so smoothly. It’s always’ under control, and it always. will be, as long as ’m around here.” Hanson shrugged . uneasily. His nerves were beginning to fray in the aggravating vibration, and he felt slightly sick to his stomach. “How do you ever work in here?” he growled, as they moved on down the crosswalk. “I.should think you’d go crazy.” Forhan smiled. “Conditioning,” he said. “Without it the men would crack in no time. That’s the super- sonics, again. It works into you, and through you. Give it time enough, and it'll tear your stomach to pieces. But the men get™long rests after short duty periods, so they have a chance to repair themselves.” A shuttle car suddenly skimmed across the vaulted ceiling and set- tled down near them. A man jumped out, ran down toward them. “John!” he shouted. “We’re going to have trouble down in 283 sector if you don’t get Steinthal off that codex. He’s trying to do a double shift—” Forhan turned to him, eyes wide. “He knows that’s strictly forbidden!” he snapped. The man colored. “I know that. He wanted to keep it quiet, but I thought you should know. McClene- han started getting the shakes’a little while ago, and Steinthal took his shift and sent him down to Psych. But Steinthal isn’t doing so hot him- self. He- just finished eight hours, and he’s starting another.” ° Forhan cursed, and ran for the shuttle car, Hanson on his heels. The car scooted up to the ceiling as For- . han jammed a Sector button, grip- ping the rail of the car tightly as it sped down the long line of banks. Twenty seconds later they swung down toward the crosswalk again, Forhan still cursing. They were climbing out of the car when they heard the scream. It was hardly human, rising in their earphones from a thin whine into a piercing, full-bodied ululation of agony. Down the areaway they saw the man reel away from his tele- type, ripping his headgear frantically off his head, face contorted in des- perate agony, screams piercing the madhouse roar of the place over and over again, Covering his eyes with his hands, the man ran blindly into the heavy relay panel, striking at it madly with his fists, ripping skin and flesh from his fingers as he scraped at the-unyielding metal casing. Like a tiger Forhan tore down the area- way, jerking the man away from the panel, clipping him with one short savage blow behind the ear. The man crumpled like a marionette to the floor. ‘ When Hanson reached them, John Forhan was dialing a small intercom telephone, speaking rapidly, his face white with anger. “Get a Psych squad down here, stat! Man is Fred Stein- thal, 283 Sector banks. Looks like a complete break, he nearly ripped his hands off on, the machine—yes, over- dose, of course. Now don’t just stand there, get a squad-down here, and send a relief for the machines.”

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| QB-B 59 He snapped down the switch, and returned to Hanson, his hands trem- bling. “Sorry to leave you like this, but I'll have to take over until a relief arrives.” He sat down at the ‘teletype, shaking his head bitterly. “Sometimes,” he said, “I think I’dl go crazy—” HE psycho-physician came out of the cubicle, closing the door quietly, and ran his hand through his hair as he crossed the waiting room to his office where Hanson and Marly Norgaard were waiting. They stood up when he came in, and looked at each other when they saw his sour face. “No good?” ventured the girl. “No good. The man went into com- plete breakdown. He was bound to— the conditioning ‘is good only to a certain limit. Beyond that anything can happen. He should have known better than to try to stay beyond the limit.” i i “How about treatment?” Marly asked sharply. “Isn’t there some way you can get him rational for a few moments? I’ve simply got to talk to him.” The doctor shrugged unhappily. “We can’t handle his rehabilitation here. We have no choice but to send him back to Sol III for recovery.” He scowled at Marly. “You don’t seem to realize what. has happened here. The man isn’t good for any- thing. He’s completely shut down. We can’t do anything with him here.” “But it happened so suddenly!” Hanson shook his head in disbelief. “One of the other men was talking to him just before it happened, and he was perfectly all right—” “Not quite. He may have looked all right, but he wasn’t, by a long way. He’s been cheating for’ a long time, working beyond the limit many times, or he wouldn’t have broken.” The doctor sank tiredly down at his desk. “You know about the psycho- conditioning that we give Central Communication operators, Without it, the men could only work four hours out of a week, and they'd have to have a month in the country for every four weeks on the job. Any more work without conditioning would send them off the deep end in no time. But we couldn’t get enough operatives to run a work schedule like that, so we worked out the con- ditioning program.” The doctor lit a cigarette nervous- ly, blew small rings of blue smoke into the room, “The conditioning just increases the man’s resistance to the strain of the work. First we filter the men to get those who are ex- tremely stable—then we start jacking up their resistances. It was a tough job figuring out the program, but we succeeded. We turned out men who could work for eight hours at a stretch, relieved by sixteen hours rest. Then, after six weeks of such work, they would need a month in the coun- try to recuperate from the effect of the work, the fatigue, the pressure of activity, and the accumulated dam- age to their bodies.” “Of course,” Marly frowned. “So this man broke down only because

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60 OTHER WORLDS he was overloading himself -beyond the limits of the conditioning? Work- ing too long, without a break?” “Far too long. And for a long peri- od of time: And the next one that does it will do the same thing.” Marly and Hanson starfed down the hall toward the elevator from the Psych department. “Did you get what you wanted?” Hanson asked. “Not by a long shot.” The girl’s eyes were angry. “There’s something missing here, Jerry. I think I’m'on the trail right to the heart of the trouble. I’ve got to give these men on the job some tests, but I think I may have the answer right in my lap.” She grinned at him happily. “What_.do you think of that, smart boy?” He grinned back at her. “I think that’s fine. You should get a medal, but you won’t.” He paused at the elevators, still grinning. “See you later, Marly. I’ve got some testing to do, too. But you and I differ on one point.” “What do you mean?” “I know where the trouble is.” E found the answer, of course, down in the “stacks,” From the moment he had heard of. the QBB on the Vega system channel, he knew that he’d find it, and he did, down below in the great clattering mass of wires and vacuum tubes that they called the “stacks.” Here was the real brain, the real central nervous ~ system of Interstellar Communica- tions. This was where the disease could be found, where the messages were stored, and relayed on for transmission on the unthinkable mul- titude of channels leaving Central. And when he found the answer, it was so deceptively simple, so perfect- ly obvious, that he knew without question that there was no sane rea- son why it had not been discovered from the first. He had started off with a couple of simple messages, after he had con- nected a transmitter and receiver into the lifeless “stacks” controlling the Vega system. They were routine mes- sages, that would be handled by the permanent circuits, run out under routine procecure: a standard mes- sage for routine landing orders, a simple two-symbol code for a birth- day greeting. And then he sent a message in through the temporary circuits, a short straight-wire mes- sage with a high priority symbol— —And got back a rush medical requisition that was four years old! He stared at it, unbelieving, and his cigarette butt burned his fingers unnoticed. This wasn’t his message, it was somebody else’s message, ask- ing for emergency medications on Sol VI. It had been sent four years ago, and it was still here— } Swiftly, Hanson moved to the stor- age file, punching a recorder button. He*froze as the “stacks” began to click, rattling, belching out message after message after endless message— old messages, outdated messages, in- complete messages, garbled messages —thousands of messages, waiting, outdated, unsent— And the question screamed insis- / by " :

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i Q-B-B tently through Hanson’s mind: How could they be here? Why hadn't they been sent? Why hadn’t some- one found out about this? Ina flash he saw the picture, a pic- ture that pointed to insanity. “A picture of rapidly growing, vastly expanding civilization. An already overloaded Central Communications, taking a greater overload as it fought desperately against time to build in more channels, to relieve the over- load, and then to build in again more channels to relieve the already over- loaded new channels, And the mes- sages were piling up, overloading the storage banks, and the banks were backlogging, forgetting the old, un- sent messages in order to»store the new unsent messages— Hanson’s hands shook violently as he lit a cigarette. Forhan should have known, he should have seen the trou- _ ble years ago, he should have correct- ed the trouble, done something, any- thing. Why hadn’t he? Hanson’s mind reeled, groping desperately for the answer, fighting to see why no one knew the backlogging had been going on. This was part of the an- Swer, true, but what good was an answer that didn’t make sense? The obvious thrust itself at him a dozen times before he finally looked at it, tested it with his mind, recognized ‘it as the obvious. He was looking for a rational an- swer. Some reason that would make sense. But he wouldn’t find one. There was no rational answer! If there were a rational answer, the trouble would have been spotted long 61 ago, and corrected. And the trouble hadn’t been spotted. Whatever the answer was, it wasn’t rational, It had to be insane, Frantically he tore the phone from the desk. He had to see Forhan, question him, bring him down here, show him. Forhan must have known about the backlog in the “stacks”— why hadn’t he acted on the trouble? Hanson rattled the dial again, snapped the code for Forhan’s office. And Marly answered the phone in Forhan’s office, sharply, nervously. “Where have you been, Jerry? We’ve been trying to get you all afternoon. You’d better get up to Forhan’s office immediately.” ea “But I’ve got to talk to him,” Han- son snapped. “He’s got to come down here, it’s a matter of life or death. This business could blow. sky high any minute—” “Tt surely-could!” The girl’s voice was tight and sharp. “You’d better come up, Jerry, and make it fast. Forhan can’t come down. Forhan’s dead.” HERE were just four of them, standing in Forhan’s office, dressed in the smooth neat suits of Terran business men. But the smooth, silky-greenish skin of the Arcturian, the flat, almost noseless faces, the small yellow eyes had nothing Ter- ran about them. Hanson closed the door quietly behind him, and faced into the room before his eye caught the small snub-nosed automatic one of them held in his hand, The girl was sitting lightly in the

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62 OTHER WORLDS corner of the desk, her leg swinging loosely to and fro. She looked up at him, cooly, her eyes not quite meet- ing his. Then she pointed to the cor- _ner of the office, beHind the desk, where John Forhan’s huge body lay twisted, still bleeding. ‘“There’s your friend,” she said smoothly. He looked again at the four Arc- turians, his face white. “All right, Marly, Let’s have it.” “Take a look out the port. You'll find your answer there.” He walked stiffly across the room to the oval window, His stomach tightened. There was no mistaking the armada that hovered high over the city; the squat, misshapen ves- sels were unmistakably Arcturian, several dozen of them, bristling with heavy armament. . “We have grown tired of waiting for Central Communications to cor- rect its errors,” one of the Arc- turians hissed in his high, sing-song voice. “Communications does not control the Benson Warp. We can send ships where we please, when we please. And those ships are not playing games, Mr. Hanson.” Hanson’s face was ashen. wouldn’t dare—” The Arcturian shrugged eloquently. “You may recall that the Arcturian system has never been too pleased with the manner in which Interstellar Union, has been run. Nor the way Communications has been run. In fact, we are much displeased. Almost to the point of violence, one might say.” His wheezy voice had a ven- omous edge to it. “You “But Interstellar Security could wipe you out—” “Interstellar Security has been and gone. They wouldn't dare touch us, and they know it. Our ships could destroy this Center, Hanson—they could blow it into a crater. Then you’d have a real Communications breakdown. What is your signal for closing down a channel? QBB?” The Arcturian managed an acid smile. “Complete QBB, on all channels. In- _ terstellar Union would then be fin- ished, and anyone who wanted to step into control would have no diffi- culty.” “Like the Arcturians?” The spokesman smiled. “Like the Arcturians,” he said bluntly. “But you’d have no communica- tions, either.” “That would be fine. Until we had a chance to set up under our own control, and under our own terms. But of course, it would be easier if Cen- tral continued to function. With Miss Norgaard’s help, and we hope yours, we can avoid most unpleasantness.” Hanson turned to Marly, his eyes cold. “Get them out of here,” he snarled. “I want to talk to you alone.” She jerked her head to the door, “Tt’s all right,” she said. “He won’t try anything.” The four left the room silently, and she turned back to see Hanson’s blazing eyes. He had her arm pinned behind her in an instant, and forced her back against the port, his blood boil- ing. “You little fool,” he grated. “You don’t know what you’re doing. You could be shot for this.”

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Q-B-B She wriggled loose, and whirled on him, eyes flashing. “You're the fool,” she snapped. “You can’t tell a golden opportunity when you see one. What do you think I’m trying to do?” Then she tossed her hair back, breathing heavily. “Jerry, can’t you see the op- portunity? These Arcturians have had this planned for over three years. They had been waiting for twenty yeats—just waiting for something to happen, somewhere in the Union, to give them an edge. They never have wanted anything to do with the Un- 'lon—they were forced in because they were a necessary link in an oth- erwise perfect chain. But they simply are not cooperative people. If they’re in things, they have to run things, And as soon as Communications be- gan to see trouble, they saw the chance to step in.” Hanson sank down into the chair. “Go on,” he said. “Where do you fit in?” \ She looked at him coldly. “I’ve been working for them for over two years. Oh, don’t give me the big eyes. I want money, and I want power. The Interstellar Union was all set up before I got going. Too tight po- litically and economically to let any- one from the bottom in. But. with a breakdown, a change of comrhand— I could see where the Arcturians were going. I’ve been in Interstellar Se- curity long enough to have plenty of information for them. I’ve kept close check on Communications, because that is the weakest point in the whole system. Without communications, the Union is through—completely 63 washed up. If the Arcs can control Communications, they control the Union, and any human who can help them do it can be on top wher they’re running things.” “So with Central in their pockets they can walk in on the Grand Ga- lactic Council, and take over every- “thing in the confusion.” He shook his head, as though to clear his mind. “And Marly Norgaard is on top. That’s very pretty. But suppose some- thing forces their hand? Suppose they have to bomb out Luna City? If they blow up Central then their communi- cations are gone too. What do they do then?” She walked over to him quickly, hands trembling. “That’s just it!” she whispered excitedly, “They can’t destroy Luna City. It’s a bluff, noth- .ing but a big bluff. Without Central they’d be as helpless as anyone else.” She watched his face narrowly. “For them it’s all or nothing. If they’re in the Union, they want to run it, and run it their way. They’re gambling everything on taking control of Cen- tral Communications. If they can’t get it, they’re through.” Her eyes crinkled slyly. “That’s my ace in the hole, Jerry. I can bargain with them, because I’ve found the key to the problem. They give me what I want, and I can get Central running again, without a flaw, and they are on top. And that’s why I need you.” Hanson watched her in growing confusion. A mental picture of the critically overloaded sta¢ks © ran through his mind, the puzzle with- out the answer. She couldn’t know

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64 OTHER WORLDS about that. “Wait a minute,” he said softly, his eyes narrowing. “You say you know what’s wrong with Central? Why Communications has been col- Japsing? You know that?” “1 know that.” She smiled, the cold desperate smile. “I’ve got the whole thing in a nutshell. I can get Central . running again in a matter of days. But I need an engineer. I need some- one who can handle the machines, someone to handle operations. I need you, Jerry, and I can buy you now. Tl have the power, and I’ll have the money.” She looked coldly at her fin- gernails. “I would have preferred Forhan, but he’s dead. He called their bluff first thing—told them to go ahead and bomb Central. So they shot him.” She shrugged. “He might not have bargained, anyway. But you —” She smiled, the old warm, inno- cent smile again, “—you’re reason- able, Jerry; you can tell a sure thing when you see it.” Hanson sat staring at her for a long moment, his mind racing. She had the answer, she said; she couldn’t know about the backlog in the “stacks,” but she had the, answer. And he knew that there was insanity in the answer—“I don’t believe you, Marly. You*must think I’m a fool.” Her eyes blazed, and “She was on her feet, furious. “I think you are a fool! I’m offering you the chance you'll never have again, Jerry. You can be on top, or you can be down and out. The tables are turning— take-your choice.” Careful, he thought. Play it care- ful—"TI can’t trust you, Marly.” His mind was tight and cold, alive to catch any hint, any slip. “If I could trust you, I might consider it. But I can’t trust you. I trusted you once before, back on Centaurus III, and I got kicked in the face.” He rubbed his cheek slowly with his forefinger, “T’m not a fool. I only need to be kicked once.” “Forget the past, Jerry! This is now! You can’t lose.” “Tye got too good a memory to forget the past, And I’ve got one on you, this time, Marly.” A sly smile was on his lips. “If I don’t play along in this, you won’t go anywhere, either—” She walked over to him then) slow- ly, her eyes icy. Her mouth was twist- ed into a sour grimace, and her voice cut out in bitter contempt, like the edge of an ice cold razor. “Look, Mr. Good-Memory, I don’t give a damn for-you—I don’t like you; I never have liked you. If you want-it blunt- ly, you make my skin crawl. But I want what I can get for myself. I’ve worked two years for his chance, and I’ve got to have you to put it: across. So I'll bargain with you, for all I’ve got. You'll be running Central, after I’ve straightened it out. It'll be in your hands. Then, if I pull a fast one, you could QBB the whole works. Join me now, and you can name your terms.” He looked at her, her twisted face, her ice-grey eyes. “All right,” he said. “Start bargaining. I want the answer to one question, just one.” His eyes © narrowed to slits, and he felt the muscles of his arms tighten. “Answer

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one question, and I’m with you.” “What question?” He took a tight breath. “Was John Forhan insane?” The light died in her eyes, like a match blown out in the wind. She took a deep breath, and her voice was very tired. “Yes,” she said, “He was. Forhan, and every single op- erator that worked in this pest-hole. All of them very much insane.” VERYBODY said Central was a madhouse,” Marly said, lighting a cigarette. “Nobody meant it, lit- erally. But it really is. I got the first substantial clue when Steinthal went into psychotic breakdown, and when I learned about their condition- ing program. Then it was a matter - of testing to prove it. And it checked through, right up to Forhan.” She smoked in silence for a mo- ment. “They* knew that there was danger here from the beginning. The men not only worked under impossi- ble conditions, and under intolerable pressure—they had well drummed into them that the whole machinery of the Union depended on them trans- mitting messages regularly, smooth- ly, without a flaw. In order to help them they were psycho-conditioned to protect them from the breakdown that would have occurred in uncon- ditioned men. But they were condi- tioned for one job, and walked right in to do an immeasurably more diffi- cult job. Their conditioning didn’t ac- count for the terrific expansion of Central. As the work and pressure increased, the men began to approach 7 Q-B-B 65 the breaking point, but they knew they couldn't break, and they kept on working. There were similar cases in humans during the Terran wars, men cracking under the strain of battle, and transferring their mental break- down into errors in judgment, irra- tionality, paralyzed limbs—because they had to keep on fighting. In Central the men should have broken up at the seams, but they had to keep Central running, so they went heroi¢ instead. And the farther in- sane they went, the more desperately convinced they were that nothing at all was wrong with them, that ‘every- thing was under control.’ Forhan wouldn’t let anyone talk him out of it, how perfectly under control Cen- tral Communications was—” She took a deep breath. “But Cen- tral Communications wasn’t under control. It was sliding more and more rapidly out of control. But the farth- er the men slipped away from sanity, the less they were able to realize thow the control was ‘slipping. The pressure of the work became increas- - ingly heavier, and heavier, and they sank deeper and deeper.” Hanson stood up, his eyes wide. The missing answer fell into place, the insane answer—and its incredi- ble implications. Like a man in a dream Hanson stood looking out the port, his mind roaring with the only possible line of action. Set Central on its feet in two days? He almost laughed aloud. She might try, and go insane herselfin the attempt. But she wouldn’t succeed. There was only one way, impossible as it seemed,

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66 OTHER WORLDS that could ever hope to succeed. He turned to her, his eyes bright. “All right, Marly,” he said cooly. “Send your Arcturian friends back to their ships. We'll turn Central over to them, lock, stock, and barrel, run- ning like it’s never run before.” His eyes glittered, and his hands were trembling. “Send them back, and then come with me—” She was back in half a minute, her grey eyes excited. ‘“They’re leaving,” she said. “They said to remind you that if anything goes wrong they'll order Central bombed out.” She smiled grimly. “We won’t have any trouble with them. Now what are you planning?” : He searched the equipment locker quickly, pulled out two of the gro- tesque masks. Hurriedly he tossed one at her. “Come along,” he mut- tered, and threw open the vaulted door to the Inside. The noise of the clattering ma- chines burst in to meet them as they snapped on the ear and nose guards? Hanson buzzed for a shuttle car, and in a few seconds they were climb- ing in, zooming up toward the vault- ed ceiling. “The first, thing to do,” said Marly, “is to get the men to- gether.and inform them of the change of command. Just tell them that For- han has been relieved, and that you’re giving orders here. Your Interstellar Security identification will convince them that it’s all right. Then—” She stopped suddenly, looking sharply at Hanson. “You aren’t listening,” she said sharply. . “No, I’m not,” said Hanson. She-glanced back nervously over. her shoulder, at the receding wall, down at the wilderness of clatterihg teletypes and clicking relays. “Where are you taking us?” she snapped, her voice on edge. Hanson pointed vaguely ahead. “Down there somewhere.” She was alarmed now. “I_ think we'd better go down.” % He shrugged. “All right.” He touched a button, and the car lurched suddenly downward toward the cross- walk. Marly stepped out of the. car swiftly. “Now we're going to call the men,” she said, thinly. Hanson shook his head, an odd smile on his lips. “We aren’t going anywhere, Marly. We’re staying right here.” His voice was soft as velvet. There was fear in hef eyes then, “What do you mean? Jerry, do you know what you’re doing?” “Oh, yes. I know what I’m doing. You wouldn’t believe it, but I do. And the first step is to relieve you of this!’ He lunged forward suddenly, snatching the guard mask from her face. The elastic band broke with a snap, and the mask came off in his hand. He could see the panic and horror rise in the girl’s eyes as the wave of intolerable sound swept in. She screamed, and her hands went up to her ears, trying to muffle the maddening roar. In panic she snatched at the mask, .and then turned into a blonde screaming fury, scratching at his face and hands, her eyes wild with fear. Hanson took her gently by the throat and gave her a sharp shove as she came at him again.

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| ' channel they can find that messages can be sent over, Then have them - broadcast the word to every planet , they can reach to open all auxiliary 3 QB-B She tottered backwards, fighting for balance, and fell to the floor, sobbing, pushing at her ears with her fingers as if to drive them through her head, writhing on the floor— And then Hanson was running to- ward the codex cubicle. He shoved his Security ID card at the man working at the desk. ‘Go out and call all the men down here,” he snapped. “Tell them to leave their machines and get down here fast. We've got trouble.” Without waiting for an answer he dived into the soundproofed visiphone booth in the corer. Swiftly he dialed for a through wire to Sol III. He snapped out the code signal for Interstellar Security, and tapped impatient fin- _ gers on the panel as the signal buzzed through. After three eternities Fritz Hebel’s face appeared in the clearing screen. “Hebel,” said Hanson. “Listen, now, and do just as I say. This is ‘critical, I mean critical, and you’ll have to follow instructions to the let- ter if you want anything saved from this mess. You’ve been waiting for something to break—this is it.” “Let’s have it,” snapped Hebel, his voice tight. “Call the substation on Sol III and tell them to open all their auxiliary channels, every channel that doesn’t go through Central. Have them open even the channels, that haven’t been used since the centralization, every 67 channels. Got that?” Hebel’s face was bewildered. “Yes, T’ve got it. What else?” Hanson took a deep breath. “Ev- erything depends on those auxiliary channels—they’ve got to be open. Then get a squadron of fighters ready and warp them through to Luna City. You know about the Arcturian squad- ron. here—send enough to handle them easily.” “So it’s breaking,” muttered He- bel. “Yes, it’s breaking. Now listen carefully, and don’t argue with me. Wait until you see the last ship leave Luna City. I’m ordering the City evacuated, haying everyone in Luna City board ships and evacuate to Sol III, As soon as your squadron leaves, call the Galactic Grand Council into emergency session, and place them under heavily armed guard. Don’t let anyone contact them about any- thing, and make sure you have the reserve’ out to handle an Arcturian attack on Sol III. They might just try it. But the important thing is to get those ships here, ready for busi- ness as soon as the last ship leaves Luna City.” ~ “Wait a minute!” roared Hebel, his eyes growing wide as Hanson was talking, “Hanson, have you lost eyour mind. You can’t evacuate Luna City. What about Central? You can’t tun it yourself, you’ve got to have men. And if we try to attack the Arcturians, they’ll bomb Central Communications off the map!” Hanson was shaking his head ex- citedly, “The City has to be evacuat-

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68 OTHER WORLDS ed. I'll be on the last ship that leaves. I’ve got the answer tothe Communications breakdown, Hebel —the whole answer. I know where it was breaking down, and why. And I know the only possible way to solve the problem.” He lit a cigarette with shaking fingers. “As soon as I sign off here,” he said rapidly, “I’m send- ing a QBB out on every channel leaving Central. I’ll QBB every chan- nel, so -the whole Galaxy will know what’s happening. Don’t worry about what the Arcturians are likely to do, Hebel—you get that squadron here, and fast.” Hebel’s eyes were wide. ‘“Xou mean to attack the Arcturians?” Hanson shook his head. “That’s the second step. The first step is to attack Galactic Central Communi- cations, You’ve got to bomb Central to smithereens.”, 7 HE was still irrational when they left her room and walked down the corridor, “She'll recover, all right,” the doctor ptomised. “Her hearing will never be right again, but there’s no serious damage done. She can be turned over to Security in a week or two.” Hebel nodded, and walked with Hanson down the steps of the New Denver Psycho-Medical ‘Clinic. “It was rough on her,” Hebel muttered. “We knew she was tied up with the Arcturians@and that something was about to break. We also knew that you disliked her, and would watch her like a hgwk. That’s why we chose you to work with her. But even con- sidering everything, she’s had a tough | time.” Hanson shrugged. “I should have. left her there,” he said coldly. “I don’t know why I didn’t. But she gave me the final link in the chain of the Communications breakdown, the one thing I couldn’t fit into the picture. She told me why no one knew what was happening.” He lit a cigarette, and the breeze caught the smoke as he turned to the Security Chief. “It was a vicious circle: The expanding system brought heavier work to Central, and the heavier the work there the faster the men went insane. Fhen when the mes- sages began piling up in the ‘stacks’ they got panicky, and their insanity let them simply ignore the backlog.” He took a deep breath. “I saw the’ trouble when I saw the repair going on, but I couldn’t see why Forhan didn’t know about the terrific over- load of material in the ‘stacks.’ Well, Forhan did know. He just convenient- ly .orgot it, because if he had recog- nized it, he would have known that there was only one answer to Com- munications. The answer he had been fighting all his life. An answer that would have been completely insane, to him. Decentralization, complete, rapid, and efficient breakdown of the ie Centralized Communications clearing house that he had worked so hard to build. Because Central Communications had gotten too big. The law of diminishing returns, in a way. The loaded gun that nobody knew about. Central had grown so big, and the system was expanding

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Q-B-B 69 so rapidly that one central clearing house could never hope to keep up with it. And it would constantly and inevitably drive men mad if they tried to keep up with it. Central had to be destroyed, because it was de- stroying itself, and the Interstellar Union along with it.” They walked toward the traffic ramp in silence. “It’s a terrible job,” said Hebel finally. “It'll be years be- fore you can get the substations and auxiliary lines built up to handle the work, even in limited Sectors. The Union will be shaken to its foun- lation before you're through.” He ked at Hanson. ‘The job is yours, you know. You asked for it. Nobody else wants it very much.” Hanson smiled. “The Union is al- ready shaken. But it’s still a Union, and a strong one. Propaganda will help me; crises arising will tend to bind the Union tighter, until Decen- tralized Communications can be working at full efficiency.” He smiled bitterly at Hebel. “If we can keep the Marly Norgaards and her ilk out of the picture, I think we can get it done.” Hebel watched him narrowly as he turned to go down the ramp to the traffic. The cool night air scurried along the curved boulevard of the Capitol City of Sol III, and far in the distance a rocket rose on its or- ange tail, higher and higher into the night sky. “You really hated that woman, didn’t you?” said Hebel. Hanson flipped the cigarette away savagely, and started down the slope. “T had a right to,” he said, over his shoulder, “I knew her too well. She Was once my wife.” MYSHKIN What does MYSHKIN mean? We were afraid you'd ask THAT! How can we answer? How can we tell you something for which science fiction has no precedent — nor the English language any sufficient adjective? WHO is Myshkin?: WHAT is. Myshkin? Now we're really stuck , «. But, we can tell you WHEN is Myshkin! MARCH 3... THAT’S WHEN! - You'll find out March 3, 1953! That’s when the April issue of OTHER WORLDS hits the stands. And that’s when MYSHKIN will hit you RIGHT BETWEEN THE EYES! COMES MARCH . 2 6 «© «© «© «© «© « «© COMES MYSHKIN!

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You collect science-fiction magazines? Better hang on to them, they may come in handy some day. Take Willard Thorpe, for instance, his collection was a - big help when he had to take—and dish out—a little PATENT MEDICINE © By William C. Bailey ‘Te OU may go in now,” the . tall one with the plain bras- siere said. Willard Thorpe, rehearsing for the tenth time what he wanted to say to Faulkner, did not hear her. “Mr. Thorpe,” she repeated, tap- ping her desk with a finger. “Mr. Faulkner can see you now.” The oth- er receptionist, the one with metallic cone bra cups, looked up and tittered. He got too hurriedly to his feet, patting at the letter inside his bolero jacket. His old-fashioned external cor- rective lenses slipped down his nose. Pushing them back angrily, he went through the big wooden door labeled “President.” Faulkner’s huge office was rich, mellowed by tasteful antiques. He sat behind a massive old desk of rosewood that loomed darkly out of the thick carpet. He was big from the waist up, a man who had added com- fortable flesh to potent muscles in , middle years. His face was square, heavy, and dominated by a powerful, slightly hooked nose. “Yes?” he rumbled, straightening in the high-backed old director’s chair. His features were suddenly concentrated, not necessarily un- friendly. Thorpe could almost feel him take inventory of his appear- ance—the horn-rimmed glasses; the bolero jacket; the tasteful culottes of chartreuse and cerise; the conserva- tive boots, heels under two inches, and coming barely half way to the knee. There was a flicker of some emotion he could not place as Faulk- ner noted he wore no spurs. “Willard Thorpe, Mr. Faulkner. Your Mr, Purvis sent me up from Personnel. He thought you should see me. Uh, I mean... .” He choked and stumbled, knowing he had said it backwards. Faulkner moved his big shoulders irritably, settling his magenta-figured Uustrated by W. B. Terry 71

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72 OTHER WORLDS Lolly jacket on his frame. Thorpe, hearing the dull clank of spurs un- der the old desk, wished again he had worn his. fe “Oh?” he said. “You're an- em- ployee here, Thorpe?” “No, sir. Actually, I’m applying for employment.” . “The devil you are. McReady is supposed to handle Purvis’ slop-over. And Purvis thought you should see me?” he asked, setting it straight. “Yes, sir. I don’t have the scien- tific degree you usually require—my Doctor’s thesis was in literature— but Mr. Purvis thought—” “Literature! What the devil!” Faulkner broke in brusquely. “No, Thorpe. I’m sorry. We hire lots of Ph. D’s, but if they aren’t engineers, they’re chemists, physicists, As for writers, all our advertising is handled by Poop, Inc.” “Please, Mr. Faulkner,” Thorpe said, fearful he would be rushed out before he said his piece. “You see, I do have some scientific back- ground.” Faulkner’s scowl dwindled, but his big square face was still un- ‘ interested, impatient, irritated. “My field was science fiction,” Thorpe said hurriedly. “Literature with a scien- tific background. My thesis subject was ‘The Golden Age of Science Fic- tion.’ Well, to do a good job, I’ve had to study a good deal in most fields of science, so that—” “Now, Thorpe,” Faulkner said, slapping big palms on the desk. “A lot of outdated, disproven facts—” “But it’s not like that at all,” Thorpe said warnily, ignoring Faulk- ner’s growing irritation at the in- terruptions. “In the first place, sci- ence was pretty well advanced in the Nineteenth and Twentieth ... Well, that’s not important, really,” he said, finally recognizing the dan- ger signs on Faulkner’s face. “The important thing is that science fic- ' tion in those days was concerned with science in the future—the science of today. The writers dreamed up or tried to imagine all sorts of inven- tions and gadgets, and ‘sooner or later a lot of them got invented. Of course, there were just thousands of ideas that we now know were absolutely contrary to physical laws, but in those” days—” “Useless here,” Faulkner cut him off. “What ever made Purvis think ...” He reached for the buzzer. “Well,” said Thorpe reluctantly. “It might have been this.” He drew the letter from within his black bo- lero and passed it over the rich desk. His glasses slipped foolishly down his nose. ““What’s this?” Faulkner grum- bled, opening it to see, “You remember Edward Hines,” he said hopefully. “Well, we got to be pretty good friends at the Uni- versity, and he said he thought you could use me, so he wrote. that letter.” “Hines? Ed Hines? Who the hell is... Oh. Hm. Ed Hines, sure.” He looked up, still holding the letter be- for him, “How come you know an old duffer like Hines?” Thorpe coughed nervously, getti his horn-rims straight again. “We were both collectors, you see—”

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PATENT MEDICINE 73 “Collectors?” “Yes,” he explained. “Everybody in my family collects something. Dad has the . . . Well, that’s not important, either,” he said quickly, killing another scowl in mid-course. “Hines and I both collect ,old issues of science fiction magazines. Between us, we must own three-quarters of - the Twentieth Century stuff in exis- tence.” “Hmph,” Faulkner snorted. “And what’s this about your inventing something?” he pursued, poking at the letter with a thick finger. “Well, it’s only half worked out,” Thorpe said, beginning to think he had found Faulkner’s wave length at last. “Hines encouraged me with it. It’s a little improvement in the Zero- cond insulation process. They have trouble making the insulation stick, you know. I figure the static bleed- ers don’t do a good enough job. Ac- tually, there are a number of ways T’'ve doped out to lick it. It’s just a question of cost and convenience.” “You’ve doped it out, eh?” Faulk- ner said sarcastically, raising his pow- erful beak. “How?” he snapped with disconcerting directness, Thorpe struggled with the techni- cal explanation, feeling his claim to scientific background was under the microscope. The big man pierced and lit a green-dappled cigar as Thorpe unfolded his idea. His big jaw __chomped at the cigar, and he clouded his brooding, enigmatic expression _ with smoke. “Well, Thorpe,” Faulkner said grudgingly, taking the cigar from his face when Thorpe had finished. “Some of the science must have stuck to you at that, Hm. Maybe old Ed knows what he’s doing.” An idea was tempting the big man, Thorpe could tell. He held his breath. 3 Faulkner chuckled and nodded briefly to himself. “Tell you what, Willard,” he said almost amiably. “I can take a flyer as quick as the next guy. Maybe there's a spot for a young fellow like you around here at that. Let’s give Purvis a start!” He leaned toward the televox. T was hard to believe that two weeks had gone by when he got his first check. It seemed only hours since he had sat in a surprised Pur- vis’ office in Personnel and struggled over his Social Security. form, his tax deductions, his powers of attor- ney, his loyalty affidavit, his em- ployment contract, literally dozens of them. It was enormously encouraging to know that he had found a way to become a part. of the economic sys- tem. He grinned and patted the check through is jacket. His third week started off with a bang. They had given him a desk, with a dictaphone and a file-dialer, and put him to work answering in- quiries from far off places that asked about products Universal didn’t make. It was a sort of public rela- tions job, and the pay had been un- expectedly good. He was supposed to get off polite, helpful letters that said Universal was sorry, but did the writ- er think of trying Whosis, Ltd,, who made a dandy line of this or that

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Ys eet kind of snivvy? He looked up from a letter some miner of Ganymede had painfully -scrawled, asking for something that didn’t exist, and by the nature of things couldn’t, and which wouldn’t have done the job he had in mind anyway, to see that Purvis had seat- ed himself on the corner of his desk. © “Hello, Willard,” he said, passing over a piece of paper. “How about signing this assignment for me? You're lucky, boy. Ill say!” He flashed a momentary, mechanically insincere grin at Thorpe. Ogling the paper through is horn- rims, Thorpe asked, “Assignment?” “Yeah, sure, Willard. That slick process of yours for making Zero- cond stick to the cable. The old man himself put the boys on it, and they think you have something. They're patenting it.” “They are?” “Why, sure, Willard,” “Well, wait a minute, Mr. Purvis,” Thorpe protested, feeling his glasses slip down his nose. “That’s my in- vention! I’ve got some thoughts of patenting it myself.” Purvis let the grin simmer down to a smile. “Not any more, Willard,” he said, pulling his culottes over one knee boyishly. He wore dull copper spurs on his knee-high boots, and they tinkled as he moved. Thorpe said: “What do you mean?” The boyish grin was back, as in- sincerely out of place as Purvis’ colle- giate cox-comb and_blazer-striped vestee, “Well, now that you work for OTHER WORLDS Universal, boy, anything you perfect you have to sell to the Corpora- tion for a dollar, That’s right in your employment contract.” “Sure,” Thorpe said intently. “I know. All Corporations do that. But just because I hadn’t dotted every ‘Tl’ and crossed every ‘T’—” “What the hell, Willard, you work here now. You'll get a bonus. Uni- versal isn’t a hog. I'll bet the Com- mittee awards you five hundred or a thousand bucks. The old man says it’s a pretty cute idea.” “Well, I still think it stinks,” Thorpe said stiffly, ramming his glasses back up the slope of his nose. “And as for perfecting it, that’s a lousey technicality. Mr. Faulkner knows I could have signed a dummy assignment to somebody the day be- fore I started here, and kept it all for myself.” “Well, you didn’t and it belongs to Universal. Now look,” Purvis said, suddenly impatient. “Sign the damned thing and take your buck.” Thorpe slammed both palms down on the desk. “I won't!” he said truculently. “Now listen, you tell Mr, Faulkner I think this is a dirty deal! I want to talk to him!” “To Faulkner? Nobody talks to Faulkner, Willard. McReady; maybe, but not Faulkner.” “T talk to Faulkner. He hired me, remember? Now, darn it, tell him Tee want to talk to ‘him!” Purvis shrugged with his eyebrows. “Okay, sucker,” he said with a jape. “You asked for it.” He scuffed a rowel angrily on the floor, leaving

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PATENT MEDICINE * a row of little dents in the composi- tion, and strode bouncily away. Thorpe was too angry to think about the pretty girls outside the President’s door when Faulkner sent for him. He hadn’t long to wait be- fore being shown into the huge, car- peted office of the President. Faulkner was not alone. A slender, grey-haired intense man sat at one corner of the huge inlaid desk. They both looked up, annoyance plain, as he rushed in.-The big expanse of ‘carpet made him feel.silly, and he ~ slowed down to a normal walk. “Hello, Thorpe,” Faulkner said curtly, leaning back from the papers he had been looking at with the grey-haired man. “Now what the devil?” Thorpe swallowed away a fuzzy, dry lump in his throat and took a quick look at the stranger before he replied. Perhaps this was McReady. He wore a fringed buckskin jacket and white antelope boots with heels no higher than ‘Thorpe’s,. He had crossed his legs, and was idly spin- ning a hammered silver rowel. “Tt’s about my invention, Mr. Faulkner,” Thorpe said, deciding he might as well go ahead with it. “The Zero-cond process,” “What about it?” “Mr. Purvis has asked me to as- sign it to the Corporation.” “Then you'd better, That all?” His square features did not glower, but Thorpe was shaken by the cold, friendless tone of his voice. The man who might have been McReady gave - him an acid, pitiless grin. 75 “Mr. Faulkner, you know I had that idea all worked out before I came here. It isn’t fair to take it from me that way. I’m quite willing to sell—” “Not fair? The devil! You signed a contract.” Thorpe pressed forward against the desk. “That’s a technicality, that's all,” he protested. “It seems to me—” “Would you like me to leave, A.J.?” the thin man asked scratch- ily, showing by an idle spin of the silver rowel that he thought he shouldn’t. “No,” Faulkner bawled roughly. “Now, see here. What the hell can you do about it? You signed the contract. We’re holding you to it. You took your pay, didn’t you?” “T won’t sign,” Thorpe said sul- lenly. “I’m getting legal advice.” ~ “Oh, for Pete’s sake.” Faulkner stormed. “What do you think we are? A bunch of crooks? We don’t need your lousey signature. Your static bleeder was pretty well described in print thirty or forty years ago, any- way, enough so’s we could fight any claims you make. If you want to buy a lawsuit, go ahead and patent it. But get your time from Purvis when you leave tonight. You’re through.” The bottom jhad dropped out. Thorpe had come to the office with no idea of letting things get so far out of hand. “Gosh!” he gasped, conscious of how young he sounded. “I don’t want to quit. I like it here, Mr. Faulkner. I enjoy my job. It’s a swell—” “J don’t like your attitude,” Faulk-

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76 OTHER WORLDS ner said, turning back to the thin man with the silver spurs. “Well, I know we’ve had a little misunderstanding, but—” “Do I have to spell it out, you simpleton,” Faulkner growled, while the other chuckled silently at the silver rowel he was still spinning. “What do you think I hired you for? Your brains? We wanted the idea. All right, you want to make it hard. So we don’t want you. Now get the hell out of here, I’m busy.” Back in his small apartment, Thorpe hegan to get the full impact of what it meant to lose his first job. Oh, it wasn’t a question of going hungry. He had_a-little money, and his parents wouldn’t stand for it, any- way. But it was darned awkward, em- barrassing and a little alarming. He certainly hadn’t handled himself like any twenty-five-year-old, he reflect- ed. A little smoother approach. to Faulkner, perhaps .. . But then he told himself that wouldn’t have worked, either. Faulk- ner had no illusions. He had been painfully blunt about why they had hired him at all. Really, that was the nastiest part of the whole thing. It was a dirty trick, any way you sliced it. But how to take the next step in making a living was still a poser. He decided “he didn’t want any part of a big corporation. He had had a look at what it means to be soulless. Actually, he had been a pretty small pawn in the whole game. What had Faulkner said? The proc- ess had been described or suggested in print years before. That meant right away that it probably wasn’t- patentable. The Corporation had only wanted to establish a nuisance pat- ent, perhaps hoping others wouldn’t know of the printed description. Well, whatever their angle was, it wasn’t flattering. Thorpe looked disgustedly around him. He was in no mood to look for work that day. And in no mood to do much else. His eyes lit on the bookcase he had had shipped from home, with its carefully jacketed copies of antique magazines. They always relaxed him, What hobby doesn’t? He picked an old volume at random from the bottom shelf, careful not to crack its sleazy fragility, and opened to a story. He read for some time, almost recap- turing the old thrill. Its language was stilted, its conception of the world of some future date funny to any- one but a connoisseur. Halfway through the tale, the printed words stopped him cold. There, in black and white, was a reasonably decent explanation of how natrow-necked vessels could be ma- chined on the inside with a cutter of larger effective radius than the neck of the vessel. He laid the book down thoughtfully. Use of the process was new, and he recalled a recent inquiry about it that he had forwarded to the proper division of Universal Manufacturing. His stom- ach began to tremble. A perfectly gorgeous way to take revenge on Faulkner formed in his mind. A long-distance call informed him that the Jergens-Tamli cutter was : f

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’ PATENT MEDICINE 77 patented, and that Universal Manu- facturing was the assignee of the pat- ent. Perfect! It took three days to get back in to see Faulkner, The pretty girls in the lush outer office were a lot less than pretty when they were saying, | “Pm sorry, but he’s not available,” and a lot of other politely cold re- marks to the same effect. “Now look,” Thorpe said, trem- bling with exasperation, to the _ shorter one, the one who always wore , ornate metallic cone bras. “I know Mr. Faulkner is in there. ‘I've heard him bellowing around half the morn- ing. You take him a note, or I'll bust in there!” His horn-rims slipped ridiculously down his sweating nose. She squared her shoulders and stuck the copper cones at him. “I’m not used to being talked to that way!” she said icily. “Mr. Faulkner does not wish to see you. Is that plain?” Thorpe regarded the cones owlish- ly through his glasses, newly pushed _ Straight. Probably flat-chested, he de- ; cided, and wore tinnies to kid the public. “What I said still goes,” he said, still shaking inside. He took his stylus from his pocket and quick- ly handed her a short note. “All right!” she snapped after a .long moment. “And stop staring at me!” Somehow that made him feel better. ‘ Nobody was behind the big desk. Faulkner came charging powerfully through a door connecting with another office as Thorpe made for the massive antique. He wore short —s accordion-pleated boots with stirrup- cut heels. Heavy. spurs glinted with the richness of pure gold, and s clanked dully. Thorpe realized with surprise that the barrel-chested man“ was quite short, two or three inches less in height: than his own five feet nine. He tried a glower of his own down at the older man, angrily deciding he should have worn spurs himself. “Damned good thing you saw me!” he blustered, realizing sickly that his yoice had merely quavered with the strain. It amused Faulkner, but not much.. He sat down behind the fabulous old desk, suddenly big and impres- sive again. “T know a threatening letter when I see one,” he said coldly, “IN give you one minute to crawl out of here on your belly, or I'll call the po- lice.” “One minute? All right. In the first fifty-nine seconds I'll tell» you this, Mr. Faulkner.” He immediately regretted the “Mr.”, but the damage was done. He saw the gleam in the other’s eye. “You people use the Jergens-Tamli process for machining narrow-necked vessels. Well, so maybe you’re such a big wheel you don’t know what it is, but the patent is assignéd to you. I looked it up. And you use it in the plant. Well, it isn’t patentable. ’m going to tell any licensees you’ve got that the patent’s no good, and show them how to break it!” Taking his hands off the polished rosewood, Faulkner leaned back in

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' 78 the high-topped director's chair, tris head resting against the rich old leather. “You’ve got “patents on the brain,” he observed. Thorpe recognized “the statement for an admission. of weakness, Faulk- ner never made remarks. He either told you or he asked you. The minute was gone, and nobody had called the police. “That invention was described in print over two hundred years ago,” Thorpe said. “All right, maybe their technological level was such they couldn’t make the tool, but they de- scribed it. The patent’s no good.” “Where?” snapped Faulkner, go- ing to the heart of the matter at once. He was asking again. “A science fiction magazine. Nine- teen fifty-three. June, 1953, issue of ‘Futureways,’ a story called INSIDE OUT, by Charles Fox. I’ve got a copy. Now what do you think of that?” ; His insides simmered like a kettle on a stove. He hadn’t realized how furious he was with the treatment he had received. “T’'ll tell you,” Faulkner said, tak- ing the other tack in the asking-tell- ing game. “You're an idiot. I don’t know anything about the damned process, but from what you describe of it, I'll bet our royalties are every bit of five hundred dollars a year. Do you think the firms we’ve licensed it to are going to start a fight with us over a lousy couple of hundred bucks? What do you think patents are, just a dog-in-the-manger deal? Hell, all big corporations own hun- OTHER WORLDS dreds of them. Some they use, some they license to others who can use them better. What the devil! You’d find out damned quick if you tried to get one of our licensees to finance a court fight that they probably li- cense a dozen of their own patents to Universal! And Fl tell you one more thing, you insolent pup, you'll never work in a manufacturing com- pany, any corporation I’ve ever heard of, in this country. T’ll black-ball you from Nome to Balboa. Is_ that enough?” It was plenty. Thorpe couldn’t re- member the rest of the words, but they all meant he was getting the hell out of the door before the cops got there. The grisly thing about it was that Faulkner apparently had made no idle threat. After a couple weeks of looking vainly for jobs, Thorpe de- cided to try another city. A few times he got to the point of having his applications considered pretty seri- ously, but suddenly the opening was filled;-or the job evaporated, or he was curtly told they didn’t want any part of him. Oh, there was never any explana- tion, but as the weeks lengthened into several months, and Thorpe, seeing his rather slender resources dwindle, tried to get any kind of a job, no matter how little skill or training it— took, it became all too apparent that — he had been black-balled. It wasn’t universal. It didn’t reach into the service industries, or per haps Faulkner was satisfied to have him tend a battery of-dishwashing sé

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, io F was certainly low enough. machines in a big hotel. The pay One week of handling racks of hot vitrolite dishes was all he had stom- ach for. When he got his "pay check, “and looked at the miserable amount ; left after all the deductions, he could not help but recall the generous "~ salary he had gotten at Universal. ‘He laughed bitterly. The check in - his hand was the second pay check of his life. If he had only had some sense, and not made a fuss about the _ Zeto-cond patent, he would probab- ly still have been in that good-pay- “ing job, probably with a bonus check for a thousand in the bank, and with a chance to show them that he had something on the ball. * He wasn’t going to get anywhere washing dishes. He couldn’t meet ex- __ penses on his pay. Gloomily he de- cided that he should return to his parents’ home. The thing would blow : over in while, or he might get another _ break, such as he had gotten when _ Ed Hines had written to Faulkner _in his behalf. Thinking of Hines brought his mind around to his collection of sci- - ence fiction. He would have to get the books crated and arrange to have them shipped home. They were too % - precious, to Thorpe at least, to leave _ in storage somewhere. _» Back in his apartment, he fingered the transparent jackets over the old, brittle paper covers. His university ~ days seemed far away. The pleasure, _ the intellectual excitement of his re- searches, seemed part of another world. Nostalgically he wished he PATENT MEDICINE 719 were back there, his nose deep in “Futureways.” Well, it was gone. The old thrill of finding invention after modern invention described in writing hundreds of years old was no longer a part of his life. Or was it? Once before the idea had cost him dearly. He wondered if he should evén let it seep back into his mind. Still, what did he have to lose? This time he intended to move with care. He would think it through to the bitter end, and then act. It would take money, that was the trou- ble, money, and some know-how that he did not have. He decided to get them both in the same place. There was, of course, the problem of choosing the man. He went to the offices of the largest newscast house in the city, and read their back is- sues. There were, he found by using the file selectors, an amazing num- ber of lawsuits involving fraud, brib- ery and intimidation. And of them, a significantly large percentage of cases were defended by an attorney named Hobart Cribb. Taking precaution first to store his collection of science fiction in a bonded warehouse, he carried with him to Cribb’s none-too-resplendent offices a copy of his Doctor’s thesis. Cribb somehow looked like his name. The first impression he gave was of bookish integrity, perhaps heightened by old fashioned .horn- rimmed spectacles similar to those that Thorpe wore. The young man was startled at the false air they carried on second look, and made a

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80 OTHER WORLDS note to discard his own for more conventional contact lenses at an early date. It was more than the horn-rims that made him think twice about Cribb. There was a mechanical quality to the attorney’s laugh, a nar- - rowing of his eyes while talking, and, most of all, an almost obscene melon of a belly that jutted from his other- wise spare frame, “Willard Thorpe,” he introduced himself. “I think I need a lawyer.” Cribb’s eyes narrowed behind the clear panes of glass. “What did you do?” His bony fingers clasped the stiff edges of his chain-mail jacket as he leaned back in his spidery chair. “T haven’t done it. I want to do it, and I want to stay out of trouble.” “Don’t we all!” Cribb laughed, suddenly hearty. “Yes, sir, Willard,” he exclaimed, slapping his bloated abdomen. “We'd all love to!” The levity left his voice in a flash. He straightened his glasses, as if for a closer look. “This kind of talk usu- ally calls for somé earnest money: Let’s see the color of yours.” “But that’s the point,” Thorpe protested, leaning forward and clum- sily catching his seldom-worn spurs in the carpet. “I want to get some money, not pay any. Am I being _awfully literal about this thing?” He was unhappily aware of the earnest- ness of his voice. “Hm,” Cribb said, looking at Hin over the tops of the frames. Thorpe thought the lawyer was puzzled. “Look,” he went on. “I’m pretty sure I’ve got a fool-proof way to get some money-out of one of the big corporations. It’s not that I’m steal- ing it, either. They gave me a raw deal, and they owe it to me. You know how to handle things like that. If you can swing it for me, I can pay you out of what I get.” Cribb slowly drew the horn- rimmed temples fromy over his ears and pressed the spectacles against his left shoulder. His naked eyes drilled Thorpe with mixed outrage and wonder. “In all my long legal career,” Cribb said, shaking his head from side to side as he spoke, “which I may say has been widely varied, I’ve never had a prospective client with more gall.-You walk in here, asking me how to break the law and go free, and you want me to advise you on a contingent basis!” He burst into rude guffaws, his melon- belly bobbing up and down indecent- ly. “But I don’t want to break any laws.” Cribb’s pinched face sobered. The glasses were popped back on _ his pointed nose, He peered at Thorpe, two. fingers still on the frames, as if they enlarged him by a hundred mag- nifications. “You don’t what?” he gasped at last. “Haw! Then you came to the wrong man!” The glasses were whipped off as he leaned far back and howled with laughter. “Go on,” he said, straightening up with- out a trace of merriment. “What is it?” “Universal Manufacturing Corpo- ration owns or controls hundreds of valuable patents. I know a way to break a gang of them. I should think

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‘ 4 3 } ~ , id PATENT MEDICINE they’d be willing to pay me not to,” A thin, whitish tongue passed over Cribb’s lips. He pushed his shoulders against the back of his chair and, studied Willard Thorpe through still narrower eyes. “Not if they had any sense,” he said at last. “They’d squeeze you into the position of try- ing to extort from them, and your jig would be up.” “Why do you think I’m here?” Thorpe snapped, irritated by the oth- er’s flippant mannerisms, He began to think he had picked the wrong man. “You’re serious about breaking these patents?” “Yes. Look this over. My Doc- tor’s thesis. I’ll tell you this,” he began, and related the appearance in print hundreds of years before of good descriptions of many modern patents. “That’s the law, isn’t it?” Thorpe demanded. “You can’t patent anything described in print, can you? That means it’s not new, and that’s one of the conditions of a patentable invention, that it’s new.” ~ “More or less,” Cribb admitted. His flip manner disappeared and the lawyer in him showed through more clearly. He slid down in his spindly chair and put his hand-carved boots up on the desk. Thorpe saw that his spurs had a single sharpened tine instead of a rowel. The desk top, he realized, was a replaceable slab of cork already well-scarred by fre- quent spurrings. “The law,” said Cribb, “Goes on the theory that a patent is a con- tract between Government and in- 81 ventor. Government gives the inven- tor a monopoly for a period of years in return for his disclosure of the invention, since his invention would otherwise become public property, under common law, immediately af- ter its disclosure. Some printed refer- ertés are disclosures. Most of them, in fact.” “Okay,” Thorpe said, relieved by Cribb’s’ more businesslike manner. “So I was close. Now, I'll have to do some research to find out exactly what patents owned by Universal are described in ‘the old science fic- tion magazines. When I get it to- gether, you figure out how to get some money out of Universal. Not a lot,” he explained primly. “But they have kept me from getting a decent job because I wouldn’t knuckle un- der, and I figure they have to make it up to me.” Cribb wagged his narrow head slowly from sidé to side. “You'd have to have something to sell,” he cau- tioned softly. “Good enough. What?” Cribb picked up the thesis and leafed through a few of the typed pages. He* found a cigarette, lit it, and smoked absently, blinking at the smoke as he nodded briefly to him- self. “These things take thought,” he observed to no one in particular. “We need son >thing to hang our hat on. Here you are, a struggling young scholar. Hm.” He let his voice die down to nothing, “And here they are,” he added at last. “A big wealthy corporation. Now that adds

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82 OTHER WORLDS » up to... His face took on a gamin look. A crooked little smile teased at his cheek. “Yes, it adds up,” he con- cluded, shutting the thesis and toss- ing it to the battered cork. “Universal is like a lot of big cor- porations, I should judge,” he went on. “They spend millions on research, and they are smart enough to know that pure research pays off, too. They give scholarships in the technical schools, and so on. Very public-spir- ited. And damned good public rela- tions. “Now, how about this, Willard? You’re young and impecunious. You’re digging into the history of inventions. Very pure and scholarly. You’ve run out of dough. You think of that great benefactor of learning, Universal. You ask them to subsi- dize you while you finish your great research. Of course, you can show - them an incomplete manuscript, with just enough in it to scare them to death. Now, if we play dumb enough, “wholesome enough and naive enough, we'll never have to spell it out. After all, big corporations don’t pay black- mail. They can’t explain it to their auditors, But if they are seared, and we give them something to hang their hat on, they'll buy in, very public- spirited and all, with the tiny little proviso that, having paid for the deal, they get the rights to it. That way, well, hell, Willard, I don’t have to spell it out for you. We'll be in a safe position whichever way the cat jumps. If they get dense and just say ‘No,’ that’ll be time enough to figure out the next degree of pres- sure,” The secret smile was now a thin, sharp grin. He had bent forward over the chewed-up surface of the desk as he concluded, until the chain-mail touched its edge. “Eh?” he demand- ed sharply. Thorpe could not help but be ex- cited by Cribb’s enthusiasm. “You’ve sold me,” he grinned back, This was more like it. Cribb was a different man when he smelled money. “Now,” said Thorpe confidently. “Spot me a. thousand or so to live on while I dig up the facts, and I’ll cut you in on what we get.” Cribb stayed half-sprawled across the cork desk-top. His eyes made tiny slits behind the horn-rims. “What kind of a cut?” he almost whispered. Thorpe breathed a sigh of relief, Cribb was going to take the deal. ITH some help on the tone of the thing, to guard against any hint of extortion, he had a fair rough draft in two months. He in- sisted on going with his attorney to the carefully planned first meeting - with Faulkner. “T want to see his face, Mr. Cribb,” he said tensely. “The skunk tried to run me into the ground, and I want to see him squirm.” Perhaps because Cribb did not mention Thorpe, they got an appoint- ment easily. Faulkner’s eyes glow- ered on either side of his meaty nose when he saw his former employee. « “What the hell is that punk doing

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PATENT MEDICINE 83 here?” he demanded. “Still asking,” said Thorpe, hop- ing the flutter in his insides didn’t show. “You shut up!” “And telling, too,” he added. “Now, now, gentlemen,” Cribb said, with .a warning glance to his client that made Thorpe’s.stomach tighten even more. “Mr, Thorpe is, in a way of speaking, my client.” “That damned Zero-cond process again?” Faulkner asked. “No. No, Mr, Faulkner, nothing like that. Perhaps I should explain why I am here. Not as a lawyer, I should say first off. Rather as a friend whose advice has been sought by this young man. I gave him that advice, only to learn that there was some dif- ference outstanding between you. My only hope is that I can serve as the agent to help you ignore that differ- ence today.” ; “Now what the devil,” Faulkner said with exasperation. “You know Mr. Thorpe is a writer,” Cribb went on smoothly. “He has been working on a new book, and quite frankly, he’s run out of funds. Not that I’m serving as a literary agent—that’s entirely out of my field. But I did suggest to Mr. Thorpe that he might find help from one of the big corporations. And you surely are aware how well known Universal’s bequests to foundations and students are, I suggested he come here.” ; “Damned poor advice,” Faulkner snorted. “I’m sorry—” “Now the book Thorpe is working on,” Cribb went on, ignoring Faulk- ner entirely. “Is tentatively entitled ‘History of Modern Patents,’ ” “I might have guessed it. This moron has patents on the brain,” “How true,” Cribb said with a con- ciliatory chuckle. “But he has some sense with it. It really surprised me, on reading his rough draft, how many of our modern, and valuable, patents were conceived many years ago, and described in print. Think of that.” The big square face set like a cool- ing melt. “So?” “Well, it’s an interesting develop- ment. A specialized study, I suppose you might say, one that would in- terest only those in the patent field, But pure research has paid wonder- ful dividends in the laboratory, Mr. Faulkner. Why not in the library as well? Mr. Thorpe, very frankly, is hoping he can get some forward-look- ing corporation to subsidize the add- ed research necessary to make his work truly definitive.” There was a long, puzzled moment of silence. Thorpe was hard put to it to keep a grin from his face. Cribb was completely unconcerned. He gave it the polite, interested treat- ment of a public-spirited citizen, no heat, not too much fervor. “Now, one more thing,” he added, as_an afterthought. “I know you have to sell ideas like this to your Direc- tors, or your Operating Committee,- or whatever controls things at Uni- veral. And I think you -have some- thing to hang your hat on. A surpris- ing number of modern patents which Mr. Thorpe has found described in

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84 old writings belong to Universal. A small point, but one to please your auditors.” He smiled happily. “You don’t say!” Faulkner breathed, bis face darkening. “A sur- prising number, you say?” “Yes. Quite understandable, I sup- pose. After all, Thorpe worked for you people, and got familiar with the processes you used. He is convinced, of course, that he would find the same true of other corporations after he has done further research.” His glasses came off with a smooth gesture, and he regarded Faulkner expectantly. His only outward sign of tension was an unthinking pluck- ing at the carpet with the sharp tine of a spur. Faulkner sat like a statue, his eyes ‘going from one of his callers to the other. His big torso broke into mo- tion with a startling jerk. “MeoReady!” he bawled, switching on the televox. “McReady! Get in here and drag a couple lawyers with you!” “Well, damn it,” he continued with obvious irritation. “I can see that I badly underestimated. you, Thorpe.” “Tm afraid we don’t understand,” Cribb said rather hurriedly, before Thorpe could speak. “Sure,” said Faulkner, his face get- ting grim. “Sure you don’t.” He took a deep breath and forced a smile onto the lower half of his big face. “I guess I know when I might get put in a corner. And that’s the time when I shut up and let the lawyers do the talking.” Suiting action to the word, he settled back in his director’s chair OTHER WORLDS and folded his arms across his Lolly jacket. His level, hard gaze was solely on Cribb. ne “Um,” said the lawyer cautiously, slitting his eyes. “An example which I suppose you think I should fol- low?” si “Suit yourself,’ Faulkner shrugged. “I know what I’ll say in front of Thorpe and what I won't, if that’s what you mean.” “All very puzzling, of course,” Cribb smiled. “But I think I can see clearly what my obligation to my young friend is.” “Your client, you mean.” “Well, I am sure he’d be guided by me,” Cribb admitted. He turned to Thorpe. “Willard,” he said, put- ting his glasses back on and firing a forceful glance at him. “I’m afraid the misunderstanding between you and Mr. Faulkner is such that your interests would be advanced more — rapidly in your absence.” He smiled thinly. “In other words, why not let me handle this from here on?” “T think I'd like to hear it,” Thorpe . suggested, not sure of his cue. “How true,” Cribb agreed, nod- ding strongly. “But apparently Mr. Faulkner feels that he and I can come to some kind of arrangement here and now, without the need of bis consulting his Directors. Isn’t that — so, Mr. Faulkner?” “Something like that,” he said, rocking in the chair. “What do you say, Willard?” “Oh, sure,” he said, getting too quickly to his feet. They were mak~- ing him feel young and foolish again. sd iia ie la in| | Re

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< PATENT MEDICINE 85 Things were a little ahead of plan, but Cribb appeared to have the situa- tion in his palm. He left, with only one knowing glance at the flat-chested reception- ist with the big metal bra cups. There might be something there at that, he mused magnanimously, feeling a lot better about the world. RIBB called him late in the af- ternoon. \“Better come to my office,’ he said, scowling into the transmitter. “Well?’’ Thorpe demanded, the in- staat he faced Cribb across the spur- _ scarred desk. “How'd we do?” “Not all bad,” Cribb said irritably. “Why didn’t you tell me what a mare’s nest you were leading me in-~ to?” “What?” Thorpe gasped. “You got me in a hell of a pickle, that’s what!” Cribb exclaimed, sud- denly angry. He whipped off his glasses and threw them bouncingly to the cork desk top. “Now wait a minute,” Thorpe pro- tested. “Didn’t they make an offer?” “Sure. Sure they did.” “Well, then you're right. It wasn’t all bad.” “Hah!” He snatched the glasses up. “They made an offer all right! They offered to give us a general release from prosecution if we sign over all rights to the book, give them _ your collection of magazines, and agree to stay out of their hair, their friends’ hair, their relatives’ hair and their friends’ relatives’ hair!” Thorpe. fell back in his chair, “I don’t get it,” he moaned. “How can they—” “Conspiracy!” Cribb yelled at him, pounding the glasses back on his nose. “They've got me over a barrel, damn it!” “You?” ‘ “Sure. What a sucker they made out of me! They claim they can make ‘me testify that we got together to plan a scheme against them specifi- cally. And they can make it stick. They can prove I financed you. That takes me out of the status of an attorney, makes me a party to a conspiracy, and that way I can’t claim- our conversations were privi- leged. I'd have to_tell the court the whole damned story!” He heaved a tremulous sigh. “We’re in a mess!” ‘With long blinkings behind his glasses, Thorpe digested what he had been told. Slowly it added up. “All right,” he said wearily. “I should have known not to go up against Faulkner. What do I do?” “Sign the agreement. Take the re- lease and be damned glad to get it. You could get in a lot of trouble.” “You ,could sure get me here,” Thorpe said bitterly. “Now, wait a minute,” Cribb pro- tested, pulling off his glasses. “Oh, shut up!” Thorpe shrilled angrily. “And stop waving those damned fake glasses at me! So you’re the smartest lawyer in town! And it only took Faulkner ten minutes to give you the licking of your life! But Vl tell you this: I'll agree to drop anything that’s described in that book, or any future action on

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30 OTHER WORLDS any patents they own, but I won’t leave science fiction alone! It’s the only thing I really care about. They don’t get my collection. Just wrap it . up so I keep my books. I’ll agree to anything they say about their pat- ents,” Cribb wearily replaced his horn- rims. “All right,” he said, much sub dued. “I'll see what I can do.” “You'll. do it!” Thorpe growled. “Or I'll get you set down for mal- practice myself. Who retained you anyway?” “Hm,” said Cribb, skewering him with a glance over the top of his glasses, ‘‘An interesting question. What was the amount of that re- tainer again, Mr. Thorpe?” It seeemd a good note to leave on. Thorpe snarled wordless, almost tear- ful frustration and got out. Still, after a week of jockeying back and forth, while he refused to give ground, Thorpe got the agree- ment in the form he had demanded, and kept his treasured collection of science fiction. The moment he had the release in his hand, he bought time on the next newscast and in the printed papers. and ran a‘small advertisement: “PATENT ADVISORY SERV- ICE. Do your competitors en- joy a patent advantage over you? Do the big corporations keep: you out of your natural market with patent log-jams? Consult Willard Thorpe, expert at unraveling patent snarls.” Other than Faulkner’s prompt tel- evoxing, he got no response to it. Faulkner’s big, powerfully-beaked face glowered from the clearing screen. “What the devil,” he barked. ~ “Are you begging for a term in pris- on?” pie te “T don’t get you,” Thorpe said, peering through his horn-rims. “You agreed to leave this patent business alone,” Faulkner told him, “Sure, I faithfully promise I'll nev er have anything to do with any patents you own.” “Well, then, what’s this advertise- ment of yours?” : “Oh, there are millions of other patents, Faulkner,” Thorpe said, tel- ishing omission of the “Mr.” “Oh,” “Of course,” Thorpe continued brightly, drawing his glasses off his nose in the best Cribb manner. “Of course, you might be a licensee un- der some of them..That I couldn’t guarantee.” “What about it?” ~ Faulkner growled, his voice dropping low. “Well, as you said yourself, Faulk- ner, big corporations license patents they own to others. And they get the right to use the patents of others. under license. Now, it would be too | bad, I'll admit that right off, if one of your big ventures depended on some patent you are using under li- — cense, Yes, sir, it would break me up something awful if some small busi- ness-man who would like to get in on the gravy qf ‘making tungsten castings asked me to break the pat- ent under which you are a licensee, Knock hell out of the price of tung- sten castings!” ”

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y PATENT MEDICINE “You can’t do that, you puppy!” Faulkner stormed. “What?” Thorpe demanded, re- placing the glasses and peering at Faulkner as if he were a wriggling insect. “You heard me, damn it. And stop waving—” Thorpe’s roar of laughter cut him off. “Sure I can do it. Ask Cribb.’ he replied. The invitation was irresistible. Faulkner’s head swung to something out of range of his-transmitter. “What about that, Cribb?” he snapped, and then tried to catch himself. “Shut up!” he heard Cribb’s voice strain weakly, obviously some feet away from the microphone. “Too late, you boob!” Thorpe rubbed it in. “I heard him.” Cribb’s pointed features, plainly furious, ‘bulged into the screen in front of Faulkner’s, but only for an instant. One heave of the. big man’s hand swept him out of view again. “How did you know he was here?” he growled, getting to the heart of it. “He’s a boob, too,” Thorpe told him bluntly. “He told me you knew he had financed my research on the book I tried to sell you. How could you know, unless he told you? He's 87 too damned smart to let a thing like that slip out. The shyster sold me out, that’s all, and I knew it. And he let me sucker him into getting my kind of release.” “And you think you've got us, eh?” he said carefully. “Ves, I do, Mr. Faulkner,” Thorpe said, the earnestness creeping back into his voice. “Cribb couldn’t think beyond your royalties. I began to think, just as you said, that they weren’t the real dough. It was profits that counted. And this way I hit at the profits.” : “Okay,” Faulkner conceded wear- ily. “P'll put you on the payroll, too, Come on over.” “Not that easy,” Thorpe protest- ed. “I want—” “What the devil!” Faulkner blast- ed, back in character again. “I told you that you had us, Now shut up and get over here. We'll make a deal. Just you and me—no damned law- yers!” The screen went dead. Thorpe grinned. He took his glasses off and shook them at the blank screen.’ “You're damned tootin’,” he said. “And I get that receptionist with the tin bra for my secretary!” THE END

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My <P Mi Sta Ma ae a ont Contiachs By ae Sprague de Camp No. 3 The Land of the Lemurs Our fabled shores none ever reach, No mariner has found our beach, * Scarcely our mirage now is seen, And neighboring waves of floating green, Yet still the oldest charts contain Some dotted outline of our main... . ENTION of Lemuria in the M last chapter leads us on one hand to the science of paleo- geography—the geography of the earth during past geological ages— and on the other to the occult wing of Atlantism. The name “Lemuria” originated as follows: After the Darwinian revolu- tion had provided &cientists with a solid framework on which to hang the history of the earth and its life, the closing decades of the last cen- tury saw a great surge of activity in the fields of biology and geology. Gaps between geological eras were filled, former transgressions of the

*Slightly condensed from, Lost Conti- nents: The Atlantis Theme in History, Science, & Literature, by L. Sprague de Camp; Phila.; Prime Press, 1952; copr. 1952 by L. Sprague de Camp. 88 Thoreau sea over the land were mapped, and the pedigrees of horses, octopi, and other life-forms were traced. During the 1860's and 70’s a group of British geologists, including Stow and Blanford in India and Griesbach in Africa, noted striking resem- blances between certain formations in India and South Africa. Wiliam — T. Blanford pointed out the simi- larity between the rocks and fossils of a deposit of the Permian Period in Central India, in a tract called Gond- wana, and a corresponding deposit in South Africa. Gondwana, ‘mean- ing “Land of the Gonds,” is named for a forest tribe that ranges the tract and which once had the un- pleasant custom of slowly torturing people to death in magical rituals to make their crops grow. The Per-

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LOST CONTINENTS mian Period was the last division of the Paleozoic Era, just before the Mesozoic Era or Age of Reptiles: a cold dry mountainous period when the highest forms of life were rather nondescript lizard-like reptiles. Blanford and his colleagues in- ferred that South Africa and India were once connected by a land-bridge that included Madagascar with its peculiar mammals, the Aldabra Is- lands with their giant tortoises, the great Seychelles Reefs (pronounced “say-shell”), and the Maldive and - Laccadive Islands. These islands and teefs form the tops of an immense submarine mountain-range that winds like a sea-serpent from South Africa to the tip of India. These observations came to the no- tice of the Austrian paleontologist Neumayr and the German biologist Haeckel. In his Erdegeschichte (1887) Neumayr published the first known attempt at a paleogeographi- cal“map of the world, showing how he thought the world looked in Juras- sic time, that is, in the middle of the Age of Reptiles. It included a great “Brazilian-Ethiopian Conti- nent” from whose southeast corner extended an “Indo-Madagascan Pen- insula” corresponding to Blanford’s _ Permian land-bridge. Ernst Heinrich Haekel was then performing the same service for sci- ence in Germany that Thomas Hux- ley was doing in England—loud and belligerent advocacy of the revolu- tionary theories of Darwin. Haeckel seized unon the Indo-Madagascan Jand-bridge to explain the gistribu- 89 tion of lemurs, creatures looking like a cross between a squirrel and a monkey, standing below. the true monkeys on our family tree, Lemurs abound in Madagascar, and are also found here ance’ there in Africa, India, and the Malay Archipelago. If, thought Haeckel, the Madagascan land-bridge had endured from the Permian to the Jurassic; why not into the Cenozoic Era or Age of Mam- mals? In a burst of exuberance Haeckel went on to suggest that this sunken land might be the original home of man, since the finding of fossil forms intermediate between men and apes had not really begun at this time. (Now over a dozen such forms are known.) Then the English zoologist Philip L. Sclater suggested the name “Lemuria” for this bridge. The name has stuck, although it now appears that Haeckel was probably wrong about Lemuria’s lasting into the Cen- ozoic, and most paleontologists think they can account for the distribution yof lemurs without it. Other investigators suggested that Lemuria was a remnant of a much larger and earlier continent, which they called Gondwanaland and thought once reached three-quarters of the way around the world in the Southern Hemisphere with a gap in, the Pacific. These hypothetical con- tinents, however, have little to do with Atlantism, for even if they ex- isted they broke up long before men evolved. Nevertheless they have been exploited by occultists and Atlanto- maniacs for their own purposes. i

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90 OTHER WORLDS’ ee ae a ~~ cay ANTARKTISCHER OZEANK THE FIRST WORLD PALEOGEOGRAPHICAL MAP, from Neumayr’s Erdegeschichte (1887) showing his hypothetical Brazilo-Ethiopian continent and the Afro-Indian peninsula later called “Lemuria.” HE greatest of modern occultists, the successor of Simon Magus and Cagliostro, was Helena P. Bla- vatsky, the founder of Theosophy. At the time she entered the current of Atlantism, in the 1870’s, she was a fat middle-aged Russian woman liv- ing in New York City. She was the estranged wife of a Russian general, and had been successively the mis- tress of a Slovenian singer, an Eng- lish businessman, a Russian baron, and a merchant from the Caucasus living in Philadelphia, and had made her living as a circus bareback rider, a professional pianist, a businesswom- an, a sweat-shop-worker, and a Spir- » itualist medium. Altogether she had led a pretty lively career, though in later years she undertook to gild re- finéd gold and paint the lily by in- venting an even more remarkable past wherein she was a persecuted virgin who travelled the wide world in search of occult wisdom. Mme. Blavatsky took as her occult partner Henry Steel Olcott, a shrewd American lawyer who left wife and sons to live with her. Theosophy real- ly got started when the pair moved to India, where Mme. Blavatsky learned to combine her considerable knowledge of Western magic and oc- cultism with a wide and inaccurate smattering of East Indian philosophy, and mythology. She led a fascinating | fia

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LOST CONTINENTS 91 and turbulent existence, and kept a hold on a sizeable body of followers even after she had been exposed in many chicaneries. In 1882 she was dazzling a pair of well-connected _Anglo-Indian dupes, the newspaper editor Arnold P. Sinnett and the government offi- cial Alan Octavian Hume, by de- livering letters she said were written by her “Master” Koot Hoomi, but which, as handwriting analysis later showed, she wrote herself. In these letters she was slowly feeling her way to that stunning occult cosmog- ony that she later advanced, a vast synthesis of Eastern and Western magic and myth about the seven planes of existence, the sevenfold cy- cles’ through which everything evolves, the seven Root Races of man- kind, the seven bodies that each of us carries with him, and the Broth- erhood of Mahatmas who run the world from headquarters in Tibet by sending out streams.of occult force and bustling about the world in their astral bodies. Mme. Blavatsky had picked up the Lemuria theory in the course of her reading and incorporated it, along with Atlantis, into her own gaudy cosmos. She dropped a few hints on these subjects in her Mahatma let- ters. Subsequently her doctrines took final if wildly confused form in her chef d’oeuvre, The Secret Doctrine, which she wrote in Europe after a couple of accomplices who assisted in the production of her thauma- turgic feats betrayed her, forcing her to leave India. This huge work is supposedly based upon the Book of Dzyan (pro- nounced “John”), of which her Ma- hatmas showed her a manuscript copy, written on palm-leaf pages, in the trances in which she and they visited one another. The. book, we are told, was originally composed in At- lantis in the forgotten Senzar lan- guage. The Secret Doctrine consists of quotations from the Dzyan and Mme. Blavatsky’s lengthy commen- taries thereon, interspersed with pas- sages of occult gibberish and dia- tribes against “materialistic” science and “dogmatic” religion. The Stanzas of Dzyan begin: “1. The Eternal Parent, wrapped in her Ever-invisible Robes, had slumbered once again for Seven Eternities. “2. Time was not, for it lay asleep in the Infinite Bosom of Duration. “3. Universal Mind was not, for there were no Ah-hi to con- tain it. “4. The Seven Ways of Bliss were not...” Presently the Universe begins to awaken: “The last Vibration of the Seventh Eternity thrills through In- finitude. The Mother swells, expand- ing from without, like the Bud of the Lotus,.Gsii After various cosmic events, de- scribed in this opaquely iridescent language, life appears on earth: “Af- ter great throes she cast off her old Three and put on her new Seven

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92 _OTHER WORLDS Skins, and stood in her first one.” (The earth seems to be conceived as a sort of cosmic stripteuse.) “The Wheel whirled for thirty crores more. It constructed Ripas; soft Stones that hardened, hard Plants that soft- ened. Visible from invisible, Insects and small Lives... . The Water- men, terrible and bad, she herself created from the remains of others. . .. The great .Chohans called the Lords of the Moon, of the Airy Bodies: ‘Bring forth Men, Men of your nature. .. .’ Animals with bones, dragons of the deep, flying Sarpas were added to the creeping things. .. .” Without going into the elaborate Theosophical worldyplan of multiple planes of existence, chains of planets following each other from plane to plane like the horses on a carousel, and other vagaries, we are told that the history of the earth runs thus: Life evolves through seven cycles or “Rounds,” during which mankind de- velops through seven Root Races, each comprising seven sub-races. The First Root Race, a kind of astral jellyfish, lived on an Imperishable Sacred Land. The Second, a little more substantial dwelt in the form- er arctic continent of Hyperborea. The Third were the apelike herma- phroditic egg laying Lemurians, some with four arms and some with an eye in the back of their heads, whose downfall was caused by their discov- ery of sex. (Mme. Blavatsky took a poor wiew of sex, at least- after she got too old to enjoy it herself.) The Fourth Root Race were the quite hu- man Atlanteans. We are the Fifth, and the Sixth will soon appear. Hyperborea, like Atlantis, is de- rived from ancient Greek geographi- cal speculations. The Hyperboreans were supposed to live in the Far North, either on an island or on the mainland of Europe or Asia. The usual locale was the northern coast of Asia, behind the imaginary Ripha- ean Mountains. Never having been there, the Greeks imagined that the Arctic was a fine place with a balmy climate, where men lived a thousand * years: On every side are the dances of maid- ens and sounds of the lyre Circling forever, and notes of the flute; as they revel in gladness, Crowned is their hair with the bay- leaves of gold; and no sickness afflicts these ; Fortunate people, or age always hate- flees O far as is known no Greek had ever visited the Far North until in Plato’s time the city of Massalia _ (our Marseilles) sent Pytheas to scout Northern Europe to see where their trade-goods were coming from. Pytheas coasted as far as the mou of the Rhine, saw Britain, and heard of an island far to the north called Thulé. This was probably the Shet- lands or Orkneys, though some have argued for Norway or Iceland. Be- yond Thulé, he was told, one could not go, for there the land, sea, and air ho longer existed as separate ele- ments, but were mixed together in a

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LOST CONTIN: EN TS 93 kind of cosmic pudding, with the con- sistency of a jellyfish. Perhaps some- body had merely been giving the in- trepid Massiliot a hyperbolic descrip- tion of an arctic fog: “so thick you could cut it with a knife!” Hyperboreans, it was said, wor- “shipped Apollo, and a wizard-priest named Abaris worshipped so well that the god in gratitude gave him a golden javelin-on which he flew about the earth as on a witch’s broomstick. He visited Greece where he stopped 'a plague at Sparta by -his magic. then went or to Italy where he stud- ied occultism under Pythagoras be- fore returning to Hyperborea. But to return to the mysterious Madame and her book: The Secret Doctrine, 1 grieve to say, is neither so ancient, so erudite, nor so authen- tic as it pretends to be. For when it appeared, the learned but humorless old William Emmette Coleman, out- - raged by Madam Blavatsky’s preten- sions to Oriental learning, Wndertook a complete exegesis of her works. He showed that her main sources were H. H. Wilson’s translation of the Visnu Purana; Alexander Winchell’s World Life, or, Comparative Ge- ology; Donnelly’s Atlantis; and other contemporary scientific and occult works, plagiarized without credit and used in a blundering manner that showed but skin-deep acquaintance with the subjects under discussion. She cribbed at least part of her Stanzas of Dzyan from the Hymn of Creation in the old Sanskyit Rig- Veda, as a comparison of the two compositions will readily show. Cole- man promised a book that should ex- pose all of H.P.B.’s sources, includ- ing that of the word Dzyan. Unfor- tunately Coleman lost his library and notes in the San Francisco earth- quake and died three years later, his book unwritten. Madame _ Blavatsky’s _ lost-conti- nent doctrines seem to be based largely on the works of Donnelly, Harris, and Jacolliot. Her contem- porary Thomas Lake Harris was a poet, ex-Universalist preacher, and associate of the early Spiritualist © leader Andrew Jackson Davis about the middle of the century. Harris soon split with Davis and set up his own cult, first in Chautauqua County, New York, and later in California. His cult had a lurid history, for Har- ris (like the notorious Purnell of the House of David) denied sex to his followers but enjoyed it himself. Harris's voluminous writings, like those of H.P.B., comprised a synthe- sis of the occultisms of India and the West, with multiple planes of exis- tence, a fantastic account of life on other worlds and in the many heav- sens and hells surrounding these worlds, the sex-life of angels, and interviews with distinguished dead persons like Galileo. The earth, it seems, is the only planet where moral evil exists. There once was another, Ariana, but God impatiently shat- tered it into meteors. The human race has gone through a succession of Golden, Silver, and Copper Ages, in the course of which it was guided for a time by Adepts from Venus. Evil, especially, the sorceries prac-

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94 OTHER WORLDS ticed in Atlantis, finally brought on a series of catastrophes which sub- mergéd Atlantis and other places, and which are remembered as the Bibli cal Flood. * H. P. B.’s other Atlantis source. the prolific but unreliable French writer Louis Jacolliot (1837-1890) made a collection of Sanskrit myths during a sojourn in India and popu- larized these in his books when he got back to France. According to him the Hindu classics tell of a former continent called Rutas in the Indian Ocean, which sank beneath the wa- ters. Jacolliot interpreted these myths as referring to a former Pacific conti- nent, embracing all the Polynesian islands, where civilization began and of whose submergence Plato’s Atlantis story is but an “echo,” When Rutas sank, other lands like India rose from the sea. ATER Theosophical writers like Sinnett and Madame Blavat- sky’s successor Annie Besant (rhymes with “pleasant”) clothed H. P. B.’s somewhat skeletal account of lost continents with a substantial body of detail. They tell, however, a story quite different from that of Pla- to, altogether ignoring his paleo-Ath- ens and its war with Atlantis. Thus the English Theosophist W. Scott-Elliot claimed to have received the following revelation fromthe The- osophical Masters by “astral clairvoy- ance”: The men of the First Root Race, living in the polar “Sacred Land” or Polarea, had astral bodies only, and therefore would be invisible to us. If our clairvoyant powers en- abled us to see them at all they would look like gigantic egg-shaped phantoms. They reproduced by fis- sion like- amebas. Pi While the men of the Second Root Race had physical bodies, as these were made of ether they, too, would be invisible to all but trained occul- tists. They lived in the great north- ern continent of Hyperborea, of which Greenland, Iceland, and the northern extremities of Europe and Sibera are remnants. These geo- graphical details are colorfully iHus- trated by the maps which Scott-El- liot copied from occult records and which are tucked into pockets in the covers of his books. In due course Hyperborea ‘broke up” and the equally great southern continent of Lemuria took form, Le- muria flourished in the Mesozoic Era and hence was infested by dinosaurs and other dangerous reptiles. Ptero- saurs flew through the air on leathery wings; ichthyosaurs and plesiosqins swarm the marshes. When the Manu, one of the super- natural supervisors of the Theosophi- cal universe, decided to bring human evolution a step further forward, he took as his model the ape-like crea- tures that had already evolved on other planets. The Manu’s first at- tempt resulted in jelly-like things with soft bones who could not stand up, but in time the structure of their bodies, hardened. These primitive and dim-witted Lemurians were hard- ly more attractive than the reptiles with which they shared the earth,

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7 Re LOST CONTINENTS 95 LEMORIA ua greatest extent % | Tis at Hi THE THEOSOPHICAL LEMURIA at its greatest extent, according to Scott-Elliot, Lemuria occupies much an extension into the North Pacific. of the southern hemisphere with Dark splotches represent moun- tainous areas. Remnants of Hlyperborea appear in the extreme North From some unnamed source the author quotes a description of a Le- murian: He was between twelve and fifteen feet tall with a brown skin, a flat face with a protruding muzzle, and small eyes set so wide apart that he could see siteways as well as for- ward. He had no forehead, but was furnished with a third eye in back, which among us is still represented by the pineal gland in the brain. His long limbs could not be completely straightened, and he had huge hands and feet, the heels of which stuck out so far to the rear that he could walk equally well backward and for- ward. He wore a loose robe of rep- tile skin, carried a wooden spear, and led a pet plesiosaur on a leash. By a strange coincidence, within the last decade scientists have found in southeastern Asia the bones and

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_ 96 teeth of enormous early-Pleistocene ape-men, Gigantanthropus and Me- ganthropus, of whom the largest spec- imens seem to have been bigger than a full-grown 500-pound gorilla. ‘These monsters match the Theosophical Le- murians in size if not in much else. Of course this does not prove that the Theosophists knew what they were talking about, any more than ‘Plato's mention of ‘the “Outer Con- tinent” shows that he knew of Amer- ica. It is perfectly possible to hit’ upon a scientific fact by pure chance, though random guesswork is not rec- ommended as a method of scientific researclr. While originally egg-laying herma- phrodites, the Lemurians began to learn about sex during the period of their Eourth Sub-Race, and by their Fifth Sub-Race were reproduc- ing their kind as we dc. Being stupid things, they interbred with beasts, « the products of thiseperverted union being the great apes. This sin so re- volted the Lhas, the supernatural beings who according to the cosmic plan were supposed at this stage to incarnate in human bodies, that the Lhas refused to do their duty. Accordingly other beings, from Venus which had already developed a high civilization, volunteered to take the Lhas’ place. These “Lords of the Flame” guided faltering hu- mankind to the point where the Le- murians became capable of individ- ual immortality and reincarnation, The Venerians also taught the Le- murians the arts of keeping fire, met- allurgy, weaving, and agriculture. By OTHER WORLDS the time the Lemurians reached their Seventh Sub-Race they looked fairly human. Their descendants on earth today are such primitive peoples as the Lapps, the Australian aborigines, and the Andaman Islanders. Their language is the direct progenitor of Chinese, albeit the Chinese people are descended from the much later Turanian race. Towards the end’of the Mesozoic Era, Lemuria, like Hyperborea_ be- fore it, began to break up by the sinking of its various parts, while. the peninsula that curved into the North Atlantic grew into Atlantis. At the same time the Fourth Root Race, the Atlantean, appeared. The first Sub- Race of this Root Race, the Rmoa- hals, moved from the remnants of Lemuria to Atlantis, though some of them stayed behind and interbred with the surviving Lemurians, the re- sulting half-breeds looking like Amer- ican Indians with blue skins. The first Rmoahals, black-skinned men ten or twelve feet tall, settled on thé southern coast of Atlantis and fought endless wars with the Sixth and Seventh Sub-Races of the Le- murians. Organized warfare was in- vented at this time, though the Le- murians had previously indulged in desultory raiding and murder, With the passage of ages the Rmoahals grew shorter; some migrated to northern Atlantis where their skins became lighter, thamgh they were twice driven back to the tropics by glacial advances. The Cré-Magnons, a stalwart race from Europe’s Old Stone Age, were their direct descen-

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LOST CONTINENTS 97 dants. It seems there 1s a minor glacial period every 30,000 years and a major glacial period every 3,000,- 000; one of the latter came on dur- ing the Rmoahal period. The next Sub-Race, the Tlavatlis, were a hardly reddish-brown people. not quite so tall as the Rmoahals, who originated in an island off the west coast of Atlantis, where Mexico is now. These migrated to the mountainous region of Atlantis. whence they eventually spread out over the continent and dispossessed the Rmoahals. Whereas the bestial Lemurians and the childish Rmoah- als where incapable of self-govern- ment, the Tlavatlis had attained the point of choosing chiefs or kings by acclamation. The next Sub-Rate, the Toltecs. ushered in thé great period of Atlan- tean glory, in the early part of the Age of Mammals. They were red- skins. a mere eight feet tall and hand- some. (Mrs. Besant, who liked to go Scott-Elliot one better, made them twenty-seven feet tall with bodies of rock-hard consistency). They discov- ered the principle of hereditary mon- archy, and for thousands of years their kings ruled them wisely because they kept in touch with the super- natural Adepts, as the legendary Roman king Numa Pompilius is sup- posed to have obtained advice from the nymph Egeria. Unhappily the, Toltecs degener- ated after 100,000 years of this splen- did culture. They resorted to sorcery and phallic worship and used their great psychic powers for personal ag- grandizement. “No longer submitting to the wise rule of the Initiate em- perors, the followers of the ‘black arts’ rose in rebellion and set up a tival emperor, who after much strug- gle and fighting drove the white emperor from his capital, the ‘City of the Golden Gates,’ and established himself on his throne.” The white emperor took refuge with a tributary king, while dynasties of sorcerers like the “demon king” Thevatat created and worshipped elemental _ spirits with bloods; rites. At this time the next Sub-Race, the Turanians, appeared and fought with the Toltecs. The newcomers were a lawless, turbulent, cruel, and brutal lot, ruthless and irresponsible individualists who to increase their population for warfare practiced complete sexual ‘promis¢uity. Their descendants, the Aztecs, carried on their fradition of cruelty. At this time also, about 800,000 years ago, a catastrophe caused much of Atlan-~ tis, including the part ruled by the sorcerers, to sink beneath the ocean, reducing it from a real continent to a large island, while islands increased in size on their way to becoming the present continents, Asia and the rest. The Turanians migrated to Asia, where on the plains of Tatary they gave rise to the more civilized and psychically. gifted Mongolians, the Seventh Sub-Race. Just how these races started is left vague. The Fifth and Sixth Sub-Races, the Semites and Akkadians, also came into being now. The former, who originated in the northern At-

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98 OTHER WORLDS lantean peninsulas that now comprise Ireland and Scotland, were a-discon- tented, quarrelsome, energetic folk living under a patriarchal social scheme and constantly raiding their neighbors, especially the law abiding Akkadians. After another catastro- phe, 200,000 years ago, reduced At- lantis to two Atlantic islands, big northern Ruta and small*southern Daitya, a dynasty of Semite sorcer- ers ruled the City of the Golden Gates in Daitya while Toltec sor- cerers reigned in Ruta. About 100,000 years ago the Ak- kadians drove the Semites from At- lantis. The Akkadians, enterprising colonizers with strong legal and com- mercial instincts, also settled the Le- vant; the Basques represent them to- day. Then another subsidence 80,000 years ago submerged Daitya and re- duced Ruta to about the size of France and Spain combined. It was this island, properly called Poseido- nis, of whose final submergence Plato wrote, Banning, another occult At- lantist, tells us that when Poseidonis sank in 9564 B.C., the world as- sumed its present shape, but not per- manently, for one of these days the continent of the next Root Race (which Banning calls by the repel- lant name of “Numerica’’) will rise _from the Pacific. Then in the remote future still another continent (“Nu- lantis’”) will appear, comprising the South Atlantic Ocean and parts of the adjacent continents. ~ Before each of these catastrophes the initiate priests, warned by occult means, would lead a migration of the worthier sections of their people to new lands. Thus it came to pass that before the subsidence of 200,000 years ago, the Occult Lodge founded the Divine Dynasty in Egypt and built the two great pyramids at Gi- zeh, which later generations mistak- enly attributed to Kings Khufu and Khafra of historic times. Subsequent- ly Egypt was flooded during the sub- mergence of Daitya, but the people, forewarned, had fled to Ethiopia whence they repopulated their land when the water subsided. Their ree- ords were also preserved, having been stored in the pyramids. The dunking of Poseidonis sent another earth- quake wave over Egypt, ending the Divine Dynasty, but Egypt nonethe- less recovered. The Manu, seeing in’ the intellec- tual powers of the Semites the best future prospects for human develop- ment, led a chosen band of these folk to Central Asia where they evolved into the Aryans—the Fifth Root: Race who include the modern Hindus and Europeans. Scott-Elliot drops only a dark hint about the place of the Jews in this Semite- Aryan scheme, to the effect that they “constitute an abnormal and unnatu- ral link between the Fourth and Fifth Root Races.” The tale of migrations and intermixtures out of which came the modern racial makeup of man- kind is set forth in such detail as to be impractical for us to try to follow out. Scott-Elliot goes on to describe life in Atlantis. Under the Toltec em- perors the Atlanteans were subject to

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_among the masses. LOST CONTINENTS 99 a collectivistic despotism like that of the Inca Empire of Peru—which in- deed was derived froni Atlantis.‘The emperor owned everything, and ruled through a squad of viceroys, under whose guidance the peasantry prac- ticed agriculture. The viceroys col- lected each crop, set aside a part for the government and another for the priesthood, and divided the rest 1 The system worked so well that Atlantis knew ho poverty until in the days of de- cadence the ruling class became sel- fish and oppressive and the system broke down. The Atlanteans raised wheat, brought from another planet by a Manu, and other grains such as oats which were crosses between wheat and earthly plants. The greatest feat of Atlantean agronomists was the cre- ation of the banana. They domesti- cated animals resembling the modern tapir, leopard, llama, and wolf, and for meat and leather kept herds of half-wild Irish elk in parks. They ate vegetables, bread, milk, meat, and fish. They showed peculiar taste with _ regard.to the last two items, prefer- ring their fish rotten and what are to us the less palatable organs for meat. _ They also drank blood. However, the kings and priests, being true initiates, were vegetarians. Drunkenness once became so common that they adopted prohibition. The Atlanteans practiced equality of the sexes, though bigamy was al- lowed and sometimes practiced. Their education was highly organ- ized, but higher education was furn- = ished the élite only. The masses were not even taught to read and write, but were confined to vocational training. The élite wrote on metal sheets and duplicated their writing by a proce ess like mimeographing. As artis they were indifferent painters, “fond of garish colors, but good sculptors and superb architects -who built: gi- gantic structures. A Toltec house al- ways had an astronomical observa- tory attached. There were no shops, since all buying and selling was done in private houses. Their sciences were highly devel- oped. Alchemists made precious met- als in any quantity wanted; astrol- ogers advised the viceroys on forth- coming weather conditions to enable the latter to plan farming operations. In war they fought with swords, spears, bows, and gas-bombs thrown from catapults. Their aircraft were boat-shaped structures made of ply- wood and light alloys, and propelled by jets of the vri-force invented by the Victorian novelist Bulwer-Lytton in his short novel, Te Coming Race, wherein a race of underground super- men use this invincible and mentally directed force to blast rocks and monsters. These aircraft had a ceiling of 1000 feet (the air being less dense than it now is) and a maximum speed of 100 m.p.h. Only the rich possessed private aircraft. The emperor had a fleet of aétial warships carrying 50 to 100 men each, whose method of fighting was to play their jets on one another until one upset the other | and rammed it while it was helptess. They also sailed the seas in ships

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100 propelled by a similar force. Atlantean religion alternated be- tween worship of the Manu and sun- worship, descending in degenerate imes to diabolism and the worship tatues of themselves by rich men. The “City of the Golden Gates re- sembled Plato’s city of Atlantis, with the addition of waterworks, a guest- house where strangers were boarded free, and a population of two million. Altogether life in the Theosophi- cal Atlantis resembles nothing so much as life on Mars as pictured in 8 Tmt WonLD ABOUT 1,000,000 YEARS AGO. DURING MANY PREVIOUS OTHER WORLDS the Martian novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs. The schismatic Theosophical lead- er Rudolf Steiner added details about the psychology of the Lemurians and Atlanteans in his Lemuria and At- lantis. Steiner, a tall bellowing Aus- trian with a fine collection of uni- versity degrees, was a power in Eu- ropean Theosophy until in 1907 he broke with the parent organization over the issue of Mrs. Besant’s de- ification of the young Hindu Krish- namurti, He seceded with 2400 fol- i RR AIES. ANO UP TO THE CATASTROPHE OF ABOUT 800,000 YEARS ATLANTIS ire Paine z c 7 r | TELE WORK THE THEOSOPHICAL ATLANTIS in its prime, according to Scott- Elliot. Atlantis occupies most of the Atlantic Ocean; Lemuria takes in southern Asia, Australia, and adjacent regions.

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inne . LOST CONTINENTS lowers and formed a new cult, the Anthroposophical Society, with head- quarters at Dornach, Switzerland, where he reigned until his death in 1925.: - The Lemurians, according to Stein- er, possessed such feeble mental powers that while they could visu- alize things, they could neither re- member their mental images nor use them for rational thought. They therefore had to get along on “in- stinct” or “indwelling spiritual force.” Still, they had more control over nature than we have because of their great development of will-pow- er, by which they could even lift great weights. Lemurian education aimed at increasing ‘this will-power _ by training young Lemurians to bear pain. Along with individual souls, the Le- i murians developed the rudiments of Speech towards the end of their racial history, Before they became divided ‘into two sexes they had but little sense of sight; for a while they man- aged with a single eye. As long as ___ the soul dominated the body, the soul being neuter, the body was also sex- less, but at last the increasing density of matter forced sex to develop. Even 80, for a long time after this interest- ing innovation, sexual intercourse was looked upon not as a pleasure but as a sacred duty. Lemurian wom- en, being more spiritual than the -men and much: given to mystic trances, were the first to develop a sense of right and wrong. The Atlanteans likewise could not reason or calculate, but they had the 101 advantage over their predecessors of possessing fine memories for mental images. Atlantean education, in fact, consisted chiefly of training the mem- ory to hold images, so that an adult Atlantean had a vast store of them available and when confronted with a problem solved it by remembering a precedent. When facing a novel sit- uation, however, he had either to ex- periment blindly or to give up. Under these conditions the Atlanteans were far from progressive. The Atlanteans were masters of the “life force” of growing things, such as a grain of wheat, and by this force they operated their aircraft, for in- stance, They also (especially the Rmoahals) grasped the magical pow- er of words and used the occult ener- gies of these words to accomplish work on the material plane. For ex- ample words could heal wounds or tame wild beasts. The Atlantean was more “natural” and instinctive in his powers and conduct than we are; he had absolute control over his physi- cal forces, and his towns grew accord- ing to natural laws like an organism, The Toltecs achieved the power of conferring upon their descendants their individual collections of “life- pictures,” thus furnishing the latter with ready-made equipment to guide their actions throughout life. When the Semites appeared, .men were losing control over the life-force and selfish individualism had become rampant. The Semites accordingly developed the power of reasoning as a counter to these changes, and along with reason a conscience. Their des-

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102 cendants the Aryans developed these faculties still further. INCE the time of Helena Bla- vatssy, Atlahtis and other lost continents have become standard fix- tures in bodies of Western occult doctrine. Similar syntheses of East- ern and Western occultism, complete with Atlantis, Lemuria, an eight-de mensional universe, reincarnation. pyramidology, and the like have been proffered by the learned contempo- rary occultist Manly P.'Hall and by the late hillbilly clairvoyant-diagnos- tician Edgar Cayce (pronounced * “Casey”), While an American physi- cian-turned-occultist, W. P. Phelon, enrolled people in his Hermetic Brotherhood of Atlantis, Luxor, and Elephante (into which he said he had been inducted by initiates in Egypt) the notorious English wizard Aleister Crowley (rhymes | with “holy”), who liked to be known as “the wickedest man in the world,” included a society of Atlantean Adepts among his many gudgeon- traps. To continue, R. Swinburne Cly- mer, who published the sécond edi-' tion of Phelon’s book and who runs a Rosicrucian Foundation in Pennsyl- vania_ rivalling the better-known AMORC, assures the readers of his own voluminous works that his so- ciety preserves the original, authentic Atlantean fire-worship of which all modern creeds and sects are but cor- rupted descendants. According to Clymer, the Atlanteans’ downfall oc- curred when, becoming overconfident OTHER WORLDS as a result of their scientific and magical accomplishments, they tried to visit God uninvited. This rash act, by upsetting the balance-of natural forces, caused the sinking of the con- tinent. Remnants of the Atlanteans, nevertheless, still preserve the an- cient wisdom in their hideouts in Yu- catan. Atlantis has of course been con- tacted through the spirit world, though there is little consistency among the widely varying accounts of Atlantean language and culture ob- tained from this source—in fact, about as little as among mediumistic accounts of the spirit world itself. In the early years of this cegtury J. B. Leslie interviewed Atlantean — ghosts through a Spiritualist medium and published the information thus obtained in a huge 805-page book that included tables of Atlantean let- ters, numbers, and musical notations, and there have been other revela- tions of this sort as well. EANWHILE, other occultists moved Lemuria from the In- dian Ocean (where Mme, Blavatsky at least had the grace to leave it) several thousand miles to the Cen- tral Pacific, where Jacolliot had lo cated. his lost land of Rutas. Another contemporary of H. P. B., John Ballou Newbrough, after a suc- cessful career as a gold-miner, phy- sician, dentist, and Spiritualist med- ium, wrote an ersatz Bible called Oahspe. This book is full of such extraordinary misinformation as that Thoth founded the Muhammedan re-

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ligion, and unfulfilled prophecies to the effect that all men would soon leave their present religions to join Newbrough’s pacifistic, vegetarian Je- hovists. Newbrough claimed that the he wrote it by automatic writing. " Oahspe includes a map of the earth in antediluvian times with a _ large triangular continent called _ “Pan filling most.of the northern _ Pacific. The author printed a Panic _ dictionary and a Panic alphabet, the latter consisting mostly of little cir- cles with patterns and pictures in them. His doctrines are explained in more detail by his follower Wing An- derson, who runs a Kosmon Press in Los Angeles and is on record as hav ing predicted that Franklin Roose ~ yelt would be succeeded by a fascist dictator in 1940, that there would _ be an American civil war by 1944 and that Hitler would be swept away by domestic revolution before he got . around to attacking the United Bt States. Man, according to Newbrough and Anderson, appeared 72,000 years ago when angels materialized on earth and interbred with a species of seal- } like animals, the A’su, to beget the Thins. These in turn crossed with the A’su to produce the Druk, who crossed with the V’hins to engender the Ghans-us. The African and Asi- __ atic peoples are the remnants of the _ Druks. Anderson gives a table show- ing the proportion. of angelic blood carried by each of these breeds, though he seems to have gotten his fractions mixed up. Pan or Mu dis- ee LOST CONTINENTS book was of angelic origin and that’ 103 appeared 24,000 years ago, but is soon to rise again from the Pacific,” and will be inhabited by the Kosmon race, formed by the amalgamations of all the present races. The Mil- lenium will begin in 1980. A writer named Frederick Spencer Oliver (nof to be confused with Pred, rick Scott Oliver the novelist) con- tributed to the Pacific-Lemuria con- cept with a tiresome occult novel, A Dweller on Two Planets (1894) which he wrote under the name of “Phylos the Tibetan.” In this story the narrator tells how he met his Master, a Chinese named Quong on Mount Shasta in Northern California. Quong:not only cured the narrator of his anti-Chinese prejudices but also tamed bears and pumas by a word (as St. Francis was supposed to have done with a wolf) and inducted the narrator into an order of sages who preserved the wisdom of the ancients at their Shasta headquarters. These magi took him on a tour of the planet Venus in his spiritual body, and also taught him to remem- ber his previous incarnations. He thus learned that when he was Zailm Numinos of Atlantis he had risen by hard®work and good luck from a poor miner’s son to prince of the realm, and had done very well until he got involved with two women at once, The main cities of Atlantis or Poseid were Idosa, Terna, Marzeus, Corosa, Numea, and. Caiphul. The land prospered under an elective monarchy; the Rai or emperor being chosen by an aristocracy Of priests (Incala) and scientists (Xioqua). The

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104 Atlanteans were of course very scien- tific, having aircraft (vailxi) and television. This tale influenced Edgar Lucien ~ Larkin, an elderly occultist who for some years before his death in 1924 ran the Mount Lowe Observatory in California—not to be confused with the nearby Mount Wilson Observa- tory. Whereas the latter is a great scientific institution, the Mount Lowe Observatory was operated as a tourist attraction by the Pacific Elec- tric Railway in connection with their Mount Lowe Inn. Larkin showed vis- itors the stars through a small tele- scope until in the 1930’s the tele- scope mechanism broke down and the Inn burned. Larkin asserted that he had spied upon the Lemuyians of Mount Shasta through a telescope, learning that a thousand of them lived in a ‘“‘mystic village” built around a great Maya- style tempie. Occasionally, he said, they appeared in neighboring towns, clad in long white robes, polite but taciturn, to buy supplies (mostly sul- phur, salt, and lard) which they paid for with gold nuggets. Every mid- night they celebrated their escape from Lemuria with ceremonies that flooded the mountain with red-and- green light. However, they did not welcome visitors, and those who tried to penetrate their retreat either failed to find it or disappeared. Eight years after Larkin’s death, one Edward Lanser made a feature story of the Shasta Lemurians for the Los Angeles Sunday Times, wherein Lanser. himself claimed to have seen OTHER. WORLDS the transcendental fireworks of the Lemurians from a train passing Mount Shasta. A clipping of this story excited the learned Scottish mythologist Lewis Spence to make much of it in his Problem of Le- muria .. . but we shall come back to Spence’s theories later. Occultists and pseudo-scientists still exploit the Shasta Lemurians and their nightgowns-despite the fact that campers and state forest officials wan- . der freely over Shasta all the time without meeting these interesting people. W. S. Cervé, for instance, credits them with aircraft and Eng- lish accents. Cervé’s book, published by Clymer’s enemies the Rosicru- cians of San Jose, combines Lemuria and Atlantis with the Jewish-Indian theory and Wegener’s hypothesis of continental drift. The Mayas, it seems, were. descendants of Atlan- teans and Lemurians, whereas all the other Amerinds were derived from the Lost Ten Tribes. Cervé’s Lemur- jans had a bump in the middle of their foreheads—a telepathic organ. Finally the late Guy, Warren Bal- lard, alias Godfré Ray King, founder of the I AM cult, claimec to have met his personal Master, Saint Ger- main, on Mount Shasta. Saint Ger- main seems to be a Mahatma re- motely derived from the Comte de Saint-Germain, a slippery eighteenth- century European occultist and in- dustrial promoter, Ballard, who grad- uated from selling stock in imaginary gold mines to old ladies, into occult- ism, picked elements of his grotesque mythology from Oliver’s book, from

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~ * iat it LOST CONTINENTS Theosophy, from Christian Science, from Rosicrucianism, and from the Swamis, and reduced the resulting mishmash to the mental level of those comic-books whose~covers show a muscular hero in a ballet-suit téar- ing a battleship asunder with his bare hands. Ballard told how his Master “showed him the sacred headquarters of the ruling Brotherhood in the Te- ton Mountains, where he saw their vast hoard of wealth and was shown magical movies of his former lives. He was delighted to learn thus that he was a reincarnation of George Washington and his wife‘of Joan of Arc. And of course he learned about Atlantis, Lemuria, and other van- ished civilizations including one in the Sahara Desert and one (ruled by a king named Casimir’ Poseidon) in the Amazon River region. For those who wish to turn At- lantism to practical account, there is or was a Lemurian Fellowship of Mil- waukee, which offered correspond- ence courses in the “Lemurian Cos- mo-Conception.” The Fellowship, _ while following Oliver and Church- ward in their concept of Lemuria, made a point of eo: having | been ruled by an élite*minority that qualified for “citizenship” by seven years’ study of occultism. The down-’ fall of Lemuriaff civilization came about when this minority emigrated to China, Yucatan, and Atlantis, leay- ing the government in the unquali- fied -hands of the proletariat. Now, however, Lemuria is again rising from the Pacific. The civiliza- 105 tion that will come into being there will be of the original Lemurian type. Its “citizens” will at the start be chosen from graduates of the cor- respondence courses of the Fellow- ship, which is even now planning the super-cities that will rise on this new continent. So, by joining the Fellow- ship now, you can get in on the ground floor. . These: vagaries illustrate the mo- tives and sources both of Atlantism and of occultism in general—the urge to distinction by some easy, indirect route; the assumptions of the wis- dom of the ancients and the hidden hierarchy that rules the earth; the yearning for a real utopia somewhere, some time, And, sometimes, the de- sire to make a fast dollar. Such doc- trines are the product of the occult animus reinforced by a fertile imagi- ‘nation, wide if indiscriminate read- ing, and disregard of logic, experi- ence, and factual evidence. Not even much imagination is needed, since the volume of occult literature is enormous, even if not familiar to the average reader, One can easily con- coct an esoteric doctrine with Atlan- tist features by lifting sections from the work of his predecessors, as Mme. Blavatsky and. Scott-Elliot used Don- nelly. — Occult Atlantism shows the double attitude of occultists towards science. On one hand they would like to cut in on the enormous prestige of sci- ence, and hence quote whatever sci- entific or near-scientific dicta they think will support their ideas. They say the Mayas’ “structures are scien-

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106 tifically admitted to be older than those of Egypt,” and “the great sci- entific explorations have revealed that there is such a continent” as a Pacific Lemuria, (Science admits nothing of the sort.) Or they quote people like John W. Keely, a nine- teenth-century perpetual - motion crank, as “distinguished scientists,” or.cite obsolete science, or refer to some authentic scientist who has gone off the deep end in a field wherein he is not expert, as Piazzi Smith did in Egyptology. No matter; fol- lowers of cults make no distinction. On the other hand, since the scien- tific method destroys occult doc- trines, occultists try to meet this diffi- culty by a frank rejection of the usual standards of knowledge. Ma- terial evidence, they say, is worth- less; Truth is to be dredged out -of the inner consciousness by mystical introspection, These methods are “more scientific than even modern science,” whose “great psysiological discoveries” are “no better than cob-. webs, spun by her scientific fantasies and illusions,” and “little reliance can be placed on such external evi- dences.” On the other hand, occult- ism is “Gnosis,” based upon infal- lible “Akashic Records,” and those who disagree with it are merely “well meaning, but greviously [sic] misin- OTHER WORLDS formed Individuals who have based their theories upon superficial arch- eological observation and theological speculation, not upon INHERENT KNOWLEDGE, CLAIRVOYANT VISION, or DIVINE REVELA- TION.” If you insist upon evidence, there are plenty of records of lost conti- nents, but these are concealed in the Fourth Dimension, or in secret-un- derground libraries in Tibet open to qualified occultists only. The occulists, in fact, live in that dream-world of early adolescence, where a boy becomes a pirate chief and a girl Marie Antoinette by a pure act of imagination. The roman- tic settings in which these*beings exist are Created, complete with colorful if inaccurate detail, by the childhood faculty of ‘conjuring up solid-looking eidetic images. But every private par- adise of that sort requires some sacri- fice from those who enter; in the case of the imaginary worlds of the occult, the abandonment of reason. And without reason nobody has yet fig- ured a way to find that hair that, perhaps, divides the false and true, So, if we really want to get to the bottom 6f theJost-continent problem, we must’ leave the occultists to their dream-worlds—very pretty, but not for us.

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“Eulitorial ‘ the world”, are actually trying to for- ward the cause of “one world” but don’t dare say that is their goal? fier can a “united” front be any- _ thing but a unit? Just the other day we got a letter from Scotland which we'll quote to _ illustrate the new thinking we’re go- _ ing through. Peter Hamilton and _ John Brunner are a couple of those “guys”. They are putting out a new _ magazine called Nebula Science Fic- tion. They are in something of a spot. They say: “Owing to the_dol- ar (and even sterling) shortages, we can’t do what we'd like and take a page in every sf zine in the States— ull we can do is ask well-disposed rsons (such as you) for a casual mention sometime.” * Casual mention, he says! Okay, here it is: “Nebula Science Fiction; _ 30c per copy, postage paid; Crown- point Publications, 159 Crownpoint Road, Glasgow, SE, Scotland.” Welcome to the fold, gentlemen! é know that with writers like Wil- many others, you'll have a/real good 7 magazine, and we have a strong F hunch a lot of OTHER WORLDS (Concluded from page 5) Reading this over, we feel sure this won't be one of those editorials we'll regret later. Maybe Nebula SF isn’t on the stands of America, but it’s there in spirit now. And the spirit’s the thing! . Which brings us to a prediction: Science fiction is due to .dominate the scene as no type of literature in the popular fashion ever has. It’s no longer an imaginative projection of the future, or of “unreality”, but a commentary on an actuality. We say this because as we stood before that newsstand, we also invisioned stand- ing there twelve years ago, and think- ing of a certain series of back cover articles concerning the “things of 1950.” We suddenly realized 1950 was PAST. Not an imaginary tomor- row, but yesterday. Isn’t that Amaz- ing? Tomorrow is here, real, factual, and as fantastic (or more so) than we- had pictured it. The almlane of today makes the i imaginary “plane of - 1950” look like a limping dodo. The science fiction of today has shoved the Past right out of the picture. The Western is a folk-story, a curio of a by-gone day, It will never be anything else again. We are here, gentlemen, Here to stay! The world of Wonder come to life at last. . . Astounding, isn’t it? Rap.

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BEYOND the BARRIER By Richard S. Shaver Mutan Mion plunges thrqugh the Barrier, in search of his lost Arl— and finds a mad universe! 109

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110 OTHER MANY THOUSANDS of years ago, on the dark world of Nor, ruled over by the goddess, Vanue, lived a one-time EKarthman, Mutan Mion, and his vari- jorm wife, Arl (she of the bushy tail). Great was their love, so that it was Jamed over thé entire universe, Then one night a kidnapper, invisi- ble even to Vanue’s watch-rays, stole Arl away Stunned by the loss of his love, Mutan Mion grieved and raged by turns, but to no avail. There was no clue to begin a search. Then, from * Peira, a world of elfin women, an egg- laying race, created ages agone by the variform scientists forthe pleasure of the ancients, came both a clue and a plea. The kidnappers of Arl were a race trom beyond the Barrier, which was a strange area of incredibly in- tense gravity in space that walled off access to a whole new universe. The Peirae had also found a way through the Barrier, but needed a warrior- ~champion to lead them to a new life of freedom beyond the dictates of the Council which had doomed them to eternal lovelessness and manlessness. To Vanue they came, seeking Mutan Mion for their champion. Accepting the task, Mutan ana his warrior comrade, Tyron, accompa- nied by their faithful crew; boarded the Darkome and traveled to, Peira with Elyse, their ambassadress guide. There they met Averna, the Elder Oracle and ruler of Peira, and Saph- ele, the warrior-maid who had dis- covered the way through the Barrier —a small planet whose orbit carried it into both universes. Only at its center, at the-bottom of a shaft to its WORLDS heart, where the tremendous gravity that would otherwise crush all matter to incredible compactness is nullified, could the passage of the Barrier be made. At a welcoming banquet, Mutan Mion discovered that his mission was two-fold, Averna expected him to be- come the father of the new race of Peirans, and to aid in the conversion from egg-layers to the normal human method of reproduction; to a race of divided sexes, as they once were be- fore the naw-forbidden variform tech- nique had made them into creatures independent of man. Angrily Mutan refused, but promised to qllow his decision to remain in the future, de- pending on his success in his search for Arl, and in his conquest of a new world for them in the universe be- yond the Barrier. A fleet was outfitted, and the Dark- ome led the way to the Barrier-pene- trating planet. Then, descending the. _ shaft to its -center, the Darkome » became wedged, trapped, and at the mercy of an enemy ship now seen below, training its rays upon them, ‘The Darkome seemed helpless, with only one ray capable of being trained downward. Now go on with the story: f * * * TARING down the shaft was S like peering down the bore of a huge cannon. The lights of the _ enemy craft at the bottom were but tiny points of deadly menace. Mutan Mion sweat drops of blood. If those unknown creatures in that ship below

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. became aware the Darkome was stuck fast between the adamantine walls of the shaft, it meant their end. A queer shimmering shaft of light sprang suddenly from the distant ship, but it did not act like any ray he knew. It clung to the sides of the shaft, sweeping up toward the Dark- ome \ike water flowing uphill, shim- mering and flowing slowly. That it Was some type of weapon he did not doubt. Mion switched on his ddlamaipe force-screens and reached out with ay beam of black shorter and touched the strange force. Before it reached the ship it seemed to lose itself in the rock,~ gradually diminishing and fi- nally disappearing. Seeing that he could stop the beam, Mion ordered the crew out in space suits, but told them to keep the bulge of the ship between them and the raider below. Mion at first did not fire on the strangers, hoping they too might de- sist, at least until the Darkome was freed. But the ship poked its nose up the shaft, and Mion saw that they Meant to close_the distance in order to use their strange weapon more effectively. He lined up the one big tay in the bow of the motionless Darkome and loosed a heavy charge of disociator ray. Thes effect was startling. The matter dissolver turned the whole bow of the strange ship into its component atoms, left a cloud of shimmering dust ‘through which the whole after part of the ship lay ex- posed, chamber on chamber. The ene- my had no defensive ray screens! Mion bellowed with triumph as the BEYOND THE BARRIER 111 strange-bodied aliens leaped out of the ship. Like shapeless sacks, float- ing in the weightless area about the core, they drifted about the cross- sectioned ship, and made their way by kicks and jerks toward the rear of their suddenly helpless vessel. Mion did not fire again. Something about the weird shape of these crea- tures held his hand. He hoped they would not attempt further’ hostilities, for he did not want to kill anything so strange until he knew more about them. After some thirty minutes of per- sistent work with the short-focus dis- cutters designed for rock melting— or for weapons in case of need—the crew freed the Darkome and filed back aboard. Tyron came batk to the controls and began to let the Dark- ome gently down the shaft. Mion switched on the inter-ship telaug beams and reported to the waiting Peiran craft all, that had occurred. Since the time needed for them all to get down the shaft safely, was al- ready cut very short he ordered all craft to enter the shaft at once, while he cleared the bottom of all danger. But as he reached the. position where the wrecked raider’s ship lay and nosed it aside so that it floated off into the horizontal bore at the bottom, he realized\he now had no way of distinguishing the raiders still intact and those other ancient craft Saphele had/ told him lay about the huge borings at the bottom. Aboard the Darkome were not only the Elder Oracle, Averna, but Saphele and Elyse, as well as a Score of other

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112 Peiran luminaries and scientists. Saphele, reading his thought, and knowing he would never ask her to go. volunteered. “T have been there before. I can recognize which are the abandoned ships and which are newcome. It could be no one but me, Lord. I will be back at once if all is well. If I do not return in less than an hour, you will know there is an enemy present and that I have been caught or cannot ‘move from hiding. What will you do then?” “T’ll come on down and shoot any- thing that moves, so don’t moye, little one!” There was some air down here, but they knew without testing that the air was worthless, because the whole sur- face of the planet was one dark smoothness. There could be no good air where there was no plant life. Saphele slipped on her helmet, stepped through the air ‘lock. They waited, the ship grinding slowly against the walls with a sound that must echo thunderously in that nar- row shaft. Saphele was back in less than a half-hour, but the time had seemed endless. “Two raiders! Getting ready to enter the shaft. You can take them as they enter, or you can drop down on them. They’re right beside the shaft in the biggest bore.” There was a gunner at every ray, the ports were open, and every one aboard was strapped in their seats, Tyron took over the controls, while Mion swiveled the bow ray back and forth. The finder ray, an infra-red OTHER WORLDS that gave a clear image on the sight- ing screen, showed only the black emptiness below. Tyron dropped the huge ship steadily downward. Quite abruptly the nose of another ship entering the shaft showed on the screen. Mion pressed the firing lever without thought, an automatic reac- tion. The ray struck the queer nose of the strange ship, divided it down the center, A foot wide swath of metal turned suddenly to dust; the nose of the ship dropped off. Revealed with- in were chambers and compartments, and creatures falling out as the ship shuddered, veered, ground against the wall of the shaft and came to a stop. “What do you call those?” bel- lowed Tyron, his mouth hanging open in astonishment. f Mion said nothing, his invisible sighting ray swinging right and left, up and down, as he watched for the other raider to appear behind the first, “Take her down so I can get a shot . at the other before they get Set,” he called to Tyron. “Never mind what they look like—you won’t be caring about that if they get a beam into us!” Tyron dropped’ the ship steadily. The nose of the Darkome touched the shattered nose sheared from the other ship, pushed it lightly aside, rolled it thunderously across the deeper bore of the tunnel at right angles to the shaft. The bulk of the rest of the ship was lying against the side of the shaft. Tyron rammed this with the nose of the Darkome, but its tail was set firm on the rock be-

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_— and the strange creatures inside shrilled screams of fear and dropped from the bulk by the scores. But. past the wrecked hulk Mion saw the other raider, poised and wait- ing, and slashed his beam right through the wrecked ship, triggering the pulsing force again and again to make sure. The second ship, too, fell apart under the ray. Fragments spun right and left and as he-passed the matter-dissolving ray over them again and again, both ships fell into a jum- ble of fragments from which the sur- vivors scrambled madly in flight. “Now,” bellowed Tyron, “will someone tell me what kind of crea- ture that is?” Mion grinned at him, relaxing a little, hoping they would have no more trouble with the raiders who seemed all to be fleeing into the darkness of » the central . tunnel. “There used. to be a God called Proteus,.who could look like any- thing he chose to, having a certain kind of protoplasm in him that re- quired no bones or other structure. Seems to me these things are some- thing like that—an animal that’ re- sembles any animal it chooses to shape tself into,” Saphele was already opening the ait-lock, and before Mion could stop them, four of the Peirans left the ship, began to paw through the wrecked fragments. They were back in a short’ time with two wounded raiders in their arms, for the weight here at the core was near nothing. They secured them with chains to the bulkheads in p BEYOND THE BARRIER neath. It only bent with their weight, 113 the storage compartments. Mion turned over the ray control to Ty- ron, went to interrogate these strange beings. The rest of the Peiran fleet were already coming down the shaft, and there was no reason to stop them. Soon the whole of the great tunnel in the core was bright with lights and the Peiran ships ranged side by side. The whole fleet sent out a party afoot from each ship to hunt down the raiders, who must remain here in this tunnel at the core. There were smaller side tunnels branching off, up which the fleeing raiders had disappeared. Several of the Darkome’s Nortan crew piled out to inspect the wrecked ships, for it was their first contact with the weapons and techniques of the races beyond the Barrier. When the firing began in the side tunnels, Mion sent two Nortans to check on the aliens’ use of weapons. They found the Péirans in a bad way, unable “to reach the enemy, yet the “enemy was firing upon thém around bends in the tunnels—firing a de- vice which sent a’ sizzling charge of corrosive energy that flowed swiftly along the rock, deaping off when it reached a Peiran. Mion, after this report, called the pursuit off, ordered all hands back aboard. He did not care for casualties in a struggle as pointless as this, with an alréady de- feated enemy. The weapon with the strange affinity for human flesh, that flowed like water along rock walls up or down, he meant to have analyzed at once. The telaug beam soon extracted

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i OTHER from the alien prisoners all the in- formation needed, But it was an ex- perience disconcerting in the extreme, to interrogate minds whose every thought was in a form unfamiliar and unexpected, based on values and con- cepts totally unacceptable to his own mind as natural thought. These pro- 114 tean creatures, whose shape changed_ from minute to minute as. their body adapted itself to its environment— oth in color and in shape—also thought in a flexible, protean flow of meaning nearly incomprehensible to Mion, seeking as he could not help seeking, for fixed concepts, rigid thought forms of recognizable repetitive value. He learned that they were a young race, for they had little history to recount to him. They had found the ships in the twin-planet core-chamber by accident, in their first flights in their own clumsy ships, and-had cop- ied them in building more. They had begun their raids through the Barrier in the expectation of acquiring more ships and more ‘varied weapons, and they had been extremely cautious and secretive, for the telaug appara- tus on the ships they-found had given them a healthy respect for the tech- nology that had created it. They were an unlovely blob of ‘gray flesh, soft in appearance. The blob put out limbs to walk, two to four to eight, depending entirely upon the whim of the moment. They put out eyes on soft round stalks, but Mion gathered this was mere imitative reflex; they did not need eyes, being light-sensitive over their WORLDS whole surface. They were not ex- tremely powerful, but they were tough. Their rubbery nature and boneless structure made them im- mune to the strains and velocities which gave mankind so much dis- comfort and so many injuries in space flight. i But more important, the minds Mion examined gave him a picture of an enemy they feared, an enemy they called the Daegun, This was a race living far away, but whose ships raided the tribes of ~ the protean men for slaves. From every picture Mion could get of the Daegun they were highly advanced technologically, and might prove for- midable opponents, They were war- like; possessed space ships, and made a practice of enslaving all other races they contacted. Mion took counsel with the Oracle and the other Peiran notables, and together they decided to tell the Omini—as he proteans called themselyes—that their fleet would aid them*against the Daegun in return for their help in finding homes beyond the Barrier. Meanwhile the twin-planets had passed within the Barrier flow. They could feel the tug and pulse of the terrible weight-causing particles surg- ing all about the little planet—held away from them by the sheer density of the rock that had passed so many times through the tidal bath of gravi- . tons, Mion privately suspected that ie =the Barrier flow would shrink any-— thing human it fully contacted into a tiny black doll of rock-like hard- ness, no matter whether the pull

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neutralized by being from all at once. Therefore he moved ships into the side tunnel berths, obviously fashioned for that purpose. As the Barrier seized the planet, ‘they felt the gravity pulse and flow and retreat and rise again. One of the Peirans happened to cross the shaft up which they would presently pass, and almost instantly she was crushed into nothingness against the tock floor. . . which explained to them all that the forces of the Barrier acted in a straight line only, and not around the right angle bend of the ~ bottom tunnel. After instructing the Omini. on their intentions, they turned their _ prisoners loose unharmed, to act as their emissaries and arrange future - meetings. Presently the pudgy crea- tures began to come in from the tun- nels, eager for passage home again, now their ships were destroyed. Watching them change shapes (sit- ting down on a chair meant draping mselves upon it like a pile of wet wash) gave great amusement. And quite suddenly the instruments old them the Barrier flow was be- hind. They were through! The new Wniverse of unknown stars lay be- fore them! tes HE-sky behind the Barrier had ‘always been dimmed, the stars seemingly small and few and very far ee, As the Darkome came out of ‘the shaft and shot up itito gravity- free space, the group behind Mion at the controls gasped in amazement “at! ‘the blazing pattern of the star a BEYOND THE BARRIER 115 spangled night. The Elder Oracle put a hand on Mion’s shoulder, spoke in an awed voice: “I predict that one day in the far future this side of the Barrier will outshine the other in human achievement just as the stars on this side out-lustre our own familiar ones.’ Saphele said: “The worlds that I touched here seemed infinitely rich- er in life. . . there is something here that is more favorable to it.” Mion turned his head to catch Saphele’s eye, but found himself look- ing at Elyse, who had left her accel- eration chair and was bent over him peering into the huge bow view-plates —which gave a larger magnification than any other view-plates on the ship. Mion grinned at her pert lovely face, so provocative . . . and his heart winced, for something about her reminded him of Arl. But he spoke at last. “It is that very fact that gives me caution, Averna, your Highness: Life here has had a better medium for growth. It follows that we may very probably-come up against antag- onists so formidable they may de- stroy us. Let us proceed with infi- nite precautions. Already the Omini have shown us there are powerful or- ganized races, spoiling for a fight. We must not get into any battles until we are ready.” Ayerna nodded, her eyes going to Elyse with a hint of jealousy which she did not allow herself to voice. “That is wisdom. Our best course would be to ally ourselves with’ the Omini, begin building strongholds on

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116 their worlds. There seems to me little reason why we can’t get along with them. Our very difference from them gives us no reason to antagonize, but the reverse. If they were human, they would haye human motivations—and reasons for competitive struggle would, inevitably arise. But they are not even ‘carnivorous, and being a water race, have little use for land!” Mion set the course for the Omini’s home planet, and turned away from the controls. There was no reason to watch for the automatic ray relay’s would thrust the ship aside or over any obstacle that might appear ahead. Mion gestured to Saphele. “Call one or two of those Omini up here.. The telaug beam will augment their thought for all to hear, and per- haps we can make plans with them about the future.” When the shapeless, gliding things appeared, Mion swung the inter-ship master telaug beam inward to the bridge chamber, focused it on the two Omini. They subsided into bulg- ing globular rounds, without limbs or, eyes or other prominences, their nervousness betrayed only by a quiv- ering of their gray skin. Their thought, augmented into deafening audibility by the huge tel-augmenter, filled the control chamber with a nervous question; “What can this strange creature want with us now?” Mion stood with his hands on his hips, his big legs spread wide, his “handsome face expressing complete curiosity and friendly intent. “We want only to be friends with the ‘Omini.” began Mion. “We would not OTHER WORLDS have attacked your craft in the shaft . had not we thought of you as pirates, who in our society are people who kill first and ask questions later. Do you understand we would not have fired on you if we had known you meant no harm?” i The telaug blared out their under- standing—and their other thoughts, such as: “Is he lying, getting ready to betray all our people into destruc- tion, as the Daegun would do?” Mion motioned to Averna. “Put your head into the telaug beam, so that they may read truly your intent: toward them, dear Elder.” Averna hesitated an instant, her eyes going to Mion so that he read within them her doubt that he meant only the Omini to see her inward thought. But she stepped into the path of the telaug beam, so that it touched her before the Omini, carry- ing her thought into their minds pow- erfully. Everyone there could hear her clear, sweet meanings: “We are a race seeking a home where we may be free of unpleasant restrictions. We want to bring our whole race here and make a new beginning. We are strong in wisdom, and we can pro- tect you from the evil Daegun whom you fear if you will help us get a foothold here beyond the Barrier.” There was a wealth of other mean- ings in her mind, and quite discern- ible to Mion was one which seemed to shriek at him. “You, Mion, are on my mind day and night. What am I to do if you find me not beauti- ful? What can I make of my life with my heart bursting with desire for

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this great strong giant of a man who will not let his heart stray toward ise Mion understood her hesitation, though such thoughts Averna man- aged to keep below the level of im- mediate appearance, still Mion and A most of the others were skilled in the use of the telaug and such minor and repressed thoughts stood out to _ them plainly. But only Mion flushed with embarrassment. Averna looked at him-coolly, her face betraying : nothing of what the ray had re- vealed to him. The Omini revealed that they had heard and understood the main part of her message to them. Their thought was tinged with a growing hope that perhaps their days of peril from the ‘ raids of the Daegun were over. They _ thought, almost together: “The Dae- gun who enslave us to make us catch fish for their tables may not enjoy their next raid. eben Lhe conference Mion carried on for some two hours, exhausting every - possible avenue toward linkage of the ~ future of the Omini with their own. It was apparent from their amphib- lous nature and their knowledge of ndersea life and geography they ‘could be very valuable to a race of “land dwellers like the Peirae. Then he gave one of the Omini a present. i It was a small portable telaug, of the _ type carried about by many Nortans for conversation and business. It was : over a range of only a few feet, ‘so they could not use it to spy upon others in the ship, but between them- selves they would’ find it invaluable BEYOND THE BARRIER 117 in conveying the correct description of their conference with Mion and Averna. The round protean body of the Omini who received this gift quiv- ered with pleasure until they feared he might spill over the deck, but he glided off with his companion still _ quivering. WO days later they were lower- ing to a landing over an Omini city, which was built on the water, supported on bladders of air. Mion wondered what they did when they had a storm. He put a ray into the big storage chamber where a score of the strange creatures waited, and learned quickly they had a method of submerging the whole city when the surface of their ocean became rough. “A submersible city!” cried Mion, watching the strange floating assem- bly of structures beneath them, The Darkome plunged into the water with a hiss and a mighty roar as the sea fountained up behind them. Mion let the depth of the water counteract their speed, then the Darkome bobbed to the surface not far from the floating city. . The structures were rather exten- sive, for so fragile a method of build- ing. They looked like innumerable toy balloons made into dome-shaped houses. The city spread as far as eye could see across the slowly heaving ocean, the houses moving with the swell like anchored boats. One after another the smaller Peiran ships plunged into the water, bobbed to the surface, swung into

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118 place alongside the Darkome. Mion swung a ray to tell three of them to stay aloft as lookouts. Out from the queer low dome- houses came swarming throngs of the rubber-shaped creatures, hurrying to- ward the water’s edge. And each of them bore one of the weapons that could throw the deadly charge with an affinity for flesh—an affinity that made aim of the weapon almost un- necessary. Mion ordered everyone to stay inside the ships until their Omini ~ passengers had had time to circulate their message. These disembarked, their bodies rippling with eagerness and happiness to be home again. Shortly afterward, a group of four of the Omini requested admittance to the Darkome, After they were aboard, Mion extracted by means of the telaug the knowledge that they had come to guide the Darkome’s leaders to suitable locations for their cities on the land, and to confer on measures for mutual defense against the Daegun. Mion took the Darkome aloft, to circle the globe at low altitude, and _let the Omini chiefs—for that is what they were—point. out the locations they thought best suited, as well as any dangers that might be there. It was a planet of much water and little land. The continents were large islands, little more. But they were heavily wooded, evidently of very rich soil. The air was balmy, the temperature amazingly even. The Omini explained that this was due to the cloud envelope, in turn due to the heavy water content of the air. UTHER WORLDS In spite of dampness it seemed a healthful world, and Mion noted that the Omini seemed to have no sickness or disease, for in questioning them over the telaug they seemed to have so little concept of the meaning of the words that Mion gathered that illness was almost unknown among them. There were some terrific water monsters, but Mion noted that the land animals they described were for the most part herbivorous; there were no large carnivores, and no oth- er races of intelligence. Mion looked at Averna, and she nodded. “ ’Twill do for our first foothold. After we have a strong base here, we can ex- plore further and select the world we mean to make our principle cen- ter. Right now, I think it best not to show ourselves to the other worlds; not until we are prepared for trou- ble.” : Mion mentally agreed, and set the Darkome down on a plateau of the largest land mass, near a thousand feet above the water level. The tre- mendous forests extended every- where, but the heavy grasses of this plateau had outfought the tree seed- lings, and for nearly a mile there were few trees. Then the forest swept on unbroken as far as eye could see. Mion swung a signal ray to the fleet, ordering them to take cover in the forest about the plateau, so that they could not be seen by any scout- ing ship of the Daegun. He had no wish to bring on an attack prema- turely.

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_ Soon after the fleet had been con- cealed in the forest Mion returned the Omini chieftains to their homes, and then concealed the Darkome be- neath the huge trees of the plateau. _ By nightfall they had thrown up the _ beginnings of an emcampment, and “started to plan their first city, a city in the trees. Mion had spent some time ques- tioning the Omini as to their captives irom previous trips. He was over- _ joyed to learn they had killed none, preferring to keep them for their skills, to learn everything they could - from them. But a raid by the Daegun _ had some months ago cost them their _ captives and most of the machinery ; they had brought back with them from the raids—which explained their latest trip, for more captives and/more machinery. They meant to learn to manufacture the strange weapons and’ delightful stimulative rays of the other side of the Barrier, but had not progressed so ‘far. “So Arl is a captive of these Dae- guns!” mused Mion. “First thing I must get done is to. capture a few of that race for study.” But it was nothing that could be rushed. A Peiran city was always erected upon extensive subterranean borings, which were used for havens . of safety in event of war, as well as " for storage and for the protection of their vital mechanisms from rust and damp. Here in this ‘water-saturated air, such caverns were particularly necessary, and to be dry they must _ be deep. Only in the depths of rock where the pressure renders the rock —-"- BEYOND THE BARRIER 119 impervious to moisture does the dry- ness necessary for long life of metal prevail. The work well begun, Mion made ready to take the fleet back, for the Darkome must escort the weaker Peiran vessels to the twin planets to make sure they were not attacked. Then he meant to return to watch over the new colony until the next swing of the twins through the Bar- rier. The fleet lifted from among the for- est giants, glittering in the diffused sunlight ‘like great elongate water drops. The colony was far from com- pletely prepared for attack, yet they could not wait, as they would miss the time when the twins plunged through the Barrier and have to wait three months longer until they re- turned. Everything seemed safe enough. They had bored several deep caverns for refuge, and they had mounted dozens of powerful ray- rifles about the cavern entrances for defense from attack from the skies. They had no illusions that the Dae- gun had not heard of their arrival, though it might be they had not. After the return of the next load of colonists, Mion meant to make up a party for exploration, hoping ‘to find where Arl might be and hoping the Daegun would not prove too formidable for general attack. But it was not to be. Hardly had he seen the fleet of small Peiran ships into the shaft of the smaller twin, and turned back toward the planet of the Omini, when a gunner sang out from his post at his ray-

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120 mount: “Strange ships on the port screens, Commander!” “Where? How many?” bellowed Tyron, snapping the bow screens on full magnification. They were bearing down on the Darkome from their back trail, at least thirty of them, queerly shaped craft like long boxes with rounded ends. Mion recognized them from the Omini’s mental pictures. The ships of the Daegun! “Draw ’em out.” muttered Mion to Tyron at the controls, “Play along, run from ’em, see what they’ve got. Let ’em think we’re frightened of em.” Tyron turned the Darkome, ran before the oncoming fleet like a rab- bit before a pack of hounds. They spread out, swept on to encircle the Darkome, and from the nearest horn of the semi-circle a dark projectile leaped, spun toward them with a great display of fire in its tail. “Some sort of torpedo.’ Better knock it off with a ray,” ordered Mion over the intercom to all the gunners at their posts. A dozen rays leaped out to touch the torpedo. It went up with a vast burst of fire— too much for a simple chemical bomb. Tyron glanced up at Mion, lean- ing over him. “Strap in, chief,” grinned Tyron, “Didn’t you recog- nize that burst? Too great to be gunpowder—they’ve got atomic fis- sion or something near as bad. We've got to be ready to dodge.” Mion got into the seat beside Ty- ron, belted the padded straps about him. Tyron swung the big ship in a OTHER WORLDS sharp curve, to see what the Daegun could do with sudden changes in course at this speed. Their pursuit came around loggily, lost speed, the gap between them widened. Mion touched Tyron’s shoulder, and he let the Darkome slow. The gap closed up again. “When it comes to questions, Ty- ron, I’ve got one for you. How come these Daeguns cut loose on us? They can’t know who we are or have any- thing against us. Do they fire on every stranger they see? “Even if they knew who we are, there’s little reason in it. That is a question. What are they fighting about? Just to capture a strange ship, and so know all there is to know about them?” Several more torpedos were loosed after them, and as quickly blown up by a detonating ray before they came close to the Darkome. Quite suddenly Mion tired of the game. He spoke over the intercom: “We're swinging around; taking the fight to them. Fire at will! I’d prefer none of them returned to carry the tale of our presence on this side of the Barrier.” Tyron, feeling also certain they — had nothing to fear but the torpedoes, swung the Darkome in a dizzying —~ bow-for-tail spin, flung on full pow- er. In seconds they were, gaining speed along their own back-trail, and — the Daegun were dead ahead. The maneuver startled their former pur- — suers, and they turned right and left, tossed torpedoes out which all went wide of the mark. The relative veloci- ties of pursuer and pursued had al-

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tered so suddenly they could not adapt, though the Darkome was still Ptzaveling slowly. They sped right past her as she lashed at“them with sud- ~ den deadly rays. One after another the Daegun craft wavered, slowed, -zig-zagged off out of control. Within “minutes there was no Daegun ship moving normally, and Tyron swung ic =e he dangled magnetic cables which locked to the wrecked ships, until he had the whole fleet trailing him on cables. _ The Peiran‘technicians may want to remodel these ships and at the _ least they can serve as decoys to bring ~ more ducks down on the pond.” " Mion detailed a squad of Nortans to search the captured craft, ques- _ tion the prisoners, Jearn — their 3 ‘strength and location. As the first of these reported back, Mion listened with deep attention. _ “They were here to learn the se- cret of the passage through the Bar- tier, they’ve been watching the Omini for some, time. They know that now that other nations have come through ‘the Barrier, they will have new ene- mies disputing their domination. ‘Thus far they’ve been kings of this - star system. They attacked us because they knew the Omini brought us through—at least they thought so.” “What do they. look like?” asked — Tyron. “With your penetray control right | beside you, you yet ask. Take a - Took!” growled Mion. Tyron swung the ray control, and BEYOND THE BARRIER 5 the Darkome again. One after another _ 12 the ships on the end of the, tow line became transparent. At the same time Mion swung a telaug beam, so that they could both see and hear the cap- tives aboard the Daegun ships. “Big devils, eh?” grunted Tyron, in astonishment. They were the things Mion had seen indistinctly in the pink mon- key’s mind, worshipping in their weird temple in the jungle. However, he doubted that these giants were primitive jungle dwellers, as those _ had been. These were members of an advanced race, however sinister their appearance. They were evident= ly. some order of Decapod, highly developed. Their claws had become refined into respectable tools, though evidently still weapons on occasion. Their exterior skeleton was retained in all its original horny glory, and it looked as if they were accustomed to spending a lot of time polishing those shells and ornamenting them with gold inlay. They stood fully as tall as Tyron if not taller. Their heads differed from” one’s idea of a crab, which is ordinarily headless; these Daegun had heads on top of their armor-plated bodies, spiny at the sides, with horny crests above what passed for their faces, Their faces were not in any way human. They had two eyes, with an added third eye where the nose would ordinarily be, and_a wide mouth surrounded with outrageous whiskers, some two or three feet long, though they were really bristles or a kind of antennae. They were big, and they looked for- midable, and their ships were strongly

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122 built. If they had had rays, instead of chemical explosives for weapons, the meeting might have come out differently. “T want to know what became of Arl, and I want to know it now. Would you find out, Tyron? If I asked them—” Mion turned his face away from his friend’s, “—I am afraid I might go berserk and slaugh- ter them all out of hand... if I learned they had killed her, or some- thing of the kind.” Tyron understood, and turned the ship over to Mion. Taking a portable telaug and three armed guards, he departed for the towed ships. Meanwhile Mion examined the strange creatures. He had run across many forms of intelligent life, but had never yet found highly devel- oped intelligence in one risen from the Decapoda, But above that tre- mendous carapace reared a head very evidently containing a highly de- veloped brain . . . and Mion realized anew that he must adjust to condi- tions here beyond the’ Barrier which must of necessity be extremely dif- ferent, separated as it had been for eons from the streams of life on the other side. Here no human racé had spread its all-embracing culture through the universe an age be- fore, to lay a path which all future development must of necessity tread on its upward rise. Here, life had developed without the intervention and control of the ancient Elder hu- mans. Here, chance alone had dic- tated which species would survive and which pass into limbo. Here chance OTHER WORLDS alone had ruled the cards of fate. Hence human design had never en- tered into the past pattern of life’s very beginnings, as on so many worlds on thé other side of the Bar- rier. There, the Elder pioneers had planted micro life on many sterile barren worlds just coming into a range of temperature and moisture capable of supporting life. There, the gigantic ships of the Titans had spread far and wide their chosen seeds of life, to provide in the future a pattern predetermined by them as the best of all possible life patterns. They had planted the very bacteria which made the soil able to support plants, and then had followed up with the seeds of the redwood, the pine, the fir and eucalyptus, to bring their future worlds of colonization into a state of beneficence for their own life ’ forms as rapidly as possible. Here, all had been chance, so far as he now knew, and there could exist any pos- sible combination of life forms or un- believable monstrosities—as well as unbelievable beauties—of complete- ly mysterious beginnings. He longed — to set out at once on an extended | tour of these strange new worlds... But, as ever, duty to those he loved held him inexorably. Mion waited, thus pondering, and watching Tyron interview the cap- tives aboard their own ships one by one. Meanwhile, the Darkome sped back toward the planet of the Omini. It was perhaps two hours later when Tyron returned, and the Dark- — ome had almost reached the midway point between the Barrier and the

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planet of the Omini. Mion eyed Ty- ron as he came in, sat himself down ‘in the acceleration chair, and thoughtfully fastened his _ straps. Then he leaned back, stretching his ' long legs and reaching for the noz- zles in the wall cabinet which could _ exude any delectable combination of " potions the Nor food industry manu- ‘factured. He dialed several on the " mixing dial, his face empty of ex- _ pression, and watched his glass fill with ‘the resulting powerful intoxi- cant, His eyes did not meet Mion’s even once. Finally Mion could stand f it no longer, and bellowed, ‘“‘Well!” My Tyron sighed, setting down his drink half finished. “They’re a tre- i mendous power, Admiral.” Tyron _ never used Mion’s official title un- _ less their business together was very serious. them tribute, Their space fleet num- bers in the tens of thousands— none of them know exactly how _ many ships in all. They are a titanic Power, and how we are going to get away with this attack on them I don’t _ know. Even the Darkome can’t knock them out of the sky altogether, though perhaps we might bluff them into thinking we can. Once they _ Tearn who and what we are, our days are numbered, for even if we defeat "i “them today, they will be back to- morrow with more and worse.” “Why did they attack us?” asked Mion, his face a mask of iron. “Because every ship that moves in space must bear a license from the Daegun officials. It is a number painted on the bow. We will have to eS arodee BEYOND THE BARRIER “Some eighty planets pay 123 simulate the number to avoid battle, otherwise every ship we see will at- ‘tack us, as everyone who does _not pay the tribute is fair game® for piracy, confiscation . . . all the rest of it. They’re slavers. "That's what has become of Arl—sold into slav- ery.” : Mion’s face brightened. “Then you didn’t learn that she is dead.” Tyron shook his head. “In some ways, she’s lucky. They aren’t hu- man, have no use for a woman other than work. And Arl is strong—work would not hurt her. They have no experience with stim or beneficial rays of any kind. In fact, their ray science is rudimentary, they think of rays as light!” “Tt is remarkable that they have progressed so far, not knowing the value of beneficial rays in thinking power!” “Ves. They have great natural in- telligence. Their ships are well built, well fitted, capably designed. I would rather they were on our side, Mion. In the Daegun mind the Omini are but a lowly form of life, a little lower than cattle, fit only for work or to shoot for sport. They have no re- gard for them.” Mion nodded. “I had suspected as much. But tell me, is there any other nearby race they do fear?” Tyron nodded. “That shaft and tunnel.in the little twin told me that sometime in the past humans came through the Barrier. We don’t know who or when, But these Daegun fear us. When they saw me and the Nor- tan warriors, they called us “Eilans.”

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124 Their way of saying it reminded me of ancient Hellas—whose people were callwg@ Hellenes. Not the latter Hel- las, but the ancient cavern Hellenes. To the Daeguns, such a name may have become ‘Ellans’, They fear these Ellans. whatever they are, and they are human in appearance. But they see them very rarely.” “Tt will be interesting to contact a race cut off for an age from all con- tact with the mother races. Interest- ing to note what development they have made, separated from all other men. It will be very different.” Tyron nodded. “Aye, chief, if we should live so long. But I doubt we're going to survive. I think this outfit communicated with another ship, which has gone for help. There’s a secretive something in their minds, and as near as I could pluck it from them, that’s it. They are used to - telaug, having acquired some in the loot they took from the Omini. So they try to hide their thought, know- ing I’m reading it. We can’t run— not with their ships in tow—and we can’t abandon them: the Peirae will need the hulls for rebuilding.” “So. Best to make it back to the colony as fast as we can and conceal all evidences of our presence. Chances are they won't locate us quickly. We'll soon be in shape to hold off any number of them, from what I’ve seen of their weapons.” . “They're making new weapons, copied from some they got from the Omini loot. Théy’ve got the idea of tay, now, and will soon be formi- dable.” OTHER WORLDS “The science needed for manufac- turing ray weapons they will not learn in a day, Tyron.” “But they are clever boys. Their minds are like quicksilver under the telaug beam, running every which way with a hundred fresh born ideas ‘even as you speak to them.” “You don’t think we could take the Darkome right up to their chief city and demand Arl? They’d fight before they’d parley, you think?” “They would, dear Mion. They’re inordinately proud, having ruled the roost around here for a thousand years, No one is going to bluff them, because they won’t back down till you knock them down. I think the best chance is to.wait till you can knock them down with out loss to yourself. These Peirae are not ready to take on any such Power as the Daegun yet. But, by planning it care- fully, in a year we should be able to deal them such a defeat they'll give us anything we want.” “A year! Tyron, I'll not sit here a year and let fate take its course — with Arl! I'll go after her if T have to go alone!” “Of course, Mion. But no use get- ting yourself killed. You’d hardly benefit her that way. It seems to me the Darkome must be held as our — ace, to throw in as a last powerful resort if the smaller ships can’t handle things. After we get things lined up, keep the Darkome concealed, use her only as a surprise measure, after the smaller craft fail to defeat the ae : gun.” that is. Until then, too, we've got to.

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re Mion almost snarled. “You’re ~ counciling cowardice!” _ Tyron shook his head. “Council- _ ing the greatest good to the greatest number. But of course, you'll have the Darkome bear the brunt of all ‘the fighting that’s bound to, come. What use will we be to anyone with her crippled?” ; “Nevertheless I’m not hanging back from battle, just because it’s “more sensible. If you wanted to be sensible, you could have remained on Nor, not stirred a foot out of your bed.”* -Tyron grinned. “You wrong me, Mion! Iam only trying to indicate _ the course of true wisdom. Howeyer we will do what seems natural, do’ all the fighting for the little women. That's what they brought us. for. And when everything is set up the | way they want it, we'll go home, __ without reward or honor, time lost in a nameless cause. Mion, what are ee we going to get out of this? “I’m keeping my eyes open, Ty- ron. We'll have our ownrewards, one __ way or another. I came here for Arl, i primarily, They invited me for that _ reason.” _ “It must have seemed opportune to them. The great war-captain of the _ Nortan-Jotun war, so easy to come i by. . . Just tell him his wife is a0 the hands of the enemy.” ____.Mutan shook his head. “I's pos- sible, I will not rest till I turn that empire upside down and shake Arl out of -it.” i “Agreed,” sighed Tyron, filling his glass again. “But it’s a whopping big ‘BEYOND THE BARRIER 125 empire, even by Nortan standards. However, size doesn’t mean much, confronted with our weapons. Sfill I say they are going to spring some- thing. Those captives aren’t at all down in the mouth. They expect us to be surprised by something very soon. Something long and dark and deadly, . .” “Long and dark ‘and deadly—you picked that from their minds, and couldn’t pick the rest? What kind of watcher are you?” Tyron smiled, switling his glass. “You go and read the crabs’ minds yourself, They’ve got minds, those boys. What long, dark, deadly thing could threaten us, but some other sort of torpedo . . . perhaps a device with radio control? That would seem what they were thinking, and didn’t know any more about it themselves. A big, fast torpedo .. .” But they were coming in to the Omini world, and Mion set the cap- tive ships in an orbit around the watery world, then started ferrying them down to the water’s surface one by one. After he had them down, he began the work of towing them up the slopes of the beach and under the gigantic trees where they would not readily be seen from the sky. The prisoners he turned over the Omini for safekeeping, taking only twenty of them along to the plateau for the Peirae to examine. The Oracle Averna took charge of the captives at once, assigning one of her Peiran menticons to each cap- tive to get a thorough picture from each mind. She meant to learn every-

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126 thing there was to know abput these Daegun. Mion and his Nortans turned in for sleep in the newly bored caverns under the plateau, marveling as they descended*in the elevator at the speed and excellent workman- ship of these small females, so lovely and delicate of appearance. One would never think they could in so short a time accomplish a task of this magnitude. “Elevators, already!’ cried Tyron, crowded in beside Mion in the lift which was. none too big for the two of them, giants that they were. “Didn’t know they had the mate- rial for such construction,” Mion said. “Our Nortan engineers could pick up a few tricks from these wom- en, They certainly never dirtied a fair hand in the job, yet they got it done.” Tyron grinned. “They’ve been pre- paring for this for years. Had this stuff all crated, ready for assembly. All they had to do was carve out the shaft with the rays, install the lift at the top of the shaft, and she’s ready to go. Just the same, they’re pretty clever. Bet you they’ve got chambers all furnished at the bottom, in the warmer rock where it’s dry, and with ventilators freshening theair. Bet you won’t even smell the dis-dust from the work, either: That’s a woman for you. If it had been Nortan engi- neers, the place would still be smell- ing of grease and dust a year later.” HEN Mion and the other Nor- tans returned to the surface, the Peiran menticons were still at OTHER WORLDS work, taking roll after roll of tape recordings from. the minds of the captive Daegun. They placed their subjects in the dream state, then suggested questions which-the mind unconsciously answered truthfully. Mion took a seat beside one of the technicons whom he knew. “How goes it, Thia? Anything sig- nificant?” “I’m glad you're here, Captain- General. There are several things we've picked from these minds that need a military evaluation. I’m just not up to the mark in things mili-* tary.” Peiran chair, spreading his legs, eye- ing her sleepily. “Everyone addresses me by a different title—it’s quite confusing,” murmured Mion. “This time I’m_correct. Our Elder has just created the post of Captain- General of all fighting forces, and pinned it on you. She'll be formally anointing you before long. Most of us are delighted to haye you take charge of the fighting. We know little enough of killing. But listen to this ” She set a play-back mechanism go- ing beside Mion which projected di- rectly into his mind both the thoughts and mental pictures of the captives. Mion listened, apparently sleepily, but suddenly sat up, his eyes going to Thia’s in surprise. Then he sagged again. “That’s what I feared we’d run into. Thia, there’s derrish among these Daegun. That’s what that means! This fellow belongs to the Mion lounged deeper in the small

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_ from their own destructives! means that in time, if not already, BEYOND THE BARRIER _ derrish group. They’re conscious ot their difference from normal non- destructive types, and have organized - for protection from the sane members of their society. That means, if these der-minded members of the Daegun are really in control, we'll never be able to make a treaty with them! Simply because no der-mind ever kept a treaty or any other bond of honor. It isn’t in them.” “T had surmised ‘that much, But did you note...?” ' “Yes, girl, I noted their method of removing the clean, non-destructive children from the lists of breeders. Because of their nature—being egg layers who lay large numbers of eggs —it is natural they should have had some system of limiting their num- bers. They do it by destroying the eggs. You noticed they have let the breeding get into the hands of these Daegun derrish? That means the derrish destro: all eggs except those That the Daegun will be one hundred per cent demoniac!” Thia nodded. “What I wanted you to see! Nearly eighty per cent of these captives show a heavy prepon- _derance of detrimental error in their thinking. Under- these A-3 order benevolent suns it’s unusual to find it so high, and I wondered, and so uncovered their breeding methods— controlled by the derrish to cause an ever higher number of hereditarily tainted births. Sad day for the Daegun when they failed to destroy their first destructives. Now they 127 are themselves destroyed!” Mion mused, crossing his legs, ab- sently running one big hand over his close-cropped black curls. ““Destroy- ing all eggs from the sane normal members of their society! How long have they been following that pro- gram?” “For six generations, Lord Mion. I’ve taken a reading from their sun. It’s that bright pink star just over the constellation~of the Crab. Queer co-incidence, their sun above the Crab, and them a race of crabs. The reading is nearly identical with the index from old Earth’s sun long ago, before the first sun-burst that wiped the surface clean of all the ancient works, It was a time of war and vast unrest on earth, before the first mi- gration.” Mion eyed her with a smile. “I was there, girl! I quite agree with you—it was a time of unusual devil- try, and the deros got control of things. But we cut them down a little. I was but a ro under Vanue.” “You, from that ancient time? But you're not big eriough . . .” The Pei; ran menticon was suddenly in confu- sion, her eyes frightened on. Mion’s. Mion reached out a hand ‘to her, touched her arm soothingly. “No need to be disturbed just be- cause I’m a few centuries older than you thought, Thia. Vanue the glori- ous is a technicon of mighty attain- ments. She has a system of culture which allows growth without unnec- essary increase in size. Size can get mighty uncomfortable, and _ she’s fought it for an age, with some suc-

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128 cess.” “You probably rank our own Elder! I didn’t expect this.” “Banish it from your mind, Thia. It’s of no importartce. Let’s to the matter at hand. Give me that sun- reading you took from their star.” Thia handed him a slip with the figures in a row. Her eyes were downcast, and she wondered inward- ly what this great one estimated her worth ... and put the thought aside. Mion studied the slip, then took pencil and pad and began to scribble computations. “They must be getting a little uncomfortable with each oth- er by now,” he muttered. Then he looked up at Thia. “I’d say they were ripe for civil war. A little fomenting and they’ll fall on each other. It’s up to us to salvage the normal benefi- cials, see to it the demoniacs destroy each other. Then set up an egg con- trol so that only the sane normals reproduce.” “There’s no correcting this wide ‘hereditary error in the prisoners we have! The structure of the brain cells themselves is prone to error, lets in disintegrant ion flows in preference to the normal ion flows from the brain centers. Even the shell structure of their brain case is not normal to the index in the Decapod Cabulare. The calcium molecules are radiant with disintegrance. Nearly conductors, in- stead of insulators, those brain cases ...” Thia ran on in confusion, wondering if the Elder Mion beside did not think her infantile, giving him all this which he had probably already deduced without definite ex- OTHER WORLD amination. “Whatever will we do with the prisoners? It’s like keeping de- mons on a leash!” Mion thoughtfully ran over the thought records, noting the lack of syllogism, the illogical patterns of thought, containing no sign of obser- vation of cause and effect, or of rea- soning from point to point of logic, but only assumptions based on teach- ings absorbed from their mother’s talk, only illogical conclusions arrived at without due process of thought, from superstitions and _prejtidices age-old among them. Idly he won- dered what this race, with their so- active minds, might have become if they had learned some respect for logic, had learned that a sound social organization must base on Tee, the natural attraction of unit for unit, on the respect for the unit’s right to survival and reproduction. “Active minds, running in a circle of error!” mused Mion aloud. “Too bad; too infinitely a loss of all val- ues. Error, error—society is nothing until it learns to check out its mental error! These things must be de- stroyed, before they become truly monstrous destroyers in vast num- bers. They are on the threshold of a completely destructive pattern of conquest.” Thia watched him, her own mind paralyzed with the realization she was here beside one of the great minds from the far past. “What are we to do with them, Lord Mion?” “Eh? Send ’em back to work their ill upon their own source, of course. A little mental ‘adjustment. Give —

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a hatred for their own organiza- tion, turn ’em loose to jam up their Own mechanism of expansion. What “else? A detrimental is of worst pos- sible value to those he works with. _ Error is what they need, considering _ them as enemies to be destroyed. _ Here it is in quantity. Give it back to them, but poifited at their own “hearts. Enough error and they are at "each other’s throats. Sides will form, and they will all be sure their side is the only side, and all others must die. Now, they take it out on other Taces, consider their own race as their _ side. We've got to start a split among them. These captives can be the op- ening wedge. Best thing to do is point up their mental works to hate _ their masters, then give 'em weapons capable of destroying the leaders but not powerful’ enough to turn against us even if they manufacture them in quantity. I’ve got to talk to the Or- _acle, decide what we can give ’em in quantity, or plans for something they can make in quantity .. .” _ “They’ve got the telaug and some other weapons they captured from the Omini. Quite possibly that may be the very things we would not want them to have . . . we don’t know ex- actly what material they did capture as the Omini did not know what the - things were or how to use them.” Thia sighed, her eyes flickering on Mion’s with a kind of stage fright at his _ nearness. “They could produce a whole sys- tem of ray weapons similar to our own, if they master just one small principal secret of their construction F E BEYOND THE BARRIER ” 129 —they’ve got the industrial capacity to do it. They could turn out deadly things we’d have trouble with in months, and may do so. We can’t wait—we've got.to destroy this Dae- gun empire at once! Can’t give ’em time to master the construction of those weapons they’ve captured!” Mion leaped to his feet, strode away to seek the Oracle and make immediate plans for attack. Thia looked after his towering figure wor- shipfully. Mion heard her worship, looked over his shoulder and grinned boyishly. Thia turned back to ber ~ work, wondering dazedly how one could live so long and yet seem so very young, like one’s own brother, She sighed, repressing her desire from force of habit—as all Peirans had had to do for so long. HE torpedos and other weapons were stripped from one of the captured ships. After the menticons had completed conditioning the Dae- gun minds, they were to be crowded aboard the stripped ship and sent on their return trip to their homes. They would have no recollection of meeting the Peirae or the Nortans, no knowledge of the Barrier passage, when they awakened from their dream state. But they would have a powerful compulsion to start a move- ment toward rebellion, and they would have new weapons to help them in that work. Too, giving their new adherents a View into the minds of the rulers from a distance via te- laug, would certainly acquire their loyalty quickly,

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130 As quickly as they had rid them- selves of the captives, the engineers of the Peirae started work on the remainder of the captured ships, in- stalling the vortex drive common to their own ships, installing the power- ful disociator rays and other weap- ons they had brought. They did not install the protective screens and shorter-ray devices necessary for-de- fense against ray attack because in- dications were that knowledge of ray weapons did not yet exist here. The Omini had a slight knowledge of ray- _use from their ships modeled after the “wrecks in the twin-planet cavern. They knew they existed, but not how to build them, So they equipped the captured ships only with rays for at- tack. “We'll be all right if the menticon work on those Daegun doesn’t slip, somehow. If one of ’em remembers, though, it could mean a mass attack here.” Mion was going over future plans with Averna, in her own new cavern dwelling. “They will not remember. Our work is very skillful. They will not come here—but we must be ready, anyway.” “Tt is not the skill of your menti- cons, dear Averna, that worries “me. It is the fact they ate a kind of creature never before met by these menticons. An ahimal with an ex- ~ terior skeleton, whose ancestors were crabs in the ocean, is hardly the same sort of subje@t for mental ad- justment asa flesh and blood hu- man.” “T 4m sure!” Averna insisted. “I OTHER WORLDS ran several tests on the Daegun to ascertain their reactions. They will react exactly as we expect them to, There will be war among the Daegua — in months.” “Meanwhile we must prepare to take full advantage of that war. I want to instruct these Omini in the use of our weapons, and equip sev- ~ eral ships for them. But first I warit you to send a ‘health’ survey party, to take their index Tic, to make sure we will not be raising up a race of destructives for future trouble, Un- derstand?” Averna, who had already arranged for such an examination, smiled lan- guourously, leaning back in the swivel chair, stretched out her long graceful legs. “No, Lord Mion, I re- fuse to take orders from you.” Mion, thinking he had orended her, began to apologize. Averna waved a long delicate fin- gered hand, lazily. “I’m tired, dear warrior. Either go away and let me dream, or take me in your arms and whisper sweet nothings in my shell- like ear. But on pain of my displeas- ure, no business until tomorrow.” Mion, hastily lunging to his feet, started toward the door, trying to ° beat his own reactions to her mood. He had taken three steps, when Aver- na said mildly, “Wait!” “Wait, Hades!” Mion called over his shoulder. “Your weapons are too powerful for me, and I see you are in the mood to use them!” Her laughter followed him down the corridor. © |

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HE ferry-work of the fleet in - bringing the Peirans through the rier went of and on, as it would go on for many years before all were at last on this side. There was an endless lot of detail work in finding _ locations for new colonies, building the underground fortresses over reich their fragile surface cities Brocld be erected later, Training and equipping the Omini for warfare ook much time, too. , “Tf it were not for the cursed Dae- gun, all this work would be unneces- “sary,” swore Tyron, coming in from a hard day, training the Omini in space maneuvers suitable for combat. “Mion agreed, himself weary, having _ been busy all day superintending the laying of the keel for a new battle ft, the first of a series designed Itimately to outweigh the Daegun t. “Aye, but if ‘twere not them, *twould be some other. These rich w rids must inevitably produce pow- fetal life of one kind or another. powerful than they are.” “Pray, instead, we have not been fooled’ in thinking them inferior. were crafty minds they bore, I’m not satisfied they are as inferior as we assumed.” “T am fed up!” Mion suddenly exploded. “I’m taking the Darkome and raiding a few eae cities, start- “ing a campaign . .. they can’t stop Darkome!” - Tyron eyed him, his face expres- jonless. After a moment he said: “T think you’re right, myself. They BEYOND THE BARRIER 131 can’t stop the Darkome, and you would find Arl in time. But waiting until all is ready for a war is far safer for the Peirae. If we were cap- tured, they would extract the whole plan of the Peirae from us. It risks everything they/work toward.” “I can’t wait! I’m only~ human. Anything can be happening to my wife. They can’t expect it of me.” Tyron suddenly grinned. “They are probably expecting you to slip their gentle leash and make for the woods at any time. Chances are they will send part of their own forces with you—if not to help you, at least to make sure you return to the fold.” Mion paced up and down, his hands clenched, his cheeks flushed, his eyes flashing. “It draws you too, eh? The endless worlds lying out there waiting; untouched, unknown . anything might be found! Why ~ do we sit here, tending the cattle for these little fairy people? Are we men, or cattle dogs?” “Well, tell ’em out, tace ‘em down, we're going to explore in the Dark- ome. Knock off a few cities of the Daegun, make sure they’re too weak to attack the Peirae, then take off for a voyage around this system. They can’t expect us to forgo explo- , ration just to tend their plans for them. They’re able enough. Get that ship you’re laying down ready, so they have a powerful craft to take the place of the Darkome. How many weeks will that take? Three, four at the most. Then, hie ho and away! To Hades with the fair Charmers, we've men’s work to do.”

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132 Behind them a little step rustled, and Mion spun around to find him- self face to face with Saphele. But instead of the disapproval and anger he expected to see on her face, she was ecstatic. “Oh, yes! And let me go with you, Lord Mion. I will do any- thing, only take me too! Who would expect you to ‘sit here with a new universe waiting . . . Oh, do that/” Mion looked at her, standing on tip-toe with her hands clasped as if in prayer to him. She was as pretty as a child’s doll, and he gave a sud- den great laugh, caught her up by the elbows and swung her round, shouting. “We'll shake their petty reins, girl, and get off into the un- known, eh? No more of this!’ Then he set her down, becoming deadly serious, “Now help us, Saphele, and we'll take you if we take no one else. Here’s how we'll do it.” HE Oracle greeted the two great Nortans indulgently and bent a quizzical glance upon Saphele as if © wondering how she came to be ac- companying them on a call she in- stinctively knew presaged action. She knew well that these powerful, rest- less men could not be tied down here on this watery planet to await the turn of events. So she smiled and said mildly: “So, you come to peti- tion me to allow a radical change in our program of activities. That much I can guess. What more is there that I cannot guess?” “We've been discussing the whole project,” began Mutan Mion, diffi- dently, keeping his eyes averted from OTHER WORLDS s hers, for he could not abide the warmth in their lovely depths, “and we have decided to ask permission to take the Darkome out on a few raids, to get some prisoners and some information on the activities of the people nearby. "Tis hardly safe to sit here when trouble can well be brewing all about us. We’ve got to know...” - : Averna went on smiling, indulgent- ly, seated there in her chair under the trees overlooking the’sea of the Omini, their bubble city a lovely bit of floating color on the horizon. The morning light was flattering to her fresh beauty. Her hair was piled high on her head, coiled gold fronted by a huge feather plume, and she looked very iota a queen. She bent a little toward the two giant Nortan officers, her incredibly attractive face turn- ing serious, and said: “You both know I have no right to say you nay in your comings» and goings —you need not ask permission. My ~ only right in overseeing your activi- ties here is to make certain they do not adversely affect the welfare of my people. If you are going out to_ stir up trouble that we can’t handle, “I say no! If you are really going to learn useful facts, carefully making certain no one learns where you come from or wha‘ you are, well and good. I will augment your crew with an equal number of my women, for they will cry ‘Unfair’ if you take Saphele and no other, for they all love you.” Mion wanted to say that all his men were becoming entirely too con- tented for warriors on an expedition

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peril, that they were perhaps get- ting too much love to be entirely good for them, but said nothing. Instead he managed: “We are warriors on an expedition of exploration. We sit here ‘waiting for attack, and it wil! surely - come! It is not good tactics to neg- ~ lect to learn more about the Daegun id these other races such as the El- tans they spoke of. It is’ inviting trouble. However well we think we could handle trouble if it comes to us, we may be wrong! Let us go, dear Averna, not one trip but many ips. Let us learn all we can about this area of space, and perhaps make _ it truly safe by destroying the nests of enemies that we know exist.” “You mean to carry the war to the Daegun?” asked Averna. “You mean to raid them, set them into confusion, agitate uprisings . .. you cannot leave warring alone? Are you aire it is not _ just restlessness?” Mion still kept his eyes averted ie: hers, looking just over her shoulder. “I cannot sit still here not no what may be happening to "my wife. It 8 one reason to ex- t it of me.” ’ Ayerna noted the simple directness of his words, heavy with unbearable i strain, and her heart was moved to pity. “Your sorrow is understood, ‘Lord Mion, and we will help you to find her. Perhaps you are right, and other things must wait. We did not come here only to build our nests and raise nestlings. Go, and our love goes with you.” The three turned to go, overjoyed at her compliance in their plans. But BEYOND THE BARRIER 133 Averna called: “One word with you alone, Lord Mion.” Mion turned back, knowing in his heart what she wanted. He stood fac- ing her, and now he dared to look into her eyes. They stood there, a subtle but devouring lightning flash- ing between them. Eyeglances only, but laden with some terrific, more than human meaning. Finally Averna sighed, said: “Only one thing I ask, If you do not find this wife of yours, or find that she is dead, you will come first to me. Swear me that, on your honor!” “Come first to you, Averna? And have you watched me all this time, and yet require an oath ... ?” Averna smiled, happiness welling up in her face like new blood. “Aye, Mion, I require it, for the good and sufficient reason there are other men about, this is the new life we are building. -I’d not lose the hare for staring after the deer. Give me your oath, and I'll wait, keeping my heart clear aS you keep yours clear for love of your own wife. Other- wise . . . what matters it? Any crea- ture will do to assuage the pangs of unrequited love until love comes again.” Mion frowned. “I had thought more highly of your ideals . . .” Averna cursed a sudden oath. “By the horns of Horus, Mion, don’t prate to me. I’m too old to be gulled by any catchpenny phrases of morality. Life is a business of living. I love you, but I’m not one to spend an. eternity mooning after any man. Either you determine your wife’s fate

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134 and post-haste back to me, or you lose me’as well! Your oath, Mion?” + “An oath is something not lightly given, Averna. Not by me, who keeps his oaths. I'll give you my oath to get back here as fast as humanly pos- sible after I know Arl is dead. But it’s a brand new universe, a deadly certain bait to lead one on and on after ever new wonders . . . I should hate to lose you by trying to make certain of you. You have my oath, Averna, to get back here. But my heart swings from you to others among the Peirae, and how do I know what tricks there may be at work, when suggestion and other means can be used to sway a man’s heart like a windvane?” “Mion, I’m only asking you to” make no certain alliances with any other woman until I’ve my ‘chance to fight for your love on equal terms. I’ve held back every unfair contrivance, and they’ve some of them used them. I want a square deal from you, that’s all!” Mion suddenly bent on one knee, took her hands and pressed each one to his lips. “Dearest” ruler, you will get your square deal, and already you must know you have a place in my heart.” HE. Darkome lifted from the morning sea of the Omini, the sea called by them the sea of Omon, and swung her dark prow toward the distant realm of the Daegun. Mion did not like the necessity of passing into the baneful influence of an evil sun, having had several experiences OTHER WORLDS with the tricks they play with a man’s thinking, making black white, and evil seem good. But the threat of that nation of crab-people had to be re- moved from the Peiran future, and he had to find his Arl again. - With him were all his own stal- warts of Nor, as well as an equal number of \the Peirae, selected for their various abilities to search out the knowledge of the universe around. One was busily making star charts for navigation, another taking spectroscopic readings of the near stars, another had her sample cases ready to be filled with the varied life\ of each planet they touched, another a chemist to test that same life for peculiarities from the norm, another a geologist to study the rock out- crops... Mion had opportunity to take with him several new fighting ships arrived in the last groups from beyond the Barrier, captains from other nations who had been recruited under the Peiran banner easily as soon as they learned that the Barrier had been pierced. But they were strangers to him, and he preferred to have by. him only forces he knew well enough to trust. But the fact of the Bar- rier’s secret having got out generally gave him much worry, for at any time some brawling nation might come crashing in upon them prepared to take over everything, for here the laws of the League would not hold as yet—and he hoped like the Peirans, never. But Elyse, listening to him think where she sat watching the wheeling stars on the scope screens, So eee Fr

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reassured him. “These fellows were requested to come along by our own agents, and the news has not gotten out. We figured we might _ need friendly strength, and they have strength and are well known to us. _ There is nothing to fear from them. They have long been traders and nav- igators for our merchants.” ~ Mion only grumbled. “Out here there is no League to hold down law- “Tess piracy, Elyse. Any one of these “most friendly ship-captains can sud- denly develop into a horror o° cupid- ity, where there is no great power to hold him down, I hesitate to leave them behind, let alone: take them along.” “Vet LT see in your mind no love _ fot the League. Why is that?” “They have grown too old, too far from ordinary human affairs. Like their ruling on the Peirans, they lack sympathy. They are good, but too re- moved, too high and distant and cold.” i ‘Elyse nodded. “So I thought of them, not truly human any more. * Immortals live too long to administer young and growing nations. The League is very ancient, and should choose new and younger representa- _ tives. Let us pray the secret of the Barrier does ‘not get out.” “We can close the Barrier any time by destroying the smaller twin. But it is a deed} that requires long _ thought to decide. "It could lose us _ much ... and myself especially many friends on Nor and Enn. On Enn especially there is much that I would hot want to lose.” BEYOND THE BARRIER 135 Elyse only twisted a lip iri what would have been a sneer on a less lovely mouth. “Ah, Mion, they are better forgotten, and you better off without them to refer to and depend on. Forget the past, and build here a new life, after your own designs.” Mion eyed her, and slowly grinned. “That is what you want, little charmer, but i: it what |-want? There’ is'so much there I cannot ever for- get. Any more than I can forget my lady Vanue. No matter what great beauty and mind I meet, she will be paramount above all in my memory.” Elyse leaned toward him, serious and intent upon him, trying to weaken the hold of such as Vanue upon him, “But, truly. Lord Mion, how can you develop around such, - splendor and greatness? There can be no Mion when the sun is taken by some overshadowing mighty thing like that. Don’t you see that in na- ture around you? A little seedling comes up under a great tree, it grows for a brief season or two, then dies for want of sustenance. All is taken away by the great thing above. Out here, we can each of ys find room, unspoiled worldse waiting to nourish us into greatness. There, what real chance has one? Look how -the Peirans have smothered and been de- nied, all because of an edict by the great court—au edict that in the enacting took but a few minutes ,of their time, yet caused us to suffer agonies for eleven centuries. We are not what we should have been if not overshadowed by the League. No, Mion, your way of growth is out

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136 here. Héad this ship toward our great- ness, Mion, and forget the dear past. Certainly, they are fine folk, grant- ed. But they take up room, and one needs room and fresh worlds and un- touched new raw soil for growth! Can’t you see that?” Mion laughed, a hard loud laugh of strain. “Aye, Elyse, I see it all too well. Think you I don’t strain to go? I am held by my duty to the Peirae, and to my wife. Which is where we are heading. to take the Daegun threat from off their horizon. Then, when I am sure they are safe, we head outward.” =: Elyse relaxed, satisfied that at least he understood where his own future lay. And she breathed a guilty little _ prayer that this wife of his would not be found. HE first sign of the Daegun they had was three ships which rock- eted up at them as they swung around a green little world to see .. . instant threat arrowing up. Tyron pulled the throttle back and the huge Darkome spurted aheaa. The Daegun ships swinging after. They loosed torpedoes which the gunners éxploded as before, and then Mior. at the main ray gave them shorter in powerful doses to drop them as the firing Of their jet motors failed: Dropping them by jerks, he managed to let them down on the water of the seas of the little world, then holding the ships motion- less with the powerful shorter beams, he put a penetray into them, and shutting off the shorter, burned out the control cables with dis. Thus OTHER WORLDS helpless, he put a telaug beam into them, ordered them overboard so that they might be picked up_ by the Darkome and examined. He learned the war expected in the Daegun empire had occurred, and after see-sawing back and forth for many days, was now centering around a world only a few hours distant from the Darkome. They marooned the Daegun on a little island in the sea, sent the cap- tive craft back to the Omini for re- building, lifted again and headed for the world where the Daegun warred, * * * Now, a volume could be written of the Darkome’s doings the next eight weeks, how she located the center of the Daegun rebellion and allied her= self to them, led them in terrible raid ~ after raid on the Daegun strongholds, swooping down: with all rays blasting to lay them wide open to the follow- ing fleets of rebels, who finished the job... and chen on to the next great stronghold, for the Daegun were a_ numerous people, and their power spread wide and deep over a dozen races and near a hundred far-flung planets. How in the end, the Daegun power ~was broken and split up into a dozen warring cliques, each. striving for power, and none of them getting it. How, after every raid and bloody de- stroying battle, the Darkome searched ~ the ruins and the camps and the. stockades where prisoners and slaves were kept, and searched -every mind for news of the great limbed human captive from beyond the Barrier,

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“ad BEYOND THE BARRIER or for news of any of the human captives said to be in the hands of the Daegun—and found them not. How, in the end, Mutan Mion took the great Lord of all the Daegun captive into his. ship, and stripped 137 captive humans from the Daegun for, of all things, a cargo of rard fish the Daegun prized! How the Darkome then abandoned the struggle, leaving the Daegun dis- membered and warring with each his mind of every information it con- tained—only to find the trail led to unknown space toward the distant e Ellans, who had bought all the empire of the Ellans. Z j (To Be Continued) She COMING Zf the SAUCERS AENNETH ARNOLD ‘and RAY PALMER Ever since Kenneth Arnold first saw the. mystery disks, the utmost confusion has existed — due to official and unofficial censorship, hoaxes, false reports, biased analyses, publicity hungry yellow newspaper sheets cand sensation magazines, military investigation, “classification” and “top secret” designations. Now this “smog” of misinformation is cleared away, replaced by facts, by the two men who know most about the disks. PRIVATELY PRINTED - NO CENSORSHIP! After four years of what amounted to official and public persecution, ridicule, fantastic accusations of trickery, the publishers of this book have decided to avoid even the possibility of editorial “Interference” in presenting the truth and nothing but the truth. They are printing a limited number of copies at their own expense, in an effort to prove: their integrity and to set this very important matter straight. BOOK NOW BEING DELIVERED Special Pre-Publication Price $4 After publication, this book will sell for $5. Order NOW! ONLY PREPAID ORDERS ACCEPTED — ORDER TODAY FROM RAY PALMER RT. 2, BOX 36 AMHERST, WISCONSIN other, and headed outward into

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138 Mlustrated by Sam Kweskin OTHER WORLDS Charles J. Webb — : said. “I’ve had it.” The Director smiled patient- ly, tolerantly. “Now, Rod,’ he soothed, “you've said that before. I’m not worried—you’ve always come through.” Rockwell’s anger mounted. The Director was /t—the man who told other men what to do, the man who sat in the councils where policy was made, the guy who translated those decisions into action. But Rod Rock- well had had enough—more than enough. “Look,” he said. “I gave no- tice a montn ago. I meant it.” “Sure, Rod, sure.” The Director smiled oilily. ““You can be through if you want to. After today. After you get out there and-——” “y's through,” Rod Rockwell Rockwell bit back unprintable words, fuming impotently. Finally he turned on his heel and strode through — the door. He was a big man, big- boned, big-framed, _ thick-muscled. He looked like a spaceman—tough and hard and smart. FEW minutes later he climbed into his ship, his anger forgot- ten in the face of the_job at hand, — He barked orders crisply, made deli- cate adjustments, and the dials be- fore him told the story as the Tiger | blasted off. Once more Rockwell and his crew were boring cleanly into space, going out to meet the ever- menacing marauders from far-off gal- axies. This time the odds were sev- en-to-one, but the objective was still

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heartbreakingly the same—to protect for the Corporation the lone plane- _toid of Grexo, to keep its valuable "ores for the hungry machines of ‘Earth, Far from home, always out- ‘numbered, the men of Rockwell’s crew often felt forgotten, neglected. Only his indefatigable will held them ie their tasks. _ Thirty thousand miles out they "met the enemy—Xeppo and his pi- fates, back for more. The energy screens went up; the Tiger darted through space in impossible maneu- vers. Swiftly, Rockwell loosed his _beams—great ravening monsters of “pure energy that took a terrible toll. One enemy ship exploded like an Overripe melon, then another, Sweat poured from the faces of the men, and there was a sharp smell of ozone in the air. yh “Jeez!” the exec said, trying to _ Keep fear from his voice. fi 4 Yi } it Rockwell grinned at him. “Stay with it, boy.” if. “The exec returned the grin, squared his shoulders, and went back “to work. a Her great generators growling in “agony under the strain, the Tiger tumbled through space. Two more enemy ships fell victim to her energy beams before the remainder—flash- ing away in Cesperate evasive maneu- vers—turned tail and ran. SHORT while later Rockwell _ brought his battered ship safely back to port. Disheveled, but wear- ing his famous grin, he stepped SPACE OPERA 139 out on the ramp. Mary was there, her eyes adoring as always, and he draped an affectionate arm about her waist as they walked off together. He was sitting down wearily when the Director bustled up. “Wonder, Rod, wonderful!” The Director beamed. “I saw the whole thing on my screen. You were ter- tific.” “Save it,” Rockwell said. “I’m still quitting.” “Now, Rod—” Y Rockwell shook his head, even as Mary looked up with sharp disbelief in her eyes. “Nope,” he said, “I mean it. I’m going back to Broadway. This TV is too rough for me.” LOST? STRAYED? or just plain CONE? We mean you, Subscriber! You send in your money; we enter your subscription; and then you moye away without telling us and your copies of OTHER WORLDS neyer reach you. If you have recently changed your address —or are planning to do so—send in both your old and new addreses to: Circulation Dept. CTHER WORLDS 806 Dempster St. EVANSTON, ILLINOIS

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The MAN From TOMORROW Personals Sun-Bathers of Eros letters Other Worlds Book Shelf tion and enjoyment, Here you will find your letters to the editor; your jokes (for which we will pay $1 each); your personal messages to your fellow readers (published free); reviews of science fiction books worthy of your attention; the latest news of what’s going on in the world of authors, editors, rival magazines, fan~ clubs, even individual readers; your bookshop; cartoons; fact articles; interviews with individuals in the public eye and many others. If you have any suggestions as to improve- ments and additional features, remember your word is our golden rule. [Mien special section of OTHER WORLDS is for your own participa- 140

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CORE another one for The Man From Tomorrow. In the August issue of OTHER WORLDS, hich went on sale June 19, and which was written two months before that, an answer was. made to Wil- iam Hecht as follows: “No new d (will be found) in the Atlantic. © reappearance of Atlantis. But “research will be made beneath the ean, and remnants of unheard-of lizations will be found.” ‘ow let us quote from an AP dis- ch from Hamburg, Germany dated st 24. “A Germian scientist says > has found what he believes to be ‘King’s castle and a temple of leg- ary Atlantis on the bottom of the North Sea off Helgoland. ~ “Rey. Juergen Spanush (the scien- is also a clergyman—Ed.) said iver of his expedition, following di- ‘rections contained in the writings of ‘the Greek philosopher, Plato, de- _ scended 30 feet and stood on a man- _ made wall. Spanush said this wall ap- parently encircled the fabled king- "©The Encyclopaedia Britannica _ says Atlantis was a legendary island in the Atlantic. It adds that Plato The Man from * TOMORROW Ww ‘describes in his writings how Egyp- tian priests represented the island as being situated just beyond the Pillars -of Hercules (the Strait of Gibraltar). “Spanush set off last month in a little boat to an area south of Helgo- land, off the northwest coast of Gez- many, which he said closely fits a de- scription by Plato. “The diver reported the wall. was built of rectangular stones, seven feet long and three feet high. _ “*T am convinced,’ Spanush said, ‘that a well-equipped expedition could result in valuable information about these huge buildings of the bronze age which submerged in a world catastrophe’. ” Another prediction we can score correct is the one regarding earth- quakes made in March, 1952 issue. The recent California earthquakes certainly bore that one out. Still another: the new type atomic weapon has~been announced, al- though its nature still is kept secret. Another score; We beat by two months (on the stands) the fact of a new record high in food prices. But—and this has raised a great fuss among our readers—Harry Tru- hy 141

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142 man will not be our next president! Said a reader (at the recent World Science Fiction Convention in Chi- cago): “Is your new prediction fea- ture a hoax?” He feferred specifically to the Truman prediction, All right, here is the announcement we prom- ised many months ago: First, we have several purposes in publishing our predictions: (1) An attempt to show that anyone can predict with a high degree of accu- racy, if he uses logic and is a careful observer of trends. (2) It is possible to make predictions which cannot be explained by the factors mentioned in purpose 1. That such predictions are the result of senses we do not yet understand, but which are being ex- plored by such scientists as Dr. Rhine * of Duke University and by many other groups. It is our purpose -to make a Jarge number of such pre- dictions which will prove that tomor- row is not beyond our reach even when the veil that hangs before it is completely impenetrable to any other process of penetration. (3) The busi- ness of making money. The predic- tion concerning Truman was in this classification. It was, neither consti- tuted on reason or logic, and certain- ly not on trends. It was a blind stab. IF it had come true, by the strang- est series of ‘circumstances in history, it would have formed the basis for a logical and serious book of proph- ecy, which would have proven a tre- mendous financial success. In short, it was the type of gamble on the “big story” that Ray Palmer has always considered his favorite pastime. That ceived! OTHER WORLDS it didn’t come off is just one of those things. We could have made a lot of money—which we could have well used to make OW even bigger and better! z However, all this doesn’t detract from the first two purposes of this column—and since we have had an overwhelming request from our read- ers to continue it as a serious proj- ect, with no hocus-pocus, no claims of men’ from the future, no tricks, we are forced to submit to the will of the majority. But we’ll admit, we’ve got a-tough row to hoe. One thing, we'll predict right here and now that three out of four of our predictions will be accurate! In a coming issue, we will draw up a scoreboard which will prove that our first two purposes are justified, and that both can be done with a very high degree of accuracy. But -most of all .we will prove that the items falling into classification 2 are sensationally correct. ” Our prediction for this month will — be a single one, falling into classifica~~ tions 1 and 2. We predict that com- munication will be established with intelligences beyond our breathable atmosphere, based on not-understood communications ALREADY te-— Further, that these intelli- gent signals have been received since 1942 by one of the most respected and famous of America’s electronic engineers. We also predict that every large country in the world will follow America’s lead in this new communi-— cation effort, and will spend (during (Concluded on page 159)

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| OOPSLA! 10c, 3/30c, 8 & an- nish/$1, annish 25c, Gregg Calkins, 61 Oakley St, Salt Lake City 16, ‘Utah. Material by Hoffman, Coving- ton, Banks, Conner and other well known fans. 17 pages mimeoed . SCIENCE FANTASY BULLETIN - Clormerty, BULLETIN Oj The weland SF Society); Harlan Elli- son, 12701 Shaker ‘Blud, Apt No. 616, Cleveland 20, Ohio; 15c, 12 ‘issues plus annual for $1.50. Mimeo, mnywhere from 30 to 45 pages... Back issues-of stf and occult zines; "will sell or trade for mags containing | Shaver. Have small number of Bur- roughs, Fort, Velikovsky, and Hub- bard books for sale. Would like to respond with fans interested in At- intis, the Elder Race, etc. Roger is, Box il1, Hayesville, Ohio OPUS (formerly FANVARI- TY); Max Keasler, Box 24, Wash- ‘ington U., St. Louis 5, Mo; 2/25c, 4/50c; 9/$1; mimeo, complete with _ Max's unusual spelling . .. Ed Wood, 31 N. Aberdeen St, Chicago 7, Ill. __ has numerous fanzines for sale at 5c, | 10c, 25c, etc. Also, AS 1927-33, plus _ other pre ’45 zines. Send for list . . . JOURNAL OF SCIENCE FiC- t TION, Charles Frendenthal, 1331 W. | Newport Ave, Chicago 13, Ill; 25c, \ ; 32 page offset fan mag; material by Bloch, Bradbury, Pomeroy, Gardner, etc , . . Would like to trade: Un- known Worlds, Dec *41 & Dec ’42 and Astounding, Nov 41 for Un- known, Aug, Nov & Dec ’39; all ’40 but Mar, Aug, Nov & Dec; "41, Apr & Oct; Carnelian Cube., Wm. J. Doherty, Jr., 23 Florence St, Cam- bridge 39, Mass . . . QUANDRY, Lee Hoffman, 101 Wagner St, Savan- nah, Ga; 15c, 3/40c; mimeo, 20 or more pages, neat, dependable .. . Want back issues of aSF, Unk, FFM. Will buy or trade. Have first issue of AS for trade. Alfred W Purdy, 1846 W 2nd Ave, Vancouver 9, B C, Can- ada... VIEWS IN SF, Ray J. Sienkiewicz, 802 W 35th St, Balti- more 11, Md; 10c, 3/25, 12/$1; “mimeo, monthly bulletin of the Balti- more Science Fiction Forum . . . Have for sale or trade: aSF, Sept, Oct and Nov ’51. Want OW, 1-4; Galaxy 1, Madge, 1-5. Evan Buck, 12 Hugue- not Dr, Larchmont, NY.. FAN- TASY TIMES; James V Taurasi, 137-03 32nd Ave, Flushing 54, N VY; 10c, 12/$1; mimeo; news-zine now in its 11th year of publication... Will accept bids on the following, special consideration for quantity or- ders; AS, scattered copies of ’39 and 143

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144 48, Spring ’49 quarterly, all ’49 ex- cept July, all 50 and ’51; FA, Mar and May thru -Sept of 748, Spring *46 Quarterly, all of 49, ’50 and ’51; miscellaneous copies of TWS, SS, Weird, Super Science, FSQ, Worlds Beyond, Marvel, Future, STF Qtly, Mag of Fantasy, Fantasy Adv, and various pocketbooks, Also have copy of “The New Adam” for sale if top offer is made... C H Geist, 2323 W Ainslie St, Chicago 25, Ill... FAN- TASY CLASSIFICATION SYS- ' TEM, by Alastair Cameron. Can be obtained from Chester D. Cuthbert, 54 Ellesmere Ave, St Vital, Mani- toba, Canada, $1; first ed limited to 500 copies; analyses and classifica- tions of basic plots for stf and fan- tasy .. . Have excerpts from old pulp size ASF, AS and Wonder. For sale at 15750c; first order for more than 15 will get a Bluebook excerpt for free, M. McNeil, 2010 McClendon, Houston 25, Texas . . . RHODO- MAGNETIC DIGEST, Garden Li- brary, 2524 Telegraph Ave, Berkeley 4, Calif. Published by The Elves’, Gnomes’ and Little Men’s Science Fiction, Chowder and Marching So- ciety; 30c, 10/$2.50; multilithed ... Robert. Perkins, Jr, RR 4, Box 54, Beloit, Wisc. will sell seven sf mags, including “Martian Chronicles” at below cost. All in excellent condition . » . SPACESHIP, Bob Silverberg, 760 Montgomery St, Brooklyn 13, N Y. Quarterly; 10c, 3/25c; mimeo ++. Will buy or trade for: H P Love- craft books and pb “The Lurking Fear,” pre ’49 aSF, Unk, Galaxy, Marvel and OW. Send 6 to 12 stf OTHER WORLDS mags and 25c and I will return an equal number. Will send Coronet or pb mysteries if desired. Have Tarzan series, “Thuvia, Maid of Mars” and “At The Earth’s Core”; also Leins- ter’s “Last Space Ship” with d/w. Interested in joining a stf club. John Quagliano, 1653 E 26 St, Brooklyn 29, NY... ETRON; Chuck Tay- lor, 1521 Mars, Lakewood 7, Ohio; 25c, 6/$1.25; mimeo; articles, fea- tures, stories and art . . . Newly- formed stf club, The Infinity Science” Fiction Club, would like to hear from south-eastern fans interested in a Southeastern conference. Contact Edith Heilweil, 2127 8 Ave N, St Petersburg, Fle... . CURRENT SCIENCE FICTION: Box 1329, Grand Central Station, New York 17, N Y;. 15c, 2/25c, 10/$1, 21/$2; mimeo; published weekly, contains fan news . .. Want ist ed “Gather Darkness,” “Dark Other,” “Beyond Infinity,” “Genus Homo,” “Carne- lian Cube,” “Cometeers.” Must be in | excel condit with d/w. Make offer, or will trade “Iron Star,” “Green Man of Graypec,” “Sign of Burning Hart,” “Mislaid Charm,” “Novels of Science”; all excel condit with d/w. John Gatto, 42 Oakland Ave, Union- town, Pa.., THE LITTLE COR- PUSCLE; -Lynn A Hickman, 408 W Bell St, Statesville, North Carolina; 15c, free to members of TLMA and Napoleon Fantasy Club; published at irregular intervals . . . Wanted: persons residing in continental USA to act as distributors for original stf and fantasy booklets. R. S. Craggs, (Concluded on page 159)

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SUN-BATHERS OF EROS By Mar soimmerman HIS month’s example of artwork sel n the ether beneath the by Other Worlds’ readers.is a i ys of the sun. Here 4 zay concept of the beautiful childre abandon, and care has no part in the planet of Love disporting them- _ existence. 145

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DID OTHER WORLDS DISCOVER US FIRST? Can Oahspe be the authentic and authorized account of the increasingly- frequent visits of flying disks and space ships? ROM the first page of OAHSPE you will find it increasingly hard to believe that Dr. John Ballou Newbrough, deceased, through whose hands this strange book was tran- scribed seventy years ago, actually wrote it, so different is Oahspe from all other books. Oahspe shows an array of minds as superior to the minds of Newbrough’s time as a flying saucer is superior to the engineering creations of today. On the basis of its literary merits alone, many find Oahspe powerfully convincing, and every day new exter- nal evidence tends to corroborate Oahspe. we Oahspe purports to have been writ- ten at the expressed order of the chief of a band of highly organized beings from other worlds, supposedly many of them older than this earth. These beings call themselves Ethereans, meaning citizens of etherea or space beyond the earth’s atmosphere, and they claim not only to have dis- covered earth long ago, but also to have colonized it, and to have had it in their loving.care and management ever since. In Oahspe, their book, they ‘give the history of their visits to earth, visits of their former expeditionary chiefs like Sethantes, Thor, Appolo, Sue, Osire, and many others whose “names are now remembered only in legend if at all, as the names of Buddha, Brahma, Mohamet and others will become legendary in cen- turies to come. In Oahspe these ethereans state quite plainly and simply what they think is good for us in this present age of atomic power and universal travel. First, they state what we should repudiate if we would escape misery. Second, what we should em- brace and practice if we would be alive and happy. As one of their members states in Oahspe; “I am not come to captivate the ignorant and unlearned. I come to the wise and learned. And not to one man only but to thousands. That which I am uttering in these words in this place, I am also uttering in the souls of thousands, and T will bring them to- gether.” You will, of course, want to ex- amine, judge, and decide for your- self the validity of Oahspe’s exten- sive statements. Decide for your- self just what and who Oahspe rep- resents. And don’t we all want to know who on earth is kidding who and why and how? Oahspe comes in a blue fabrikoid binding. It is a large book of 890 pages illustrated and indexed. Five dollars will bring this Wonder Book of the Age to you postpaid. If you wish it C.O.D. it will cost you five- fifty. If you are not pleased with the book send it back and money will be returned to you immediately. Order from Kosmon Press, 2208 West 11th St., Los Angeles 6, California. Advertisement 146

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Nilliam F. Holl I just read your feature “Nebulosi- ~ ties.” It is something unusual in the - field of wild speculation. Yes, despite - your “logic” and “proof,” I call it wild. The first thing I’d like to get my teeth into is your statement: “Most history is fiction.” You arrived at this not-so-uncommon conclusion by stating that history is continually "f being revised by the political crew then in power. Not true. Only the outlook has-been’ changed. There is, _ in almost every instance, too much ‘documented proof on hand to allow obliteration or, as_you put it, “edit- "ing out.” Much of history is inferred, unearthed by circumstantial evidence which makes the basic conclusion in- evitable. Only the small pieces can be “edited out.” Next thing, you say not only that _ the A-bomb tests have changed our _ weather, but that they Were the cause of the Kansas and Missouri floods. Gads! If that’s not wild speculation, maybé we'd better call back in the ~ guy who said the Earth was flat! Lis- ten: Our weather is slightly effected locally by percussion waves originat- ing from the tests, but otherwise, they can and have caused O weather changes. How could they? if ETTERS Jeary Meee teeter tok 1 Oy nd EO es Me CLARK PUBLISHING COMPANY, 806 DEMPSTER STREET, EVANSTON, ILLINOIS eo Re your next paragraph, if we knew how we could have war, we wouldn’t have it. Half the cure of a disease is in finding the cause. Next, you glibly state that the re- cent quakes were due to the A-bomb tests. Do you know just how “ter- rific? the impact of even a super A-bomb is, compared with what is re- quired to cause the smallest of quakes? Do you know how many mil- lions of tons of pressure must be . placed on a fault before there is a shift of any kind? If your “terrific” A-bomb blasts had the effect you sup- pose, Southern Cal. would have been buried beneath the sea centuries ago from natural causes! In your last paragraph you say: “No city was ever built that was not destroyed, no civilization that did not fall, no culture that did not degen- erate.” But few indeed are the cities which weren’t re-built; few the cul- tures that did not regenerate; few the civilizations that did not rise again! Surely, Rome fell. But what is America, if not a Roman Republic? What is Russia but a prototype of ancient Sparta? ; You see, the phoenix is more than a bird of legend. It is the symbol of all life, all thought. For those cul- tures, those civilizations, those philos- 147

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148 OTHER ophies are born and reborn in the minds of men. They echo and re-echo down the endless corridors of time. I know you were just gassing, but please stick closer to the facts. Stop treating honest logic as though it were your worst enemy! I like your magazine. 1657 Ocean Ave., « Santa Monica, Calif. What is “history” in Germany to- day? 1s it the bopks Hitler destroyed? Is it the hangover of the Superman propaganda? Is if the “truth” being disseminated on both sides of the Iron Curtain by all the conquering pow- ets? Can you, in the midst of all this confusion, find the actual pathway of history? Can you DOCUMENT one single bit of it? I say it is im- possitle—and the future will regard it in an even more confused light. Propaganda, not history! We just plain disagree with you on the A-bomb and weather. And we aren't alone. Try reading Colliers and the Post... ; How we have wars? Easy. Selfish, greedy men. And PROPAGANDA. Earthquake scientists predict quakes by watching the “build-up” of pressure on known faults, And will you deny the “punch” of the A-bomb as insufficient to trigger a.loaded gun? By your reasoning, the Cro-Mag- non did. not vanish—he is America today. Same guy, same civilization— regenerated. Nuts. You are mistaking new civilizations for resurgences of old ones. If we build a new city on _ the site of Troy, is it Troy all over WORLDS again? And what about the eleven cities under Troy, whose inhabitants \ and civilization we have not the slightest inkling as to identity or na- ture?—Rap. Klaus Kaufman OTHER WORLDS! ... and yet, in reading your features the Earth seems to be the only world in ques- tion. In your editorial we learn these facts: the atomic dust and snow is bringing about floods and unusual weather, the air is poisoned, we're ready for the grave. We learn of the terrible fate your bushes were involved in. Your farm is ruined! Another feature, NEBULOSITIES, paints more of the same. Our Dem- ocratic way of life is fast fading. A volcano has erupted; this proves that - the Earth is exploding in slow mo- tion. For those impatient souls: the’ Earth is exploding. slowly, but give it time, remember, patience is a virtue. All this may be true, but why must you insist-on publishing these grim facts in your magazine. We all read for our entertainment. We read fea- tures to smile and laugh. Instead, we find ourselves bathed in cold sweat, — watching the sunsets, closing our win- dows to keep out the poisoned air. This is surely the end! Mr. Rap, a question. If the end is so near why do you continue publish- ing OTHER WORLDS, or maybe you plan to move to Mars? The na- tives will get a kick out of the mag. 1 Water St.,

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Newburgh, N. Y. We are merely being brave, carry- on as if the end wasn’t near! —Rap. OG E. Williams ig Greetings Palmer, you’re an. out- ken cuss, a non-conformer, and aybe a dam fool, but I’ll buy you ‘on the newsstands anytime. : To elucidate: You’re outspoken at time when policy seems to dictate at I see, I observe and remember (maybe) but just ’cause I don’t agree T don’t go round bitching about it” -not even to try and make it better. n rapping old uncle’s knucks, the iticians, the super-conformist, the ‘Socialistic tendencies, etc., you've set Lig omething of a precedent. None of us one hundred percent with Uncle “the politicos, graft, corruption the like but of all the books or Tread you are the only dam guy with guts enough to say so—in Non-conformer? Please show me conformist who ever had an orig- inal thought, who ever pioneered, in history, in development, in science, ‘or even in politics? Which way is but down when everybody con- _ forms? I said maybe a dam fool, that sticks, but not like it sounds... could be you're a little business man —like me, and maybe those big pres- sure groups won’t like what you’ve been saying, or how you say it, before a public, and maybe ’cause they don’t ‘like it they can pressure you into LETTERS 149 doing something silly like maybe be- coming a conformist—maybe to get paper, or labor or something, maybe that makes you a dam fool for flaunt- ing your ideas (and mine) “in the in- fluence of all those big interests, but by god that don’t keep you from being right—I just hope they can’t catch you in that old tight spot. Don’t be a dam fool rap, be RIGHT and STILL WIN! So much for axe grinding, now for a plot. In the Naked Godess you've scored highest. Good story, nuff said, T’m sure you liked it too—but—there you go—non-conformist again, every- body else refers to Warp Drive, Atomics, or just plain jet fuel... this is the first story in any sf mag in the last seven months to base the drive of the story on the drive of a ship in which the basis for travel was electrical! Were you unaware of this trend away from Electrical possi- bilities? Atomics might provide drive. They could never pro- vide protection from meteors, force screens, light the ship or provide in- ternal power. Warp drive is so devia- tionist nobody could begin to explain what it uses... not that drive is SO important to the story, except that in most cases the author tries to give the impression of travel in order to hold the story together... so OK .. ..look at today’s bomber or other large, fast aircraft. If it’s so fast human error is done away with by electro-servo-mechanisms, some- times connected with radar, radio, - etc. ... all electrical, a space ship is “going to go faster yet, huh? OK, re-

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150 fine your mechanisms, provide for adequate generation or storage of large amounts of electricity, and you have the power requirements needed for operational stability, light, heat and refrigeration —the only thing Jacking then? DRIVET My contention is that Electricity has some very dark, unexplored al- leys, not one, but several—two for example . . . an efficient storage bat- tery, and negative electricity. Or if you want to get complicated, hi-fre- quency plus combination of types of electricity, a-c, d-c and neg. How to get drive? Well, what char- acteristics MUST you’ have—a ‘few, instantaneous control, positive ac- tion, controlability, safety ... only electricity offers these things to us; it’s the only thing fast enough to offer them at high speeds. Perhaps electricity is the first step on a two- step ladder . . . but -emember the “old Doc Methuselah” series in asf? He had a ship (what a ship) that was pretty much the ONLY possibility as far as practicability. It seemed to combine hovering, overdrive, et¢., was very flying saucerish in the abilities to swoop, speed up, slow down et al. Perhaps nullifying gravity will be enough—at first, then the pioneers will find they need protection for cold, heat; meteors, dust, cosmic rays or something and another fatet of the dormant powers of electricity will be brought to light. First the drive, then the safety factor, a shield or screen to stop those rays! One thing’s fer sure, when spacing comes, it'll come from OTHER WORLDS electricity or a take-off from elec- tricity. It’s the only weapon we have that can also be called a tool. I can say it needs doing, I can say what needs to be done, I can even chart out a course to the goal that has to be reached, but I lack that all important combination of factors dear old Edison had, someone’ll have em sometime soon, and they'll read this—or something like it, and get the bug. For what it’s worth RAP I’d like to see you lend your obvious talents to creating a feature length novel based on. the type of equipment and tech- niques described above. Believe it would be good. In a recent editorial you men- tioned women on your covers—seems to me the answer to that one is sim- ple... the only MAN not interested in a woman, or women is the one who’s dead, and your circulation doesn’t go to graveyards. Let the prudes whisper, rave and raise hell, you'll go on selling more mags if you include a little sex interest in. 1100 West Main, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Wouldn’t trying to squelch me prove I was right—and isn’t that what they'd want to avoid? As for that plot for an electrical novel, may- be one of our writers who can write will take up the idea. Speaking of sex, s how do you like the DeMille bath- tub scene on the cover? And it isn’t dragged into the story—the whole story depends on it!—Rap.

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Charles F. Albrecht, Jr. ‘I have been reading “Other ” for about two years and I ave enjoyed all your stories. I have so enjoyed all of your covers, That the main reason why I have writ- roductions of your swell covers, I know: that PeAny persons besides my- iow the possibilities of this idea. Hq. Sq. 3650th, BMTG, Sampson, AFB, N. Y. _ Jt would cost a young fortune!+A Set of plates of that size would cost 500.00 printing about $250.00. And "d probably sell a couple hundred at 25c. But, you must note that we've begun giving you front and back ‘overs suitable for framing as is. So, haven't we complied with your re- est, except as to size!—Rap. Erma Simon About Other Worlds: it’s stupen- ‘ us! Magnificent! Astounding! In- credible! Marvelous! Fantastic! Fab- lous! In fact, I like it! People tell me I'm hard to please, so that’s a com- -pliment. The new paper is terrif! Glad you’re using the two-cover for- ‘mat too—nice. Hang on to Hornstein—he’s got something on the ball. But, just one question. Why no Bradbury? Even reprints? Every mag should have a Bradbury saga once:in a while! For Nebulosities: Somebody: pre- dicted jet transports by 1958. I think he’s off his rocker. No jet transport compariy could operate at a profit; a= SSS ae LETTERS 151 at least not with present-day fuels. Which brings up possible story plot: first commercial jet transport com- pany succeeds in spite of high costs, general public resistance to new ideas, rival company with cupital operating “old-type” combustion engine planes. Give it to éne of the pros—I’m just an amateur writer myself. By the way, give Harmon my vote for president, provided he runs on a platform of fewer serials, more shorts, a bigger OW, and a flying saucer in every garage.“Election slogan: What this country needs is a good Sc stf mag!! Hurrah! Hurrah! (Other fans, I am sure, cheering in the back- ground.) As a matter of fact, this is the first fan letter I ever wrote—but it sure is fun. Again orchids to you and OW and here’s to an even bigger and better mag! s R. D. 1, Scenery Hill, Pa. You haven't seen anything but a few Hornstein sketches so far—wait guntil you see the illustrations he’s got coming up!—Rap. * Pvt. Gunther Wallenda Just finished the October issue of OTHER WORLDS and made up my mind that I would try my hand at writing a few lines to you, and let you know how much I like your mag. I am one ‘of those guys that has been reading science-fiction for about 15 years, but not being too handy with a typewriter I never got up the

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152 nerve to write, I do think that your mag, is one of the best in the field and haven’t missed any issues so far. Your editorials I really enjoy even if I don’t agree with all of them, but last time you really went-to town on one of my pet peeves, mainly the A-bomb, not that I have anything against the Bomb itself but the con- stant denial of the fact that it could- n’t possibly affect the weather and even the people. I remember just last week reading that where the bombs were dropped in Japan during the last war, the birthrate of girls is way ahead of boys at the present time. How can that be explained if the radiation itself isn’t supposed to be strong enough after a short time to affect us? x Now another thin: I’m interested in, the flying saucers—natch, I have a pet idea of mine on that too. In- stead of it being “weather balloons or certain planets” there is a chance that we perhaps have built and launched one or more space stations? It could be possible and they would certainly be able to reflect the sun at night when they are in a favorable position. That would also account for the speed seen in the flying saucers. Now for the stories in the last is- sue. The SUN-SMITHS I liked best, then came THE NAKED GOD- DESS, FEARLESS FERGY, and I didn’t like LAST MINUTE. Of course I realize that different people like different stories and I don’t ex- pect you to put out a mag. just to please my taste like a lot of letters I & OTHER WORLDS have read where the writer seems to believe just because he likes one type of story you should only print that type. I see where a lot of the other mags. are copying your idea of allowing the printing of other mags. name in the letter column, and I think that’s a good thing. It makes everything a lit- tle friendlier to me. Now a suggestion. How about put- ting an address at the head of_your letter list so a person cah see where to send this letter, Wd, “25” U. A. Hosp. Ft. Jackson, S.C. No sooner said than done.—Rap. Ron Smith Here it is a dreary 10:00 p.m. I’m _ tired, but instead of going to bed like I should, what do I do? Write you a letter. sat down here at the typewriter with a sort of hypnotic stare in my eyes_and started typing. Why? I wondered. The fact is, I’m just fascinated by OTHER WORLDS. I wish it came out weekly instead of monthly. But now that I think about it, it isn’t OTHER WORLDS that holds my interest, it’s you. The way you handle her, shape her, put yourself into her and give her life. I’ve really never seen an editor yith your ap- proach to magazine editing. Most of them edit as if they were working, - but you seem to like what you're doing. That makes OTHER WORLDS a sort of different maga- zine; she’s alive, that I’m sure of.

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She has a personality all her own; jour personality. Why don’t you give FATE the treatment you give her? So you’re going to publish the Shaver Mystery? Let me know the price, and I’ll buy a copy now. Tt is true that our particular cul- ture can’t survive eternity. All civili- zations possess their own seed of de- struction; and the people water and feed and nurse that seed. It grows nd eventually chokes out that civili- _ zation. It has always happened like that in the past, I only hope it won’t ALWAYS happen in the future. May- be some day we'll catch on to our- _ selves and learn how to think right. _ We ought to face reality though, and realize that it isn’t likely to happen ith our culture, we are just being naive in thinking so. People don’t understand’ them- selvés. Practically all of civilization Says it doesn’t want war; a great ma- jority of it really BELIEVES it loesn’t want war. But the truth is, it ust be, that a majority of the peo- ‘ples do want war. Otherwise there wouldn't be any. Too bad everybody _ isn’t a psychologist. Or do psychol- ogists want war too? To change the subject to OTHER WORLDS: The “Sun-Smiths” was an A-plus story. The back cover was again very good, but I do think an ex- anation, or a story, is in order. “Maybe a stf poem, or at least a title o the things. 4 , The front cover was excellent. But _ damn it, where did you get the bright idea for a spaceship? If this is the fect it’s going to have, you had bet- LETTERS ‘ ~ 153 ter quit reading QUICK, After all, YOU got to see it before Malcolm got happy with his pen. I'll sit and sigh over this cover fgr another cou- ple of minutes now, before I forget it; I like pretty girls too. Your new series of articles is ex- cellent. I’ve said how much I enjoy your editorials. Please come up with some idea I will disagree with. It’s very dis- concerting not to find something to make me think you're nuts, Every- body thinks everybody else is nuts, you know. Vea ema on going monthly, 332 E. Date Oxnard, Calif, We'll try to have some sort of story with our back covers. November we explained in the editorial. As a mat- ter of fact, some of our future back covers are going to illustrate stories in the magazine! As for being jealous of us, we're jealous of Malcolm Smith—you see, he takes the pic- tures; And not just one, but dozens of poses, before he gets one we're satis- fied with. Art directors are so lucky. —Rap. Peter Kreeft This is my first letter to any sf mag as I am only 15 and have been a fan for only a few months, but I feel I must write you re the wonderful and horrible condition of your mag. Your stories are tops except for just one thing: serials. I hate sae I hate ’em! I hate ’em! And so ‘do 90 percent of the rest of the sf fans. Why

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154 not substitute a novella or two, com- plete in one issue, instead? Please, please, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE CUT IT OUT! Serials are driving me nuts! Your feature, The Man from To- morrow is terrific. Keep it up. Your predictions are better than Jules Verne’s, H. G. Wells, & Walter - Winchell’s all put together. Our sci- entists ought to take them seriously and really get to work on them. Now Rap, if you want to be an ostrich, as you suggest in Oct. OTHER WORLDS (Nebulosities, p. 155, 156), go right ahead. As for the rest of the world, we'll go on “wreck- ing the future’ by inventing new and better things for the benefit of the world. If, as you suggest, every- one had done that, we would be in the Stone Age yet. Whassa matter with you? If we were all like that there would be no science fiction! And that is one of the most horrible punishments possible for an sf fan. Why would there be no sf? Why, with “no new advancements in technology, civilization, and eulture to look for- ward to in the future, would anyone write about the future? Please, Rap, be reasonable. I dare you to print this letter! 26 Richardson Ave., " Haledon, N. J. Our serial policy will modify from time to time—but meanwhile, we think you'll find it worthwhile to save the issues and read the serial when you have it complete. They are going to be terrific stories! Dare us? Why OTHER WORLDS any letter fit to be written is fit to be published. We just try to make the LETTERS section interesting by se- lection—Rap. Robert D, McNamara Just received the October issue ae OW and must say it was a good one, I thought that you had reached a peak of some sort with the August number, back cover and all, but you seemed to have beaten it this time, Not only were the front and back covers superior to those of the other, but the paper was wonderful, ex- tremely easy to read. Nevertheless, there has been quite a drop in the in- terior “illos; following in the steps of IMAGINATION you’ve made them too sketchy, and without enough de- tail. Try to get some Cartier, for though Charles Hornstein’s works — were good, the rest were a little below mediocre, “PEOPLE WHO MAKE OTHER WORLDS” was as usual, good. I’ve read so many autobiog- — raphies of de Camp, however, on the back of his books and periodicals he is featured in, that I feel I know all there is to know about him—the photo was exceptional, though. Now for the stories— Definitely best in the issue was T. P. Caravan’s beautiful little gem of comical farcity, “LAST MINUTE.” I’ve never heard of Caravan’s name before, but if he can keep turning out wonderful pieces like this I'll be look- ing forward to seeing more and longer stories by him in future issues. Coming in second was Richard S. Shaver’s thrill-packed conclusion of

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e “Sun-Smiths.” I’ve commented in ‘it before, so suffice it to say that it was worthy of Shaver at his best. Am a little doubtful, however, about your judgment in picking another Shaver Serial to succeed this immediately. You can push a good thing too far; if serials on the readers issue»after is- _ sue, invariably good as they are, you’re going to find a lot of fans fed “up to the ears with him and stopping buying. ~ “THE NAKED GODDESS” by S. _ J. Byrne and “FEARLESS FERGY” tank together for third and fourth _ place, with the latter, I think, a littie _ superior to Byrne’s piece. Both good _ however. L. Sprague de Camp’s article was good; but merely that. I’m probably " just a little tired of that type of ar- ' ticle, I imagine, having just com- pleted reading “NEW LANDS” but I still think that de Camp could be a little less confusing. Not that the article itself is hard to decipher, merely that by the time you’ve got the names of the various Greek char- acters associated in your mind you've ’ forgotten that a place like Atlantis ever existed. (If it did exist!) “NEBULOSITIES” is probably your best feature, and I certainly hope you continue it. When you cut out the hocus-pocus of things (that’s the only word, Ihave for it) like _ ROW” and merely expound your own ideas and_ theories, exceptionally worthy themselves, for what they are —yours, then you have an article LETTERS you're going to keep forcing Shaver’s - “THE MAN FROM TOMOR- — 155 worthy of your by-line. As I mentioned “Man” above I might as well review it next, though I find no entertainment in reading this rather sorry attempt at sensa- tionalism. It wouldn’t be too bad if you’d quit trying to convince the readers that this is not your writing, but a citizen. of the future-speaking from your lips. And don’t object and say you don’t actually say that is the TRUTH—I can see how those sly inferences and often “pointed remarks are meant to affect the reader psychol- ogy. Oh, you’re a smart one, Palmer! But McNamara is wise to you. And as for your actual predictions, why quite simply there aren’t any. Each issue you keep promising to reveal something in the next—then stall them for a time in that number. “Prophecies” like citing the always capricious weather as having some- thing queer about it, and then in a tremendous exposé misquoting weath- er reports that never would have been corrected if it weren’t for a fan who luckily lived in the area. And your mild predictions “such as saying H.S.T. would corner the Convention, are so inconsequential that when proven wrong the reader merely says, “Well, there’s one wrong,—but Ray probably interjected that himself in- stead of listening to what the Man from ‘Tomorrow told him. So it says here that there’s going to be a rise of an unprecedented 2.68 in the grain market of Masatonia, eh? Gad, better put that startling bit of information on my chart!” A, Merritt once said, RAP, that if you’re going to write a

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“156 fantasy story, have it in a setting in “Mongolia, or in some other uncheck- able spot. That’s exactly what you’re doing ed, to your evident gain but to many of we readers’ serious dis- satisfaction. Well, despite a few hard words, old liorse, you’ve put out an excellent issue, and though I’ll continue to dis- approve of features like “The Man From Tomorrow” and its ilk, I shall still remain a faithful reader: Keep up the good work, and schedule that Bok cover for the near, ve-ry near future, please! ‘SO Plaza St., Brooklyn 17, N. Y. . We aren't following in the steps of IMAGINATION, Why, after what that guy, Hamling, did to us at the convention ... | Gave.us a plaque, he did. Embarrassed us in front of all those 1050 people! Lucky he was only acting for the Convention Com- mittee! Sure, we'll make the illus- trations less sketchy—just to get even with Hamling! But Hornstein — you'll besraving about him soon! Shaver serials are rare. It just so happens he wrote two at once... Coming up soon are other guys—even complete novels in one issue! See Man From Tomorrow, this issue. No hocus-pocus. But honest; aren’t we producing even one teeny prediction which lays it on the line? Guess we gotta recapitulate and mark up the Score some more ...— Rap. The International Flying Saucer Bureau This is to inform you of an or- OTHER WORLDS ganization formed to collect data and history in connection ba the Flying Saucers. Anyone may become a mieentaal age is no drawback. We are trying to get - all Saucer-Minded people banded to- gether in one big organization. I would appreciate all you can do to help us. I understand you are quite an au- thority on the Saucers and would like it very much if you would consider an honorary Life Membership in our society. ° I have been reading “Other Worlds” ever since the first issue hit the newsstands and I must admit it is TOPS on my list, and you can _ quote me if you desire. Albert K. Bender, President, P. O. Box 241, ‘ Bridgeport 2, Conn, - Glad to help. Also, the membership is an honor —Rap. Rosco Wright What happened to OTHER WORLDS? I know it’s nice of you to get smoother paper but the print-, er gave you the brownest and the worst and not only that he or you threw this issue together so fast that the interior layout is about the ugli- est in the history of science-fiction. Why? This was the most uninteresting issue you ever put out. As a printer and as an artist I think you ought to let me plan your layout for you—on second thought why don’t you hire

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LETTERS to be your boss—or let Bea do the layout—or was it the new month- ly schedule this time? For 35 cents I WANT SOPHISTICATED LAY- OUT. You might look at some mod- ern advertising. This issue of OW looks like something that wouldn’t even sell in the deadest decade be- fore the gay nineties. And another ‘thing. I like the back cover idea BUT this second one by Jones has terrible balance, nothing but a hack idea and ‘poor coloring. It is far inferior to the first one. You want that I should aint your cover too? Jones’ little ‘technique was pretty good on the first over. The next one had better be good and while you are at it why don’t you switch to a four-plate proc- ss? It will improve your newsstand "appearance immensely. My motto is “Babes look better on four plates.” _ Well? What are you going to do _ about it? 146 East 12th Ave., Eugene, Ore. Well, how do you like the ap pear- ‘ance of this issue? Sure, we were in a horrible haste on the October issue. Didn't even have our department cuts due to shifting printers. We slapped it together frantically, because some- how we got all fouled up on dates, _ which is why we skipped the Sep- _ tember issue. But now, we got a new dress, our art director is working nights, and we will sophisticate you right out of your bed! How'd you like November back cover? And _ Jones on this one? As for four-color 157 fast! Take it easy, we'll get around to it—Rap. Fred Goetz The rapidly increasing popularity of tape and wire recorders has given rise to a new and most fascinating hobby—Tape-respondence or Wire- spondence. I’m an old-time science fiction reader, and it occurred to me that this hobby would be of especial in- terest to my fellow readers, be they active fans or not. Talking and listening to people from everywhere is a tremendous thrill, I know, because I’ve exchanged well over 1,200 “Talking Letters” with many people in this and 18 for- eign countries. Although many of my friends live thousands of miles away I know more about them, their fami- lies, their work, their every-day af- fairs than I do about the people liv- ing in the next apartment. In fact, my “Talking Letters” friends mean just as much to ne.as do my personal friends of many years’ standing. In response to numerous requests I am now forming an organization, ~ TAPE-RESPONDENTS, INTER- NATIONAL. Membership is open to all. There is no obligation. Anyone who has a friendly disposition and a recorder (tape or wire) may join. Join T-R-I today! Get*in touch with me by tape, by wire, or by letter. I'll be glad to have your ideas and suggestions. 3488 22nd Street, San Francisco 10, Calif.

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158 Any of you fans got the equip- ment? Sounds like it would be fun! —Rap. Richard Fugett ' Your covers stink, Your features smell Your stories are bad, And the editorials’ aren’t so hot, either. 972 Gretna Green, Los Angeles 49, Calif. Will any of our rzaders who may have some knowledge of the maga- zine to which this interesting letter should have been directed, please in- form us, so that we can forward it? Obviously it does not refer to us. Per- haps it is a joke? We cannot say we know of a single magazine in this particular category. Perhaps it is Russian propaganda!—Rap. Tom Reamy Well, at last you got: the mag to looking all right on the outside; now try working on the inside. Here are some suggestions which you will im- “mediately do the opposite: (1) Throw all the Terry illos you got on hand into the nearest waste-basket where they belong. How bad can an artist get? I know, Terry showed me. There’s no use in my suggesting some artists to get because it’s been done innumerable times; and what hap- pens? The next issue is full of Terry. What is he? A relative? (2) Start skipping an issue be- tween serials. Galaxy—has_ started skipping two issues, which is better s OTHER WORLDS still. You’ll be hearing about this. (3) Have Jones write an explana- tion about his paintings, which, by the way, would look better on the front than the ones you put there, ~ Oh yeah! Way back when—in 50 I think, you said that you were going to start a department like the Analyt- __ ical Laboratory in aSF. It hasn’t showed, up yet. Seems like you prom- ised it for the next issue: When I read in your August edi- torial that you were going to start another Byrne serial, I was all set to go into a chair throwing rage. But, it turned out that it wasn’t a serial but, a short novel all in one piece. T began to cool down. Then I saw the announcement for the Shaver serial. Duckt d General Delivery, Andrews, Texas. Okay, we've got Henry Sharp, Mc- Cauley, Fuqua, Tillotson, Bok, Jones, St. John, Hornstein, Settles, and others coming up. Rest easys Also, — our serial policy isn’t a policy—you'll get variation, And we did put Jones on the front cover last issue, He'll be there again in March. Analytically, we'll keep that promise too, eventu- ally. We've been so busy~. . — Rap. The Junior Flying Saucer League After reading most all of the maga- zines out concerning “flying saucers” I, personally, think that the article you had last January in OTHER WORLDS by Kenneth Arnold is the finest I have ever read. Our club, The Junior “Flying Saucer” League ~

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of Investigations, has a large library on the “saucers” and we treasure the one in OTHER WORLDS mostly. Our teen-age league is trying to get members all over the U. S. If any teen-ager would like to join the club, write to me at the address below. Max B. Miller, 1420 S. Ridgeley Dr., Los Angeles 19, Calif. The MAN From TOMORROW (Concluded from page 142) 1953) ten million dollars on new elec- tronic equipment designed for receiv- ' ing such messages from space! We predict that OTHER WORLDS - will carry an article in the near fu- ture which will PROVE the work al- ready done in this field, and will name names, places, dates. We are not alone in this area of space —Rap. QP PERSONALS (Concluded jrom page 144) 25 McMillan Ave, West Hill, On- tario, Canada . . . CRITI-Q; Ste- - phen Craig, Box 89, Runnemede, N J; 10c; published, irregularly; mimeo... LETTERS LOST CONTINENTS “ATLANTIS” In History, Science and Literature By L. SPRAGUE DE CAMP “De Camp seems to make good sense, and I am lost in admiration alike of the ‘catholic range of his researches and the boldness and decision with which he handles these sometimes thorny and sometimes nebulous questions.”—Prof, Garrett Mattingly, historiafi, THE ATLANTIS BOOK TO END ALL ATLANTIS BOOKS! About 375 pp.,-incl. 17 plates, four appendices, notes, bibliography, and index. Library binding. $6.00. Or- der from your, local book store or from the publisher. Get Your Copy Today PRIME PRESS Box 2019 ‘Philadelphia 3, Penn. 159

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8 Z LBA Somme se ZGUZ A Zt ZEZ 2222222222222 £04022 GLIAL BOOK SHELF For the convenience of readers of OTHER WORLDS, we are listing here a number of science fiction and kindred books that can be secured directly from us. If you wish any of the following titles, address your order to OTHER WORLDS Book Shelf, 806 Dempster St. Evanston, Ill Only prepaid orders accepted. We pay postage. WHO GOES THERE? (THE THING) By John W. Campbell, Jr. Seven strange stories, including Blindness, a tale of Prometheus reborn, snatching atomic energy from the sun itself; Twilight and Night, prophetic visions of the future, $3.00 THE MAN WHOrSOLD THE MOON -By Robert A. Heinlein The most amazing book of prophecy ever written, The first volume of the Future History series, spanning the years of the near future. $3.00 SPACE ON MY HANDS By Frederic Brown Nine of the best stories of this well-known writer including Ps In The Sky, Nothing Sirius, Crisis, 1999, The Star Mouse. Humor as you'll like it. $2.50 THE WHEELS OF IF By L. Sprague de Camp Meet The Gnarly Man, an immortal Neanderthal pursued by a man-crazy female anthropologist: The Warrior Race, Spartan Supermen seduced on a wanton world; Hyperpelosity, where a strange mutation makes clothing obsolete. $3.00 “KINSMEN OF THE DRAGON By Stanley Mullen An original science-fantasy novel, never before published. Contains such chapters as Trail of the Wizard, Votaries of Ys, Darla of the Seagreen Byes, The Black Tower, 26 thrilling chapters ia all. $3.50 SIDEWISE IN TIME By Murray Leinster The cream of the writings of America’s favorite fiction author, including Proxima Contaurt, The Fourth Dimensional Demonstrator, and many others, $3.00 THE GREEN HILLS OF EARTH By Robert A. Heinlein The second volume in the Future History series, with Rhysling, The Blind Singer, and the adventure of the entire solar system. $3.00 \ 160

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BOOK SHELF 161 BEYOND THESE WALLS By Rena M. Vale A tremendous novel of passion and conklibe in the world of the future. The surprise “science-fiction” find of the year. (Not yet issued) $3.50 CLOAK OF AESIR , By John W. Campbell, Jr. The second great collection of “Don A. Stuart” stories, including the Aess series, the Machine trilogy, and the memorable Forgetfulness. $3.00 ‘MURDER IN MILLENNIUM VI By Curme Gray Brand new original novel presenting an entirely new aspect of science-fiction writing. $3.00 _ THE BEST SCIENCE-FICTION STORIES: 1951 By Bleiler & Dikty The third in this series of the best science-fiction stories of each year. Contains a bumper crop of 18 tales. $2.95 x PLUS THE FOLLOWING BOOKS FOR $3.00 EACH: | rentanerary By E. E, Smith, Ph.D. BEYOND THE HORIZON : By Robert A. Heinlein _ SINISTER BARRIER By Eric Frank Russell DIVIDE AND RULE By L. Sprague de Camp DARKER THAN YOU THINK ; By Jack Williamson SKYLARK OF VALERON By E. E. Smith, Ph.D, A MARTIAN ODYSSEY By Stanley G. Weinbaum SEVEN OUT OF TIME By A. L. Zagat THE INCREDIBLE PLANET By John W. Campbell, Jr. _ FIRST LENSMAN By E. E. Smith, Ph.D. MASTERS OF TIME By A. E. van Vogt _ THE BRIDGE OF LIGHT By A. Hyatt Verrill _ THE COMETEERS By Jack Williamson ‘GENUS HOMO By P. Schuyler Miller & L. Sprague de Camp - GALACTIC PATROL ; By E. E. Smith, Ph.D. _ THE MOON IS HELL! By John W. Campbell, Jr. GRAY LENSMAN By E. E. Smith, Ph.D. F AND THESE GREAT BOOKS FOR ONLY $2.75 EACH DREADFUL SANCTUARY By Eric Frank Russell _ BEYOND INFINITY _ By Robert Spencer Carr ‘SEEDS OF LIFE By John Taine *%

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WHY WALK A CROOKED MILE? Or Any Mile At All? For OTHER WORLDS t When you can have st delivered right to your door, even before the newsstand gets it, in pertect condition in a heavy envelope; and in addition enjoy a saving of 10¢ per copy! Give your feet—and your pocketbook! —a break. SUBSCRIBE NOW And let Uncle Sam do the legwork, MAIL YOUR REMITTANCE TO Clark Publishing Company, 806 Dempster Street, Evanston, Ill. eee ee eer ee eee err reer rer eee Teer reer errr ee ere rey NAME TARO Ree eee eens eee e eee eee eme eee eee eee eens ese serene sees neee ADDRESS 2. ce eceecceececcsacevccvececce CITY ..ee5e ZONE so siovccctcuess StUtO sc. chcccecdechevcessdncceenecscspaceusione 1 wish to subscribe te OTHER WORLDS for (check square): ; L] 12 issues (2) 24 issues ; $3.00 $6.00 Enclosed ts ["] cash [] check [[] money ordar for $....s+sscesceeeeeaeee Begin my subscription with the......s0ceeeceseeeceeeees «i85U0. Check here if this is a renewal subscription [_] 24 Printed in the U.S.A. 162

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