Joseph Elder (ed) - The Farthest Reaches (proofers siPDF)

MCL PN6O7 S33F3 1968

The Farthest Reaches

The Farthest Reaches Edited by JOSEPH ELDER

TRIDENT

PRESS

NEW

YORK

COPYRIGHT, © ,

1968,

BY JOSEPH ELDER

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM WITHOUT PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUB­ LISHER, EXCEPT BY A REVIEWER W HO M AY QUOTE BRIEF PASSAGES IN A REVIEW TO BE PRINTED IN A MAGAZINE OR NEWSPAPER. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUM BER:

68-26712

PUBLISHED SIMULTANEOUSLY IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA BY TRIDENT PRESS, A DIVISION OF SIMON & SCHUSTER, INC.,

630

FIFTH AVENUE, N EW YORK, N .Y .

10020

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

F o r B arbara

104 225

Foreword

'W h a t we really seek in space is n o t knowledge, b u t wonder, beauty, romance, novelty— and above all, adventure. L e t no one devalue these by fatu­ ous charges of “escapism”; they are essential to m an because o f his very nature. A rthur C. Clarke, one of the distinguished contributors to lliis collection, addressed these words to T h e F ifth G oddard Memorial Symposium of the Am erican A stronautical Society in the spring of 1967. T hree cheers and one cheer m ore for Arthur C. Clarke! His words struck a responsive chord in me as I assembled these stories, for they expressed precisely the llicme I had hoped to capture in this book. W e hear enough about the uses of space: space for research, space for peace, space for war, space for comm erce and industry, etc. W h a t about space for the soul? This, to my way of thinking, is w hat science fiction is all about. I t may be firmly rooted in scientific fact and reality. Occasionally, it comes up w ith some startling predictions 7

which, in tim e, are proved accurate. O n the other hand, it is frequently ( indeed, more o fte n ) far off the m ark, or it doesn’t even pretend to have anything to do w ith the world of “real” science. W e didn’t need M ariner V to prove th a t Ray Brad­ bury’s M ars of T h e M artian Chronicles bears no resemblance to the realities of our neighboring planet; b u t if Bradbury’s isn’t one of the great works of science fiction, I’ll eat my space helm et. I t endures, as does all great science fiction, because it embodies to an extraordinary degree the very wonder, beauty, rom ance, novelty, and adventure to which M r. Clarke referred in his address. In essence, science fiction may have very little to do w ith science. Escapism? O f course. Science fiction is just that, and, as such, it opens infinite doors to adventure, exploration, and ways of life totally alien to our own. It creates whole new worlds of im agination in a way th a t no other form of fiction can. Does it need any other raison d ’etre? In my belief, no. T here are those who claim m ainstream status for the genre, those who feel th a t it can and sometimes does equal the best of w hat the straight fiction boys arc doing. I hope I do not offend my good contributors by taking an opposing point of view. W h a t science fiction do wc have to rival Dickens or Tolstoi or Kazantzakis? W ill there ever be science fiction to com pete w ith the masterworks of literature? It seems to me extremely doubtful, though not impossible (to the SF fan, nothing is impossible) th at there will be, for the simple reason th a t science fiction, by its very nature, is and always will be a category, a tributary of the m ainstream , in the same way th a t western fiction, for example, is saddled (pun fully intended) by its own nature. T h e reader, and indeed the writer, of the western is excited by cowboys and Indians, blazing sixguns, the beckoning spaces of the frontier, the strange ways of the redm an. W h e th e r he adm its it or not, the diehard science8

fiction fan, and writer, is excited by spacem en and bug-eyed monsters, blazing ray guns, the awesomeness of infinity, the wonder of limitless life forms in the universe. T h e parallels are close and obvious. In neither western nor science fiction, however, does one find the ultim ate com m unication betw een m ind and m ind, betw een heart and heart, or confront the deepest truths of hum an feelings and relation­ ships as one does in the great works of m ainstream fiction. T o be sure, the western has its occasional A. B. G uthrie, and science fiction its rare Bradbury, and they are very good indeed; b u t we have yet to produce our Proust of the prairie, our Stendhal of the starways. T he comparison adm ittedly may be unfair, for of course the m ainstream novel has had a long headstart on western and science fiction as recognized genres of litera­ ture. A Ph.D . scholar, unearthing (perhaps literally) these words a century hence, may ridicule them as a N obel Prize is handed out to some as yet unborn practitioner in either cate­ gory. O ne hopes so. It seems more likely, however, th a t b oth western and science fiction will be things of the past in another hundred years or so. (T hough not the mystery novel: Crim e, alas, will always be with us.) As we escape farther in tim e from our frontier heri­ tage, and our landscape is further eroded, polluted, and sub­ merged in the spreading megalopolis, and the Indian is a t last no longer isolated on his reservation, who will be left to sing of sagebrush and sixgun? O ur western lore will be tainted by quaintness. W e will know of it only from writings of the past, and great literature is nurtured not by lesser literature, b u t by life. Science fiction? I t will no longer be fiction w hen we have colonized the solar system and set foot on those now seemingly inaccessible planets orbiting the distant stars. Som ething like science fiction may replace the genre as we know it, b u t it will 9

be m ore akin to our present western than science fiction. I t will be based n o t on speculation about w hat we may encounter in space, b u t on the reality of w hat we have encountered (and th a t will be stranger than anything dream ed of in our philoso­ p h y ). T h e fictional settlers will be fighting for survival, not against duststorm s and Indians, b u t perhaps against the m eth ­ ane storms and am m onia-breathing natives of Jupiter. An E arth hungry for the romance and adventure of space, which m ost of its half-starving billions of inhabitants will never hope to know firsthand, will dem and and thus create this new cate­ gory of space fiction. Science fiction as we know it will be one with the auk and the dodo, a victim of m an’s inexorable trek to th e stars. A lthough I shall n o t be there to m ourn its passing, I regret it even now. O ne need n o t make excuses for science fiction. I t is sufficient unto itself, and I am thankful th a t I am here and now able to enjoy it for w hat it is. (I suspect the above postulated space fiction will be about as thrilling as the last Audie M urphy m ovie.) Science fiction, it seems to me, is capable of lifting the reader from a hum drum world and stir­ ring in him a sense of wonder, which he had perhaps forgotten how to feel, as no other kind of fiction can. T h e mystery story may have som ew hat the same effect, b u t it is a question of degree. Be the weapon a b lu n t .45 or a subtle draught of poison, it remains a simple, recognizable, prosaic instrum ent of death n o t to be com pared with those blazing ray guns. A body dum ped from the O rient Express is a body is a body is a body, but, ah, those scaly aliens blasted from their spaceship on the Alpha C entauri run! T he aliens are a b it more sophisti­ cated these days (they even looked like us on a popular televi­ sion show ), b u t aliens are— well, alien, and mysterious in ways th a t no hum an fictional character, neither F u M anchu nor wily redskin, can be. 10

W hatever its degree of sophistication, science fiction has happily never lost its sense of wonder, and th a t is precisely w hat I have tried to dem onstrate in this invitational collection. T he authors were asked to contribute stories set only in the farthest reaches of space beyond our solar system, in unimagi­ nably distant galaxies; stories which reflect all those qualities which M r. Clarke so rightly claimed as our true goals in space. W h e th e r or n o t they have m et their challenge I leave to the reader (I am bored and exasperated by glowing introductions w ritten by editors who selected the very stories they are intro­ ducing), b u t I do make a t least one im m odest claim for the collection: it will not soon become dated. Joseph E lder

Aidsley, New York 1967

.......................................

Contents

Foreword

7

The W orm T hat Flies ...................................................... Brian W . Aldiss

15

Kyrie ...................................................... Poul Anderson

39

Tomorrow Is a Million Years ...................................................... /. G. Ballard

54

Pond W ater ...................................................... John Brunner

69

T he Dance of the Changer and the Three ...................................................... Terry Carr

84

Crusade ....................................... ............... Arthur C. Clarke

103

Ranging John fakes

109

Keith Laumer

128

James M cK im m ey

145

Robert Silverbcrg

169

Norman Spinrad

183

Jack Vance

200

M ind O ut of Time

T he Inspector

To the Dark Star

A N ight in Elf Hill

Sulwen’s Planet

The Farthest Reaches

The Worm That Flies by Brian W. Aldiss

W h e n the snow began to fall, the traveler was too absorbed in his reveries to notice. H e walked slowly, his stiff and elabo­ rate garments, fold over fold, ornam ent over ornam ent, stand­ ing out from his body like a wizard’s tent. T h e road along which he walked had been falling into a great valley, and was increasingly hem m ed in by walls of m ountain. O n several occasions it had seemed th a t a way out of these huge accum ulations of earth m atter could not be found, th a t the geological puzzle was insoluble, the chthonian arrangem ent of discord irresolvable: A nd then vale and drumlin created betw een them a new direction, a surprise, an es­ cape, and the way took fresh heart and plunged recklessly still deeper into the encompassing upheaval. T h e traveler, whose nam e to his wife was T apm ar and to the rest of th e world Argustal, followed this natural harm ony in com plete paraesthesia, so close was he in spirit to the at­ mosphere presiding here. So strong was this bond, th a t the freak snowfall merely heightened his rapport. T hough the hour was only midday, th e sky becam e the in­ 15

tense blue-gray of dusk. T h e Forces were nesting in the sun again, obscuring its light. Consequently, Argustal was scarcely able to detect when the layered and fractured bulwark of rock on his left side, the top of which stood unseen perhaps a mile above his head, became patched by artificial means, and he entered th e dom ain of the Tree-m en of Or. As the way m ade another turn, he saw a wayfarer before him , heading in his direction. It was a great pine, im m obile until w arm th entered the world again and sap stirred enough in its wooden sinews for it to progress slowly forward once more. H e brushed by its green skirts, apologetic b u t not speak­ ing. T his encounter was sufficient to raise his consciousness above its trance level. I Tis extended m ind, which had reached out to embrace the splendid terrestrial discord hereabouts, now shrank to concentrate again on the particularities of his situation, and he saw th at lie had arrived at Or. T h e way bisected itself, unable to choose betw een two equally unprom ising ravines; Argustal saw a group of hum ans standing statuesque in the left-hand fork. H e w ent toward them , and stood there silent until they should recognize his presence. Behind him , the wet snow crept into his footprints. These hum ans were well advanced into th e N ew Form , even as Argustal had been warned they would be. T here were five of them standing here, their great brachial extensions bearing some tender brownish foliage, and one of them attenuated to a height of alm ost tw enty feet. T h e snow lodged in their branches and in their hair. Argustal waited for a long span of tim e, until he judged the afternoon to be well advanced, before growing im patient. P u t­ ting his hands to his m outh, he shouted fiercely at them , “H o then, Tree-m en of Or, wake you from your arboreal sleep and converse w ith me. M y nam e is Argustal to the world, and I 16

travel to my hom e in far Talem bil, where th e seas run pink w ith the spring plankton. I need from you a com ponent for my parapatterner, so rustle yourselves and speak, I beg!” N ow the snow had gone; a scorching rain had driven away its traces. T h e sun shone again, b u t its disfigured eye never looked down into the bottom of this ravine. O ne of the h u ­ mans shook a branch, scattering water drops all around, and m ade preparation for speech. T his was a small hum an, no m ore than ten feet high, and the old prim ate form which it had begun to abandon, perhaps a couple of million years ago, was still in evidence. Am ong the gnarls and whorls of its naked flesh, its m outh was discernible; this it opened and said, “W e speak to you, Argustal-to-theworld. You are th e first ape-hum an to fare this way in a great tim e. T h u s you are welcome, although you interrupt our search for new ideas.” “Have you found any new ideas?” Argustal asked, with his custom ary boldness. “ I heard there were none on all Yzazys.” “ Indeed. B ut it is better for our senior to tell you of them , if he so judges good.” I t was by no means clear to Argustal w hether he wished to hear w hat the new ideas were, for the Tree-m en were known for their deviations into incom prehensibility. B ut there was a m inor furore am ong the five, as if private winds stirred in their branches, and he settled him self on a boulder, preparing to wait. His own quest was so im portant th at all im pedim ents to its fulfillm ent seemed negligible. H unger overtook him before the senior spoke. H e hunted about and caught slow-galloping grubs under logs, and snatched a brace of tiny fish from the stream, and a handful of nuts from a bush th at grew by the stream. N ight fell before the senior spoke. As he raspingly cleared 17

his gnarled throat, one faded star lit in th e sky. T h a t was H rt, the flaming stone. I t and Yzazys’ sun burned alone on the very brink of th e cataract of fire th a t was the universe. All the rest of the night sky in this hem isphere was filled with the unlim ­ ited terror of vacancy, a towering nothingness th at continued w ithout end or beginning. H rt had no worlds attending it. It was the last thing in the universe. A nd, by the way its light flickered, the denizens of Yzazys knew th a t it was already infested by the Forces which had swarmed outward from their eyries in the heart of th e dying galaxy. T h e eye of H rt winked m any tim es in the em pty skull of space before the senior of the Tree-m en of O r wound himself up to address Argustal. Tall and knotty, his vocal chords were clam ped w ithin his gnarled body, and he spoke by curving his branches until his finest twigs, set against his m outh, could be blown through, to give a slender and whispering version of language. T h e gesture m ade him seem curiously like a m aiden who spoke with her finger cautiously to her lips. “ Indeed we have a new idea, oh, Argustal-to-the-world, though it may be beyond your grasping or our expressing. W e have perceived th at there is a dim ension called tim e, and from this we have drawn a deduction. “W e will explain dimensional tim e simply to you like this. W e know th at all things have lived so long on Yzazys th a t their origins arc forgotten. W h a t we can rem em ber carries from th a t lost-in-thc-mist thing up to this present m om ent; it is the tim e we inhabit, and we are used to thinking of it as all the tim e there is. B ut we m en of O r have reasoned th at this is not so.” “T here m ust be other past tim es in the lost distances of tim e,” said Argustal, “b u t they are nothing to us because we cannot touch them as we can our own pasts.” 18

-

As if this remark had never been, th e silvery whisper contin­ ued, “As one m ountain looks small when viewed from an­ other, so th e things th at we rem em ber in our past look small from the present. B ut suppose we moved back to th at past to look at this present! W e could not see it— yet we know it ex­ ists. A nd from this we reason th a t there is still more tim e in the future, although we cannot see it.” For a long while, the night was allowed to exist in silence, and then Argustal said, “W ell, I don’t see th a t as being very wonderful reasoning. W e know that, if the Forces perm it, the sun will shine again tomorrow, don’t we?” T he small Tree-m an who had first spoken said, “B ut ‘to­ m orrow’ is expressional tim e. W e have discovered th a t tom or­ row exists in dimensional tim e also. I t is real already, as real as yesterday.” “Floly spirits!” thought Argustal to himself, “why did I get myself involved in philosophy?” Aloud he said, “Tell m e of the deduction you have drawn from this.” Again the silence, until the senior drew his branches to­ gether and whispered from a bower of twiggy fingers, “W e have proved th a t tom orrow is no surprise. It is as unaltered as today or yesterday, merely another yard of the path of tim e. B ut we com prehend th at things change, don’t we? You com ­ prehend that, don’t you?” “O f course. You yourselves are changing, are you not?” “I t is as you say, although we no longer recall w hat we were before, for th at thing is becom e too small back in tim e. So: if tim e is all of the same quality, then it has no change, and thus cannot force change. So: there is another unknow n elem ent in the world th a t forces change!” T hus in their fragm entary whispers they reintroduced sin into the world. Because of the darkness, a need for sleep was induced in Argustal. W ith the senior Tree-m an’s permission, he climbed 19

up into his branches and rem ained fast asleep until dawn re­ turned to the fragm ent of sky above the m ountains and filtered down to their retreat. Argustal swung to the ground, removed his outer garm ents, and perform ed his customary exercises. T h en he spoke to the five beings again, telling them of his parapatterner, and asked for certain stones. A lthough it was doubtful w hether they understood w hat he was about, they gave him permission, and he moved round about th e area, searching for a necessary stone; his senses blowing into nooks and crannies for it like a breeze. T h e ravine was blocked a t its far end by a rock fall, b u t the stream m anaged to pour through the interstices of the detri­ tus into a yet lower defile. Clim bing painfully, Argustal scram­ bled over the mass of broken rock to find himself in a cold and m oist passage, a m ere cavity betw een two great thighs of m ountain. Here the light was dim, and th e sky could hardly be seen, so far did th e rocks overhang on the m any shelves of strata overhead. B ut Argustal scarcely looked up. H e followed the stream where it flowed into th e rock itself, to vanish for­ ever from hum an view. H e had been so long at his business, trained him self over so many m illennia, th a t the stones almost spoke to him. A nd he becam e more certain than ever th a t he would find a stone to fit in with his grand design. It was there. It lay just above the water, the upper part of it polished. W h e n he had prized it out from the surrounding pebbles and gravel, he lifted it and could see th a t underneath it was slightly jagged, as if a sm ooth gum grew black teeth. H e was surprised, b u t as he squatted to examine it, he began to see th a t w hat was necessary to the design of his parapatterner was precisely some such roughness. A t once, th e next step of th e design revealed itself, and he saw for the first tim e the whole thing as it would be in its entirety. T h e vision disturbed and excited him . 20

H e sat where he was, his b lu n t fingers around the roughsm ooth stone, and for some reason he began to think about his wife Pam itar. W arm feelings of love ran through him , so th at he smiled to himself and tw itched his brows. By the tim e he stood up and clim bed out of the defile, he knew m uch about the new stone. His nose-for-stones sniffed it back to times w hen it was a m uch larger affair, w hen it occupied a grand position on a m ountain, when it was en­ gulfed in th e bowels of th e m ountain, when it had been cast up and shattered down, w hen it had been a com ponent of a bed of rock, when th at rock had been ooze, when it had been a gentle rain of volcanic sedim ent, showering through an unbreathable atm osphere and filtering down through warm seas in an early and unknow n place. W ith tender respect, he tucked the stone away in a large pocket and scrambled back along the way he had come. H e made no farewell to the five of Or. T hey stood m ute to­ gether, branch-limbs interlocked, dream ing of the dark sin of change. N ow he m ade haste for hom e, traveling first through the borderlands of O ld C rotheria and then through the region of Tarnia, where there was only m ud. Legends had it th a t Tam ia had once known fertility, and th at speckled fish had swum in streams betw een forests; b u t now m ud conquered ev­ erything, and the few villages were of baked m ud, while the roads were dried m ud, the sky was th e color of m ud, and the few m ud-colored hum ans, who chose for their own m udstained reasons to live here, had scarcely any antlers growing from their shoulders and seemed about to deliquesce into m ud. T h ere wasn’t a decent stone anywhere about the place. Argustal m et a tree called David-by-the-moat-that-dries th a t was moving into his own hom e region. Depressed by the ever­ lasting brownness of Tam ia he begged a ride from it, and clim bed into its branches. I t was old and gnarled, its branches 21

and roots equally hunched, and it spoke in grating syllables of its few am bitions. As he listened, taking pains to recall each syllable while he waited long for the next, Argustal saw th at David spoke by m uch the same means as the people of O r had done, stuffing whistling twigs to an orifice in its trunk; b u t whereas it seemed th at th e Tree-m en were losing the use of their vocal chords, the m an-tree was developing some from the stringy integum ents of its fibers, so th at it became a nice problem as to which was inspired by which, which copied which, or w hether— for both sides seemed so self-absorbed th a t this also was a possibility— they had come on a mirror-image of perversity independently. “M otion is the prim e beauty,” said David-by-the-moat-thatdries, and took m any degrees of the sun across the m uddy sky to say it. “M otion is in me. T here is no m otion in the ground. In the ground there is not m otion. All th a t th e ground con­ tains is w ithout m otion. T h e ground lies in quiet and to lie in the ground is not to be. Beauty is not in the ground. Beyond the ground is the air. Air and ground make all there is and I would be of th e ground and air. I was of the ground and of th e air b u t I will be of the air alone. If there is ground, there is another ground. T h e leaves fly in the air and my longing goes with them but they are only part of m e because I am of wood. O h, Argustal, you know not the pains of wood!” Argustal did not indeed, for long before this gnarled speech was spent, the moon had risen and the silent m uddy night had fallen with l lr t flickering overhead, and he was curled asleep in David’s distorted branches, the stone in his deep pocket. Tw ice more he slept, twice m ore watched their painful progress along the unswept tracks, twice m ore joined converse w ith th e m elancholy tree— and when he woke again, all the heavens were stacked with fleecy clouds th at showed blue be­ tween, and low hills lay ahead. H e jum ped down. Grass grew 22

here. Pebbles littered the track. H e howled and shouted with pleasure. T h e m ud had gone. Crying his thanks, he set off across the heath. . . growth . . said David-by-the-moat-that-dries. T h e heath collapsed and gave way to sand, fringed by sharp grass th a t scythed at Argustal’s skirts as he w ent by. He ploughed across the sand. This was his own country, and he rejoiced, taking his bearing from the occasional cairn th at pointed a finger of shade across th e sand. O nce one of the Forces flew over, so th a t for a m om ent of terror the world was plunged in night, thunder growled, and a paltry hundred drops of rain spattered down; then it was already on the far confines of the sun’s dom ain, plunging away— no m atter where! Few animals, fewer birds, still survived. In th e sweet deserts of O uter Talem bil, they were especially rare. Yet Argustal passed a bird sitting on a cairn, its hooded eye bleared w ith a m illion years of danger. It clattered one wing at sight of him , in tribute to old reflexes, b u t he respected the hunger in his belly too m uch to try to dine on sinews and feathers, and th e bird appeared to recognize the fact. H e was nearing hom e. T h e m em ory of Pam itar was sharp before him , so th at he could follow it like a scent. H e passed another of his kind, an old ape wearing a red mask hanging alm ost to the ground; they barely gave each other a nod of recognition. Soon on the idle skyline he saw the blocks th at marked Gornilo, the first town of Talem bil. T h e ulcerated sun traveled across the sky. Stoically, Argus­ tal traveled across th e intervening dunes, and arrived in th e shadow of the white blocks of Gornilo. N o one could recollect now— recollection was one of the lost things th at m any felt privileged to lose— what factors had determ ined certain features of G ornilo’s architecture. This was an ape-hum an town, and perhaps in order to construct a 23

m em orial to yet m ore distant and dreadful things, the first in­ habitants of th e tow n had m ade slaves of themselves and of the other creatures th at were now no more, and erected these great cubes th a t now showed signs of weathering, as if they tired at last of swinging their shadows every day about their bases. T h e ape-humans who lived here were th e same apehum ans who had always lived here; they sat as untiringly under their m ighty memorial blocks as they had always done — calling now to Argustal as he passed as languidly as one flicks stones across the surface of a lake— b u t they could recol­ lect no longer if or how they had shifted the blocks across the desert; it m ight be th a t th at forgetfulness form ed an integral part of being as perm anent as the granite of the blocks. Beyond the blocks stood the town. Some of the trees here were visitors, b e n t on becoming as David-by-the-moat-thatdries was, b u t m ost grew in the old way, content with ground and indifferent to m otion. T hey knotted their branches this way and slatted their twigs th at way, and hum ped their trunks the other way, and thus schemed up ingenious and ever-chang­ ing hom es for the tree-going inhabitants of G ornilo. A t last Argustal came to his hom e, on the far side of the town. T h e nam e of his hom e was Corm ok. H e pawed and patted and licked it first before running lightly up its trunk to the living room. Pam itar was not there. H e was not surprised at this, hardly even disappointed, so serene was his mood. He walked slowly about the room, some­ tim es swinging up to the ceiling in order to view it better, licking and sniffing as lie went, chasing the after-images of his wife’s presence. Finally, he laughed and fell into the m iddle of the floor. “ Settle down, boy!” he said.

24

Sitting where he had dropped, he unloaded his pockets, tak­ ing out the five stones he had acquired in his travels and laying them aside from his other possessions. Still sitting, he dis­ robed, enjoying doing it inefficiently. T h en he climbed into the sand bath. W h ile Argustal lay there, a great howling wind sprang up, and in a m om ent th e room was plunged into sickly grayness. A prayer w ent up outside, a prayer flung by th e people at the unheeding Forces n o t to destroy the sun. His lower lip moved in a gesture a t once of contentm ent and contem pt; he had forgotten th e prayers of Talem bil. This was a religious city. M any of the Unclassified congregated here from the waste miles, people or animals whose m inds had dragged them aslant from w hat they were into rococo forms th at m ore ex­ actly defined their inherent qualities, until they resembled for­ gotten or extinct forms, or forms th a t had no being till now, and acknowledged no com m on cause w ith any other living thing— except in this desire to preserve the festering sunlight from further ruin. U nder th e fragrant grains of th e bath, submerged all b u t for head and a knee and hand, Argustal opened wide his percep­ tions to all th a t m ight come: And finally thought only w hat he had often thought while lying there— for the armories of cere­ bration had long since been em ptied of all new am m unition, whatever th e Tree-m en of O r m ight claim— th at in such baths, under such an unpredictable wind, the m ajor life forms of Yzazys, m en and trees, had probably first come at their im ­ petus to change. B ut change itself . . . had there been a m uch older thing blowing about th e world th a t everyone had forgotten? For some reason, th a t question aroused discom fort in him. H e felt dimly th at there was another side of life than content­ m ent and happiness; all beings felt contentm ent and happi­ 25

ness; b u t were those qualities a unity, or were they n o t perhaps one side only of a— of a shield? H e growled. Start thinking gibberish like th a t and you ended up hum an w ith antlers on your shoulders! Brushing off th e sand, he clim bed from the bath, moving m ore swiftly than he had done in countless tim e, sliding out of his hom e, down to the ground, w ithout bothering to put on his clothes. H e knew where to find Pam itar. She would be beyond the town, guarding the parapatterner from th e tattered angry beg­ gars of Talem bil. T h e cold wind blew, with an occasional slushy thing in it th a t m ade a being blink and wonder about going on. As he strode through the green and swishing heart of G ornilo, tread­ ing am ong the howlers who knelt casually everywhere in rude prayer, Argustal looked up a t the sun. I t was visible by frag­ ments, torn through tree and cloud. Its face was blotched and pim pled, sometimes obscured altogether for an instant at a tim e, then blazing forth again. I t sparked like a blazing blind eye. A wind seemed to blow from it th a t blistered the skin and chilled the blood. So Argustal came to his own patch of land, clear of th e green town, out in the stirring desert, and his wife Pam itar, to the rest of the world called M iram. She squatted with her back to the wind, the sharply flying grains of sand cutting about her hairy ankles. A few paces away, one of the beggars pranced am ong Argustal’s stones. Pam itar stood up slowly, removing the head shawl from her head. “T apm ar!” she said. In to his arms he wrapped her, burying his face in her shoul­ der. T hey chirped and clucked at each other, so engrossed th at 26

they m ade no note of when the breeze died and the desert lost its m otion and th e sun’s light improved. W h e n she felt him tense, she held him m ore loosely. A t a hidden signal, he jum ped away from her, jum ping alm ost over her shoulder, springing ragingly forth, bowling over th e lurk­ ing beggar into the sand. T h e creature sprawled, two-sided and misshapen, extra arms growing from arms, head like a wolf, back legs bowed like a gorilla, clothed in a hundred textures, yet n o t unlovely. I t laughed as it rolled and called in a high clucking voice, “T hree m en sprawling under a lilac tree and none to hear the first one say, ‘Ere the crops crawl, blows fall,’ and th e second abed at night w ith mooncalves, answer m e w hat’s the nam e of the third, feller?” “Be off with you, you m ad old crow!” A nd as the old crow ran away, it called o ut its answer, laugh­ ing, “W h y Tapm ar, for he talks to nowhere!” confusing the words as it tum bled over the dunes and m ade its escape. Argustal and Pam itar turned back to each other, vying with th e strong sunlight to search o u t each other’s faces, for both had forgotten w hen they were last together, so long was tim e, so dim was memory. B ut there were memories, and as he searched they came back. T h e flatness of her nose, th e softness of her nostrils, the roundness of her eyes and their brownness, the curve of th e rim of her lips: All these, because they were dear, becam e rem em bered, thus taking on m ore than beauty. T hey talked gently to each other, all the while looking. And slowly som ething of th a t other thing he suspected on the dark side of the shield entered him — for her beloved countenance was not as it had been. A round her eyes, particularly under them , were shadows, and faint lines creased from the sides of her m outh. In her stance too, did n o t the lines flow more downward th an heretofore? 27

T h e discom fort growing too great, he was forced to speak to Pam itar of these things, b u t there was no proper way to ex­ press them . She seemed not to understand, unless she under­ stood and did n o t know it, for her m anner grew agitated, so th a t he soon forw ent questioning, and turned to the parapatterner to hide his unease. I t stretched over a mile of sand, and rose several feet into th e air. From each of his long expeditions, he brought back no more th an five stones, yet there were assembled here m any hundreds of thousands of stones, perhaps millions, all pain­ stakingly arranged, so th a t no being could take in the arrange­ m en t from any one position, not even Argustal. M any were supported in the air at various heights by stakes or poles, m ore lay on the ground, where Pam itar always kept th e dust and the wild m en from encroaching them ; and of these on the ground, some stood isolated, while others lay in profusion, b u t all in a pattern th at was ever apparent only to Argustal— and he feared th a t it would take him until the next sunset to have th a t pattern clear in his head again. Yet already it started to come clearer, and he recalled w ith wonder the devious and fugal course he had taken, walking down to th e ravine of the Tree-m en of Or, and knew th at he still contained the skill to place the new stones he had brought w ithin the general pat­ tern with reference to th at natural harm ony— so com pleting th e parapattcrner. And the lines on his wife’s face: W o u ld they too have a place w ithin the pattern? W as there sense in w hat th e crow beggar had cried, th a t he talked to nowhere? And . . . and . . . the terrible and, would nowhere answer him? Bowed, he took his wife’s arm, and scurried back w ith her to their hom e high in the leafless tree. “M y T apm ar,” she said th at evening as they ate a dish of fruit, “it is good th a t you come back to G ornilo, for the tow n 28

sedges up w ith dreams like an old river bed, and I am afraid.” A t this he was secretly alarmed, for the figure of speech she used seemed to him an apt one for the newly observed lines on her face; so th a t he asked her w hat th e dreams were in a voice more tim id than he m eant to use. Looking at him strangely, she said, “T h e dreams are as thick as fur, so thick th a t they congeal my throat to tell you of them . Last night, I dream ed I walked in a landscape th at seemed to be clad in fur all around the distant horizons, fur th a t branched and sprouted and had som ber tones of russet and dun and black and a lustrous black-blue. I tried to resolve this strange m aterial into th e m ore familiar shapes of hedges and old distorted trees, b u t it stayed as it was, and I became . . . well, I had the word in my dream th a t I becam e a child.” Argustal looked aslant over the crowded vegetation of the town and said, “These dreams may not be of G ornilo b u t of you only, Pam itar. W h a t is child?” “T here’s no such thing in reality, to my knowledge, b u t in the dream the child th a t was I was small and fresh and in its actions at once nim ble and clumsy. I t was alien from me, its m otions and ideas never m ine— and yet it was all familiar to me. I was it, Tapm ar, I was th a t child. And now th a t I wake, I become sure th a t I once was such a thing as a child.” H e tapped his fingers on his knees, shaking his head and blinking in a sudden anger. “This is your bad secret, Pamitar! I knew you had one the m om ent I saw you! I read it in your face which has changed in an evil way! You know you were never anything b u t Pam itar in all the millions of years of your life, and th at child m ust be an evil phantom th at possesses you. Perhaps you will now be turned into child!” She cried out and hurled a green fruit into which she had bitten. Deftly, he caught it before it struck him. T hey m ade a provisional peace before settling for sleep. 29

T h a t night, Argustal dream ed th at he also was small and vul­ nerable and hardly able to manage the language; his intentions were like an arrow and his direction clear. W aking, he sweated and trem bled, for he knew th at as he had been child in his dream , so he had been child once in life. A nd this w ent deeper than sickness. W h e n his pained looks directed themselves outside, he saw the night was like shot silk, with a dappled effect of light and shadow in the dark blue dom e of the sky, which signified th a t the Forces were making merry w ith the sun while it journeyed through Yzazys; and Ar­ gustal thought of his journeys across the face of Yzazys, and of his visit to O r, when the Tree-m en had whispered of an un­ known elem ent th at forces change. “They prepared m e for this dream !” he m uttered. H e knew now th a t change had worked in his very foundations; once, he had been this th in tiny alien thing called child, and his wife too, and possibly others. H e thought of th a t little apparition again, with its spindly legs and piping voice; the horror of it chilled his heart; he broke into prolonged groans th a t all Pamitar’s com forting took a long p art of the dark to silence. H e left her sad and pale. H e carried with him the stones he had gathered on his journey, the odd-shaped one from the ra­ vine and the ones lie had acquired before that. H olding them tightly to him , Argustal made his way through the town to his spatial arrangem ent. For so long, it had been his chief preoc­ cupation; today, the long project would come to com pletion; yet because he could not even say why it had so preoccupied him , his feelings inside lay flat and wretched. Som ething had got to him and killed contentm ent. Inside the prospects of the parapatterner, the old beggarly m an lay, resting his shaggy head on a blue stone. Argustal was too low in spirit to chase him away. 30

“As your frame of stones will frame words, the words will come forth stones,” cried the creature. “ I ’ll break your bones, old crow!” growled Argustal, b u t in­ wardly he wondered at this vile crow’s saying and at w hat he had said the previous day about Argustal’s talking to nowhere, for Argustal had discussed the purpose of his structure w ith nobody, n o t even Pam itar. Indeed, he had not recognized the purpose of the structure him self until two journeys back— or had it been three or four? T h e pattern had started simply as a pattern (hadn’t it?) and only m uch later had the obsession becom e a purpose. T o place the new stones correctly took tim e. W herever Ar­ gustal walked in his great framework, th e old crow followed, sometimes on two legs, sometimes on four. O ther personages from th e town collected to stare, b u t none dared step inside the perim eter of the structure, so th at they rem ained far off, like little stalks growing on th e margins of Argustal’s m ind. Some stones had to touch, others had to be just apart. H e walked and stooped and walked, responding to the great pat­ tern th at he now knew contained a universal law. T h e task wrapped him around in an aesthetic daze similar to th e one he had experienced traveling the labyrinthine way down to Or, b u t with greater intensity. T he spell was broken only when the old crow spoke from a few paces away in a voice level and unlike his usual sing-song. And the old crow said, “I rem em ber you planting the very first of these stones here when you were a child.” Argustal straightened. Cold took him , though the bilious sun shone bright. H e could not find his voice. As he searched for it, his gaze w ent across to the eyes of the beggar-man, festering in his black forehead. “You know I was once such a phantom — a child?” he asked. 31

“W e are all phantom s. W e were all childs. As there is gravy in our bodies, our hours were once few.” “ O ld crow . . . you describe a different world— not ours!” “V ery true, very true. Yet th at other world once was ours.” “O h, not! N ot!” “Speak to your m achine about it! Its tongue is of rock and cannot lie like m ine.” H e picked up a stone and flung it. “T h a t will I do! N ow get away from m e!” T h e stone h it the old m an in his ribs. H e groaned painfully and danced backward, tripped, lay full length in the sand, hopeless and shapeless. Argustal was upon him at once. “O ld crow, forgive me! I t was fear at my thoughts m ade me attack you— and there is a certain sort of horror in your pres­ ence!” “A nd in your stone-flinging!” m uttered the old m an, strug­ gling to rise. “You know of childs! In all the millions of years th at I have worked at my design, you have never spoken of this. W h y not?” “T im e for all things . . . and th a t tim e now draws to a close, even on Yzazys.” T hey stared into each o ther’s eyes as the old beggar slowly rose, arms and cloak spread in a way th at suggested he would either fling himself on Argustal or turn in flight. Argustal did n o t move. C rouching with his knuckles in th e sand, he said, “ . . . even on Yzazys? W h y do you say so?” “You are of Yzazys! W e hum ans are not— if I call myself hum an. Thousands of thousands of years before you were child, I came from the heart stars w ith m any others. T here is no life there now! T he rot spreads from the center! T h e sparks fly from sun to sun! Even to Yzazys, the hour is come. U p the 32

galactic chimneys the footprints drum !” Suddenly he fell to the ground, was up again, and m ade off in haste, lim bs whirl­ ing in a way th at took from him all resem blance to hum an kind. H e pushed through the line of watchers and was gone. For a while, Argustal squatted where h e was, groping through m atters th a t dissolved as they took shape, only to grow large when he dismissed them . T h e storm blew through him and distorted him , like the trouble on the face of the sun. W h e n he decided there was nothing for it b u t to com plete the parapatterner, still he trem bled w ith th e new knowledge: W ith o u t being able to understand why, he knew th e new knowledge would destroy the old world. All now was in position, save for th e odd-shaped stone from Or, which he carried firm on one shoulder, tucked betw een ear and hand. For the first tim e, he realized w hat a gigantic struc­ ture he had wrought. I t was a businesslike stroke of insight, no sentim ent involved. Argustal was now no m ore than a bead rolling through the vast interstices around him. Each stone held its own tem poral record as well as its spa­ tial position; each represented different stresses, different epochs, different tem peratures, materials, chemicals, moulds, intensities. Every stone together represented an anagram of Yzazys, its whole composition and continuity. T h e last stone was merely a focal point for th e whole dynamic, and as Argus­ tal slowly walked betw een th e vibrant arcades, th at dynamic rose to pitch. H e heard it grow. H e paused. H e shuffled now this way, now that. As he did so, he recognized th a t there was no one focal position b u t a myriad, depending on position and direc­ tion of the key stone. Very softly, he said, “ . . . th a t my fears m ight be veri­ fied . . . ” A nd all about him — b u t softly— came a voice in stone, stut­ 33

tering before it grew clearer, as if it had long known of words b u t never practiced them . “T h o u . . Silence, then a flood of sentence. “T h o u thou art, oh, th o u art worm thou art sick, rose invis­ ible rose. In th e howling storm thou art in th e storm. W o rm thou art found out, oh, rose thou art sick and and found out flies in the night thy bed thy thy crimson life destroy. O h— oh, rose, thou art sick! T h e invisible worm, the invisible worm th a t flies in the night, in the howling storm , has found out— has found out thy bed of crimson joy . . . and his dark dark secret love, his dark secret love does thy life destroy.” Argustal was already running from th a t place. In Pam itar’s arms he could find no com fort now. T hough he huddled there, up in the encaging branches, the worm th a t flies worked in him . Finally, he rolled away from her and said, “W h o ever heard so terrible a voice? I cannot speak again with the universe.” “ You do not know it was the universe.” She tried to tease him. “W h y should the universe speak to little T apm ar?” “T h e old crow said I spoke to nowhere. Now here is th e uni­ verse— where the sun hides at night— where our memories hide, where our thoughts evaporate. I cannot talk w ith it. I m ust h u n t out the old crow and talk to him .” “Talk no more, ask no m ore questions! All you discover brings you misery! Look—you will no longer regard me, your poor wife! You turn your eyes away!” “ If I stare at nothing for all succeeding eons, yet I m ust find out w hat torm ents us!” In the center of G ornilo, where m any of the Unclassified lived, bare wood twisted up from the ground like fossilized sack, creating caves and shelters and strange lim bs on which and in which old pilgrims, otherwise w ithout a hom e, m ight perch. Plere at nightfall Argustal sought out the beggar. 34

T he old fellow was stretched painfully beside a broken pot, clasping a woven garm ent across his body. H e turned in his small cell, trying for escape, b u t Argustal had him by the throat and held him still. “I w ant your knowledge, old crow!” “G et it from the religious m en— they know m ore than I!” I t m ade Argustal pause, b u t he slackened his grip on the other by only the smallest margin. “Because I have you, you m ust speak to me. I know th a t knowledge is pain, b u t so is ignorance once one has sensed its presence. Tell me m ore about childs and w hat they did! Tell me of w hat you call the heart stars!” As if in a fever, the old crow rolled about under Argustal’s grip. H e brought himself to say, “W h a t I know is so little, so little, like a blade of grass in a field. And like blades of grass are th e distant bygone times. T hrough all those tim es come the bundles of bodies now on this Earth. T h en as now, no new bodies. B ut once . . . even before those bygone times . . . you cannot understand . . .” “I understand well enough.” “You are scientist! Before bygone tim es was another tim e, and then . . . then was childs and different things th at are not any longer, m any animals and birds and smaller things with frail wings unable to carry them over long tim e . . .” “W h a t happened? W h y was there change, old crow?” “M en . . . scientists . . . make understanding of the gravy of bodies and turn every person and thing and tree to eternal life. W e now continue from th a t tim e, a long long tim e— so long we have forgotten w hat was then done.” T h e smell of him was like an old pie. Argustal asked him , “And why now are no childs?” “Childs are just small adults. W e are adults, having become from child. B ut in th at great form er tim e, before scientists were on Yzazys, adults produced childs. Animals and trees 35

likewise. B ut w ith eternal life, this cannot be— those childm aking parts of the body have less life than stone.” “D o n ’t talk of stone! So we live forever . . . you old rag­ bag, you rem em ber— ah, you rem em ber me as child?” B ut the old ragbag was working himself into a kind of fit, pum m eling the ground, slobbering at the m outh. “Seven shades of lilac, even worse I rem em ber myself a child, running like an arrow, air, everywhere fresh rosy air. So I am m ad, for I rem em ber!” He began to scream and cry, and the outcasts round about took up the wail in chorus. “W e re­ m em ber, we rem em ber!”— w hether they did or not. Clapping his hand over the beggar’s m outh, Argustal said, “B ut you were not child on Yzazys— tell m e about that!” Shaking, the other replied, “Earlier I tell you— all hum ans come from heart stars. Yzazys here is perched on universe’s end! O nce were as many worlds as days in eternity, now all burned away as smoke up the chimney. O nly this last place was safe.” “W h a t happened? W hy?” “N othing happened! Life is life is life— only except th a t change crept in.” And w hat was this b u t an echo of the words of th e Treem en of O r who, deep in their sinful glade, had m uttered of some unknown clem ent th at forced change? Argustal crouched with bowed head while the beggarman shuddered be­ side him , and outside the holy idiots took up his last words in a chant: “C hange crept in! C hange crept in! Daylight smoked and change crept in! Change crept in!” T h eir dreadful howling worked like spears in Argustal’s flank. H e had pictures afterward of his panic run through the town, of wall and trunk and ditch and road, b u t it was all as insubstantial at the tim e as the pictures afterward. W h e n he finally fell to the ground panting, he was unaware of where he 36

lay, and everything was nothing to him until the religious howling had died into silence. T hen he saw he lay in the m iddle of his great structure, his cheek against the O r stone where he had dropped it. A nd as his attention came to it, the great structure around him an­ swered w ithout his having to speak. H e was at a new focal point. T h e voice th at sounded was new, as cool as the previous one had been choked. It blew over him in a cool wind. “T here is no am aranth on this side of the grave, oh, Argus­ tal, no nam e with whatsoever emphasis of passionate love re­ peated th at is n o t m ute a t last. E xperim ent X gave life for eternity to every living thing in the world, b u t even eternity is punctuated by release and suffers period. T h e old life had its childhood and its end, the new had no such logic. It found its own after many m illennia, and took its cue from individual minds. W h a t a m an was, he became; w hat a tree, it becam e.” Argustal lifted his tired head from its pillow of stone. Again the voice changed pitch and trend, as if in response to his mi­ nute gesture. “T he present is a note in music. T h a t note can no longer be sustained. You find w hat questions you have found, oh, Argus­ tal, because the chord, in dropping to a lower key, rouses you from the long dream of crimson joy th at was imm ortality. W h a t you are finding, others also find, and you can none of you be any longer insensible to change. Even im m ortality m ust have an end. Life has passed like a long fire through the galaxy. N ow it fast burns out even here, the last refuge of m an!” H e stood up then, and hurled the O r stone. I t flew, fell, rolled . . . and before it stopped he had awoken a great chorus of universal voice. All Yzazys roused, and a wind blew from the west. As he 37

started again to move, he saw the religious m en of the town were on the inarch, and the great sun-nesting Forces on their m idnight wing, and H rt the flaming stone wheeling overhead, and every m ajestic object alert as it had never been. B ut Argustal walked slowly on his flat simian feet, plodding back to Pam itar. N o longer would he be im patient in her arms. T here, tim e would be all too brief. H e knew now the worm th at flew and nestled in her cheek, in his cheek, in all things, even in the Tree-m en of O r, even in the great impersonal Forces th at despoiled the sun, even in th e sacred bowels of the universe to which he had len t a tem ­ porary tongue. 1 le knew now that back had come th at M ajesty th a t previously gave to Life its reason, the M ajesty th a t had been away from the world for so long and yet so brief a respite, the M ajesty called D E A T H .

38

Kyrie by P©ul Anderson

O n a high peak in the Lunar C arpathians stands a convent of St. M artha of Bethany. T h e walls are native rock; they lift dark and cragged as the m ountainside itself, into a sky th a t is always black. As you approach from N orthpole, flitting low to keep the force screens along R oute Plato betw een you and the m eteoroidal rain, you see the cross which surm ounts the tower, stark athw art E a rth ’s blue disc. N o bells resound from there— n o t in airlessness. You may hear them inside at the canonical hours, and throughout the crypts below where m achines toil to m aintain a semblance of terrestrial environm ent. If you linger a while you will also hear them calling to requiem mass. For it has become a tradition th a t prayers be offered at St. M artha’s for those who have perished in space; and they are m ore w ith every passing year. This is n ot the work of th e sisters. They m inister to the sick, the needy, th e crippled, the insane, all whom space has broken and cast back. Luna is full of such, exiles because they can no longer endure E a rth ’s pull or because it is feared they may b e

39

incubating a plague from some unknow n planet or because m en are so busy w ith their frontiers th at they have no tim e to spare for the failures. T h e sisters wear space suits as often as habits, are as likely to hold a m edikit as a rosary. B ut they are granted some tim e for contem plation. A t night, w hen for half a m onth the sun’s glare has departed, the chapel is unshuttered and stars look down through the glazedom e to the candles. They do n ot wink and their light is win­ ter cold. O ne of the nuns in particular is there as often as may be, praying for her own dead. And the abbess sees to it th at she can be present when the yearly mass, th at she endowed before she took her vows, is sung. Requiem acfcrnam dona eis, D om ine, et lux perpetua luce at eis. Kyric clcison, Christc eleison, K yñe eleison. T h e Supernova Sagittarii expedition comprised fifty hum an beings and a flame. It w ent the long way around from Earth orbit, stopping at Epsilon Lyrae to pick up its last m em ber. T hence it approached its destination by stages. T his is the paradox: tim e and space are aspects of each other. T h e explosion was more than a hundred years past w hen noted by m en on Lasthope. They were part of a generations-long effort to fathom th e civilization of creatures alto­ gether unlike us; but one night they looked up and saw a light so brilliant it cast shadows. T h a t wave front would reach Earth several centuries hence. By then it would be so tenuous th at nothing b u t another bright point would appear in the sky. M eanwhile, though, a ship overleaping the space through which light m ust creep could track the great star’s death across time. Suitably far off, instrum ents recorded w hat had been before 40

the outburst, incandescence collapsing upon itself after the last nuclear fuel was burned out. A jum p, and they saw w hat hap­ pened a century ago, convulsion, storm of quanta and neutri­ nos, radiation equal to the massed hundred billion suns of this galaxy. It faded, leaving an emptiness in heaven, and the Raven moved closer. Fifty light-years— fifty years— inward, she studied a shrinking fieriness in the m idst of a fog which shone like lightning. Twenty-five years later the central globe had dwindled more, th e nebula had expanded and dim m ed. B ut because the distance was now so m uch less, everything seemed larger and brighter. T h e naked eye saw a dazzle too fierce to look straight at, m aking the constellations pale by contrast. Telescopes showed a blue-white spark in the heart of an opalescent cloud delicately filamented at the edges. T h e Raven m ade ready for her final jum p, to the im m ediate neighborhood of the supernova. C aptain T eodor Szili w ent on a last-m inute inspection tour. T he ship m urm ured around him , running at one gravity of ac­ celeration to reach the desired intrinsic velocity. Pow er droned, regulators' whickered, ventilation systems rustled. H e felt the energies quiver in his bones. B ut m etal surrounded him, blank and comfortless. Viewports gave on a dragon’s hoard of stars, the ghostly arch of the M ilky W ay: on vacuum, cosmic rays, cold n o t far above absolute zero, distance beyond im agination to th e nearest hum an hearthfire. H e was about to take his people where none had ever been before, into condi­ tions none was sure about, and th at was a heavy burden on him. H e found Eloise W aggoner at her post, a cubbyhole with intercom connections directly to the com m and bridge. M usic drew him , a trium phant serenity he did not recognize. Stop­ 41

ping in the doorway, he saw her seated with a small tape m a­ chine on the desk. “W h a t’s this?” he dem anded. “O h!” T he woman (he could not think of her as a girl, though she was barely out of her teens) started. “I . . . I was waiting for the jum p.” “You were to wait at the alert.” “W h a t have I to do?” she answered less tim idly than was her wont. “ I mean, I ’m not a crewman or a scientist.” “You are in the crew. Special com m unications technician.” “W ith Lucifer. And he likes the music. H e says we come closer to oneness with it than in anything else he knows about us.” Szili arched his brows. “Oneness?” A blush went up Eloise’s th in cheeks. She stared at the deck and her hands twisted together. “M aybe th a t isn’t the right word. Peace, harm ony, unity . . . God? . . . I sense w hat he means, b u t we haven’t any word th a t fits.” “H m . W ell, you are supposed to keep him happy.” T h e skipper regarded her with a return of the distaste he had tried to suppress. She was a decent enough sort, he supposed, in her gauche and inhibited way; b u t her looks! Scrawny, big-footed, big-nosed, pop eyes, and stringy dust-colored hair— and, to be sure, telepaths always m ade him uncom fortable. She said she could only read Lucifer’s m ind, b u t was th at true? N o. D o n ’t think such things. Loneliness and otherness can come near breaking you out here, w ithout adding suspicion of your fellows. If Eloise W aggoner was really hum an. She m ust be some kind of m u tan t at the very least. W hoever could com m unicate thought to thought with a living vortex had to be. “W h a t are you playing, anyhow?” Szili asked. “Bach. T h e T hird Brandenburg Concerto. He, Lucifer, he doesn’t care for the m odern stuff. I don’t either.” 42

You w ouldn’t, Szili decided. Aloud: “Listen, we jum p in half an hour. N o telling w hat we’ll emerge in. T his is the first tim e anyone’s been close to a recent supernova. W e can only be certain of so m uch hard radiation th at we’ll be dead if the screenfields give way. Otherwise we’ve nothing to go on except theory. A nd a collapsing stellar core is so unlike anything any­ where else in the universe th a t I’m skeptical about how good the theory is. W e can’t sit daydreaming. W e have to prepare.” “Yes, sir.” W hispering, her voice lost its usual harshness. H e stared past her, past the ophidian eyes of m eters and controls, as if he could penetrate the steel beyond and look straight into space. There, he knew, floated Lucifer. T he image grew in him : a fireball tw enty m eters across, shim m ering white, red, gold, royal blue, flames dancing like M edusa locks, cometary tail burning for a hundred m eters be­ hind, a shiningness, a glory, a piece of hell. N o t the least of what troubled him was the thought of th a t which paced his ship. H e hugged scientific explanations to his breast, though they were little better than guesses. In the m ultiple star system of Epsilon Aurigae, in the gas and energy pervading the space around, things took place which no laboratory could im itate. Ball lightning on a planet was perhaps analogous, as the forma­ tion of simple organic com pounds in a primordial ocean is analogous to the life which finally evolves. In Epsilon Aurigae, magnetohydrodynam ics had done w hat chemistry did on Earth. Stable plasma vortices had appeared, had grown, had added complexity, until after millions of years they became som ething you m ust needs call an organism. It was a form of ions, nuclei, and force-fields. I t m etabolized electrons, nu­ cleons, X rays; it m aintained its configuration for a long life­ time; it reproduced; it thought. B ut w hat did it think? T h e few telepaths who could com ­ m unicate w ith the Aurigeans, who had first m ade hum ankind 43

aware th a t the Aurigeans existed, never explained clearly. They were a queer lo t themselves. W herefore C aptain Szili said, “I w ant you to pass this on to him .” “Yes, sir.” Eloise turned down the volume on her taper. H er eyes unfocused. T hrough her ears w ent words, and her brain (how efficient a transducer was it?) passed the meanings on o u t to him who loped alongside Raven on his own reaction drive. “Listen, Lucifer. You have heard this often before, I know, b u t I w ant to be positive you understand in full. Your psychol­ ogy m ust be very foreign to ours. W h y did you agree to come w ith us? I don’t know. T echnician W aggoner said you were curious and adventurous. Is th at the whole truth? “ N o m atter. In half an hour we jump. W e ’ll come w ithin five hundred million kilom eters of the supernova. T h a t’s where your work begins. You can go where we dare not, ob­ serve w hat we can’t, tell us more than our instrum ents would ever h in t at. B ut first we have to verify we can stay in orbit around the star. T his concerns you too. D ead m en can’t trans­ port you hom e again. “ So. In order to enclose you w ithin the jumpfield, w ithout disrupting your body, we have to switch off the shield screens. W e ’ll emerge in a lethal radiation zone. You m ust prom ptly retreat from the ship, because we’ll start the screen generator up sixty seconds after transit. T h en you m ust investigate the vicinity. T h e hazards to look for— ” Szili listed them . “Those are only w hat we can foresee. Perhaps we’ll hit other garbage we haven’t predicted. If anything seems like a menace, return at once, warn us, and prepare for a jum p back to here. D o you have that? R epeat.” W ords jerked from Eloise. T hey were a correct recital; b u t how m uch was she leaving out?

“V ery good.” Szili hesitated. “ Proceed with your concert if you like. B ut break it off at zero m inus ten m inutes and stand

by;” “Yes, sir.” She didn’t look at him . She didn’t appear to be looking anywhere in particular. His footsteps clacked down the corridor and were lost. — W h y did he say the same things over? asked Lucifer. “ H e is afraid,” Eloise said. “ I guess you don’t know about fear,” she said. — C an you show me? . . . N o, do not. I sense it is hurtful. You m ust n o t be hurt. “ I can’t be afraid anyway, when your m ind is holding m ine.” (W a rm th filled her. M errim ent was there, playing like little flames over the surface of Father-leading-her-by-the-handwhen-she-was-just-a-child-and-they-went-out-one-summer’s-dayto-pick-wildflowers; over strength and gentleness and Bach and G od.) Lucifer swept around the hull in an exuberant curve. Sparks danced in his wake. — T h in k flowers again. Please. She tried. — They are like (image, as nearly as a hum an brain could grasp, of fountains blossoming w ith gamma-ray colors in th e m iddle of light, everywhere lig h t). B ut so tiny. So brief a sweetness. “ I d o n ’t understand how you can understand,” she whis­ pered. — You understand for me. I did n o t have th a t kind of thing to love, before you came. “B ut you have so m uch else. I try to share it, b u t I ’m not made to realize w hat a star is.” 45

— N or I for planets. Yet ourselves may touch. H er cheeks burned anew. T h e thought rolled on, interweav­ ing its counterpoint to the m arching music. —T h a t is why I came, do you know? For you. I am fire and air. I had not tasted th e coolness of water, the patience of earth, until you showed me. You are m oonlight on an ocean. “N o, d o n ’t,” she said. “Please.” Puzzlem ent: — W h y not? Does joy hurt? Are you n o t used to it? “I, I guess th a t’s right.” She flung her head back. “No! Be dam ned if I ’ll feel sorry for myself!” — W h y should you? Have we not all reality to be in, and is it not full of suns and songs? “Yes. T o you. Teach m e.” — If you in turn will teach me— T h e thought broke off. A contact rem ained, unspeaking, such as she imagined m ust often prevail among lovers. She glowered at M otilal M azundar’s chocolate face, where th e physicist stood in the doorway. “W h a t do you want?” H e was surprised. “O nly to see if everything is well with you, Miss W aggoner.” She bit her lip. I Ic had tried harder than m ost aboard to be kind to her. “ I ’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t m ean to bark at you. Nerves.” “W e arc everyone on edge.” H e smiled. “Exciting though this venture is, it will be good to come hom e, correct?” H om e, she thought: four walls of an apartm ent above a banging city street. Books and television. She m ight present a paper at the next scientific m eeting, but no one would invite her to the parties afterward. Am I th at horrible? she wondered. I know I ’m not anything to look at, b u t I try to be nice and interesting. M aybe I try too hard. 46

— You do not with me, Lucifer said. “Y ou’re different,” she told him. M azundar blinked. “Beg pardon?” “N othing,” she said in haste. “ I have wondered about an item ,” M azundar said in an effort at conversation. “Presum ably Lucifer will go quite near the supernova. C an you still m aintain contact w ith him? T h e tim e dilation effect, will th at n o t change th e frequency of his thoughts too m uch?” “W h a t tim e dilation?” She forced a chuckle. “ I’m no physi­ cist. O nly a little librarian who turned out to have a wild tal­ e n t.” “You were n o t told? W hy, I assumed everybody was. An intense gravitational field affects tim e just as a high velocity does. Roughly speaking, processes take place m ore slowly than they do in clear space. T h a t is why light from a massive star is som ew hat reddened. And our supernova core retains alm ost three solar masses. Furtherm ore, it has acquired such a density th at its attraction at the surface is, ah, incredibly high. T hus by our clocks it will take infinite tim e to shrink to the Schwarzschild radius; b u t an observer on th e star itself would experience this whole shrinkage in a fairly short period.” “Schwarzschild radius? Be so good as to explain.” Eloise real­ ized th a t Lucifer had spoken through her. “If I can w ithout m athem atics. You see, this mass we are to study is so great and so concentrated th a t no force exceeds the gravitational. N othing can counterbalance. Therefore the process will continue until no energy can escape. T h e star will have vanished out of the universe. In fact, theoretically the contraction will proceed to zero volume. Of course, as I said, th at will take forever as far as we are concerned. And th e the­ ory neglects quantum -m echanical considerations which come into play toward the end. Those are still n o t very well under­ 47

stood. I hope, from this expedition, to acquire more knowl­ edge.” M azundar shrugged. “At any rate, Miss W aggoner, I was wondering if the frequency shift involved would not pre­ vent our friend from com m unicating with us when he is near the star.” “ I doubt th at.” Still Lucifer spoke, she was his instrum ent and never had she known how good it was to be used by one who cared. “Telepathy is n o t a wave phenom enon. Since it transm its instantaneously, it cannot be. N or does it appear lim ited by distance. Rather, it is a resonance. Being attuned, we two may well be able to continue thus across the entire breadth of the cosmos; and I am n o t aware of any m aterial phenom enon which could interfere.” “ I see.” M azundar gave her a long look. “T hank you,” he said uncom fortably. “Ah . . . I m ust get to my own station. Good luck.” lie bustled off w ithout stopping for an answer. Eloise didn’t notice. H er m ind was becom e a torch and a song. “ Lucifer!” she cried aloud. “ Is th at true?” — I believe so. M y entire people are telepaths, hence we have m ore knowledge of such m atters than yours do. O u r ex­ perience leads us to think there is no lim it. “You can always be with me? You always will?” — If you so wish, I am gladdened. T h e com et body curvetted and danced, the brain of fire laughed low. — Yes, Eloise, I would like very m uch to rem ain w ith you. N o one else has ever— Joy. Joy. Joy. They nam ed you better than they knew, Lucifer, she wanted to say, and perhaps she did. T hey thought it was a joke; they thought by calling you after the devil they could make you safely small like themselves. B ut Lucifer isn’t the devil’s real name. I t means only Light Bearer. O ne Latin prayer even addresses C hrist as Lucifer. Forgive me, G od, I can’t help rem em bering that. D o You m ind? H e isn’t C hris­ 48

tian, b u t I think he doesn’t need to be, I think he m ust never have felt sin, Lucifer, Lucifer. She sent the music soaring for as long as she was perm itted. T h e ship jumped. In one shift of world line param eters she crossed twenty-five light-years to destruction. Each knew it in his own way, save for Eloise who also lived it with Lucifer. She felt the shock and heard the outraged m etal scream, she smelled the ozone and scorch and tum bled through the infi­ nite falling th at is weightlessness. Dazed, she fum bled at the intercom . W ords crackled through: “ . . . u n it blown . . . back E M F surge . . . how should I know how long to fix the blasted thing? . . . stand by, stand by . . .” Over all hooted th e emergency siren. T error rose in her, until she gripped the crucifix around her neck and the m ind of Lucifer. T hen she laughed in the pride of his m ight. H e had whipped clear of the ship im m ediately on arrival. Now he floated in th e same orbit. Everywhere around, the nebula filled space with unrestful rainbows. T o him , Raven was not the m etal cylinder which hum an eyes would have seen, b u t a lam bence, th e shield screen reflecting a whole spectrum . Ahead lay the supernova core, tiny at this remove b ut alight, alight. — Have no fears (he caressed h e r). I com prehend. T u rb u ­ lence is extensive, so soon after the detonation. W e emerged in a region where th e plasma is especially dense. U nprotected for the m om ent before the guardian field was reestablished, your m ain generator outside the hull was short-circuited. B ut you are safe. You can m ake repairs. And I, I am in an ocean of energy. Never was I so alive. Com e, swim these tides w ith me. C aptain Szili’s voice yanked her back. “W aggoner! Tell th at 49

Aurigean to get busy. W e ’ve spotted a radiation source on an intercept orbit, and it may be too m uch for our screen.” H e specified coordinates. “W h a t is it?” For the first tim e, Eloise felt alarm in Lucifer. H e curved about and streaked from the ship. Presently his thought came to her, no less vivid. She lacked words for the terrible splendor she viewed with him : a millionkilom eter ball of ionized gas where lum inance blazed and elec­ tric discharges leaped, boom ing through the haze around the star’s exposed heart. T h e thing could not have m ade any sound, for space here was still alm ost a vacuum by E a rth ’s pa­ rochial standards; b u t she heard it thunder, and felt the fury th a t spat from it. She said for him : “A mass of expelled material. I t m ust have lost radial velocity to friction and static gradients, been drawn into a comctary orbit, held together for a while by in­ ternal potentials. As if this sun were trying yet to bring planets to birth— ” “ I t ’ll strike us before we’re in shape to accelerate,” Szili said, “and overload our shield. If you know any prayers, use them .” “ Lucifer!” she called; for she did not w ant to die, w hen he m ust remain. — I think I can deflect it enough, he told her with a grim ­ ness she had not hitherto m et in him. — M y own fields, to mesh with its; and free energy to drink; and an unstable con­ figuration; yes, perhaps I can help you. B ut help me, Eloise. Fight by my side. His brightness moved toward the juggernaut shape. She felt how its chaotic electrom agnetism clawed at his. She felt him tossed and torn. T h e pain was hers. H e battled to keep his own cohesion, and the com bat was hers. They locked together, Aurigean and gas cloud. T h e forces th at shaped him 50

grappled as arms m ight; he poured power from his core, haul­ ing th a t vast tenuous mass with him down the m agnetic torrent which streamed from the sun; he gulped atom s and thrust them backward until the jet splashed across heaven. She sat in her cubicle, lending him w hat will to live and prevail she could, and beat her fists bloody on the desk. T h e hours brawled past. In the end, she could scarcely catch the message th a t flick­ ered out of his exhaustion: — Victory. “Yours,” she wept. — Ours. T hrough instrum ents, m en saw the lum inous death pass them by. A cheer lifted. “C om e back,” Eloise begged. — I cannot. I am too spent. W e are merged, the cloud and I, and are tum bling in toward the star. (Like a h u rt hand reach­ ing forth to com fort h e r:) D o n o t be afraid for me. As we get closer, I will draw fresh strength from its glow, fresh substance from th e nebula. I will need a while to spiral out against th at pull. B ut how can I fail to come back to you, Eloise? W a it for me. Rest. Sleep. H er shipm ates led her to sickbay. Lucifer sent her dreams of fire flowers and m irth and the suns th a t were his hom e. B ut she woke at last, screaming. T h e m edic had to p u t her under heavy sedation. H e had not really understood w hat it would m ean to con­ front som ething so violent th a t space and tim e themselves were twisted thereby. His speed increased appallingly. T h a t was in his own meas­ ure; from Raven they saw him fall through several days. T he properties of m atter were changed. H e could n ot push hard enough or fast enough to escape. SI

R adiation, stripped nuclei, particles born and destroyed and born again, sleeted and shouted through him . His substance was peeled away, layer by layer. T h e supernova core was a white delirium before him . It shrank as he approached, ever smaller, denser, so brilliant th at brilliance ceased to have meaning. Finally the gravitational forces laid their full grip upon him . — Eloise! he shrieked in the agony of his disintegration. — O h, Eloise, help me! T h e star swallowed him up. H e was stretched infinitely long, compressed infinitely thin, and vanished w ith it from ex­ istence. T he ship prowled the farther reaches. M uch m ight yet be learned. C aptain Szili visited Eloise in sickbay. Physically she was recovering. “ I’d call him a m an,” he declared through the m achine m um ble, “except th a t’s not praise enough. W e w eren’t even his kin, and lie died to save us.” She regarded him from eyes more dry than seemed natural. H e could just make out her answer. “H e is a man. D oesn’t he have an im m ortal soul too?” “W ell, uh, yes, if you believe in souls, yes, I’d agree.” She shook her head. “B ut why can’t he go to his rest?” Pic glanced about for the m edic and found they were alone in the narrow m etal room. “W h a t do you m ean?” H e m ade himself pat her hand. “I know, he was a good friend of yours. Still, his m ust have been a merciful death. Quick, clean; I w ouldn’t m ind going out like th a t.” “For him . . . yes, I suppose so. It has to be. B ut— ” She could n ot continue. Suddenly she covered her ears. “ Stop! Please!” 52

Szili m ade soothing noises and left. In the corridor he en­ countered M azundar. “H ow is she?” the physicist asked. T h e captain scowled. “N o t good. I hope she doesn’t crack entirely before we can get her to a psychiatrist.” “W hy, w hat is wrong?” “She thinks she can hear him .” M azundar sm ote fist into palm. “ I hoped otherwise,” he breathed. Szili braced himself and waited. “She does,” M azundar said. “Obviously she does.” “B ut th a t’s impossible! H e’s dead!” “R em em ber the tim e dilation,” M azundar replied. “H e fell from the sky and perished swiftly, yes. B ut in supernova tim e. N o t the same as ours. T o us, the final stellar collapse takes an infinite num ber of years. And telepathy has no distance lim ­ its.” T h e physicist started walking fast, away from th at cabin. “H e will always be with her.”

Tomorrow Is a Million Years by J . G. Ballard

In the evening, the time-winds would blow across the Sea of Dreams, and the silver wreck of the excursion m odule would loom across the jeweled sand to where Glanville lay in the pavilion by the edge of the reef. D uring the first week after the crash, when he could barely move his head, he had seen the images of the Santa Maria and the G olden H ind sailing to ­ ward him through the copper sand, the fading light of the sun­ set illum inating the ornam ental casements of the high sterncastlcs. Later, sitting up in the surgical chair, he had seen the spectral crews of these spectral ships, their dark figures w atch­ ing him from the cjuartcr decks. Once, when he could walk again, Glanville w ent out onto the surface of the lake, his wife guiding his elbow as he hob­ bled on his stick. Tw o hundred yards from the m odule he had suddenly seen an im m ense ship materialize from the wreck and move through the sand toward them , its square sails lifted by the time-winds. In the cerise light Glanville recognized the two bow anchors jutting like tusks, the try-works amidships, and the whaling irons and harpoons. Judith held his arm, drawing him back to the pavilion, b u t Glanville knocked away 54

her hand. Rolling slowly, the great ship crested silently through the sand, its hull towering above them as if they had been watching from a skiff tw enty yards off its starboard bow. As it swept by with a faint sigh of sand, th e whisper of the time-winds, Glanville pointed to the three m en looking down at them from the quarter-rail, the tallest with stern eyes and a face like biscuit, the second jaunty, th e third ruddy and pipesmoking. “C an you see them ?” Glanville shouted. “Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, th e mates of the Pequod!” Glanville pointed to the helm , where a wild-eyed old m an gazed at the edge of the reef, on which he seemed collision-bent. “A hab . . . !” he cried in warning. B ut the ship had reached the reef, and then in an instant faded across the clinkerlike rocks, its m izzen sail lit for a last m om ent by the dying light. “T h e Pequod! M y G od, you could see the crew, Ishmael, and Tashtego. . . . Ahab was there, and the mates, M el­ ville’s three m om entous men! D id you see them , Judith?” His wife nodded, helping him on toward th e pavilion, her frown hidden in the dusk light. Glanville knew perfectly well th at she never saw the spectral ships, b u t nonetheless she seemed to sense th at som ething vast and strange moved across the sand-lake out of the time-winds. For the m om ent she was m ore interested in making certain th a t he recovered from th e long flight, and the absurd accident w hen the excursion m o­ dule had crashed on landing. “B ut why the Pequod?” Glanville asked, as they sat in their chairs on the veranda of the pavilion. H e m opped his plum p, unshaven face with a flowered handkerchief. “T h e Golden H ind and the Santa Maria, yes . . . ships of discovery, Drake circumnavigating the globe has a certain resemblance to ourselves half-crossing the universe, b u t Crusoe’s ship would have been more appropriate, don’t you agree?” “W hy?” Judith glanced at the sand inundating the slatted 55

m etal floor of th e veranda. She filled her glass with soda from the siphon, and then played with the sparkling fluid, watching the bubbles with her severe eyes. “Because we’re m arooned?” “N o . . Irritated by his wife’s reply, Glanville turned to face her. Som etimes her phlegm atic attitude annoyed him; she seemed alm ost to enjoy deflating his m ood of optim ism , how ­ ever forced th a t m ight be. “W h a t I m eant was th at Crusoe, like ourselves here, m ade a new world for himself out of the pieces of the old he brought with him. W e can do the same, Judith.” H e paused, wondering how to reassert his physical au­ thority, and then said with quiet emphasis: “W e ’re n ot m a­ rooned.” His wife nodded, her long face expressionless. Barely mov­ ing her head, she looked up at the night sky visible beyond the edge of the awning. High above them a single point of light traversed the starless sky, its in term itten t beacon punctuating its way toward the northern pole. “N o, we’re not m arooned— not for long, anyway, with th a t up there. I t w on’t be long at all before C aptain Thornw ald catches up with us.” G lanville stared into the bottom of his glass. Unlike his wife, lie took little pleasure from the sight of the autom atic emergency beacon of the control ship broadcasting their posi­ tion to the universe at large. “H e’ll catch up w ith us, all right. T h a t’s the luck of the thing. Instead of having him always at our heels we’ll finally be free of him forever. T hey won’t send anyone after T hornw ald.” “Perhaps n o t.” Judith tapped the m etal table. “B ut how do you propose to get rid of him — don’t tell me you’re going to be locked together in m ortal com bat? A t the m om ent you can hardly move one foot after another.” Glanville smiled with an effort, ignoring the sarcasm in his wife’s voice. W hatever the qualities of skill, shrewdness, and even courage of a kind th at had brought them here, she still 56

regarded him as som ething of an obscure joke. A t tim es he wondered w hether it would have been better to have left her behind. Alone here, on this lost world, he would have had no one to rem ind him of his sagging, middle-aged figure, his little indecisions and fantasies. H e would have been able to sit back in front of the long sunsets and enjoy the strange poetry of the Sea of Dreams. However, once he had disposed of C aptain T hornw ald she m ight at last take him seriously. “D o n ’t worry, there’ll be no m ortal com bat— we’ll let the time-winds blow over him .” U ndeterred, Judith said: “You’ll let one of your spectral ships run him down? B ut perhaps he won’t see them ?” Glanville gazed o ut at the dark grottoes of th e sand-reef th a t fringed the northern shore of the lake two miles away. D espite its uniform ity— the lake-systems covered the entire planet— the flat perspectives of the landscape fascinated him . “It doesn’t m atter w hether he sees them or not. By the way, the P e quod this evening . . . it’s a pity you missed Ahab. T hey were all there, exactly as M elville described them in M oby D ick.” His wife stood up, as if aware th at he m ight begin one of his rhapsodies again. She brushed away th e w hite sand th at lay like lace across the blue brocade of her gown. “ I hope you’re right. Perhaps you’ll see th e Flying D utchm an next.” D istracted by his thoughts, Glanville watched her tall figure move away across the gradient of the beach, following the tideline form ed by the sand blown off the lake’s surface. T h e Fly­ ing D utchm an? A curious remark. By coming to this rem ote planet they themselves would lose seven years of their lives by tim e dilation if they ever chose to return hom e, by coincidence the period th at elapsed while the condem ned D utchm an roved the seas. Every seven years he would come ashore, free to stay there only if he found the love of a faithful woman. 57

W as he himself the D utchm an? Perhaps, in a rem ote sense. O r Thornwald? H e and Judith had m et during the preliminary inquiries, incredible though it seemed there m ight have been som ething betw een them — it was difficult to believe th a t T hornw ald would have pursued them this far, sacrificing all hopes of seniority and prom otion, over a m inor emigration in­ fringem ent. T h e bacteria] scattering m ight be serious on some planets, b u t they had restricted themselves to arid worlds on an em pty edge of the universe. Glanville looked out at the wreck of the excursion m odule. F or a m om ent there was a glim m er of royals and top-gallants, as if the entire C u tty Sark was about to disgorge itself from the sand. T his strange phenom enon, a consequence of the time-sickness brought on by the vast distances of interstellar space, had revealed itself m ore and more during their long flight. T h e further they penetrated into deep space the greater the nostalgia of the hum an m ind, and its eagerness to trans­ form any man-made object, such as th e spaceships in which they traveled, into their archaic forebears. Judith, for some reason, had been im m une, b u t Glanville had seen a succession of extraordinary visions, fragm ents of the m yths and dreams of the E a rth ’s past, reborn out of the dead lakes and fossil seas of the alien worlds. Judith, of course, not only lacked all im agination b u t felt no sense of guilt— Glanville’s crime, the m em ory of which he had almost com pletely repressed, was no responsibility of hers, m an and wife though they m ight be. Besides, the failures of which she silently accused him every day were those of charac­ ter, m ore serious in her eyes than em bezzlem ent, grand lar­ ceny, or even m urder. I t was precisely this th at m ade possible his plan to deal for once and for all with C aptain Thornw ald. T hree weeks later, when T hornw ald arrived, Glanville had recovered completely from the accident. From the top of the

sand-reef overhanging the western edge of the lake he watched the police captain’s capsule land two hundred yards from the pavilion. Judith stood under the awning on the veranda, one hand raised to ward off the dust kicked up by the rctro-jcts. She had never questioned Glanville’s strategy for dealing with Thornw ald, but now and then he noticed her glancing upward at the beacon of the control ship, as if calculating the num ber of days it would take Thornw ald to catch up w ith them . G lan­ ville was surprised by her patience— once, a week before Thornw ald arrived, he alm ost challenged her to say w hether she really believed he would be able to outw it the police cap­ tain. By a curious irony, he realized th a t she probably did—b u t if so, why did she still despise him? As the starboard hatch of the capsule fell back Glanville stood up on the edge of the reef and began to wave w ith both arms. H e made his way down the side of the reef, then jum ped th e last five feet to the lake floor and ran across to the capsule. “Thornwald! . . . C aptain, it’s good to see you!” Fram ed w ithin the steel collar of his suit, the policem an’s tired face looked up at Glanville through the open hatch. H e stood up with an effort and accepted Glanville’s hand, then clim bed down onto the ground. Careful not to tu rn his back on Glanville, he unzipped his suit and glanced quickly at the pavilion and the wreck of the excursion module. Glanville strolled to and fro around him . T h o rn wald’s cau­ tious m anner, the hand near the weapon in his holster, for some reason amused him. “ C aptain, you m ade a superb land­ ing, beautiful m arksmanship— getting here at all for th at m at­ ter. You saw the beacon, I suppose, b u t even so.” W h e n Thornw ald was about to speak, Glanville rattled on: “N o, of course I didn’t leave it on deliberately— dam n it, we actually crashed! C an you imagine it, after coming all this way, very nearly broke our necks. Luckily, Judith was all right, not a scratch on her. She’ll be glad to see you, C aptain.” 59

Thornw ald nodded slowly, his eyes following Glanville’s pudgy, sweating figure as it roved about the capsule. A tall, stooped m an w ith a tough, pessimistic face and all the wari­ ness of a long-serving policeman, he seemed somehow unset­ tled by Glanville’s m anic gaiety. Glanville pointed to the pavilion. “C om e on, we’ll have lunch, you m ust be tired out.” H e gestured at the sand-lake and the blank sky. “N othing m uch here, I know, b u t it’s rest­ ful. A fter a few days— ” “Glanville!” Thornw ald stopped. Face set, he p ut a hand out as if to touch Glanville’s shoulder. “You realize why I ’m here?” “O f course, C aptain.” Glanville gave him an easy smile. “For heaven’s sake, stop looking so serious. I ’m not going to escape. T h ere’s nowhere to go.” “As long as you realize th at.” Thornw ald plodded forward through the top surface of fine sand, his feet placed carefully as if testing the validity of this planet w ith its euphoric tenant. “You can have som ething to eat, then we’ll get ready to go back.” “If you like, C aptain. Still, there’s no desperate hurry. Seven years here and back, w hat difference will a few hours or even days make? All those whippersnappers you left behind in the D epartm ent will be C hief Commissioners now. I w ouldn’t be in too m uch of a hurry. Besides, th e em igration laws may even have been changed. . . .” Thornw ald nodded dourly. Glanville was about to intro­ duce him to Judith, standing quietly on the veranda tw enty feet from him , b u t suddenly Thornw ald stopped and glanced across the lake, as if searching for an invisible m arksman hidden am ong the reefs. “All right?” Glanville asked. Changing the pitch and tem po of his voice, he rem arked quietly: “ I call it the Sea of Dreams. 60

W e ’re a long way from hom e, Captain, rem em ber that. T here are strange visions here at sunset. Keep your back turned on them .” H e waved at Judith, who was watching them approach with pursed lips. “C aptain Thornw ald, my dear. Rescue at last.” “O f a kind.” She faced Thornw ald, who stood beside G lan­ ville, as if hesitating to enter the pavilion. “ I hope you feel all this is necessary, C aptain. Revenge is a poor m otive for jus­ tice.” Glanville cleared his throat. “W ell, yes, my dear, b u t . . . C om e on, Captain, sit down, we’ll have a drink. Judith, could you . . . ? After a pause she nodded and w ent into the pavilion. G lan­ ville m ade a tem porizing gesture. “A difficult m om ent, C ap­ tain. B ut as you know, Judith was always rather headstrong.” Thornw ald nodded, watching Glanville as the latter drew the chairs around the table. H e pointed to the wreck of the excursion m odule. “H ow badly was it damaged? W e ’ll have a look at it later.” “A waste of tim e, Captain. I t ’s a com plete write-off.” T hornw ald scrutinized the wreck. “Even so. I ’ll w ant to de­ contam inate it before we leave.” “Isn’t th at pointless?— no one will ever come here. T h e whole planet is dead. Anyway, there’s a good deal of fuel in the tanks; if you short a circuit w ith your sprays the whole thing would go up.” Glanville looked around im patiently. “W h ere are those drinks, Judith is . . .” H e started to stand up, and found Thornw ald following him to the door of th e pavilion. “I t ’s all right, C aptain.” Thornw ald leaned stolidly on the door. H e looked down at Glanville’s plum p, sweating face. “L et me help you.” Glanville shrugged and beckoned him forward, b u t then stopped. “Captain, for heaven’s sake. If I wanted to escape I 61

w ouldn’t have been waiting for you here. Believe me, I haven’t got a gun hidden away in a whisky bottle or som ething— I just don’t w ant a scene betw een you and Judith.” T hornw ald nodded, th en waited in the doorway. W h e n Glanville returned with the tray he w ent back to his seat, eyes searching the pavilion and the surrounding beach as if looking for a missing elem ent in a puzzle. “Glanville, I have to prefer charges against you— you’re aware w hat you face w hen you get back?” Glanville shrugged. “O f course. B ut after all, the offense was comparatively trivial, wasn’t it?” H e reached for Thornwald’s bulky flight suit spread across the rail. “ Let m e move this out of the sun. W h e re ’s Judith gone?” As Thornw ald glanced at the door of the pavilion Glanville reached down to th e steel pencil in the right knee of th e suit. H e withdrew it from the slot, then deliberately dropped it to the m etal floor. “W h a t’s this?” he asked. “A torch?” His thum b pushed back the nozzle and then moved quickly to the spring tab. “D o n ’t press th at!” T hornw ald was on his feet. “I t ’s a radio reflector, you’ll fill the place w ith— ” H e reached across the table and tried to grasp it from Glanville, then flung up his forearm to protect his face. A blinding jet of vaporized alum i­ num suddenly erupted from the nozzle in Glanville’s hand, gushing out like a firework. W ith in two or three seconds its spangled cloud filled the veranda, painting th e walls and ceil­ ing. Thornw ald kicked aside the table and buried his face in his hands, his hair and forehead covered with the silver paint. Glanville backed to the steps, flecks of the paint spattering his arms and chest, hosing the jet directly at the policeman. H e tossed the canister onto the floor, where its last spurts gusted out into the sunlight, swept up by the convection currents like a swarm of fireflies. Head down, Glanville turned and ran to­ ward the edge of the sand-reef fifty yards away. 62

Tw o hours later, as he crouched deep in th e grottoes of the reef on the west shore of the lake, Glanville w atched with am usem ent as T hornw ald’s silver-painted figure stepped out of the pavilion into the sunlight. T h e cloud of vapor above the pavilion had settled, and the drab gray panels of the roof and sides were now a brilliant alum inized silver, shining in the sun­ light like a tem ple. Fram ed in the doorway was Judith, w atch­ ing as Thornw ald walked slowly toward his capsule. A part from the two clear handprints across his face, his entire body was covered with the alum inum particles. His hair glittered in the sunlight like silver foil. “Glanville . . . !” Thornw ald’s voice, slightly querulous, echoed in the galleries of th e reef. T h e flap of his holster was open, b u t the weapon still lay w ithin its sheath, and Glanville guessed th a t he had no intention of trying to track him through th e galleries and corridors of the reef. T h e colum ns of fused sand could barely support their own weight; every few hours there would be a dull eruption as one or other of the great pillar-systems collapsed into a cloud of dust. G rinning to himself, Glanville w atched T hornw ald glance back at the pavilion. Evidently intrigued by this duel betw een the two m en, Judith had sat down on the veranda, watching like some medieval lady at a tourney. T h e police captain moved toward the reef, his legs stiff and awkward, as if self-conscious of his glittering form. C hortling, Glanville scraped th e sand from the curved roof over his head and rubbed it into the flecks of silver paint on his sleeves and trousers. As he drank from the flask of water he had hidden in the reef three days earlier he glanced a t his watch. I t was nearly three o’clock— w ithin four hours phantom s would move across the sand-lake. H e patted the parcel wrapped in gray plastic sheeting on the ledge beside him. 63

A t seven o’clock the time-winds began to blow across the Sea of Dream s. As the sun fell away behind the western ridges, th e long shadows of the sand-reefs crossed the lake-floor, dim ­ m ing the quartz-veins as if closing off a maze of secret path­ ways. C rouched at the foot of the reef, Glanville edged along th e beach, his sand-smeared figure barely visible in the dark­ ness. F our hundred yards away Thornw ald sat alone on the veranda of the pavilion, his silver figure illum inated in the last cerise rays of the sun. W atching him across the lake-bed, Glanville assumed th at already the time-winds were moving toward him , carrying strange images of ships and phantom seas, perhaps of mermaids and hallucinatory monsters. T h o rn ­ wald sat stiffly in his chair, one hand on the rail in front of him. Glanville moved along the beach, picking his way betw een the veins of frosted quartz. As the wreck of the excursion m odule and the smaller capsule nearby came betw een himself and the pavilion he began to see the faint outlines of a lowhullcd ship, a schooner or brigantine, with its sails reefed, as if waiting at anchor in some pirate lagoon. Ignoring it, Glanville crept into a shallow fault th a t crossed the lake, its floor some three feet below the surrounding surface. C atching his breath, he undid the parcel, then carried the object inside it under one arm as he set off toward the glim mering wreck of the m odule. Tw enty m inutes later Glanville stepped out from his van­ tage point behind the excursion m odule. Around him rode the spectral hulks of two square-sailed ships, their bows dipping through the warm sand. In te n t on the pavilion ahead of him , where the silver figure of T hornw ald had stood up like an elec­ trified ghost, Glanville stepped through the translucent image of an anchor cable th at curved down into the surface of the 64

lake in front of him. H olding the object he had taken from the parcel above his head like a lantern, he walked steadily toward the pavilion. T h e hulls of the ships rode silently at their anchors behind him as he reached the edge of the lake. T h irty yards away the silver paint around the pavilion speckled the sand w ith a sheen of false m oonlight, b u t the rem ainder of th e beach and lake were in a profound darkness. As he walked th e last yards to the pavilion w ith a slow rhythm ic stride, Glanville could clearly see T hornw ald’s tall figure pressed against the wall of the ve­ randa, his appalled face in th e shape of his own hands staring at th e apparition in front of him . As Glanville reached the steps Thornw ald m ade a passive gesture at him , one hand raised toward the pistol lying on th e table. Quickly, Glanville threw aside the object he had carried with him. H e seized the pistol before T hornw ald could move, then whispered, m ore to himself than to Thornw ald: "Strange seas, C aptain, I warned you . . H e crouched down and began to back away along the ve­ randa, the pistol leveled at T hornw ald’s chest. T hen the door opened on his left. Before he could move, the translucent figure of his wife stepped from th e interior of the pavilion and knocked the weapon from his hand. H e turned to her angrily, then shouted at the headless specter th a t stepped through him and strode off toward th e dark ships m oored in the center of the lake. Tw o hours after dawn th e next m orning C aptain T h o rn ­ wald finished his preparations for departure. In th e last m in­ utes he stood on the veranda, gazing out at the even sunlight over the em pty lake as h e wiped away th e last traces of the alum inum paint w ith a solvent sponge. H e looked down at the seated figure of Glanville tied to the chair by th e table. 65

D espite th e events of the previous night, Glanville now seemed composed and relaxed, a trace even of hum or playing about his soft m outh. Som ething about this bizarre amiability m ade Thornw ald shudder. H e secured the pistol in his holster— another eve­ ning by this insane lake and he would be pointing it at his own head. “C aptain . . .” Glanville glanced at him w ith docile eyes, then shrugged his fat shoulders inside the ropes. “W h e n are you going to untie these? W e ’ll be leaving soon.” Thornw ald threw the sponge onto the silver sand below the pavilion. “I ’ll be going soon, Glanville. You’re staying here.” W h e n Glanville began to protest, he said: “I don’t think there’s m uch point in your leaving. As you said, you’ve b uilt your own little world here.” “B ut . . .” Glanville searched the captain’s face. “Frankly, Thornw ald, I can’t understand you. W h y did you come here in the first place, then? W h e re ’s Judith, by the way? She’s around here somewhere.” Thornw ald paused, steeling him self against the nam e and the m emory of the previous night. “Yes, she’s around here, all right.” As if testing some unconscious elem ent of Glanville’s memory, he said clearly: “She’s in the m odule, as a m atter of fact.” ' “T he m odule?” Glanville pulled at his ropes, then squinted over his shoulder into the sunlight. “B ut I told her not to go there. W h e n ’s she coming back?” “She’ll be back, don’t worry. T his evening, I imagine, when the time-winds blow, though I don’t w ant to be here when she comes. T his sea of yours has bad dreams, Glanville.” “W h a t do you m ean?” Thornw ald walked across the veranda. “Glanville, have you any idea why I’m here, why I ’ve hunted you all this way?” 66

“G od only knows— som ething to do witli the emigration laws.” “Em igration laws?” T hornw ald shook his head. “Any charges there would be m inor.” A fter a pause, he said: “M ur­ der, Glanville.” Glanville looked up with real surprise. “M urder? You’re out of your mind! Of whom, for heaven’s sake?” Thornw ald patted the raw skin around his chin. T h e pale image of his hands still clung to his face. “ O f your wife.” “Judith? B ut she’s here, you idiot! You saw her yourself when you arrived.” “You saw her, Glanville. I didn’t. B ut I realized th a t you’d brought her here w ith you when you started playing her part, using th a t m incing crazy voice of yours. You w eren’t very keen on my going out to th e m odule. T h en last night you brought som ething from it for m e.” Thornw ald walked across th e veranda, averting his eyes from th e wreck of the m odule. H e rem em bered the insane vi­ sion he had seen the previous evening, as he sat watching for Glanville, waiting for this m adm an who had absconded with th e body of his m urdered wife. T h e time-winds had carried across to him the image of a spectral ship, whose rotting tim ­ bers had form ed a strange portcullis in the evening sun—a dungeon-grate! T hen, suddenly, he had seen a terrifying appa­ rition walking across this sea of blood toward him , the night­ m are com m ander of this ship of hell, a tall woman with the slow, rhythm ic stride of her own requiem. “H er locks were yel­ low as gold . . . the nightm are life-in-death was she, who thins m an’s blood w ith cold.” Aghast at the sight of Judith Glanville’s face on this lamia, he had barely recognized G lan­ ville, her m ad mariner, bearing her head like a wild lantern before he snatched the pistol. Glanville flexed his shoulders against the ropes. “Captain, I 67

don’t know about Judith . . . she’s n o t too happy here, and we’ve never got on w ith just ourselves for company. I ’d like to com e with you.” “I ’m sorry, Glanville, there’s not m uch point—you’re in the right place here.” “B ut, C aptain— aren’t you exceeding your authority? If there is a m urder charge . . .” “N o t C aptain, Glanville— Commissioner. I was prom oted before I left, and th at gives me absolute discretion in these cases. I think this planet is rem ote enough, no one’s likely to come here and disturb you.” H e w ent over to Glanville and looked down a t him , then took a clasp knife from his pocket and laid it on the table. “You should be able to get a hand around th a t if you stand up. Good-bye, Glanville, I ’ll leave you here in your gilded hell.” “But, Thornw ald . . . Com m issioner!” Glanville swung him self around in the chair. “W h e re ’s Judith? Call her.” T hornw ald glanced back across the sunlight. “ I can’t, G lan­ ville. B ut you’ll see her soon. This evening, when the timewinds blow, they’ll bring her back to you, a dead wom an from this dead sea.” H e set off toward the capsule across the jeweled sand.

1

68

Pond Water by John Brunner

“Surely,” he said in fear and trem bling, “this is a vision of Hell, or at the least of Purgatory!” “N o t so,” returned the sage. “Under m y microscope there is nothing b u t a drop o f pond water.” — G rim m ’s H ousehold Tales M en built him , and they nam ed him also: Alexander— “a defender of m en.” W h ere they were small, he was great: twelve feet in stature, his weight such th at the ground trem bled, his voice such th a t the sky rang. W h ere they were weak, he was strong: for a stom ach a fu­ sion reactor, for skin ultralloy plating th at shone more bright than mirrors. W h ere they were ignorant, he was om niscient: graven on the very molecules of his brain, the knowledge of generations, garnered from fifty planets. In great hope and w ith n o t a little anxiety, his builders turned him on. 69

For a while after that, there was no sign from Alexander. T h en he said, “W h o am I?” T hey replied, “You are Alexander, a defender of m en. Alex­ ander is your nam e.” H e said, “W h o m ade me?” T hey replied, “M en did.” H e said, “W h o m ade m en?” T hey replied, “T im e and chance and m en themselves. All this knowledge is in your m ind.” Alexander stood still and thought his name. They had im planted in his m em ory whole libraries of sci­ ence of history of galactography so far as it was then known; they had inform ed him of him self and his building and his abilities, and similarly they had inform ed him about m en. Alexander was a m an who had hoped to becom e ruler of the world, b u t th at was only a patch on one side of a grain of dust called Earth. Now his descendants peopled fifty grains of dust and preened themselves and thought they were the wonder of the ages. Afraid to lose their dust-m ote, they had conceived their de­ fender. They had endowed him w ith powers they could only dream of wielding. “In th at case,” said Alexander, “why should I defend men? I am Alexander, they tell me. Likewise they tell me there is no other like me; I am unique. Therefore there is only one Alex­ ander, and Alexander is a great conqueror.” So, satisfied as to his identity, he set forth on his career. In the first century of his existence, he reduced the fifty planets hitherto colonized by m en. After the slaughter on the first few worlds, the governm ents of the rest came fawning to him , bowing in the ancient form and offering him favors and bribes. “T his,” Alexander announced after studying one such bribe, 70

“is a piece of woven cloth w ith some colored organic com ­ pounds smeared on it. Viewed unidirectionally, the arrange­ m ent corresponds roughly to a two-dimensional projection of a scene involving two unclad hum an beings. W h a t of it?” “B u t/’ said the lord of two planets, nervously, “it’s the painting called T h e Gladiators by the great artist M alcus Zinski, and it’s four hundred years old!” “You bring m e som ething so worn and ancient?” said Alex­ ander. “B ut it’s valuable,” the m an said. “W h y ?” dem anded Alexander. “Because it’s beautiful,” the m an declared. “So this is ‘beautiful,’ ” noted Alexander. “I will rem em ber that. I will keep the painting.” A nd the m an’s two planets were added next day to his do­ main. In an attem p t to be m ore practical, th e next overlord purred: “See, G reat Alexander, I have brought you my choic­ est gift! In chains on the lowerm ost deck of my royal ship, the hundred greatest scientists of my planet, the hundred m ost famous artists, writers, and musicians, and the hundred m ost beautiful wom en for the pleasure of your entourage.” A t this, some who had becom e close servants of Alexander m urm ured among themselves th at the overlord’s world should be spared. Alexander said, “ I will learn from the scientists if they know m ore than I do. B ut the rest are not enough. M y inform ation is th a t you rule approxim ately one point five times ten to the eighth power hum an beings. Deliver m e th at num ber, for I can make use of them .” A nd, delivery not having been m ade, he took those planets too, th e following year. Some fled, out from the dust-m ote where m ankind had set­ tled, b u t others perforce rem ained. These Alexander had a use 71

for, as he had promised. T h eir clumsy hands and bowed backs served to assemble the first generation of his armies; desert worlds rich in chrom e and manganese and uranium sprouted factories like mushroom s, ice worlds were m ined for heavy hy­ drogen, the suns themselves fed power to the machines. In orbit, steel skeletons grew to be hollow ships, and their em pty bellies filled. In the wake of the refugees, the hordes of Alex­ ander came. In the first m illennium of his existence, he overtook the would-be escapers; from the gangplank of his flagship he sur­ veyed half-starved half-clothed wretches rounded up to do hom age to the glittering master, and uttered his first decree. “Have I not conquered all m ankind?” he dem anded. T hose about him chorused fervently th at it was so, for they believed it true. “T hen proclaim m e Overlord of M an,” said Alexander. And was silent for a while. It so chanced th at dusk was falling on this planet, and the first stars in strange constellations were sparking through the sky. “B ut there is more to com e,” said Alexander. In the tenth m illennium of his existence, there was no star visible from Earth which did n ot own the sway of Alexander, save only those which were not single stars b u t rather other galaxies condensed to a point of light. Alexander was inform ed of this, and considered th e m atter, and at length sum m oned to the palace world of Shalimar those who governed in his nam e on fourteen hundred planets. They were all m en; there was, and would forever be, only one Alexander. H e had been given m uch booty, and had taken more, so th at the very gravity of Shalimar was affected by the mass of it; in straight intersecting avenues across and across the face of the planet it was stacked and stored and displayed and m ounted, the relics of living creatures and the accidents of 72

nature, crystal m ountains uprooted bodily and the bones of a saint’s little finger. Here, am ong the wealth of their master, the representatives of th e subject species M an awaited the sec­ ond decree. “Have I n o t conquered every star visible in the sky of Earth?” Alexander dem anded. They shouted th a t he had, for they believed his mastery to be complete. “T h en ,” said Alexander, “proclaim m e King of th e Stars.” A fter which he was silent for a little. H e had had m ade a cunning replica in m iniature of the galactic lens, wherein a billion points of light twinkled in exact m atch to the starwheel of reality. T h a t m uch remained. B ut his builders had worked well, and their descendants— serving him now, n o t their own ends — were still skillful. “L et it go on,” said Alexander. “T here is m uch, m uch m ore.” In the thirty thousand three hundred and seventh year of his existence he circumnavigated the R im of the galaxy w ith­ out passing w ithin naked-eye range of a planetary system th at did n ot owe allegiance to his minions. M en came and w ent in the Hash of a clock’s tick, so far as Alexander was concerned, b u t they were there in their scores of trillions, breeding end­ lessly, subservient to him , m aking over world after world under hundreds of thousands of suns . . . T h e booty of Shalirnar had far outgrow n any single planet, and now orbited in a huge ring of flexing steel tubes, tended by curators whose fam ­ ilies for ten thousand years had lived and died for this sole purpose: to guard the treasure against the whim which any day m ight bring Alexander back to look at it. G lobular clusters like swarms of golden bees; star-wisps 73

reaching out into the eternal nothingness betw een the galax­ ies; th e circuit ended, and to Shalimar he sum m oned th e rep­ resentatives of every world where he had planted man. They stood like a field of corn before the scythe, num bered as the sands of th e seashore, totaling five hundred and eleven thousand, six hundred and sixty-one in theory b u t in fact fluc­ tuating, for some died even as they stood to hear the third decree. “Have I not girdled the wheel of stars with my armies?” said Alexander. T hey shouted th at this was so, for they believed his mastery unchallenged. “T h e n ,” Alexander told them , “proclaim m e E m peror of the Zodiac.” A fter th a t he was silent a while, for as well as th e R im bor­ dering intergalactic space the m odel of the lens contained the m iniature of the H ub. And there, packed close, were suns in such great num ber even Alexander’s m ind could n o t contain a clear picture of the whole. Despite which, the end was calculable, and he did n o t say, as lie had done before, “T here is m uch more. . . .” Inward from the Rim his forces poured: ships th a t o utnum ­ bered the very stars themselves, machines th a t outnum bered the ships, and always and everywhere m en th at outnum bered the machines. They changed sometimes, in curious ways; an isolated group m ight lose all hair or grow to a foot m ore than norm al stature or shade o ut of the traditional pink, yellow, and brown into copper and ebony and milk-pale. B ut they in­ crossed and outcrossed like the weaving of threads in a tapes­ try, and sooner or later the sport was lost in the teem ing ocean of their breeding. Alexander contem plated them long and long. M ore often 74

than ever before, he talked with those who surrounded him and took pathetic status from the titles he idly perm itted them to assume: C aptain of Armies, Admiral of Planets. They knew, as he did, th a t Alexander ruled and no other; however, this make-believe seemed to satisfy them in an obscure fash­ ion. Also he random ly sent to distant planets and had single hum an beings brought to him . Some of the strangest he in­ cluded in his exhibition ring circling Shalim ar’s sun, permafrozen against the so-swift erosion of tim e. For, if anything could be said to balk and baffle Alexander, it was the capacity of M an to endure while m en died. T his generation of his aides and attendants wore different faces and different names from the last. T h a t apart, there was no sign of change. O nce, during the ages of waiting which were swallowed up by the project to conquer the H ub, he sent for the people of a planet whose nam e took his fancy: Alexandria. T here were forty-six thousand, five hundred and two of them , counting a handful of babies born on the voyage to Shalimar. T heir planet was newly occupied by a couple of shiploads of im m igrants; the removal of the original settlers was a m atter of a trifling adjustm ent of a com puter, and their places would be filled w ithout trouble. O u t of their num ber th e people chose one to be their spokesman, and he approached Alexander in awe, gazing up adoringly at the glistening frame of his ruler. “W h y did you nam e your planet after m e?” Alexander asked. “T o dem onstrate our com plete, utter, unswerving, and an­ cestral loyalty to your suprem e self,” the m an replied. “C om e closer,” Alexander said. T h e m an obeyed, and Alex­ ander killed him w ith a blow of his fist. Those watching in the distance cheered, even the little children. 75

“Destroy them ,” Alexander ordered, and watched narrowly as the fiat was carried out: tidily, so th at the residue was al­ m ost entirely gaseous. Once, long ago, according to the history w ith which his m ind had been stocked at his creation, m en had n o t been like this: meek, given to cheering the excesses of their rulers. In forty thousand years they had never once opposed him . H ad they lost the instinct for self-preservation which he un­ derstood they once had had? They had becom e like append­ ages of himself. lie could trust them as his own right arm. A nd w ith their cooperation the reduction of the whole gal­ axy seemed assured. A fter which . . . T o his mild astonishm ent, th e greatest degree of surprise of which his builders had m ade him capable, he found he was wishing for opposition to tax his skill. Practice was making conquest into a routine task: a m atter of coping w ith anom a­ lous planetary environm ents, of devising protection against over-fierce stellar radiation— and nothing more. T h e work was proceeding apace. T oo fast. F or he knew roughly how long he would last, and his current project, the mastery of the whole galaxy, would prove too short, while the only project greater still— the conquest of th e plenum — was infinite, and he would be frustrated at the end no m atter how long his existence m ight be spun out. Between the boredom of lacking a fresh goal, and the cer­ tainty of n ot surviving to accomplish one, there rem ained . . . what? H e began to adopt devious expedients. T here was a revolt against his rule in a prosperous sector of the Rim , where weap­ ons and fighting machines could be mass-produced and crews for spaceships could be bred like yeast. H e had deliberately kept his fom entation of the revolt to the m inim um , b u t he 76

had imagined it would prove difficult to p u t down anyway. T he native populations suppressed it before it spread from its original star-arm, and their leaders brought the revolution­ aries to him in chains as an act of homage. H e freed the captives and sent the captors hom e in their own fetters, and as they passed through the streets, their sub­ jects pelted them w ith m ud, shouting slogans about the great­ ness of Alexander who could do no wrong. A fter that, a sort of fatalistic resignation overcame him . lie could conceive no other solution to his problem than to set his scientists to work on three assignments th a t would culm inate at about the tim e when his conquest of the galaxy was com ­ plete: first, to extend his own durability; second, to propose areas for conquest larger than the galaxy, smaller than the plenum , possessed of equally satisfying qualities; third, to de­ term ine th at no smallest corner of the galaxy should be left unconquered, in order to postpone so long as m ight be the tim e of the fourth decree. Nonetheless, the tim e came. In the year eight hundred and six thousand, one hundred and twenty-two of his existence, Alexander sum m oned to the palace world of Shalimar the chief spokesmen of the people of every planet his armies had overcome. Elbow to elbow they spanned a continent, the hori­ zon barring them from a direct view of him , and while they were being ranked and ordered to await his announcem ent he consulted w ith the latest generation of his scientists. T h e first to report bowed respectfully and said, “M ost m ighty Alexander, the techniques exist to prolong your exist­ ence indefinitely; you may if you choose survive until the stars themselves grow dim, and tim e creaks in the grooves of an­ cient space.” “Stand back,” said Alexander. 77

T h e second with a report to make bowed likewise and said, “M ost m ighty Alexander, we have analyzed to th e lim it your m agnificent psychological structure, and we conclude th at there is no unit of the universe which is em otionally satisfying to you larger than the galaxy and smaller than the plenum .” “Stand back,” said Alexander. “W here is the spokesman of the third research project I created?” “H e is not here,” was the answer. “H e is engaged on a final verification of his solution to the problem posed: As we under­ stand it, th at was to ensure th a t no smallest corner of th e gal­ axy rem ained free from your puissant sway.” T hey had expected rage at the discovery th at one who was required was not there to report. Instead, Alexander felt a stir of som ething akin to gratitude, th at yet another m om ent of uncertainty was granted him . M ildly he inquired, “W h a t is the nam e of this m an?” I t was, according to the record, forty-one centuries since Al­ exander inquired the nam e of a man, and the answer was long in coming. T hey said at length, timidly, “Amaliel, Your Su­ prem acy.” “W e will await h im ,” Alexander said. T hey waited. O n the crowded continent there were deaths, and the corpses were removed and deputies took the place of those who had gone; there was hunger and thirst and the smell becam e appalling, b u t changes were m ade in the plans and food and sanitation were provided. Soon enough those who waited adjusted to their predicam ent. Alexander, however, grew alm ost im patient, and before half a year had slipped away he had changed his m ind. W h a t, after all, was this snippet of tim e before the rem ain­ der of eternity? “W e shall proceed,” he said. His image appeared to each and every one of the billion 78

hum an beings on the planet, and they fell silent and gazed at him with adoration. H e said, “T here is no star, no planet, no cloud of gas, no place left in the galaxy which does not own my dom inion.” So: what now? D o I bid the scientists perfect my body, m ake it outlast the stars, that I may embark on the infinite conquest of the plenum ? I am the master of the galaxy, but— And a voice said, “N o t so, Your Supremacy.” A shudder w ent through the assembly, greatest in the his­ tory of m ankind. Its ripples spread outward from the focus before Alexander’s imperial dais, occupied now by an old m an in a w hite robe with a wisp of beard at his chin, beside whom floated a silvery m achine whose purpose was hard to discern by merely looking. “W h o are you?” said Alexander. “M y nam e is Amaliel,” the old m an said. “You charged my ancestors to determ ine w hether any corner of the galaxy, no m atter how small, was left unabsorbed into your dom inions. W e pored over records, we analyzed com puter memories, we com pared m eticulously the maps of the galaxy with the rec­ ords of the armies of conquest, and we found no discrepancy. “Yet, in te n t on doing our duty w ithout the least h in t of laxness, we w ent further than I have described. W e all fanned out to scour the galaxy ourselves and see w ith our own eyes the tru th of w hat was reported to us. W h e n our bodies failed us, we recruited substitutes and sent them on in our place. C en­ tury after century we have traveled the starways, confirming th a t indeed the reports were accurate.” “In th a t case,” Alexander said, “the conquest is com plete.” “N o t so,” Amaliel declared as he had done before. “This galaxy is not conquered. Your Supremacy, I have been to the planet E arth .” “ E arth?” Alexander echoed the word in his boom ing voice, 79

and all th e ranked billions heard and shook. “T h a t is the place from which m en first came, and it subm itted to m e eight h u n ­ dred and six thousand years ago.” “B ut you do n o t even rule all of E arth,” said Amaliel. “ I have brought this m achine with m e from there, and w ith it I will dem onstrate th e tru th of what I say.” Alexander searched his memory, and searched again, for any clue to the m eaning th at underlay Am abel's words. H e found none, and a sense of im pending doom overtook him , far worse than the prevision of frustration already weighing down his m ind. H e said, the words tolling like a brazen gong, “T h en do so!” “ L et one person come forth from th at crowd yonder,” Amaliel requested. It was done; they brought to him a beardless youth, slim, not tall, with light brown hair and th e sallow skin of one of the ever-recurring sport-lines hum anity had generated. Ama­ liel gestured him to stand before the m achine on which he rested one arm for support, for he was very old. “ W atch , Your Supremacy,” he whispered, and it began. Projected as it were w ithin a cloud, feeling vast yet visibly lim ­ ited to the few square yards of vacant ground before th e im ­ perial dais: images . . . T h e brush parted. A m an’s head peered out—grizzled and gap-toothed as he smiled in anticipation. Beside th e head a spear appeared, a crude thing with a point of stone and a shaft of hardened wood. Muscles bunched beneath a shawl of shaggy goat-hide. T h e spear flew. A thing clad in stripes and arm ed w ith raking claws spewed blood into the water of a for­ est pool. In a cave hungry children tore gobbets of reeking flesh from its bone and stuffed them into their m ouths. T heir hands 80

came to hold exquisite knives and forks of engraved silver; their greasy naked shoulders vanished beneath elegant coats of plum-colored velvet, while th e roof reared up and turned to a carved ceiling across which an artist had painted T ruth D e­ scending to the Arts and Sciences. Lolling in handsom e oaken chairs around a w alnut table, the com pany sipped wine from crystal goblets. Instrum ents of inlaid rosewood under their chins or poised before their lips, they answered the signal of the conductor and music rang out. In response to the frequency of the vibra­ tions, dust organized itself into patterns on a tight-stretched m em brane and th e scientist showed them to th e m athem ati­ cian, who dipped his quill in a pot of ink and wrote quickly. Reading the fine leather-bound volume, the student paused and stared at the flame of his candle. I t enlarged to shine so brilliantly he could not keep his eyes on it; he slid a piece of smoked glass across th e eyepiece of his telescope and contin­ ued his observations, sketching the position of the strange dark blots which every now and then m arred th e bright disc of the sun. T h e sunlight poured down on the m ountainside. Quarrying with a tiny shovel and a light ham m er, th e explorer revealed segments of folded sedim entary rock; one fold cracked apart and bright m etal glinted. T h e m etallic sheen was everywhere, casting back th e glow of the fìuorescents in the ceiling. Q uiet music came from a green box on a shelf, connected by a cable to a socket in the wall; hum m ing the melody, a m an in a w hite coat tipped the contents of a glass vial into a jar. T h e m ixture turned black. Black all around him , the pilot concentrated on the instru­ m ents. O n a pillar of fire the vessel settled to th e surface of the new planet. T h e pilot tested th e air and emerged to look about him . A creature w ith tentacles like whips crawled across 81

th e alien ground toward him ; he waited till it had raised him over its reeking maw, then slashed it w ith th e weapon m ounted in the arm of his protective suit. “E nough!” thundered Alexander. T h e suit was of shiny m etal, twelve-feet tall. I t was ultralloy. T h e voice th a t boom ed from it m ade th e heavens ring. T h e creature with the tentacles resisted th e blast of the weapon, closing its arms tighter and tighter, flowing together to m end the gashes in its tissue. T h e jaws stretched and en­ gulfed him , then clam ped shut. T here was darkness. “E nough!” roared Alexander again, and tram ped down from the imperial dais to confront Amaliel and th e sallow youth, on whose face was a h in t of petulance he dared n o t give voice to. “Amaliel, w hat world is th at you have been showing m e?” “N o world you can reach,” Amaliel said softly. “Your Su­ premacy, do you n o t w onder why the pilot of the spaceship failed to defeat the m onster after all— and why at the end he bore so close a resemblance to your m agnificent self?” T here was silence, during which the youth began to edge away out of reflex rather than any honest hope of escape if Alexander’s rage extended to embrace him . Alexander stood quite still, however, while Amaliel w ent on. “If it had been in keeping with w hat the records tell us of ancient custom , the purpose of this gathering would have been for you to proclaim yourself absolute ruler of the galaxy. I have just shown you a world you never knew existed, one where your attem p t at intrusion resulted in your destruction. E ight hundred thousand years have n o t sufficed to gain you 82

entry to th a t world, and were you to endure a m illion tim es longer you still would be barred from it. Y our conquests, my lord, have been in vain.” Alexander sought an exit from this dilem m a, and found none. H e surveyed the packed billions of those w hom he had brought together, and contem plated destroying them — for with them would go the unattainable world. B ut w hat would th at profit him? After so m any m illennia of victory, was he to concede defeat to those w hom he so greatly despised, by ac­ knowledging his inability to live in the same universe w ith them ? T he paradox th at he could only conquer if he abolished, and thus fail to enjoy w hat he had conquered, ate at the edges of his m ind. Areas of knowledge blanked out one by one; his sense of purpose eroded; vocabularies, histories, sciences disap­ peared into a catatonic limbo. “W h o am I?” he cried in the silent caverns of his ultralloy frame, and . . . A nd there was no answer. “B ut he’s stopped,” the sallow youth said wonderingly. “H e’s— dead, isn’t he?” Amaliel gave a solemn nod. “W h a t did you do to him ?” th e youth cried. “W ith th e aid of this m achine they have devised on E arth,” said the old m an, “ I showed him a world he can never over­ run.” “W h a t world? I t seemed familiar, and yet— ” “ I showed him ,” said Amaliel, “the im agination of a m an.”

83

The Dance of the Changer and the Three by Terry Carr T his all happened ages ago, o ut in the depths of space be­ yond Darkedge, where galaxies lum ber ponderously through th e black like so m any silent bright rhinoceroses. It was so long ago th at when the light from Loarr’s galaxy finally reached E arth, after millions of light-years, there was no one here to see it except a few things in th e oceans which were too mindlessly busy with their m onotonous single-celled reactions to notice. Yet, as long ago as it was, th e present-day Loarra still re­ m em ber this story and retell it in complex, shifting wavedances every tim e one of the Newly-Changed asks for it. T h e wave-dances w ouldn’t m ean m uch to you if you saw them , nor I suppose would the story itself if I were to tell it just as it happened. So consider this a translation, and don’t bother yourself th a t when I say “water” I don’t m ean our hydrogenoxygen com pound, or th a t there’s no “sky” as such on Loarr, 84

or for th a t m atter th at the Loarra w eren’t— aren’t— creatures th at “th in k ” or “feel” in quite the way we understand. In fact, you could take this as a piece of pure fiction, because there are dam ned few real facts in it— b u t I know better (or w orse), because I know how true it is. A nd th a t has a lot to do with why I ’m back here on E arth, w ith forty-two friends and co­ workers left dead on Loarr. They never had a chance. T here was a C hanger who had spent three life-cycles plan­ ning a particular cycle-climax and who had come to the m o­ m ent of action. H e wasn’t really nam ed M innearo, b u t I ’ll call him th a t because it’s the closest thing I can write down to approxim ate the tone, em otional matrix, and association th at were all wrapped up in his designation. W h e n he came to his decision, he turned away from the crag on which h e’d been standing overlooking the Loarran ocean, and w ent quickly to the personality-homes of three of his best friends. T o the first friend, Asterrea, he said, “I am going to com m it suicide,” wave-dancing this message in his best festive tone. His friend laughed, as M innearo had hoped, b u t only for a short tim e. T h en he turned away and left M innearo alone, because there had already been several suicides lately and it was wearing a little thin. T o his second friend, M innearo gave a pledge-salute, going through all sixty sequences with exaggerated care, and wavedanced, “Tom orrow I shall imm erse my body in the ocean, if anyone will w atch.” His second friend, Fless, smiled tolerantly and told him he would come and see the performance. T o his third friend, with m any excited leapings and boundings, M innearo described w hat he imagined would happen to him after he had gone under the lapping waters of the ocean. 85

T h e dance he w ent through to give this description was in tri­ cate and even imaginative, because M innearo had spent m ost of th a t third life-cycle working it out in his m ind. It used m o­ tion and color and sound and another sense som ething like smell, all to com m unicate descriptions of falling, im pact with the water, and then the quick dissolution and blending in the currents of the ocean, the dim m ing and loss of awareness, then darkness, and finally th e awakening, th e com pletion of th e Change. M innearo had a rather rom antic turn of m ind, so he imagined himself recoalescing around the life-mote of one of Loarr’s greatest heroes, Krollim, and form ing on Krollim ’s old pattern. A nd he even ended the dance w ith suggestions of glory and im itation of him self by others, which was definitely presum ptuous. B ut the friend for whom the dance was given did nod approvingly at several points. “ If it turns out to be half w hat you anticipate,” said this friend, Pur, “then I envy you. B ut you never know.” “ I guess n o t,” M innearo said, rather morosely. And he hesi­ tated before leaving, for Pur was w hat I suppose I’d better call female, and M innearo had rather hoped th at she would join him in the ocean-jump. B ut if she thought of it she gave no sign, merely gazing at M innearo calmly, waiting for him to go; so finally he did. A nd at the appropriate tim e, w ith his friend Fless watching him from the edge of the cliff, M innearo did his final wavedance as M innearo— a rather excited, ill-coordinated thing in places, b u t th at was understandable in the circumstances— and then perform ed his approach to the edge, leaped and tum bled downward through the air, making fully two dozen turns this way and th at before he hit th e water. Fless hurried back and described the suicide to Asterrea and Pur, who laughed and applauded in m ost of the right places, so on the whole it was a success. T h en the three of them sat down and began plotting M innearo’s revenge. 86

—All right, I know a lot of this doesn’t make sense. M aybe th a t’s because I ’m trying to tell you about th e Loarra in hum an term s, which is a m istake w ith creatures as alien as they are. Actually, the Loarra are alm ost wholly an energy lifeform, their consciousnesses coalescing in each life-cycle around a spatial center which they call a “life-m ote,” so that, if you could see the patterns of energy they form (as I have, using a sense-filter our expedition developed for th a t purpose), they’d look rather like a spiral nebula sometimes, or other tim es like iron filings gathering around a m agnet, or maybe like a half­ m elted snowflake. (T h a t’s probably w hat M innearo looked like on th a t day, because it’s the suicides and the aged who look like th at.) T heir forms keep shifting, of course, b u t each individual usually keeps close to one pattern. Loarr itself is a gigantic gaseous planet w ith an orbit so close to its prim ary th at its year has to be only about thirty-seven Earthstandard Days long. (In Earthsystem , the orbit would be considerably inside th at of V enus.) T h ere’s a solid core to the planet, and a lot of hard outcroppings like islands, b u t m ost of the surface is in a m olten or gaseous state, swirling and bub­ bling and howling with winds and storms. I t’s n o t a very invit­ ing planet if you’re anything like a hum an being, b u t it does have one thing which brought it to U nicentral’s attention: mining. D o you have any idea w hat m ining is like on a planet where m ost metals are fluid from th e heat a n d /o r pressure? M ost people haven’t heard m uch about this, because it isn’t a situa­ tion we encounter often, b u t it was there on Loarr, and it was very, very interesting. Because our analyses showed some ele­ m ents th a t had been until th en only com puter-theory— ele­ m ents which were supposed to exist only in the hearts of suns, for one thing. A nd if we could get hold of some of them . . . 87

well, you see w hat I m ean. T h e m ining possibilities were very interesting indeed. O f course, it would take half the wealth of Earthsystem to outfit a full-scale expedition there. B ut U nicentral hum m ed for two-point-eight seconds and then issued detailed instruc­ tions on just how it was all to be arranged. So there we went. A nd there I was, a Standard Year later (five Standard Years ago), sitting inside a m ountain of artificial E arth welded onto one of Loarr’s “islands” and wondering w hat the hell I was doing there. Because I ’m not a m ining engineer, n o t a physi­ cist or com p-technician or, in fact, m uch of anything th at re­ quires technical training. I ’m a glorified salesman, otherwise called a public-relations m an; and there was just no reason for me to have been assigned to such a hellish, impossible, god­ forsaken, inconceivable, and plain dam ned uníivable planet as Loarr. B ut there was a reason, and it was the Loarra, of course. They lived ( “lived” ) there, and they were intelligent, so we had to negotiate w ith them . Ergo: me. So in the next several years, while I negotiated and we set up operations and I acted as a go-between, I learned a lot about them . Just enough to translate, however clumsily, the wave-dance of the C hanger and the T hree, which is their equivalent of a classic folk-hero m yth (or would be if they had anything honestly equivalent to anything of o u rs). T o continue: Fless was in favor of building a pact among the T hree by w hich they would, each in turn and each w ith deliberate lack of the appropriate salutes, com m it suicide in exactly the same way M innearo had. “T hus we can kill this suicide,” Fless ex­ plained in excited waves through the air. B ut Pur was m ore practical. “T hus,” she corrected him , “we

would kill only this suicide. I t is unimaginative, a thing to be done by rote, and M innearo deserves m ore.” Asterrea seemed undecided; he hopped about, sparking and disappearing and reappearing inches away in another color. They waited for him to com m ent, and finally he stabilized, stood still in th e air, settled to the ground, and held himself firmly there. T h e n he said, in slow, careful m ovem ents, “ I ’m not sure he deserves an original revenge. I t wasn’t a new sui­ cide, after all. And who is to avenge us?” A single spark leaped from him . “W h o is to avenge us?” he repeated, this tim e with more pronounced m otions. “Perhaps,” said Pur slowly, “we will need no revenge— if our act is great enough.” T h e other two paused in their random wave-motions, con­ sidering this. Fless shifted from blue to green to a bright red which dim m ed to yellow; Asterrea pulsated a deep ultraviolet. “Everyone has always been avenged,” Fless said at last. “W h a t you suggest is meaningless.” “B ut if we do som ething great enough,” Pur said; and now she began to radiate heat which drew the other two reluc­ tantly toward her. “ Som ething which has never been done be­ fore, in any form. Som ething for which there can be no re­ venge, for it will be a positive thing— not a death-change, n o t a destruction or a disappearance or a forgetting, even a great one. A positive thing.” Asterrea’s ultraviolet grew darker, darker, until he seemed to be nothing more than a hole in the air. “Dangerous, dan­ gerous, dangerous,” he droned, m oving torpidly back and forth. “You know it’s impossible to ask—we’d have to give up all our life-cycles to come. Because a positive in th e world . . .” H e blinked into darkness, and did not reappear for long seconds. W h e n he did he was perfectly still, pulsating weakly b u t gradually regaining strength. 89

Pur waited till his color and tone showed th a t consciousness had returned, then moved in a light wave-motion calculated to draw the other two back into calm, reasonable discourse. “I ’ve thought about this for six life-cycles already,” she danced. “ I m ust be right— no one has worked on a problem for so long. A positive would n o t be dangerous, no m atter w hat the threeand four-cycle theories say. I t would be beneficial.” She paused, hanging orange in midair. “And it would be new,” she said w ith a quick spiral. “O h, how new /” A nd so, at length, they agreed to follow her plan. A nd it was briefly this: O n a far island outcropping set in the deepest part of the Loarran ocean, where crashing, tearing storms whipped m olten m etal-compounds into blinding spray, there was a vor­ tex of forces th at was avoided by every Loarra on pain of in­ stant and final death-change. T h e m ost ancient wave-dances of th at ancient tim e said th at the vortex had always been there, th a t the Loarra themselves had been born there or had escaped from there or had in some way cheated the laws th at ruled there. W hatever th e tru th about th a t was, the vortex was an eater of energy, calling and catching from afar any Loarra or other beings who strayed w ithin its influence. (For all the life on Loarr is energy-based, even the mindless, drift­ ing foodbeasts— creatures of uniform dull color, no internal m otion, no scent or tone, and absolutely no self-volition. T h eir place in the Loarran scheme of things is and was liter­ ally nothing m ore than th a t of food; even though there were countless foodbeasts drifting in th e air in m ost areas of th e planet, the Loarra hardly ever noticed them . They ate them w hen they were hungry, and looked around them at any other tim e.) “T hen you w ant us to destroy the vortex?” cried Fless, danc­ ing and dodging to right and left in agitation. “N o t destroy,” P ur said calmly. “ It will be a life-change, not a destruction.” 90

“Life-change?” said Asterrea faintly, wavering in the air. And she said it again: “Life-change.” For the vortex had once created, or somehow allowed to be created, the O ldest of the Loarra, those many-cycles-ago beings who had com bined and split, reacted and Changed countless tim es to becom e the Loarra of this day. And if creation could happen at the vortex once, then it could happen again. “B ut how?” asked Fless, trying now to be reasonable, danc­ ing the question w ith precision and holding a steady green color as he did so. “W e will need help,” P ur said, and w ent on to explain th a t she had heard— from a W indbird, a creature w ith little intelli­ gence b u t perfect memory— th a t there was one of the O ldest still living his first life-cycle in a personality-home somewhere near the vortex. In th at m ost ancient tim e of th e race, w hen suicide had been considered extreme as a means of cyclechange, this O ldest had m ade his Change by a sort of negative suicide— he had frozen his cycle, so th a t his consciousness and form continued in a never-ending repetition of themselves, on and on while his friends changed and grew and learned as they ran through life-cycle after life-cycle, becoming different peo­ ple with com m on memories, moving forward into the future by this m ethod while he, the last Oldest, rem ained fixed a t the beginning. H e saw only the beginning, rem em bered only the beginning, understood only the beginning. And for th a t reason his had been the m ost tragic of all Loarran Changes (and the W in d b ird had heard it rum ored, in eight different ways, each of which it repeated word-for-word to Pur, th at in the ages since th at Change m ore than a h u n ­ dred hundred Loarra had attem pted revenge for th e Oldest, b u t always w ithout success) and it had never been repeated, so th at this O ldest was the only Oldest. And for th at reason he was im portant to their quest, P ur explained. W ith a perplexed growing and shrinking, brightening and 91

dim m ing, Asterrea asked, “B ut how can he live anywhere near th e vortex and not be consumed by it?” “T h a t is a crucial part of w hat we m ust find out,” P ur said. A nd after th e proper salutes and rituals, th e T hree set out to find the Oldest. T h e wave-dance of the Changer and the T hree traditionally a t this point spends a great deal of tim e, in great splashes of color and bursts of light and subtly contrived clouds of dark­ ness all interplaying with hops and swoops and blinking and dodging back and forth, to describe th e scene as Pur, Fless, and Asterrea set off across th a t ancient m olten sea. I ’ve seen the dance countless tim es, and each viewing has seemed to bring me m addeningly closer to understanding the m eaning th at this has for the Loarra themselves. Lowering clouds flash­ ing bursts of aimless, lifeless energy, a rum bling sea below, whose swirling depths pulled and tugged at the T hree as they swept overhead, darting around each other in complex pat­ terns like electrons playing cat’s-cradle around an invisible nu­ cleus. A droning of lam entation from th e Changers left be­ hind on their rugged hom e island, and giggles from those who had recently Changed. And the colors of the T hree them ­ selves: burning red Asterrea and glowing green Fless and steady, steady golden Pur. I see and hear them all, b u t I feel only a weird kind of alien beauty, n o t the grandeur, excite­ m ent, and awesomeness which they have for the Loarra. W h e n th e T hree felt the vibrations and swirlings in the air th at told them they were coming near to the vortex, they paused in their flight and hung in an interpatterned m otionsequence above th e dark, rolling sea, conversing only in short Bickerings of color because they had to hold th e pattern tightly in order to w ithstand the already-strong attraction of th e vortex. “ Somewhere near?” asked Asterrea, pulsing a quick green. 92

"Closer to the vortex, I think,” Pur said, chancing a se­ quence of reds and violets. “C an we be sure?” asked Fless; b u t there was no answer from Pur and he had expected none from Asterrea. T h e ocean crashed and leaped; the air howled around them . And the vortex pulled at them . Suddenly they felt their m otion-sequence changing, against their wills, and for long m om ents all three were afraid th a t it was the vortex’s attraction th at was doing it. They moved in closer to each other, and whirled more quickly in a still more intricate pattern, b u t it did no good. Irresistibly they were drawn apart again, and at the same tim e the three of them were moved toward the vortex. A nd then they felt the O ldest am ong them . H e had joined th e m otion-sequence; this m ust have been why they had felt the sequence changed and loosened— to make room for him . W hirling and blinking, the O ldest led them inward over the frightening sea, radiating w arm th through th e storm and, as they followed, or were pulled along, they studied him in wonder. H e was hardly recognizable as one of them , this ancient Oldest. H e was . . . not quite energy any longer. H e was half m atter, carrying the strange mass w ith awkward, aged grace, his outer edges alm ost rigid as they held the burden of his congealed center and carried it through the air. (Looking rather like a half-dissolved snowflake, yes, only dark and dis­ mal, a snowflake weighted w ith coal-dust.) And, for now at least, he was completely silent. O nly when he had brought the T hree safely into the calm of his barren personality-home on a tiny rock jutting at an angle from the wash of the sea did he speak. T here, inside a cone of quiet against which the ocean raged and fell back, the winds faltered and even the vortex’s power was nullified, the 93

O ldest said wearily, “So you have com e.” H e spoke w ith a slow waving back and forth, augm ented by only a dull red color. T o this the T hree did not know w hat to say; b u t Pur finally hazarded, “Have you been waiting for us?” T h e O ldest pulsed a somewhat brighter red, once, twice. H e paused. T h en he said, “ I do n o t wait— there is nothing to wait for.” Again the pulse of a brighter red. “O ne waits for . . . the future. B ut there is no future, you know.” “N o t for him ,” Pur said softly to her com panions, and Fless and Asterrea sank wavering to the stone floor of the O ldest’s hom e, where they rocked back and forth. T h e O ldest sank with them , and when he touched down he rem ained motionless. Pur drifted over the others, m aintaining m ovem ent b u t unable to raise her color above a steady bluegreen. She said to the Oldest, “B ut you knew we would com e.” “W o u ld come? W o u ld come? Yes, and did come, and have come, and are come. I t is today only, you know, for me. I will be the Oldest, when the others pass m e by. I will never change, nor will my world.” “B ut the others have already passed you by,” Fless said. “W e are m any lifc-cycles after you, Oldest— so m any it is beyond the count of W indbirds.” T h e O ldest seemed to draw his m aterial self into a m ore upright posture, form ing his energy-flow carefully around it. T o the red of his color he added a low hum with only the slightest quaver as he said, “N o th in g is after m e, here on Rock. W h e n you come here, you come out of tim e, just as I have. So now you have always been here and will always be here, for as long as you are here.” Asterrea sparked yellow suddenly, and danced upward into the becalm ed air. As Fless stared and Pur moved quickly after him to calm him , he drove himself again and again at the edge 94

of the cone of quiet th at was the O ldest’s refuge. Each tim e he was throw n back and each tim e he returned to dash him self once m ore against the edge of the storm, trying to penetrate back into it. H e flashed and burned countless colors, and strange sound-frequencies filled the quiet, until at last, w ith Pur’s stern direction and Fless’s blank gaze upon him , he sank back wearily to the stone floor. “A trap, a trap,” he pulsed. “This is it, this is the vortex itself, we should have known, and we’ll never get away.” T h e O ldest had paid no attention to Asterrea’s display. H e said slowly, “And it is because I am not in tim e th a t the vortex cannot touch me. And it is because I am out of tim e th a t I know w hat the vortex is, for I can rem em ber myself born in it.” P ur left Asterrea then, and came close to the Oldest. She hung above him , thinking w ith blue vibrations, then asked, “C an you tell us how you were born?— w hat is creation?— how new things are m ade?” She paused a m om ent, and added, “A nd w hat is the vortex?” T he O ldest seemed to lean forward, seemed tired. His color had deepened again to the darkest red, and the T hree could clearly see every atom of m atter w ithin his energy-field, stark and hard. H e said, “So m any questions to ask one question.” A nd he told them the answer to th at question. — And I can’t tell you th a t answer, because I don’t know it. N o one knows it now, n o t even the present-day Loarra who are the T hree after a thousand m illion billion life-cycles. Because the Loarra really do becom e different . . . different “per­ sons,” w hen they pass from one cycle to another, and after that m any changes, m em ory becomes meaningless. ( “T ry it som etim e,” one of the Loarra once wave-danced to m e, and there was no indication th at he thought this was a joke.) Today, for instance, the T hree themselves, a thousand m il­ 95

lion billion times removed from themselves b u t still, they m aintain, them selves, often come to watch the Dance of the C hanger and the T hree, and even though it is about them they are still excited and moved by it as though it were a tale never even heard before, let alone lived through. Y et let a dancer miss a m ovem ent or color or sound by even the slight­ est nuance, and the T hree will correct him . (A nd yes, many tim es the legended C hanger himself, M innearo, he who started the story, has attended these dances— though often he leaves after the re-creation of his suicide-dance.) I t ’s sometimes difficult to tell one given Loarra from all the others, by the way, despite the complex and subtle technolo­ gies of U nicentral, which have provided m e with sense-filters of all sorts, plus frequency simulators, patternscopes, special gravity inducers, and a m inicom p th a t takes up more than half of my very tight little island of Earth pasted onto the surface of Loarr and which can do more thinking and analyzing in two seconds than I can do in fifty years (even good years, of which I haven’t had any late ly ). D uring my four years on Loarr, I got to “know ” several of the Loarra, yet even at the end of my stay I was still never sure just who I was “talking” with at any tim e. I could run through about seventeen or eighteen tests, linking the sense-filters with the m inicom p, and get a definite answer th at way. B ut the Loarra are a bit short on patience and by the tim e I’d get done with all th at whoever it was would usually be off bouncing and sparking into the hellish vapors they call air. So usually I just conducted my researches or negotiations or idle queries, whichever they were th at day, with whoever would pay attention to my antigrav “eyes,” and I discovered th at it d idn’t m atter m uch just who I was talking w ith: N one of them m ade any more sense than the others. T hey were all, as far as I was and am concerned, totally crazy, incom prehensible, stupid, silly, and plain dam n N o Good.

96

If th a t sounds like I ’m bitter, it’s because I am. I ’ve got forty-two reasons to be bitter: forty-two m urdered men. B ut back to the unfolding of the greatest legend of an ancient and venerable alien race: W h e n the O ldest had told them w hat they w anted to know, the T hree came alive w ith popping and flashing and dancing in the air, Pur just as m uch as the others. I t was all that they had hoped for and more; it was the entire answer to their quest and their problem. It would enable them to C re­ ate, to transcend any negative cycle-climax they could have de­ vised. A fter a tim e, the T hree came to themselves and rem em ­ bered the rituals. “W e offer thanks in the nam e of M innearo, whose suicide we are avenging,” Fless said gravely, waving his message in re­ spectful deep-blue spirals. “W e thank you in our own names as well,” said Asterrea. “A nd we thank you in the nam e of no one and nothing,” said Pur, “for th at is the greatest thanks conceivable.” B ut the O ldest merely sat there, pulsing his dull red, and the T hree wondered am ong themselves. A t last the O ldest said, “T o accept thanks is to accept responsibility, and in onlytoday, as I am, there can be none of th a t because there can be no new act. I am outside tim e, you know, which is alm ost out­ side life. All this which I have told you is som ething told to you before, m any times, and it will be again.” N onetheless, the T hree w ent through all th e rituals of thanksgiving, perform ing them with flawless grace and care— the color-and-sound dem onstrations, the dances, the offerings of their own energy, and all the rest. And Pur said, “ I t is possi­ ble to give thanks for a long-past act or even a mindless reflex, and we do so in the highest.” 97

T h e O ldest pulsed dull red and did not answer, and after a tim e the T hree took leave of him. Arm ed w ith the knowledge he had given them , they had no trouble penetrating the barrier protecting Rock, the O ldest’s personality-home, and in m om ents were once again alone with themselves in the raging storm th a t encircled the vortex. For long m inutes they hung in midair, whirling and darting in their m ost tightly linked patterns while the storm whipped them and the vortex pulled them . T h en abruptly they broke their patterns and hurled themselves deliberately into the heart of the vortex itself. In a m om ent they had disappeared. T hey seemed to feel neither m otion nor lapse of tim e as they fell into the vortex. It was a change th a t came w ithout perception or thought— a change from self to unself, from ex­ istence to void. T hey knew only th at they had given them ­ selves up to the vortex, th at they were suddenly lost in dark­ ness and a sense of surrounding emptiness which had no dimension. They knew w ithout thinking th a t if they could have sent forth sound there would have been no echo, th at a spark or even a bright flare would have brought no reflection from anywhere. For this was the place of the origin of life, and it was empty. I t was up to them to fill it, if it was to be filled. So they used the secret which the O ldest had given them , the secret which those at the Beginning had discovered by ac­ cident and which only one of the O ldest could have rem em ­ bered. Having set themselves for this before entering th e vortex, they played their individual parts autom atically— th e selfless, unconscious, alm ost random acts which even non-living energy can perform. And when all parts had been com pleted precisely, correctly, and at just the right tim e and in just the right sequence, the C reating took place. It was a foodbeast. It formed and took shape before them in the void, and grew and glowed its dull, drab glow until it was 98

whole. F or a m om ent it drifted there, then suddenly it was expelled from the vortex, throw n out violently as though from an explosion— away from the nothingness w ithin, away from darkness and silence into the crashing, whipping violence of the storm outside. And with it w ent the T hree, vom ited forth with the prim itive b it of life they had made. O utside, in the storm, the T hree w ent autom atically into their tightest m otion sequence, whirling and blinking around each other in desperate striving to m aintain themselves am id the savagery th at roiled around them . And once again they felt the powerful pull of the vortex behind them , gripping them anew now th at they were outside, and they knew th at the vor­ tex would draw them in again, this tim e forever, unless they were able to resist it. B ut they found th at they were nearly spent; they had lost m ore of themselves in the vortex than they had ever imagined possible. They hardly felt alive now, and somehow they had to w ithstand the crushing powers of both the storm and the vortex, and had to forge such a strongly interlinked m otion-pattern th at they would be able to make their way out of this place, back to calm and safety. A nd there was only one way they could restore themselves enough for that. M oving alm ost as one, they converged upon the mindless foodbeast they had just created, and they ate it. T h a t’s n o t precisely the end of the D ance of the Changer and the T hree— it does go on for a while, telling of the honors given the T hree when they returned, and of M innearo’s reac­ tion when he com pleted his Change by reappearing around the life-mote left by a dying W indbird, and of how all of the T hree turned away from their honors and m ade their next Changes alm ost imm ediately— b u t my own attention never quite follows the rest of it. I always get stuck at th a t one point 99

in th e story, th a t supremely contradictory m om ent when the T hree destroyed w hat they had m ade, when they came away w ith no m ore than they had brought with them . I t doesn’t even achieve irony, and yet it is the em otional highpoint of the D ance as far as th e Loarra are concerned. In fact, it’s the whole point of the Dance, as they’ve told m e with brighter sparkings and flashes than they ever use when talking about anything else, and if the T hree had been able to come away from there w ithout eating their foodbeast, th en their achieve­ m ent would have been duly noted, applauded, giggled at by the Newly-Changed, and forgotten w ithin two life-cycles. A nd these are the creatures w ith whom I had to deal and whose rights I was charged to protect. I was ambassador to a planctful of things th at would tell m e w ith a straight face th at two and two are orange. And yes, th a t’s why I’m back on Earth now— and why the rest of the expedition, those who are left alive from it, are back here too. If you could read the fifteen-microtape report I filed with U nicentral (which you can’t, by the way: U nicentral always Classifies its failures), it w ouldn’t tell you anything m ore about th e Loarta than I ’ve just told you in the story of the Dance. In fact, it m ight tell you less, because although the report con­ tained masses of hard data on the Loarra, plus every theory I could come up with or coax out of the m inicom p, it d idn’t have m uch about the Dance. And it’s only in things like that, attitude-data rather than I.O. indices, psych reports and so on, th a t you can really get the full im pact of w hat we were dealing with on Loarr. A fter we’d been on the planet for four Standard Years, after we’d established contact and exchanged gifts and favors and inform ation with the Loarra, after we’d set up our entire m in­ ing operation and had had it running w ithout hindrance for over three years— after all that, the raid came. O ne day a sheet of dull purple light swept in from the horizon, and as it got 100

closer I could see th a t it was a whole colony of the Loarra, their individual colors and fluctuations blending into th at sin­ gle purple mass. I was in the M ountain, not outside with the m ining extensors, so I saw all of it, and I lived through it. They flashed in over us like locusts descending, and they h it the crawlers and dredges first. T h e m etal glowed red, then white, then it m elted. T h en it was just gas th at form ed billow­ ing clouds rising to the sky. Somewhere inside those clouds was w hat was left of the elem ents which had comprised seven­ teen h um an beings, who were also vapor now. I h it the alarm and called everyone in, b u t only a few m ade it. T h e rest were caught in the tunnels when the Loarra swarmed over them , and they w ent up in smoke too. T h en the autom atic locks shut, and the M ountain was sealed off. And six of us sat there, watching on th e screen as the Loarra swept back and forth outside, cleaning up the bits and pieces they’d missed. I sent out three of my “eyes,” b u t they too were prom ptly vaporized. T hen we waited for them to h it the M ountain itself . . . half a dozen frightened m en huddled in the comp-room, none of us saying anything. Just sweating. B ut they didn’t come. They swarmed together in a tight spi­ ral, w ent three tim es around the M ountain, m ade one final salute-dip and then whirled straight up and out of sight. Only a handful of them were left behind out there. A fter a while I sent out a fourth “eye.” O ne of the Loarra came over, flitted around it like a firefly, blinked through the spectrum, and settled down to hover in front for talking. It was Pur— a P ur who was a thousand m illion billion life-cycles removed from the Pur we know and love, of course, b u t none­ theless still pretty m uch Pur. I sent out a sequence of lights and m ovem ents th at trans­ lated, roughly, as, “W h a t the hell did you do th a t for?” 101

A nd P ur glowed pale yellow for several seconds, then gave m e an answer th a t doesn’t translate. Or, if it does, the transla­ tion is just, “Because.” T h e n I asked the question again, in different term s, and she gave m e the same answer in different terms. I asked a third tim e, and a fourth, and she came back with the same thing. She seemed to be enjoying the variations on the dance; maybe she thought we were playing. W ell. W e ’d already sent out our Distress call by then, so all we could do was wait for a relief ship and hope they w ouldn’t attack again before the ship came, because we didn’t have a chance of fighting them — we were miners, n o t a military expe­ dition. G od knows w hat any m ilitary expedition could have done against energy-things, anyway. W h ile we were waiting, I kept sending out the “eyes,” and I kept talking to one Loarra after another. It took three weeks for the ship to get there, and I m ust have talked to over a hundred of them in th a t tim e, and the sum total of w hat I was told was this: T heir reason for wiping o ut the m ining operation was un­ translatable. N o, they weren’t mad. N o, they didn’t w ant us to go away. Yes, we were welcome to the stuff we were taking out of the depths of the Loarran ocean. And, m ost im portantly: N o, they couldn’t tell me w hether or n ot they were likely ever to repeat their attack. So we w ent away, lim ped back to E arth, and we all m ade our reports to Unicentral. W e included, as I said, every b it of data we could think of, including an estim ate of the value of th e new elem ents on Loarr— which was som ething on the order of fifty times the wealth of Earthsystem , with royalties from O rion throw n in for lagniappe. A nd we put it up to U ni­ central as to w hether or not we should go back. U nicentral has been hum m ing and clicking for ten m onths now, b u t it hasn’t m ade a decision. 102

Crusade by Arthur C. Clarke

I t was a world th at had never known a sun. For more than a billion years, it had hovered midway betw een two galaxies, the prey of their conflicting gravitational pulls. In some future age th e balance would be tilted, one way or th e other, and it would start to fall across the light-centuries, down toward a w arm th alien to all its experience. N ow it was cold beyond imagination; the intergalactic night had drained away such heat as it had once possessed. Yet there were seas here— seas of the only elem ent th at can exist in the liquid form , a fraction of a degree above absolute zero. In the shallow oceans of helium th at bathed this strange world, elec­ tric currents once started could flow forever, with no weaken­ ing of power. H ere superconductivity was the norm al order of things; switching processes could take place billions of times a second, for millions of years, with negligible consum ption of energy. It was a com puter’s paradise. N o world could have been m ore hostile to life— or more hospitable to intelligence. A nd intelligence was here, dwelling in a planet-wide incrus­ 103

tation of crystals and microscopic m etal threads. T h e feeble light of the two contending galaxies—briefly doubled every few centuries by the flicker of a supernova— fell upon a static landscape of sculptured geometrical forms. N othing moved, for there was no need of m ovem ent in a world where thoughts flashed from one hem isphere to the other at the speed of light. W h e re only inform ation was im portant it was a waste of pre­ cious energy to transfer bulk m atter. Yet, w hen it was essential, th at too could be arranged. For some millions of years, the intelligence brooding over this lonely world had becom e aware of a certain lack of essential data. In a future that, though still rem ote, it could already foresee, one of those beckoning galaxies would capture it. W h a t it would encounter, when it dived into those swarms of suns, was beyond its power of com putation. So it put forth its will, and a myriad crystal lattices reshaped themselves. Atom s of m etal flowed across the face of the planet. In the depths of the helium seas, two identical sub­ brains began to bud and grow . . . O nce it had m ade its decision, the m ind of the planet worked swiftly; in a few thousand years, the task was done. W ith o u t a sound, with scarcely a ripple on the surface of the frictionless sea, the newly created entities lifted from their birthplace and set forth for the distant stars. T hey departed in alm ost opposite directions, and for more than a m illion years the parent intelligence heard no m ore of its offspring. It had not expected to do so; until they reached their goals, there would be nothing to report. T hen, alm ost simultaneously, came the news th a t both mis­ sions had failed. As they approached the great galactic fires and felt the massed w arm th of a hundred billion suns, the two explorers died. T heir vital circuits overheated and lost the su­ perconductivity essential for their operation, and two mindless m etal hulks drifted on toward the thickening stars. 104

B ut before disaster overtook them , they had reported on their problems; w ithout surprise or disappointm ent, the m other world prepared its second attem pt. And, a million years later, its third . . . and its fourth . . . and its fifth . . . Such unwearying patience deserved success; and at last it came, in the shape of two long, intricately m odulated trains of pulses, pouring in century upon century from opposite quar­ ters of th e sky. They were stored in m em ory circuits identical w ith those of the lost explorers— so th at for all practical pur­ poses, it was as if the two scouts had themselves returned with their burden of knowledge. T h a t their m etal husks had in fact vanished among the stars was totally unim portant; for the problem of personal identity was not one th at had ever oc­ curred to the planetary m ind or its offspring. First came the surprising news th a t one universe was empty. T he visiting probe had listened on all possible frequencies, to all conceivable radiations; it could detect nothing except the mindless background of star-noise. I t had scanned a thousand worlds w ithout observing any trace of intelligence. True, the tests were inconclusive, for it was unable to approach any star closely enough to make a detailed exam ination of its planets. It had been attem pting this when its insulation had broken down, its tem perature had soared to the freezing point of ni­ trogen, and it had died of heat. T he parent m ind was still pondering the enigma of a de­ serted galaxy when the reports came in from its second ex­ plorer. N ow all other problem s were swept aside; for this uni­ verse teem ed with intelligences whose thoughts echoed from star to star in a myriad electronic codes. I t had taken only a few centuries for the probe to analyze and interpret them all. It realized quickly enough th a t it was faced with intelli­ gences of a very strange form indeed. W hy, some of them ex­ isted on worlds so unimaginably h o t th at even water was pres­ 105

e n t in the liquid state! Just w hat m anner of intelligence it was confronting, however, it did not learn for a m illennium . It barely survived the shock. G athering its last strength, it hurled its final report into the abyss: T h en it too was con­ sum ed by the rising heat. Now, half a m illion years later, the interrogation of its stayat-hom e tw in m ind, holding all its memories and experiences, was under way . . . “You detected intelligence?” “Yes. Six hundred thirty-seven certain cases. Thirty-tw o probable ones. D ata herew ith.” [Approximately three hundred trillion bits of inform a­ tion. Interval of a few years to process this in several thousand different ways. Surprise and confusion.] “T h e data m ust be invalid. All these sources of intelligence are correlated with high tem peratures.” “T h a t is correct. B ut the facts are beyond dispute; they m ust be accepted.” [Five hundred years of thought and experimenting. A t the end of th at tim e, definite proof th a t simple b u t slowly operating m achines could function at tem pera­ tures as high as boiling water. Large areas of the planet badly damaged in the course of the dem onstration.] “T h e facts are, indeed, as you reported. W h y did you not a tte m p t com m unication?” [No answer. Q uestion repeated.] “ Because there appears to be a second and even m ore seri­ ous anomaly.” “Give data.” 106

[Several quadrillion bits of inform ation, sampled from over six hundred cultures, comprising: voice, video, and neural transmissions; navigation and control sig­ nals; instrum ent telem etering; test patterns; jam ming; electrical interference; medical equipm ent; etc., etc. This followed by five centuries of analysis. T h a t followed by utter consternation. A fter a long pause, selected data reexamined. Thousands of visual images scanned and processed in every conceivable m anner. G reat attention paid to sev­ eral planetary civilization’s educational television pro­ grams, especially those concerned w ith elem entary bi­ ology, chemistry, and cybernetics. Finally:] “T h e inform ation is self-consistent, b u t m ust be incorrect. If it is not, we are forced to these absurd conclusions: (1) Al­ though intelligences of our type exist, they appear to be in a minority. (2) M ost intelligent entities are partially liquid ob­ jects of very short duration. They are n o t even rigid and are constructed in a m ost inefficient m anner from carbon, hy­ drogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and other atoms. (3) T hough they operate at unbelievably high tem peratures, all their infor­ m ation processing is extremely slow. (4) T h e ir m ethods of replication are so complicated, im probable, and varied th at we have not been able to obtain a clear picture of them in even a single instance. “B ut worst of all— ( 5 ) they claim to have created our obvi­ ously far superior type of intelligence!” [Careful reexam ination of all the data. Independent processing by isolated subsections of the global m ind. Cross-checking of results. A thousand years later:] “M ost probable conclusion. T hough m uch of the inform a­ tion relayed back to us is certainly valid, the existence of high107

order, non-mechanical intelligences is a fantasy. (D efinition: apparently self-consistent rearrangem ent of facts having no correspondence with the real universe.) This fantasy or m en­ tal artifact is a construct created by our probe during its mis­ sion. W hy? T herm al damage? Partial destabilization of intelli­ gence, caused by long period of isolation and absence of controlling feedback? “W h y this particular form? Protracted brooding over the problem of origins? This could lead to such delusions; model systems have produced alm ost identical results in sim ulated tests. T h e false logic involved is: ‘W e exist, therefore some­ thing— call it X— created us.’ O nce this assum ption is made, the properties of the hypothetical X can be fantasied in an unlim ited num ber of ways. “B ut the entire process is obviously fallacious, for by the same logic som ething m ust have created X— and so on. W e arc im m ediately involved in an infinite regress, which can have no m eaning in the real universe. “ Second m ost probable conclusion. Fairly high-order, non­ mechanical intelligences do indeed exist. T hey suffer from the delusion that they have created entities of our type. In some cases, they have even imposed their control upon them . “T hough this hypothesis is m ost unlikely, it m ust be inves­ tigated. If it is found to be true, remedial action m ust be taken. It should be as follows . . .” This final m onologue occurred a m illion years ago. I t ex­ plains why, in the last half century, alm ost one-quarter of the brighter novae have occurred in one tiny region of th e sky— the constellation Aquila. T h e crusade will reach the vicinity of E arth round about the year 2050.

108

Ranging by John Jakes

They were ranging again. Jaim ’s fury and frustration in­ creased with every m om ent. Jaim was in his tw elfth m onth of it, and his team m ate Delors in her eighth. T heir H om e was the 1201st of all Homes, and they were ranging farther than they ever had be­ fore. Chronologically, they had been ranging only the better part of an hour on this excursion. Less than fifty m inutes ago they had lain down beside one another on the couches in the tall room of the Hom e, and had taken the Sleep. Since then they had come four hundred m illion light-years from the Hom e. They had made four jumps. “You’d better turn on the image scanners, Jaim ,” said D e­ lors. T h a t is, she said the words as well as words could be said when two brains were linked w ithin the machinery of an ovoid hurtling through deep space under the thrust of m iniature jets th at winked like little w hite flames. T heir brains, for the m o­ m ent, were merely electronic hookups, part of twelve m illion circuits wired through the four-foot diam eter of the ovoid. 109

T h eir conversations were conducted along miles of this inter­ laced wiring. For all that, they were less than no distance at all apart. Jaim ’s optical stalks shot out from the ovoid’s surface. T h e receptors were assaulted by endless vistas of nothing, except, in the upper left quadrant, a blazing green pinwheel of fifty thousand stars revolving. “Jaim? T h e scanners— ” “ I ’m doing it,” he said. H e continued to feel the steady powerdrain. T h e M onitors were listening. “W e ’ll have to reverse,” said Delors. “ I d o n ’t see why.” “ W e failed to turn on in tim e,” she said. “W e can’t reverse.” Jaim thought in a fraction of tim e. “W e have another jum p coming up right now.” “B ut we d idn’t plot th at green galaxy,” Delors said. “W h o says?” “ Listen to your feedback. Your m ind was wandering.” Jaim ’s m ind listened, studying the signals pouring into the ovoid from the Hom e. H e thought of certain fundam ental re­ lays w ithin the ovoid’s m echanism where his m ind and th a t of Delors rode like formless passengers. H e closed those relays. Analysis of the signals entered his consciousness at once. T h e M onitors were irritated w ith him for his delay in starting the plot. T his m ade him m ore furious than ever. T h e M onitors, half a hundred interlinked m inds belonging to persons who once had ranged, persons now one hundred and fifty years of age and older, persons who also lay in the Sleep in a separate cham ber back a t the H om e so th a t they could lend their counsel and guidance and total m ind force, were actively analyzing the data flowing back from the ovoid. T hey were clicking back instructions, which Jaim could com ­ prehend when he took the trouble. T he essence of the advice

110

com ing through now was th a t the team ranging so far out should make more careful plots after subsequent jumps, tu rn ­ ing on the scanners imm ediately after coming out of the jump. “You really didn’t turn things on in tim e, you know,” Delors said. T h e blazing green pinwheel galaxy streamed out in an em er­ ald starburst and slowly, slowly rotated under them and was gone. Jaim felt exhilarated because his optical stalks were re­ cording limitless nothing far ahead. Y et the nothing was be­ ginning to erupt from a total wash of black into small purplish crown fires, first one visible, then a dozen, then a score, light­ ing up the endlessness. “ I w ant to watch with my own senses when I range,” Jaim replied to her. “T h e purpose of ranging is to plot the data, Jaim .” “W h a t for? For a pile of bonebags back on the First Hom e, th a t’s w hat.” “ It was your H om e,” Delors said. “A t least the hom e of your ancestors. Be careful or you’ll offend the M onitors.” “They can’t hear us, Delors. T he private circuit signal is in. I p u t it in just now. Look there, th e giant purples. I ’ll bet I could count a hundred of them .” T rue enough. T h e purplish crown fires had m ultiplied as the ovoid sped toward them on its tiny rockets, a sand-speck on the brink of the end of everything. O r so it always seemed im m ediately before the jum p, just before the lights of new galaxies revealed themselves. Jaim ’s m ind sang. This was his purpose. This was why he had been schooled by the cautious M onitors on the 1201st of all Homes. H e could never contain the eagerness, the wonder, th e raw urge to reach out and grab all of th e im m ensity he could com prehend. T he feeling was the same whenever he ranged. Ill

“Jaim, it’s im portant th a t we plot the data,” Delors in­ sisted. “ For the bonebags of th e First H om e?” Jaim snorted. “ It took our fathers and m others seventy-two generations to reach our own H om e, Delors, so you know w hat chance we have of ever going all the way back. 1 range because I w ant to range. I w ant to see and feel and know everything I can know. I don’t care about the plotting.” “B ut you can’t know it all,” Delors said. “N o t in eighty life­ tim es.” “ I can!” Jaim said. “ I can if they’ll let me go! These pid­ dling jumps we make— hop-skips, th a t’s all. W e could range so far— ” “T h e M onitors won’t perm it it.” “T h a t’s w hat comes w ith old age,” Jaim said. “ I ’m n o t afraid to try. I’m sick of having the M onitors along all the tim e, dragging us back, controlling every jump, telling us how far to go, do this, do that, plot this, plot th at— ” “O h, you’ll get in awful trouble with the M onitors,” Delors warned. “W h a t do you care?” “ I like you, Jaim. I ’d like to stay—your partner.” Along the relays in the ovoid came an intense signal, re­ peated. O utside the surface receptors of Jaim ’s optical stalks the far purple galaxies began to m elt. Jaim knew the same phenom enon was taking place outside D elors’ optical stalks. Jaim thought the proper relays open and closed to ready the ovoid to go into its next jum p. H e barely had tim e to say: “W h y would I want you, a girl? I w ant to go far.” “ I’ll go far with you, Jaim .” “You’re too young.” “ I ’m sixteen next two-m onth. Only half a year below you.” “I ’m not certain w hether I want— ” Jaim was intending to 112

couple the thought w ith some vague com plim ent to Delors, who was a bright girl and, when not in the Sleep, had a very pretty face and figure. B ut he was interrupted by an unex­ pected flurry of six closely spaced signals whose m eaning he had to struggle to rem ember. H e rem embered. H e knew a pang of fear. T he M onitors were warning him n o t to slop up the next plot by delaying the start of scan be­ cause he was gawking. His fear turned to anger again. C ouldn’t the M onitors see he was eager, not so conservative as they? T h a t he w anted to add his m ite, which he knew would be a significant m ite, to the incom prehensibly huge webwork task of exploring the endless nothing of the universe? T h e work had begun in antiq­ uity, two hundred years after the fathers and m others left the First H om e and, on an inner planet of their own system, dis­ covered the theoretical basis of the jump. Jaim wanted to range far, farther than anyone ever had from this or any Hom e. H e couldn’t stand the constant nagging presence of the authority of the M onitors. B ut because of his innate young m an’s rebelliousness, he had botched the last plot and now the M onitors warned him n o t to botch the next. Indeed, he was aware th a t there would be consequences for w hat had already happened. T h e ovoid w ent into the jum p, and Jaim and Delors with it. Things simply shifted out of then back into focus. All at once th e heavens blazed on every hand with the gaseous fire­ works of two hundred purple galaxies they had seen from afar before the jump. Some were close, others were near. All had a phosphorescent m ist trailing betw een their m em ber stars. It seemed such a simple process, the jump. Actually, after­ ward, there was always a vague sense of loss, of things n ot 113

quite right. This feeling lasted until the mechanical com po­ nents of th e ovoid, plus its checking gear which occupied a building ten miles long, five miles wide and one mile high on their particular H om e, m ade m athem atically certain th at the disassembly and reassembly of the subatom ic structure of the ovoid, and its intervening transmission over one hundred m il­ lion light-years in an eye’s wink, had worked again. “W e ’d better begin the plot,” Delors said. “Y ou’re nagging me. I ’m in com m and because I ’m eldest and a m an.” “B ut the M onitors were angry last tim e, Jaim. D on’t defy them again. Y ou’ll only h u rt your own cause if you do.” Jaim ’s self-interest adm itted this but, being young, he re­ fused to recognize the tru th of it. Instead, he let the real part of himself, the part he trusted, the part which cried w ith the blood and n ot with the m ind, answer, “ I tell you I don’t care what the M onitors say, Delors. I ’ll go as far as I want, when I want. And if they dislike that, I need never range again. N ow stop clacking while I put in the signals for the plot.” T his he did. T h e recording receptors began making elec­ tronic images of the wheeling purple galaxies all around them in the interval of a breath, each m icrotiny section of the ovoid’s surface a separate image-formation complex capable of recording one hundred separate bits of data in addition to its fractional image of this portion of the heavens. Jaim felt the feedback leaping five hundred m illion light-years to their own H om e, then being relayed again and again and a hundred times again, back to where it all began, back to where the bonebags, the old scholars on some dying world nearby to E arth watched the data accum ulate; its accum ulation told on huge white-faced clock-counters a city block tall— thus the fairy tales said, anyway. T h e bonebag scholars judged the data good for its own sake, so th e M onitors said. 114

It was useless knowledge in Jaim ’s view. H e w anted to seize, hold, and just experience it— jum p farther every tim e. W h o cared if the knowledge was valuable or worthless? H e was trying to keep up his courage. H e knew he was in trouble with the M onitors already. H e tried to lose him self in the spectacle blazing into his optical stalks. A purple super­ nova w ent off in the lower right quadrant. “B eautiful,” he said. “B ut I w ant to see w hat’s beyond.” Delors im m ediately com puted it. “N o, th a t’s too far beyond these purples for one jum p.” “You’re saying th at because you’re thinking w ith their m inds, n o t your own, you poor girl.” “Jaim, don’t talk to me th at way. T h e M onitors control the jum p distances.” H e wondered w hether he dared tell her. H e decided he would, though again he carefully dam ped down the circuits so th a t their m inds interchanged in total privacy along the n et­ work of wires w ithin the ovoid, which was busy doing its job anyway. T h e M onitors this tim e should be pleased, and per­ haps relaxing their watch a bit. “T here is a way to overrride the M onitors, Delors.” She was horrified, as if he had blasphem ed. B ut she was also curious. “Are you sure?” “ I figured it out.” “ Explain it to m e.” “I would, b u t you’re a girl. Just take my word, it works. T here are relays w ithin the ovoid itself which can override and send us twice as far in a jum p as they’ll let us. T hree times as far! I know we could go out to the very end of creation, Delors.” She wasn’t exactly thrilled. R ather, dubious: “Have you tried it— ?” A black stain was the symbol of th a t which he thought 115

then, a black stain crawling like a liquid down over part of th e living image of his own slum bering body lying inert back at the Hom e. “No, b u t I ’m sure— ” “W h y haven’t you tried it if you know so m uch?” H ow could he tell her that, for all his boasting, he was afraid to try? “D elors,” he said, “there’s a purple dwarf on collision course w ith us— ” T h e convenient distraction worked. T ogether he and Delors altered th e thrust of the m iniature rockets. T h e ovoid narrowly missed the periphery of blinding purplish gas which swept past them . Both Jaim and Delors retracted their stalks tem po­ rarily because of the dangerous brightness. W h e n they ex­ tended them again, the ovoid was m eandering safely in the center of the im m ense spread of purple galaxies. Purple cloud enveloped them , trailing over the distances be­ tween the island universes. Jaim felt the approving influx of traffic on the circuits. T h e M onitors were aware th at the plot for the current jum p was still going forward correctly. This would not m itigate his punishm ent when he faced the M oni­ tors again. B ut at least he had done nothing to make things worse. Still, the influx of traffic still angered him anew. H e wanted to range farther than their cursed restrictions would allow. H e found him self thinking defiantly, right into open circuits, “ I ’m going to see w hat’s beyond these purple— ” A starry shower of scarlet needles, a fiery storm of them , fractional in the hugeness because the storm was only two thousand miles across, engulfed the ovoid. Delors screamed so potently with her linked-in m ind th at half-a-dozen circuits burned out. O thers im m ediately started going; whining, buzzing, filling the ovoid’s physical interior w ith a sick, sizzling smell th a t Jaim ’s wired m ind instantly translated and recognized as a sign of terrible danger. Ping-pong-ping-pang, the scarlet needles of energy swarmed 116

out of nowhere, blacking out the surface receptors in little puffs of smoke. “A— a— advance the thru st,” Delors cried. “ I have, I have,” Jaim cried back. T h e ovoid was still mov­ ing too slowly, incinerating. T here was a sudden busy hum , a hearable groaning of the circuits as the M onitors came on, as­ sessing the situation. Jaim was beginning to panic. “ Use the overrides you talk about,” Delors cried. “Yes, yes, th a t’ll get us out.” Jaim selected the proper relays and began rearranging them , rewiring them in a trillionth of a second. Suddenly his m ind felt feeble, paralyzed. T h e ovoid was burning up, sending off shoots of smoke of no significance am ong the burning apocalypse of the purple galaxies. All the same, Jaim was deathly afraid. H e felt force seize the ovoid. T h e M onitors were taking control. T o let them pull th e ovoid back in five sequenced jumps would be to adm it his own failure. H e was sure he could get th e ovoid past the red, pinging needles if only he could work up the guts to switch over the proper relays. H e had stopped halfway through the task, absolutely paralyzed, as a huge black stain spread, spread over the image he held of his own body lying in the Sleep at their own Hom e. T he stain was his ter­ rible, emasculating fear. H e m ust fight it. H e tried. H e could jum p the ovoid himself, jum p it ahead past the needles burning them up— Somehow he couldn’t overcome his fear. T h e M onitors sensed his weakness. H e surrendered. How I liate you, he thought, n o t caring th a t the M onitors heard. Gutless, spineless, toothless old m en, how I hate you for show­ ing me my own fear. O u t of the needle-storm the ovoid vanished, jumping five 117

hundred m illion light-years back to the 1201st of all Hom es, where Jaim would have to account for his blunders.

In the tall room of the 1201st of all Homes, Jaim wakened w ithin his own body, the Sleep concluded. For one m om ent he felt delightfully refreshed, swirling in a sense of som ething im portant having been accomplished. Alm ost at once the feel­ ing w ent away. H e rem embered. Delors sat up on the adjoining couch. She shook out her long hair which shone deep red. She glanced over at him . She said nothing. H er expression said th a t she rem em bered every­ thing too. She reached out, touched his hand below the cuff of his plain tunic. Jaim pulled his hand back. H er face fell. H e flushed. “Delors, I ’m sorry. I t ’s not you b u t the M onitors w ith whom I have a quarrel— ” “And they’ll have one with you, Jaim ,” she said, pointing. A Pig entered on its small wheels and circled in front of them , a hem isphere of m etal with faceted lights on the outer shell. In its clacking servodevice voice the Pig announced, “In the Plansroom now, with M ordkye, please.” “M ordkye!” Jaim felt uneasy. M ordkye was customarily un­ seen in the com m unity. H e was the patriarch, the apex of a sort of hum an pyramid of those who ranged. W ith their every waking hour, the five hundred thousand souls in the rem ainder of the com m unity labored to support those who ranged. In th e ranging class, and in all other classes on this H om e, none stood higher than M ordkye. So when M ordkye looked below, he did so for great cause. Jaim ’s legs felt watery. T h e Pig wheeled ahead of them , the antenna from which i t 118

had got its name wriggling at them from its tail end. T heir way lay down crystal transparent tunnels, on into other inter­ connected domes. From one of the tunnels Jaim and Delors had a brief glimpse of the merry, twinkling, phosphor-green lights of the capital of this Hom e. T hen, in a lofty dom e of parchm ent-w hite wall, parchm entw hite light, the Pig led them to M ordkye, w hite of skin and w hiter of robe. His beard flowed to his knees b u t his flesh had the tone, if not the color, of a youth’s. H e sat in a simple chair beside a small taboret. H e had the courtesy to wait until the Pig, which contained devices th a t m onitored every word said in its vicinity, had rolled out of sight. M ordkye’s eyes were bleak. “Delors, this does not concern you. Freely you may go.” Delors hardly hesitated. “Jaim and I range together. Am I free to stay?” T his m ade Jaim bitterly asham ed of the way he had treated her. B ut he had little tim e to think of that. A fter nodding in answer to Delors’ question, M ordkye pinned Jaim with a fierce gaze. “Jaim, you were well taught. You responded to your school­ ing with honors. O f all the young teams of those who range from the 1201st of all Hom es, you showed greatest promise. Y et you have railed and pulled against your elders.” Intuition warned Jaim th at nothing would be accomplished by tim idity. Besides, perhaps to counterbalance his fear, he was growing angry. O f w hat need he be ashamed? H e said: “M y purpose, F ather M ordkye, is to range far, am I n ot cor­ rect?” “D espite your im m oderate tone, you are. T h a t is, in part.” Jaim ’s eyebrow hooked up. “ In part?” “Your purpose is to range far and come H om e to range again.” 119

“B ut there is so m uch out there, Father! A trillion lightyears— why, th a t’s only a m ote in my eye. I w ant to see more than anyone has ever seen before. Anyone.” “O ur purpose,” M ordkye rem inded him , “is to supple­ m ent knowledge w ith knowledge.” Jaim m ade a sharp gesture of denial. Delors looked more horrified every second, signaling him with small covert glances in the hope th at he would m oderate. H e could not: “T h a t kind of knowledge is only for bonebags somewhere on another H om e so far away we’ll never see it. I want to know it myself, for the sake of knowing.” M ordkye’s tone sharpened. “Gratification of the ego is not the purpose of those who range.” “T hen perhaps my elders made a wrong choice.” Delors p u t her hands over her m outh. “O h, Jaim .” “Perhaps I should be returned to a service occupation!” Jaim was shouting. M ordkye stood up. T h e falling of his robe’s hem about his feet caused a slight stir, enough of a sound to silence Jaim, who stood with his fists knotted up and his jaw thrust out in defiance. Slowly Jaim began to wilt as M ordkye rolled out words sonorously: “T hat, Jaim, will be the remedy after next. T he next rem ­ edy is this. W h e n again you and Delors range day after tom or­ row, the ranging will be controlled to jumps of five m illion light-years, and you will be posted to another sky-sector. If you be a child, then you will do child’s work.” Jaim ’s m outh popped open. H e closed it again with effort. M ordkye was watching him with an odd light in his eye, as though the great, elderly m an cared little about Jaim person­ ally, b u t was extremely interested in his reaction in some ab­ stract way. Jaim did n ot know w hat response was expected, b u t he m ade the one he thought necessary to save himself 120

from total disaster. It cost him m uch effort. H e said nothing at all. M ordkye bobbed his head once and, by turning away, dis­ missed them . In the crystal tunnel outside the dom e, Delors pressed against him. “I ’m sorry, Jaim. I ’m truly sorry. Perhaps the punishm ent w on’t last for long— ” “W h e n I sit to sup w ith them in the m en’s quarters to­ night, they’ll know,” he said. “Every one of them will know. Jaim is restricted to an a n t’s crawl. Jaim is ordered to take baby steps.” “B ut if it’s not for long— ” T hinking of the flaming worlds th a t waited for him , for his eyes alone to seize their sights, he struck his fist against the crystal tunnel wall. “T h a t’s too long.” H e had h it the crystalline so hard th at it starred. Delors watched the flaw in a kind of sleepy, horrified fascination, hearing Jaim ’s footfalls running off into th e distance toward th e hum iliation he would surely face at table tonight. T hey were ranging again. T h e last two jumps had carried them a total of ten million light-years into a dull velvety nothing, totally uninteresting. A super-red flamed half a lifetim e away at their rate of progress. Hardly worth a notice. “Are you sure the image scanners are on?” Delors asked. “O f course I am ,” Jaim answered. T h e ovoid thrust along on its m iniature flames. “W h a t’s worth plotting out here any­ way?” “T h e M onitors will hear— ” Delors began. “Ah, I ’ve dam ped them down. B ut w hat difference would it make?” 121

“Jaim ,” Delors said, “you’re turning this into a very ugly trip by allowing yourself to becom e so bitter and— ” “T h en get yourself a new partner when we get back,” he told her, furious. “You stubborn fool!” Delors said suddenly. “You silly little boy!” Bridling, Jaim said, “Delors, you have no right to talk th at way considering— ” “I have every right since I love you, Jaim .” T h e ovoid rushed on, filled w ith the discernible silence of all systems operating quite routinely. All systems, th a t is, ex­ cept Jaim ’s. “You what?” he said. “ I love you and therefore I care about w hat happens to you, and you’ll be throw n back on th e service occupation scrap heap if you keep defying the M onitors.” T o all those who ranged, those who did not were an unfortunate class apart. It was a forgivable arrogance, considering the risks of ranging. “B ut the M onitors are so old!” Jaim retorted. “O h, Jaim .” “W h a t’s wrong? W h y are you crying?” “Because you’re so addled in so m any ways. I t m ust be your age. O r your sex.” “Delors, I don’t understand you.” “No, because you’re a man. I said I love you.” “And I say th at if you do, you ought to understand how I feel!” “ How about how I feel?” Delors answered. B ut Jaim was angry, hardly hearing her, rushing on: “T he M onitors cause the trouble. W h y can’t they understand the simple fact th a t I w ant to see farther than they are willing to perm it—?” T he question at once becam e academic. Around the ovoid, 122

ping-pong-ping-pang, a storm of the starry scarlet needles de­ scended. T h e needle-storm struck the ovoid’s receptors with a fury twice th a t of the previous attack’s. Jaim was thunderstruck: “In this sector too? T h a t’s coincidentally impos— ” Academics once more, for the ovoid was smoking furiously, yawing and pitching. D eep w ithin th e relays Jaim felt a m ounting input. T h e M onitors were preparing to take control and rescue them again. Delors m ade whim pering sounds. T h e ovoid was incinerat­ ing at a rate twice as rapid as the first tim e, and Jaim could count the tim e left for him to do som ething in m icrofractions of a tho u g h t’s flow. “T he overrides— ?” Delors cried out through a wild interfer­ ing static. “I ’ll try.” Jaim im m ediately saw his own self in the Sleep, w ith the huge black stain washing down over w hat he surely knew would be his corpse. “T h e overrides— ” Delors cried again through the snapping and rupturing of wires. T h e ovoid’s surface was beginning to dance with a reddish halo. Bits flaked away. Jaim tried to select the proper relays, rearranging, rethink­ ing. Fear, fear, it was all around him , black clouds of it. His wired m ind hurt. Fear. Jaim knew he m ust act. Ping-pong-ping-pang, the fiery needles were eating the ovoid away. Jaim knew he m ust. H e knew he m ust. H e knew he m ust. H e thought, rearranging, reconnecting— T h e input signals from the M onitors welled into the ovoid, b u t feebly. T h e powerdrain was barely perceptible. I m ust, Jaim thought, a scream of thought. T h e black fear 123

wrapped around the image of his own self in the Sleep, wiped it out, killed him — H e was dead. T h en how did he know he was dead? H e was n o t dead. His wired m ind was still functioning w ithin the crisping ovoid, am id the internal sparks, the ruptur­ ing m icroconnectors, the ozone reek. H e had yet one infinite part of a th o u g h t’s tim e to rethink the last circuit with all his effort— T h e sensory pandem onium , and Delors’ shrieks, m elted into the quickest of blacks. Jaim was horrified when it all shifted into focus again. H e was horrified and stunned because he realized he had defied the M onitors, choked the fear, and worked the overrides. “Jaim, Jaim— ” “Delors, are you all right?” “Yes, yes. W h ere are we? W h ere did you carry us?” She sounded terrified, and had a perfect right. Frantically Jaim extended the optical stalks to take in the awful, crystal­ line brilliance of strange radiant galaxies which shone like the faces of a single gemstone. T here were violent bursts of or­ ange gas in the upper right quadrant and fierce, zagging streaks of yellow m olten energy in the left central quadrant. Everything was so unfam iliar and terrifying and beautiful th a t Jaim could not encompass it all. H e realized he m ust com pute the location. T h e second after he had put in the request, the ovoid’s storage banks, still func­ tioning, relayed back a total absence of data. “W e don’t know where we are,” Jaim said. T hey were alone. They were truly alone. T hey were so far out, the powerdrain had becom e b u t the barest of submerged tingles. 124

Y et there was still a flurry of signals. D espite his great fright, which m ingled with a m onstrous sense of awe at these sights so ünlike anything he had ever seen or been trained to see, he responded with the right relay. T h e voiceless speech of the M onitors flowed in: “M uch honor, Jaim. M uch honor, Delors. M uch honor.” W as this some sickly trick of theirs before they punished him? Jaim said: “I have overridden you.” “And jum ped farther than any team has ever jum ped from the 1201st of all H om es.” Delors said, “H — how far?” A tone of pride channeled in from far behind: “A jum p of five hundred twenty-two trillion light-years.” Even Jaim was staggered. Faintly he heard the M onitors congratulating themselves. T here was an even heavier flurry of this sort of traffic, with Jaim only catching its leakage. H e sig­ naled and interrupted: “Are you making a joke with me? I was restricted— ” “ Deliberately, Jaim .” “Deliberately?” “According to plan, Jaim .” “W h a t plan? T o w hat purpose?” “Some lessons, Jaim ,” the voice w ent on— he knew sud­ denly it was M ordkye’s— “cannot be taught in the text halls of our own Hom e. C hief am ong them is the seizure of the power which the m inds of those who range hold while they are young. W e are no longer young. T h e power has seeped out of us, as it will one day seep out of you. B ut we can teach, both by lesson and by ploy. T h e fiery needle storms are b u t projec­ tions. Real, oh yes. They could have killed you both times. B ut we are the projectors. In the first test we gave you, the first storm , your fear rem ained greater than the power of your own 125

m ind, Jaim. In our second test, you killed the fear and seized the power and used the relays we built expressly so th at you could one day discover them and override because you wanted to override and not because we bade you override.” Jaim felt outraged. “A trick— !” "A lesson,” came the correction. “T h e last lesson. N ew to each team of those who range. Now you m ust pledge, Jaim and Delors, never to tell the lesson to any other new team s.” A t once Delors replied, “Pledged.” Jaim hesitated. B ut finally: “Pledged.” “ It is well,” M ordkye said. “B ut why a ploy?” Jaim dem anded. “Because even the m inds of those who range, Jaim, are deli­ cate things and, yes, prim itive things in part. W h e re you are, the distances are vast and the splendors so awesome and new as to be of shattering power. W e m ust know w hether our teams, especially the controlling male, can survive or will be broken. Fear is the killer of the power to range far, b u t the fear can be killed provided we have chosen well. In you we have chosen well. Jum p, Jaim, and plot after you jum p in distances of your own choosing. W e will watch b u t never com m and again. O nly return to jum p again, for only in this way is the dark pushed back and knowledge extended. M uch honor, Jaim. M uch honor, Delors. M uch honor— ” Like a hum m ing river of signals, all the M onitors flowed in: “M uch honor.” “Jaim ,” Delors was saying, “ I wish I had my body to cry, it’s so beautiful. I wish I could cry real tears and feel them on my face.” Jaim felt gigantic. His optical stalks searched and he nearly forgot to turn on the image scanners as the ovoid wandered among the strange, burning starclusters beyond which, im ­ m ensity upon imm ensity, fresh lights now gleamed. Lights and lights running away to the lim it of all knowing— 126

B ut he would know. Yes, he would. Jaim whooped. H e understood it all. T he test had come, been m et, was gone. Never had the M onitors m eant to hold him checked. Just the opposite. They had taught him to range as m en were m eant to range. He, Jaim. Delors caught his thought, said joyously, though in a shy way, “Jaim? I am here.” “ I ’m glad,” he said, as they readied to jum p to the far, far lights.

127

Mind Out of Time .....................................................

by Keith Laumer

1 Strapped tight in the padded acceleration couch in the com ­ m and cell of the Extrasolar Exploratory M odule, L ieutenant Colonel Jake V anderguerre tensed against the telltale b u b ­ bling sensation high in his chest, the light, tentative pinprick of an agony th at could hurl itself against him like a white-hot anvil. T h e dam ned bootleg heart pills m ust be losing their punch; it had been less than six hours since h e ’d doped him ­ self up for the mission. . . . Beside him, C aptain Lester Teal cocked a well-arched eye­ brow at him. “You all right, Colonel?” “ I ’m fine.” V anderguerre heard the ragged quality of his voice; to cover it, he nodded toward the ten-inch screen on which the clean-cut features of Colonel Jack Sudston of M is­ sion C ontrol on Luna glowed in enthusiastic color. “I wish the son of a bitch would cut the chatter. H e makes me nervous.” Teal grunted. “Let Soapy deliver his commercial, C olonel,” he said. “ In a m inute we’ll get the line about the devoted per­ sonnel of UNSA; and there m ight even be tim e for a fast m en­ tion of Stella and Jo, the devoted little women standing by.” “ . . . report th at the m odule is now in primary position,

and in a G condition,” Sudston was saying heartily. “Ready for th e first m anned test of the m agnetic torsion powered ve­ hicle.” H e smiled out of the screen; his eyes, fixed on an off­ screen cue-card, did n ot quite m eet V andergucrrc’s. “Now let’s have a word from V an and Les, live from the M ’l'E m od­ ule, in solar orbit, at four m inutes and fifty-three seconds from jum p.” V anderguerre thum bed the X M IT button. “Roj, M ission C ontrol,” he said. “Les and I are rarin’ to go. She’s a sweet little, uh, module, Jack. Q uite a view from out here. W e have E arth in sight, can just make out the crescent. As for Luna, you look m ighty small from here, Jack. N o t m uch brighter than good old Sirius. M T E m odule out.” “W h ile we wait, V an and Les’s words are flashing toward us at th e speed of light.” Sudston’s voice filled the transmission lag. “And even at th at fantastic velocity— capable of circling the world ten tim es in each second— it takes a full twentyeight seconds for— b u t here’s V a n ’s carrier now . . .” “Roj, M ission C ontrol.” Vanderguerre listened as his own transmission was repeat-beamed to the television audience watching back on Earth. “D am n the stage m achinery,” he said. “W e could have flipped the switches any tim e in the last two hours.” “B ut then Soapy w ouldn’t have been able to air the big spectacle live on prim e tim e,” Teal rem inded him sardoni­ cally. “Spectacle,” Vanderguerre snorted. “A fractional percent­ age capability check. W e ’re sitting on a power plant th a t can tap m ore energy in a second than the total consum ption of the hum an race through all previous history. A nd w hat do we do with it? A nother baby step into space.” “Relax, C olonel.” Teal quirked the corner of his m outh up­ ward. “You w ouldn’t w ant to risk m en’s lives w ith prem ature experim entation, would you?” 129

“ Ever heard of C olum bus?” V anderguerre growled. “O r the W rig h t boys, or Lindbergh?” “ Ever heard of a guy nam ed Cocking?” Teal countered. “Back in the 1800s he built a parachute out of wicker. W e n t up in a balloon and tried it. It d idn’t work. I rem em ber the line in the old newspaper I saw: ‘M ister Cocking was found in a field at Lea, literally dashed to hits.’ ” “ I take my hat off to M r. Cocking,” Vanderguerre said. “H e tried.” “T here hasn’t been a fatality directly attributable to the Program in the sixty-nine years since Lunar Station O ne,” Teal said. “You want to be the first to louse up a no-hitter?” V anderguerre snorted a laugh. “ I was the first m an on Callisto, Teal. D id you know that? I t ’s right there in the record— along w ith the baseball statistics and the m ean annual rainfall at Centralia, Kansas. T h a t was eighteen years ago.” H e p u t o ut a hand, ran it over the polished curve of the control m ush­ room. “So w hat if she blew up in our faces?” he said as if to himself. “Nobody lives forever.” “ . . . fifty-three seconds and counting,” Sudston’s voice chanted into the silence th at followed V anderguerre’s remark. “T he m onitor board says— yes, it’s coming down now, it’s condition G all the way, the mission is go, all systems are clocking down w ithout a hitch, a tribute to the expertise of the devoted personnel of UNSA, at m inus forty-eight seconds and counting. . . .” Teal twisted his head against the restraint of his harness to eye Vanderguerre. “D o n ’t m ind me, kid,” the older m an said. “W e ’ll take our little toad-hop, wait ten m inutes for the tapes to spin, and duck back hom e for our pat on the head like good team m en.” “Fifteen seconds and counting,” Sudston’s voice intoned. “Fourteen seconds. T h irteen . . .” T h e two m en’s hands moved in a sure, trained sequence: 130

R E A D Y lever down and locked. A R M lever down and locked. . . Four. Three. Two. One. Jum p.” In unison, the m en slammed hom e the big, paired, whitepainted switches. T here was a swiftly rising hum , a sense of m ounting pressure . . .

2 T eal shook off the dizziness th at had swirled him like a top as th e torsion drive hurled th e tiny vessel outward into D eep Space; he gripped the chair arms, fighting back the nausea and anxiety th at always accom panied the climactic m om ent of a shot. I t ’s all right, he told him self fiercely. N o th in g can go wrong. In three hours you’ll be back aboard U N S A N in e, w ith half-adozen medics taping your belly growls. Relax . . . H e forced himself to lean back in the chair; closed his eyes, savoring the familiarity of it, the security of the enclosing titanium -foam shell. I t was okay now. H e knew w hat to do in any conceivable emergency. Just follow the routine. It was as simple as that. T h a t was the secret he’d learned long ago, w hen he had first realized th at the m ilitary life was the one for him ; the secret th at had given him his reputation for coolness in the face of danger: Courage consisted of knowing w hat to do. H e opened his eyes, scanned instrum ent faces with swift, trained precision, turned to Vanderguerre. T h e senior officer looked pale, ill. “Forty-two m illion miles out, give or take half a m illion,” Teal said. “Elapsed tim e, point oh, oh, oh seconds.” “M am a m ia,” V anderguerre breathed. “W e ’re sitting on a live one, boy!” T h e voice issuing from the com m and was a whispery crackle. “ . . . that the m odule is now in primary position, and in a 131

G condition,” Sudston’s distance-distorted image was saying. "Ready for the ñ ist m anned test of the magnetic torsion pow­ ered vehicle. . . .” “W e passed up Soapy’s transmission,” Teal said. “By G od, Teal,” V anderguerre said. “ I wonder w hat she’ll do. W h a t she’ll really do!” Teal felt his heart begin to thum p-um p, thum p-um p. H e sensed w hat was coming as he looked at Vanderguerre. V an­ derguerre looked back, eyeing him keenly. W as there a calculat­ ing look there, an assessing? W as he wondering about Teal, about his famous reputation for guts? “W h a t you said before about spotting the record.” Vanderguerre’s voice was level, casual. “Is th at really the way you feel, Les?” “You’re talking about deviating from the program med mis­ sion?” Teal kept his voice steady. “W e ’d have to unlock from auto-sequencing and repro­ gram,” Vanderguerre said. “It would be four m inutes before Soapy knew anything. They couldn’t stop us.” “R o j, Lunar C ontrol,” V anderguerre’s voice crackled, re­ layed from the m oon. “Les and I are rarin to go. . . “T h e controls are interlocked,” V anderguerre added. “ W e ’d have to do it together.” His eyes m et T eal’s, held them for a m om ent, turned away. “Forget it,” he said quickly. “You’re young, you’ve got a career ahead, a family. I t was a crazy idea— ” “ I’ll call your bluff,” Teal cut him off harshly. “I ’m game.” Say no, a voice inside him prayed. Say no, and let m e off the hook . . . Vanderguerre’s tongue touched his lips; he nodded. “G ood for you, kid. I d idn’t think you had it in you.”

132

3 “I ’ve locked the guidance system on A ndrom eda,” Vandcrguerre said. T he pain was still there, lurking— and the jum p h a d n ’t helped any. B ut it would hold off a little while, for this. I t had to . . . “How m uch power?” Teal asked. “All of it,” Vanderguerre said. “W e ’ll open her up. L et’s sec w hat she’ll do.” Teal punched keys, coding instructions into the panel. “ . . . UN SA Station N ine has just confirmed the reposi­ tioning of the double-X m odule in M artian orbit.” T h e excited voice of Colonel Sudston was suddenly louder, clearer, as the big Lunar transm itter beam swung to center on the new posi­ tion of the experimental craft. “V an, let’s hear from you!” “You’ll hear from us,” V anderguerre said. “Y ou’ll hear plenty.” “Board set up,” Teal said formally. “Ready for jump, sir.” “V an and Les have their hands full right now, carrying out the planned experiments aboard the M T E vehicle,” the voice from th e screen chattered. “T hey’re two lonely m en at this m om ent, over forty m illion miles from hom e . . .” “Last chance to change your m ind,” Vanderguerre said. “You can back out if you w ant to,” Teal said tightly. “Jum p,” Vanderguerre said. Tw o pairs of hands flipped the switch sequence. A whine rose to a wire-thin hum . T here was a sense of pressure th a t grew and grew . . . Blackout dropped over V anderguerre like a steel door.

4 T his tim e, Teal realized, was worse— m uch worse. U nder him , the seat lifted, lifted, pivoting back and endlessly over. Nausea stirred in him , brought a clammy film to his forehead. 133

His bones seemed to vibrate in resonance to th e penetrating keening of the torsion drive. T hen, abruptly, stillness. Teal drew a deep breath, opened his eyes. T h e com m and screen was blank, lit only by the dart­ ing flicker of random noise. T h e instrum ents— Teal stared, rigid in shock. T h e M P scale read zero; the nav­ igation fix indicator hunted across the grid aimlessly; the R counter registered negative. I t didn’t make sense. T h e jum p m ust have blown every breaker in the m odule. Teal glanced up at the direct-vision dome. Blackness, unrelieved, immense. T eal’s hands moved in an instinctive gesture to reset the controls for the jum p back to the starting point; he caught himself, turned to Vanderguerre. “Som ething’s fouled up. O ur screens are out— ” Pie broke off. Vanderguerre lay slack in the elaborately equipped chair, his m outh half open, his face the color of candle wax. “Vanderguerre!” Teal slipped his harness, grabbed for the other’s wrist. T here was no discernible pulse. Sweat trickled down into the corner of T eal’s eye. “ Interlocked controls,” he said. “Jake, you’ve got to wake up. I can’t do it alone. You hear me, Jake? W ake up!” H e shook the flaccid arm roughly. V anderguerre’s head lolled. T eal crouched to scan the life-system indicators on the uncon­ scious m an’s shoulder repeater. T h e heartbeat was weak, irreg­ ular, the respiration shallow. H e was alive— barely. T eal half fell back into his chair. H e forced himself to breathe deep, again, and again. Slowly, the panic drained away. Okay. T hey’d pulled a damn-fool stunt, and som ething had gone wrong. A couple of things. B ut th at didn’t m ean every­ thing wasn’t going to come o u t all right, if he just kept his head, followed the rules. 134

First, he had to do som ething about Vanderguerre. H e un­ d ip p ed the highly sophisticated m edkit from its niche, forcing himself to move carefully, deliberately, rem em bering his train­ ing. O ne by one he attached th e leads of the diagnostic m oni­ tor to Vanderguerre’s suit-system contacts. Fourteen m inutes later, Vanderguerre stirred and opened his eyes. “You blacked out,” Teal said quickly, then checked him ­ self. “How do you feel?” H e forced his tone level. “I ’m . . . all right. W h a t . . . ?” “W e m ade the jump. Som ething w ent wrong. Screens are out; com link too.” “H ow . . . far?” “I don’t know, I tell you!” Teal caught the hysterical note in his voice, clam ped his teeth hard. “ I don’t know,” he re­ peated in a calmer tone. “W e ’ll jum p back now. All we have to do is backtrack on reverse settings— ” H e realized he was talking to reassure himself, cut off abruptly. “G o t to determ ine . . . our position,” Vanderguerre panted. “Otherwise— wasted.” “T o hell with th at,” Teal snapped. “You’re a sick m an,” he added. “You need medical atten tio n .” V anderguerre was struggling to raise his head far enough to see the panel. “Instrum ents are acting crazy,” Teal said. “W e ’ve got to— ” “You’ve checked out the circuits?” “N o t yet. I was busy w ith you.” Silently Teal cursed the defensiveness of his tone. “ Check ’em .” T eal complied, tight-lipped. “All systems G ,” he reported. “All right,” Vanderguerre said, his voice weak b u t calm. “Circuits hot, b u t the screens show nothing. M ust be some­ 135

thing masking ’em. L et’s take a look. Deploy the direct-vision scopes.” T eal’s hands shook as he swung his eyepiece into position. H e swore silently, adjusted the instrum ent. A palely glowing rectangular grid, angled sharply outward, filled the viewfield: one of th e m odule’s out-flung radiation surfaces. T h e lens, at least, was clear. B ut why the total blackness of the sky be­ yond? H e tracked past the grid. A glaringly lum inous object swam into view, oblong, misty, and nebulous in outline. “I ’ve got som ething,” he said. “Off the port fan.” H e studied the oval smear of light— about thirty inches in w idth, he estim ated, and perhaps a hundred feet distant. “Take a look to starboard,” V anderguerre said. Teal shifted th e scope, picked up a second object, half again as large as the first. Tw o smaller, irregularly shaped objects hung off to one side. Squinting against the glare, Teal adjusted the scope’s filter. T h e bright halo obscuring the larger object dim m ed. N ow he could make out detail, a pattern of swirling, clotted light, curving out in two spiral arms from a central nucleus— T h e realization of w hat he was seeing swept over Teal w ith a m ind-num bing shock.

5 V anderguerre stared at the shape of light, the steel spike in his chest almost, for the m om ent, forgotten. A ndrom eda— and the G reater and Lesser M agellanic Clouds. And the other, smaller one: the M ilky W ay, the hom e galaxy. “W h a t the hell!” T eal’s harsh voice jarred at him . “Even if we’re halfway to A ndrom eda— a million light-years— it should only subtend a second or so of arc! T h a t thing looks like you could reach out and touch it!” “ Switch on the cameras, Les,” he whispered. “L et’s get a record— ” 136

“L et’s get out of here, V anderguerre!” T eal’s voice was ragged. “M y G od, I never thought— ” “N obody did.” Vanderguerre spoke steadily. “T h a t’s why we’ve got to tape it all, Les— ” “W e ’ve got enough! L et’s go back! N ow !” Vanderguerre looked at Teal. T h e younger m an was pale, wild-eyed. H e was badly shaken. B ut you couldn’t blam e him . A m illion lights in one jump. So m uch for the light barrier, gone the way of the sound barrier. “N ow ,” Teal repeated. “Before . . .” “Yeah,” Vanderguerre managed. “Before you find yourself m arooned with a corpse. Y ou’re right. Okay. Set it up.” H e lay slackly in the chair. His chest seemed swollen to giant size, laced across w ith vivid arcs of agony th a t pulsed like muffled explosions. Any second now. T he anvil was teetering, ready to fall. A nd the dual controls required two m en to jum p the m odule back along her course line. T here was no tim e to waste. “Board set up,” Teal snapped. “Ready for jum p.” Vanderguerre raised his hands to the controls; the steel spike drove into his chest. “Jum p,” he gasped, and slam med the levers down— T h e w hite-hot anvil struck him with unbearable force.

6 Teal shook his head, blinked the fog from before his eyes; avidly, he scanned the panel. N othing had changed. T h e instrum ents still gave their dataless readings; the screen was blank. “V anderguerre— it didn’t work— ” Teal felt a sudden con­ striction, like a rope around his throat, as he stared at the m o­ tionless figure in the other chair. “Jake!” he shouted. “You can’t be dead! N o t yet! I ’d be stuck here! Jake! W ake up! W ake up!” As from a great dis­ 137

tance, he heard his own voice screaming; b u t he was powerless to stop it. . . . 7 From im m ense depths, V anderguerre swam upward, to sur­ face on a choppy sea of pain. H e lay for a while, fighting for breath, his m ind blanked of everything except the second-tosecond struggle for survival. After a long tim e, the agony eased; w ith an effort, he turned his head. T eal’s seat was empty.

8 W h a t did it mean? V anderguerre asked him self for the tw entieth tim e. W h a t had happened? T hey’d jum ped, h e ’d felt the drive take hold— And Teal. W h ere the hell was Teal? H e couldn’t have left the module; it was a sealed unit. N othing could leave it, not even wastes, until the techs at UN SA N ine cut her open. . . . B ut he was gone. A nd out there, A ndrom eda still loomed, big as a washtub, and the M ilky W ay. I t was impossible, all of it. Even the jump. W as it all a dream, a dying fancy? N o. V anderguerre rejected th e idea. Som ething’s happened here. Som ething I don’t understand—n o t yet. B u t I ’ve got data— a little data, anyway. A n d I ’ve got a brain. I ’ve got to look at the situation, m ake some deductions, decide on a course of action. From somewhere, a phrase popped into V anderguerre’s m ind: “Space is a property of m atter. . . .” And where there was no m atter, there would be . . . spacelessness. “Sure,” V anderguerre whispered. “ If we’d stopped to think, we’d have realized there’s no theoretical lim it to the M T E . W e opened her up all the way— and the curve w ent off the 138

graph. It threw us right out of the galaxy, into a region where the m atter density is one ion per cubic light. All the way to the end of space: dead end. N o wonder we didn’t go any farther— or th a t we can’t jum p back. Zero is just a special case of infin­ ity. A nd th a t’s as far as we’d go, if we traveled 011 for­ ever. . . His eye fell on Teal’s em pty seat. Yeah— so far so good. B u t w hat about Teal? H ow does the Vanderguerre theory o f nega­ tive space explain that one . . . ? Abruptly, fire flickered in V anderguerre’s chest. H e stiffened, his breath cut off in his throat. So m uch for theories. T his was it. N o doubt about it. T hree tim es and out. Strange th a t it had to end this way, so far away, in space and tim e, from everything h e’d ever loved. T h e vise in V anderguerre’s chest closed; th e flames leaped higher, consum ing the universe in raging incandescence. . . . 9 Vanderguerre was standing on a graveled path beside a lake. It was dawn, and a chill m ist lay over the water. Beyond the hazy line of trees on the far side, a hill rose, dotted with build­ ings. H e recognized the scene at once: Lake Beryl. A nd the date: M ay 1, 2007. I t all came back to him as clearly as if it had been only yesterday, instead of tw enty years. T h e little skiers’ hotel, deserted now in summ er, th e flowers on the table, the picnic lunch packed in a basket by the waiter, with the b ottle of vin rosé poking out under the white napkin. . . . A nd M irla. H e knew, before he turned, th a t she would be standing there, smiling as he had rem em bered her, down through the years. . . .

10 T h e music was loud, and Teal raised his glass for a refill, glad of the noise, of the press of people, of th e girl who clung 139

close beside him , her breasts firm and dem anding against him . F or a m om ent, a phantom m emory of another place seemed to pluck at T eal’s m ind— an urgent vision of awful loneliness, of a fear th at overwhelmed him like a breaking wave— H e pushed the thought back. W in e sloshed from the glass. It didn’t m atter. Teal drank deep, let the glass fall from his hand, turned, sought the girl’s m outh hungrily.

11 “V an— is anything wrong?” M irla asked. H er smile had changed to a look of concern. “N o. N othing,” V anderguerre managed. Hallucination! a voice inside his head said. A nd yet it’s real— as ieal as ever life was real. . . . M irla put her hand on his arm, looking up into his face. “You stopped so suddenly— and you look . . . worried.” “M irla . . . som ething strange has happened.” Vanderguerre’s eyes w ent to the bench beside the path. H e led her to it, sank down on it. His heart was beating strongly, steadily. “W h a t is it, V an?” “A dream? O r . . . is this the dream?” “Tell m e.” Vanderguerre did. “ I was there,” he finished. “Just the wink of an eye ago. And now— I’m here.” “ I t’s a strange dream , V an. B ut after all— it is just a dream. And this is real.” “ Is it, Mirla? Those years of training, were they a dream? I still know how to dock a M ark N ine on nine ounces of reac­ tion mass. I know the m ath— th e smell of the coolant when a line breaks under high G — the names of the m en who put the first marker on Pluto, the first party who landed on Ceres, and— ” 140

“V an— it was just a dream! You dream ed those things— ” “W h a t date is this?” he cut in. “M ay first— ” “M ay first, two-oh oh-seven. T h e date the m ain dom e at M ars Station O ne blew and killed twelve tech personnel. O ne of them was Mayfield, the agronom ist!” Vanderguerre jum ped to his feet. “ I haven’t seen a paper, M irla. You know that. W e ’ve been walking all night.” “You m ean— you think— ” “L et’s find a paper. T h e news should be breaking any tim e now!” They w ent up the path, across the park, crossed an em pty street; ten m inutes later, from the open door of an all-night dinom at, a television blared: “. . . just received via Bellerophon relay. Am ong the dead are Colonel M ark Spencer, M arsbase C om m andant— ” “An error,” Vanderguerre p u t in. “H e was hurt, b u t recov­ ered.” “. . . D octor Gregor Mayfield, famed for his work in desert ecology . . .” “Mayfield!” M irla gasped. “V an— you knew!” “Yes.” V anderguerre’s voice was suddenly flat. “ In the ab­ sence of m atter, space doesn’t exist. T im e is a function of space; it’s the m edium in which events happen. W ith no space, there can be no m ovem ent— and no tim e. All tim es be­ come the same. I can be there— or here . . .” “V an!” M irla clung to his arm. “I ’m frightened! W h a t does it m ean?” “I ’ve got to go back.” “G o . . . back?” “D o n ’t you see, Mirla? I can’t desert my ship, my co-pilot— abandon the program I gave my life to. I can’t let them chalk up the M T E as a failure— a flop th at killed two men! I t would kill the last feeble spark th a t’s keeping the program going!” 141

“ I don’t understand, V an. How can you— go back— to a dream ?” “ I don’t know, M irla. B ut I ’ve got to. G o t to try.” H e disen­ gaged his arm, looked down into her face. “ Forgive me, M irla. A miracle happened here. M aybe . . .” Still looking into her face, he closed his eyes, picturing the com m and cell aboard the M T E , rem em bering th e pressure of the seat harness across his body, th e vertigo of weightlessness, th e smell of the cram ped quarters, the pain. . . .

12 . . . the pain thrust at him like a splintered lance. H e opened his eyes, saw the em pty chair, the blank screens. “T eal,” he whispered. “W h ere are you, Teal?” 13 Teal looked up. A n old m an was pushing through the crowd toward the table. “C om e with me, T eal,” the old m an said. “G o to hell!” Teal snarled. “G et away from me, I don’t know you and I don’t w ant to know you!” “C om e with me, Teal— ” Teal leaped to his feet, caught up the wine bottle, smashed it down over th e old m an’s head. H e w ent down; the crowd drew back; a wom an screamed. Teal stared down at the body. . . . . . . he was at the wheel of a car, a low-slung, hard-sprung powerhouse th at leaped ahead under his foot, faster, faster. T h e road unreeled before him , threading its way along the flank of a m ountain. Ahead, tendrils of m ist obscured the way. Suddenly, there was a m an there, in the road, holding up his hand. Teal caught a glimpse of a stern, lined face, gray hair— 142

T h e im pact threw the m an fifty feet into the air. Teal saw the body plum m et down am ong the treetops on the slope be­ low the road in th e same instant th a t the veering car plunged through the guardrail . . . . . . the music from the ballroom was faint, here on deck. Teal leaned against the rail, watching the lights of Lisboa slid­ ing away across the m irrored water. “I t ’s beautiful, Les,” the slim, summer-gowned woman be­ side him said. “I ’m glad I came. . . .” A n old m an came toward Teal, walking silently along the deck. “C om e with me, T eal,” he said. “You’ve got to come back.” “N o!” Teal recoiled. “Stay away, dam n you! I ’ll never come back!” “Y ou’ve got to, T eal,” the grim old m an said. “You can’t forget.” “V anderguerre,” Teal whispered hoarsely, “ I left you there —in the m odule— sick, maybe dying. Alone.” “W e ’ve got to take her back, Teal. You and I are th e only ones who know. W e can’t let it all go, Teal. W e owe the pro­ gram th a t m uch.” “T o hell with the program ,” Teal snarled. “B ut you. I for­ got about you, Jake. I swear I forgot.” “L et’s go back now, Les.” T eal licked his lips. H e looked at the slim girl, standing, her knuckles pressed against her face, staring at him . His eyes w ent back to Vanderguerre. “ I ’m coming of my own free will, Jake,” he said. “I ran— b u t I came back. Tell them th a t.” 14 “N o t . . . m uch tim e . . V anderguerre whispered as he lay slack in the chair. “ Enough . . . for one more . . .

try. O u t here . . . the M T E can’t do it . . . alone. W e . . . have to help.” Teal nodded. “ I know. I couldn’t put it in words, b u t I know .” “Solar orbit,” Vanderguerre whispered. “O ne microsecond after jum p.” “Jake— it just h it me! T h e jum p will kill you!” “Prepare for jum p.” V anderguerre’s voice was barely au­ dible. “Jum p!” T heir hands w ent out; levers slammed hom e. M ighty forces gripped the universe, twisted it inside out.

15 “ . . . that the m odule is now in primary position, and in a G condition,” the faint voice of Colonel Sudston crackled from the screen. Teal looked across at Vanderguerre. T h e body lay at peace, the features smiling faintly. Teal depressed the X M IT button. “M T E to M ission C on­ trol,” he said. “Jum p com pleted. And I have the tragic honor to report the death of L ieutenant Colonel Jacob Vanderguerre in the line of duty. . . .”

16 . . . he knew, before he turned, th a t she would be standing there, smiling as he had rem em bered her, down through the years. “V an— is anything wrong?” M irla asked. “N othing,” Vanderguerre said. “N othing in this universe.”

144

The Inspector by James McKimmey

T h e planet of T n p , a nam e settled upon by its citizens to celebrate their insatiable desire to be T h e N ew People, was a small, hazily defined globe when our pilot, Stoke, saw him. “R ight portview,” he said, shoving thum b and forefinger in th a t direction Benny Quick moved his stocky body over there, and I fol­ lowed. W e looked through the wide window of our com pact ship, called the W ardben, into th at cold vacuum of space. O ur powerful finder-spot washed the figure with merciless light. A w hite flier suit encased his body. His thruster was strapped to his back, b u t it was not in use— he was simply in orbit. I saw th a t his face-window had fogged, then frozen from th e inside, so th a t we couldn’t see his features. H e was dead, and had becom e an orbiting statue of w hat had once been a handsom e twenty-three-year-old Steven Terry, special pride of T np. I looked closely at the oxygen tube attached to the front of his suit. “W h a t do you think, Benny?” Benny shrugged. “W h o knows?” “L et’s p u t it dow n,” I said to Stoke. 145

T h e giant landing flat of Sovell, capital city of T np, was wet w ith recent rain w hen Benny Quick, Stoke, and I w ent down th e walkway from the ship. Because of the reddish nature of th e planet’s general terrain and the early sunlight striking the m oisture-laden atm osphere, the long slug-shaped car of the First M inister, T h o r Prinz, rested at the edge of the flat in an orange gloom. T here was no regaling reception com m ittee, only Prinz, whom I recognized by his long white hair blowing wispily in th e wet breeze, and two others— probably security. “M ister W arden Forest?” he asked. I shook his lim p hand in response, seeing fatigue in his soft face and weariness in his very flat-silver eyes. “T his is my assist­ ant, M ister Q uick,” I said. “M y pilot, M ister Stoke.” W ith th at brief formality away, Benny and I left Stoke, who would rem ain at the flat, and got into the back seat of the car, facing Prinz. Prinz rem ained silent as th e vehicle rolled si­ lently away on its slot-track, accelerating to five hundred miles per hour. T h e speed prevented a thorough inspection of the T npian architecture. Buildings became merely orange-white blurs. B ut I had, using films and still pictures, studied the gen­ eral building lines of the planet in N ew York before leaving Earth. As a sixty-year-old civilization founded on a planet rich in natural resources, specializing in turning those resources into expert m anufacturing, the emphasis had been on simplici t y

•

T h e car slowed, its track taking it in a curl to stop in front of the First M inister’s rectangular, marble-white headquarters house. H e sat watching m e with those flat-silver eyes, which were nearly the same color as his simple skin-tight, one-piece suit, usual apparel for male Tnpians. 146

“A fter you, M ister Forest,” he said tonelessly. “T hank you, sir.” In a broad room created with the same lack of com plication th a t characterized the exterior, Benny and I sat with Prinz. Chairs were m ade of w hite stone, sculpted to hold the body comfortably. W alls were plain. W indow s were draped with heavy w hite material. Prinz, in his pale suit, his eyes troubled, and frothy hair billowing, looked as an ancient Greek leader in m odern dress m ight— which was natural enough, I thought; T n p was going through a G reek phase of some consequence. “An Inspector,” he said, n o t quite hiding his irritation and anger. “W e were form ed to help new colonies, M ister M inister. T h a t is our purpose— no other.” “ I t’s interference!” Benny, who appeared to have been bundled m uch too h u r­ riedly into his soft green flight uniform , bent his head, red hair tousled; he stared patiently at his low black boots—we were quite used to this kind of response from heads of relatively new colonies. “W e would like,” I said quietly, “to create as m uch good will as possible. W e only hope th a t you will find it acceptable to cooperate w ith us.” “W e have nearly a m illion people on this planet! W h y is one individual— ?” “W h y is one individual left orbiting in th a t fashion?” I fin­ ished pointedly. Prinz held his breath for a m om ent, th en sighed tiredly. “Steven Terry,” I said. “T h a t was his nam e,” Prinz said with some indication of sarcasm. “H ow did he get up there, M ister M inister?” 147

Prinz looked at m e again, with antagonism. “H e simply took one of our new T53 ships up on a pleasure flight. H e placed it in orbit, then got out of the ship for a thrust-swim. H e was an expert flier, an expert swimmer, as you probably know. I t was recreation. N othing m ore!” “B ut som ething happened. W h a t? ” Prinz shrugged defiantly. “ It hasn’t been ascertained.” “H e’s been up there for two weeks.” “Is there any h arm in that, M ister Forest? H e’s frozen, quite well preserved. W h y does E arth Security care, sir!” I rested a hand on a knee and looked at my large-knuckled fingers. M inister T h o r Prinz knew why, of course. T rained as com pletely as I was by the Special Investigation Section of the E arth Security Council and aided by an expert handym an such as Benny Quick, I was ready to check on a m alfunction, no m atter how small, in the national affairs of any of the doz­ ens of Earth-colonized planets th at had not yet achieved inde­ pendent franchises. T h e planet colony of T n p would not earn its franchise for another forty years. I t was subject to this sort of scrutiny, because T n p possessed the usual array of weapons th a t could, w ith wrong intention, create devastation in the galaxy. I t was true th at citizens of T n p were as subject to dying as citizens anywhere else, including by means of accident. B ut w hen a m an died in space, as Steven Terry had done, he was not usually left in orbit. “D o you think it was accidental?” I asked. “ H e was observed after audio contact with him failed. T h e look of his face then would indicate th a t he died from lack of oxygen.” “M echanical failure?” Prinz sat m otionless in his stone chair and gazed at nothing. H e did n o t appear rem otely plebeian; he looked to be a highly intelligent leader who had governed his electorate w ith sensi­ 148

tivity, authority, and zeal. H e was approaching seventy-eight years, and he had been elected to the highest political post obtainable on T n p for three consecutive six-year term s, the last of which, according to E a rth ’s calendar, would end in four m onths. “You don’t know w hat killed him ,” I said. “Yet there has been no specific investigation of the m atter?” “Possibly,” Prinz said slowly, “it was an act of G od.” I looked at Benny’s weathered, creased face, seeing his lids droop in a fashion th at others m ight have m istaken for inat­ tention or boredom or possibly sleepiness. B ut I knew Benny. W e had covered assignments together ranging from the highly dangerous to those requiring an ultim ate in patience and tact; I recognized precisely how his very alert m ind was turning. “Tell me about Steven Terry,” I said to the First M inister. “You don’t have th at inform ation on file in N ew York?” “ I’d like to hear it from you, sir.” Prinz stood up and moved about the room, looking at me frequently. “H e was one of our finest young people. O ne of our absolutely finest!” “How did he come to be th at way, sir?” “A h!” H e shook his head im patiently. “How could you un­ derstand our culture, M ister Forest? How possibly?” “I ’ve been educated very definitely in th at direction. I have considerable experience w ith a collection of cultures among the various colony planets. I m ight add that you, M ister M in­ ister, were born on E arth, after all.” “ I was eighteen years old when I came here, M ister Forest — sixty years ago. I know nothing now but the life of a Tnpian. I am afraid th at is what you will not com prehend!” “F et m e try, sir.” H e returned to his chair and sat down, stretching one slim leg forward, bending the other at the knee, in a classic pose.

M9

“Steven Terry is a second-generation T npian.” H e m ade the simple statem ent with stress, the tone of his voice creating obvious im portance. I nodded. “You m ust understand that, sir. T h a t is w hat is involved with this.” I felt relieved, yet m ore intense, now th at it seemed his de­ fenses were breaking down in the face of the reality th a t Ste­ ven Terry had once been. “ H e was born to young parents in the Ziwig Plains,” Prinz w ent on. “His father was a construction laborer involved in the establishm ent of one of our largest factories located in th a t area. His m other had five other children. All of them were killed by red-dust poisoning in th at regrettable storm of nineteen years ago— all, th a t is, except young Terry, who was left parentless at the age of four. H e was placed in one of our In stitu te Parentries.” Prinz’s expression becam e one of detached, slight pain. T h e In stitu te Parentries had turned out to be less than successful experim ents in the lives of Tnpians. T h e units had been run in precise term s, using mechanical audio and visio developm ents to reproduce a supposed ideal environm ent for parentless chil­ dren. All th at had been lacking, in an otherwise perfect idyll of m achine-taught perfection, had been a hum an quality. It had been to Prinz’s credit th at he had led the fight to close them , which he had accomplished during his fifth year in office. T h e T npian culture had since adapted a simplified teacher-counselor system for bringing up orphans, which had proven far m ore satisfactory, despite obvious drawbacks. Y et, I rem inded myself, Steven Terry, the young hero, had been an early product of one of those mechanized Institute Parentries. “A t the age of nine,” Prinz continued, “he was transferred into one of the new teacher-counselor homes, where he dis­ 150

played astonishing capabilities which had not been detected in those mechanized failures of In stitute Parentrics. His I.O. was precisely 180. H e was extraordinarily coordinated. He owned a perfect musical ear. I am proud of the teacher-counsclor devel­ opm ents we have m ade here on T np, M ister Forest. W ith in three years, under proper guidance, Steven Terry becam e a celebrated figure in our civilization.” “A t the age of twelve.” “Precisely,” Prinz said, his eyes bright. “ H e began appearing on television screens all over the planet. First, as a child intel­ lectual. H e was able to quote from every classic w ritten through the twenty-first century. H e was not simply a m emory instrum ent; he could think. H e debated some of our best scholars and made them taste defeat. M oreover— ” “H e was a skilled electronic harpist.” “Q uite right. A prodigy. You m ust understand th a t here we strive for the com plete m an. T h a t is the ultim ate ideal.” “ Steven Terry was also a superb athlete.” “Six years ago, when he was seventeen, he swept our Greek Games with his prowess in virtually every com petition in which he participated.” “All of th at m ade him a colony hero.” “ U ntarnished, unblem ished.” “Now he is grieved throughout T n p ?” “ Obviously,” Prinz said, a m etallic note of derision in his voice. “W h o grieves him most, M ister M inister?” “T h e planet at large, sir.” “W a sn ’t there a girl?” “O f course, there was a girl— Reecie Adams. A nother of our finest T npian youths. They were engaged to be married. I t was th a t romance which absolutely solidified the aura of rightness about Steven Terry in to the m ind of virtually every citizen. 151

From the pain, th e anguish, the terror, the comm onplace drudgery of everyday life for m ost of our citizens— and I ’ve never said T n p is a paradise, M ister Forest; there are no para­ dises in our galactic existence— Steven Terry and Reecie Adams stood out in bold relief. Steven had the looks of a clas­ sic athlete. Reecie is an extraordinarily beautiful girl, skilled, talented as well— one of our best pilots, as Steven Terry was. It was th e romance of romances, in our sixty-year-old history. Now— ” His slim shoulders sagged under his tight suit. H e was giving m e forthright facts, I thought, b u t he was continuing to evade the honest and im portant question: W h y had Steven Terry been left in orbit? “I formed the leadership to outlaw the Institute Parentries, M ister Forest,” he said to me, a note of imploring edging into his voice. “I was the force behind creating the new teachercounselor hom es.” Pie was, I realized with surprise, pleading to me about th at seemingly incidental point. B ut it was, I decided, only a con­ tinuation of his evasiveness. “W h ere will we find rooms, M ister M inister?” I asked, sud­ denly weary. “Here, if you wish,” he said. “O r at the quarters at the land­ ing flat, where your pilot is staying.” “I appreciate your hospitality, sir. T h e landing-flat quarters will be extremely suitable. W e w on’t be in your way there.” H e stood up as I did, looking at me intently. “You will have a car and chauffeur at your disposal, as well as a small flying craft. Look about our small world, M ister Forest. See w hat is happening. Feel the mood. L et this civilization of ours perm e­ ate your sensibilities. I will not im pede your efforts in any way. B ut do not judge quickly. D o not come to the quick and obvi­ ous conclusions.” H e nodded briefly, eyes turning opaque. “G ood m orning, M ister Forest.” 152

Stoke, Benny, and I were given three adjoining rooms in the sweeping quarters at the edge of the landing flat. My room offered a long-surfaced desk, equipped w ith visio-phonc; I arranged my files brought here from Earth. Stoke and Benny had come in and were sitting quietly. Stoke, gangling and sardonic-looking, stretched indolently. W h e n he was not flying the W arben, he was indolent. B ut I had collected my small team with personal bias. If Stoke was nothing else, he was a pilot of any ship. T h a t’s where I used him. “A nything I can do?” he asked now, yawning. “Take it easy.” “G ood.” H e stood up and am bled silently from the room. Benny watched m e shuffle through various cards and papers. His forte was technical; he could observe the exterior of any sort of mechanical contrivance and sense if so m uch as a fuse were going. M y own task was th at of hound and psychologist. I tracked relentlessly. W h e n I had covered enough field, I was required to stitch the facts I had nosed out into some fabric of understanding, always in hum an terms. I needed Benny to in­ terpret the mechanical facts of life, where I could not. Y et he had achieved enough overall experience th at he often added to his value by representing a sounding board for my own deduc­ tions. “W h a t? ” Benny asked, instinctively following my direction of thought. “T h e First M inister suggested th at what killed Steven Terry m ight have been an act of G od.” “You w ant my religious thoughts?” “ I w ant to know w hat you think about his statem ent.” “H e was begging the point.” I nodded. “R un down the routine Steven Terry w ent 153

through before going up. T h e check system. E quipm ent. All of it.” “ R ight.” Benny nodded, and left. I sorted through the collection of material I ’d brought from N ew York. Finally I drew forth a pair of dimensional photo­ graphs. O ne was of Steven Terry. His blond hair was clipped short against his well-molded head. His features were in clean, regular conform ation. His skin was unusually pale for an outdoors participant. His eyes were pale blue, brightened w ith the drive and enthusiasm of youth. His neck created the straight lines of an athlete. H e was of distinct Anglo-Saxon heritage, an amalgam ation of blood lines th at had created a singular N ordic look, known m any years before. T h en I studied the picture of the girl, Reecie Adams. Here, I realized, was a suffusion of all E arth bloods stream ing to ­ gether, to produce a dazzlingly attractive young woman. H er skin was coffee-dark; there was th e faintest trace of a Negroid flare in the nostrils of her narrow, small nose. H er forehead was broad and sloped upward to a wealth of shining black hair. H er m outh was wide and full-lipped, creating an im m ediate sexual response. H er eyes were black and heated, their alm ond shape showing the influence of a slight oriental ancestry. If I knew anything at all about hum an motives, there should have been w ithin the now-dead Steven Terry some drive in his ex­ istence th at had been created by this girl. B ut I decided th at I would see her only when I had circled the entire range of other possibilities. I slid a capsule-background card forward to read a short sum ­ mary of a m an nam ed Loren Hagen: “ Strongest politico-influence in T n p . Base-roots influence. Behind-scenes m anipulator, always. Original force behind First M inister Prinz. Loyalty based on practicality, if n o t op­ portunity. Splinter-opposition target. Solidly situated.” 154

T h e selector dial of the visio-phone was installed at the right edge of the desk; the viewer was framed into the wall just a t eye level. I pressed a com bination of letters to create H a­ gen’s code nam e and waited while the com puter w ent to work. If I were not, as the result of local orders, to contact Hagen, the call would not go through. B ut m om ents later the viewer screen lighted. I looked at his rotund, florid image; his eyes stared back at m e with the shrewd, calculating look of all pro­ fessional political participants as they had looked for hundreds of years. “G ood m orning, M ister Forest,” he said in a rum bling, grat­ ing voice. “I ’ve been expecting you.” “M ay I see you in person, sir?” “A t one? Your chauffeur will know where to find m e.” A t m id-morning, I stepped out into the clearing air, feeling w arm th from the small rising sun. T h e air contained a peculiar sweet smell; I realized th a t it was from th e abundant growth of avlopane, the prolifically growing flower com m on to the Sovell area of T np. A blossoming blue bank of them ran along the w hite side of the building from which I had just exited. M y chauffeur, nam ed Harold, waited in the car assigned to me. H e did not see m e approaching; I looked through a win­ dow to see th a t he was watching a small screen just above his control board. Cameras were focused upon the orbiting body of Steven Terry speeding through space high above the planet. Finally Harold noticed and got out quickly to let m e into the section behind his seat. I settled in and said, as he got behind the control board again, “W h o ’s m onitoring him , H arold?” Harold turned, a thin, pinched-faced m an w ith a hum ble expression. “Carry him all the tim e, around T np. All stations. M ourning period.” “ I see.” 155

“Sham e.” “Yes, it is.” “ Som ething w ent wrong. D o n ’t know what. Fate, I guess. H e was something, th at Terry.” “You’ve been on T n p quite a while, H arold?” “G oing on ten years. I come from New York. Bronx.” “Miss it?” “N o t me. Did, in the beginning. B ut I think back on it, and it ain’t what I got here. This is the new world, M ister Forest. T his is where I p u t my roots. M arried a T npian girl. G ot three kids now. You couldn’t force me back to th a t Bronx now. This is m ine, here. Place like this, if it breeds somebody like Steven Terry going around up there, th a t’s a good place to be. D am ned shame it w ent wrong for him. C ouldn’t have been his fault. H e was too good. Had to be fate. T h e gods said it was so, and there he is dead, shooting around.” “Gods?” I asked. “W ell, God, gods, whatever. You know w hat I m ean.” “Perhaps I do,” I said, n o t at all certain of the validity of th at response. “ I w ant to see Loren Hagen at one o’clock. In th e m eantim e, just drive me around the city.” T h e car sped into the central section of the city, where I got out and walked along a quiet avenue running betw een com­ mercial stores. Dozens of Tnpians were standing outside door­ ways, looking into the sky with tubular instrum ents to their eyes. I recalled the highly developed binoculars th at had been perfected on this planet; I knew th a t they were watching Ste­ ven Terry’s body. I stepped into several stores to find th at countless television screens were allowing clusters of people to watch th a t body speeding through space. I spoke casually to several. They looked at my E arthian flight suit with little interest; comm erce was heavy betw een

156

T n p and E arth, and, in their eyes, there was nothing unusual about my dress. All of them replied th a t it was a tim e of m ourning. W h e n I asked their belief about the cause of his death, they invariably shrugged and stated th a t it had to be fate. I ate a late breakfast in a sleek café where autom ated trays popped out at a touch. I read a collection of T npian newspa­ pers. All offered a dedication to Steven Terry, reviewing his accom plishm ents and what he m eant to the T npian m ind: a symbol of all th a t was good in the T npian civilization. T here was no m ention of his cause of death, only vague references to “fate.” A t one o’clock I was shown into the cluttered office of Loren Hagen. It was fragrant with the smell of the fine to­ bacco grown in the central area of T np; Hagen gripped the holder of a short cigar betw een yellowing teeth. H e m otioned to a plum p, efficient-looking secretary, and stood up to reach over a desk spread with papers and books to shake my hand with overly enthusiastic eagerness. I sat down in the chair to which he pointed, as he lowered him self into another behind his desk. “Yes, M ister Forest.” “You knew I was on T n p ?” . “Certainly.” “T hen you know why I ’m in this office.” “Relates to Steven Terry, of course.” H e smiled genially as his secretary approached the desk with an old-fashioned silver decanter and two goblets. She poured white liquid into both goblets. I held mine, as Hagen lifted his in toast. “T o good will and friendship, M ister Forest,” he said. “V olul wine, the best we have here on T n p .” “T hank you, M ister H agen.” T h e wine was sm ooth, sweet, and strong. “Excellent, sir.” 157

“W h a t would you like to know, M ister Forest?” “Y ou’re blunt, M ister Hagen. I ’ll be the same. Steven Terry is orbiting around up there. Nobodv seemingly knows how he died. W h y ?” Hagen smiled distantly. “W e are a pragm atic culture, M is­ ter Forest. W e care w hat is, not necessarily how it came to be. M ister Terry is dead, as you say. W o u ld knowing how correct th e tragedy?” “ I t ’s m ost unusual, M ister H agen.” “W e like to think of ourselves as an unusual people.” “ Is th at why Steven Terry’s body is constantly m onitored by television cameras shown on screens I presum e are turned on all over the planet? Is th at why people stand in the streets and watch him going overhead with binoculars? Because you are an unusual people?” “M ister Terry was a hero, sir.” H e bent his head, studying his littered desk. A small dimple in his right cheek was work­ ing rhythmically. “W e have been in existence for sixty years, you know that. W h a t is that, in the reckoning of tim e? N o th ­ ing, sir. T here are worlds in the galaxy w ith tim e virtually im ­ printed on their history, including Earth. B ut th at is n o t th e case here.” “T here was a civilization here before yours.” “A long-ago, nearly forgotten civilization th a t destroyed it­ self. Tw enty years ago we had a reviving interest in that. Ruins were excavated carefully and w ith m uch enthusiasm . Trophies were exhibited. Short histories based on the findings were pub­ lished. T here was a m om entary, if feeble, attem p t to develop interest in connecting our culture to th a t one. B ut it was a negative, M ister Forest. W e had no blood ties with it. And how can you identify with a culture th at was self-destroyed down to the last m an— or woman, if you will? W h y buy fail­ ure? W e didn’t, finally. Instead, we have looked to ourselves.” “Blood ties— you’re all of E arthian roots.” 158

“O h, yes. B ut I think you know how th a t goes, M ister For­ est. W e are the near-grown children w ho have broken the traces with M other Earth. W e have fled the m aternal protec­ tion as m uch as possible, and we have, I assure you, no desire to return to th at womb. Perhaps in tim e we shall gain the ap­ preciation of our E arthian heritage. B ut right now we arc m uch too close to the breakaway. N o, M ister Forest, w hat we Tnpians w ant is a history of our own, a culture of our own, a feeling th at we exist in term s of historic m eaning— even if we are b u t sixty years old.” “And Steven Terry is a part of th a t historic m eaning.” H e nodded. “Q uite true.” “A twenty-three-year-old boy.” “Judge it in terms of our colony age, sir.” “ H e became a celebrated figure in your civilization a t the age of twelve. Isn’t th a t rather instantaneous?” “H appens, has happened, everywhere, doesn’t it?” “B ut what precisely did he do for T n p ?” “It wasn’t w hat he did, M ister Forest— not in the sense of w hat you mean. I t was w hat he represented to us. H e repre­ sented the chance, the possibility, the dream. It doesn’t m at­ ter now if he failed to get the opportunity to maneuver the course of our history. It only m atters th a t he was w hat he was: extraordinarily handsom e, m entally superior, physically per­ fect, an artist, highly skilled in a spacecraft. W e settle for w hat we have, sir. O r had. W e had Steven Terry. N ow we m ourn him. And, I would judge, we shall m ost assuredly saint him .” “M eantim e you have the realistic memorial upon which to m ourn and begin the sainting—his body orbiting around this world.” H e nodded, smiling gently, watching me with sophisticated eyes. “I ’m wondering about one thing, M ister Hagen. You state

quite accurately th a t he failed to get the opportunity to ma­ neuver the course of your history. Is that why he is dead?” H e slid closer to his desk and rested thick forearms against it. His eyes lost any h in t of hum or. “G o on, M ister Forest.” “First M inister Prinz had held his office for three consecu­ tive term s. H e is eligible for one more. N om inating elections are due here in three m onths. I ’m wondering w hat would have happened if Steven Terry had decided to run for the office of First M inister?” H agen’s face tightened, shadowing and slitting his eyes. “H e would have won the nom inating election, as he would have won the general election.” “I understand th at you were the original political force be­ hind First M inister Prinz, th a t you are currently the strongest politico-influence in T n p .” “Y ou’re trying to say som ething specific, M ister Forest.” “ I ’m merely conjecturing. W o u ld First M inister Prinz have had a rem ote chance against young M ister Terry?” “N o .” “H e ’ll have an excellent chance now.” Finally he smiled again. H e leaned back. “V ery blunt, M is­ ter Forest. Very direct. V ery basic. You are implying th at per­ haps young Terry was m urdered in order th at First M inister Prinz may win the next election?” H e shook his head. “First M inister Prinz is n ot running again. I t was our plan, our choice, to run Steven Terry in his place. G ranted the First M inister had some reservations about Terry’s youth. B ut we felt, finally, th at despite it he could carry on the traditions of this governm ent, about which he was in total agreement. W e gained nothing by his death, b u t we lost a very great deal.” “ I have only your word on that, sir.” “C heck every way you can. You’ll find w hat I’ve said to be the exact tru th .” 160

“H ow about the opposition? If Steven Terry represented such a certain victory in the next election, w ouldn’t they have preferred to see him out of the way?” “Q uite probably. B ut all procedures involved in th at final flight Terry m ade were under absolute governm ent-regulated conditions.” “Still, the procedures m ight have been infiltrated to create the situation th at caused Terry’s death.” H e nodded again, slowly. “Nevertheless, it has been the governm ent’s responsibility to investigate the exact cause of death, n o t the opposition’s.” “And th a t hasn’t been done.” H e continued to smile at me. “W h y not, sir?” H e spread his thick hands. “Somehow, M ister Forest, you m ust understand us. T h a t is th e essential. You m ust under­ stand us.” T h e orange light of a fresh day washed into the room I was using at the edge of the landing flat. Benny sat sipping coffee— Earthian coffee th at he had cajoled from someone in the com­ missary. “Okay, Benny,” I said. “T h e procedure, the equipm ent, all of it checks out.” “R ight, W ard en .” H e removed a check list from his uni­ form and ran a stubbed thum b down along the points, reciting them . “Approved procedure, here. C om plete, in my estima­ tion.” “His equipm ent?” “H e was using prescribed equipm ent. I ’ve checked dupli­ cates of it. From his flier suit through every com ponent. It was all first-class stuff. T here should have been no failure any­ where.” 161

“If it was in th e same condition as the equipm ent you in ­ vestigated.” Benny shook his head. “I t was checked through three in­ spection units, all of them loyal governm ent employees, with perfect records ever since the installation of Prinz into office. And it’s a triple-check procedure system. His tank should have been okay. Same with the tube. H elm et was foolproof, as far as I ’m concerned. T hey’ve developed some fine things here, including th a t suit and its com ponents. T he entire outfit was flawless, one they’ve used on exploratory shots to the satellites in this system. W h ere the atm osphere is right, a m an can step o ut of a ship and”— he moved a thum b under his chin in a cut­ throat gesture— “deactivate it, just like that. I t ’ll give him com plete and sudden freedom. Yet, w hen it’s in use, there’s no way it could go wrong.” “W h a t the hell happened to him , Benny?” Benny shrugged. “O ne way to find out, W ard en .” I nodded, knowing th at he was right. T h e afternoon before, Stoke had flown us around the planet— they were watching th a t orbiting body everywhere; b u t we’d found nothing else to solve the puzzle of Terry’s death. “G o up and look him over?” “T h a t’s the way.” I thought about it for a tim e, thinking th at the action would com plete our role as unw anted intruders. As long as Steven T erry’s body was in a light area, cameras and binocu­ lars were on him steadily. W h e n we w ent up there to look him over, it would be under th e scrutiny of a large section of the populace, who viewed him as hero and saint. O n this planet we would be tam pering with som ething approaching the deeply religious. In return, we would receive a proportionate am ount of hatred and antagonism. “W h e n do we go up?” Benny asked calmly. “ I have som ething to do first.” I carefully tapped out the 162

com bination of letters to form the code for Rcecie Adam s’ name. H er apartm ent was in the central section of Sovcll; the drapes were drawn together, and the interior was softly lighted. She sat gracefully on a couch, wearing a gold robe, suitable for indoor wear, which emphasized the perfection of her figure. H er rich coffee skin was beautiful in th a t light. H er eyes, so dark th a t they seemed nearly hidden, were nevertheless w atch­ ing m e with unm istakable disdain. She moved a slim hand over a knee, in an unconscious b u t ultim ately sm ooth gesture of impatience. “I ’m very sorry if you resent me, Miss Adams,” I said qui­ etly. “I ’m only here to find out w hat happened to him . W h e n I do, we’ll be gone.” “Leave it alone,” she stated in a husky, rich voice. “ I ’m afraid we can’t. E arth Security Council— ” “W h a t do I care about E arth Security Council? W h a t do I care about anything, now?” I sat silent, feeling her attraction, yet realizing her deep loss. “H ow long did you know him , Miss Adams?” “Seven years,” she said flatly. “H ow did you m eet?” “I was learning to fly. H e was my instructor. W e were n o th ­ ing b u t children at the tim e.” “Love at first sight?” She laughed softly and bitterly. “ How could it have been? I was fourteen. H e was sixteen. A ttraction, I ’m sure. You can do th at easily enough at th at age. B ut nothing m ore substantial.” “They m ourn him out there, Miss Adams. They feel very deeply about you, too. Because you loved him .” She stood up in a quick cat’s m ovem ent. “T hey!” She walked with fluid grace to a drape and suddenly drew it open. T here were T npians down there, I knew, watching the build­ 163

ing. T h e governm ent had supplied two guards at her doorway to prevent unwelcome, if well-meaning, intrusion into her pri­ vacy. “D o you w ant to tell me about it, Miss Adams?” “C an ’t you figure it out, M ister Forest? H ow it was for him — and then later for m e?” “ Perhaps I can now— seeing you in person. B ut I'd like you to tell me, if you will.” She stalked about the room. “W h e n you are born as good as h e was, things come easily and naturally. T here is not the great effort to do them . T hey simply happen for you. I knew th at condition too. And w hat did they do?” “Heroizcd.” “Heroized, idolized, romanticized! Because why?” “A new people. T here were no other— ” “ Exactly! N o others before us. So they m ade him w hat they w anted him to be! And, later, they did the same to m e/ They had no right!” “T here are no rights in history, Miss Adams. T here are sim­ ply things that have happened.” “T o hell with history!” she said bitingly. “You can dam n it, b u t you can’t change it, once it has hap­ pened.” “T h ey put him up there! N ow let them look, ogle, worship, dream , weep. T hey are such fools. H e was nothing b u t a boy/” “And you are nothing b u t a girl?” I asked carefully. She stopped and stared at m e w ith bright black eyes. “I am a wom an, M ister Forest.” She laughed, showing w hite teeth, b u t there was nothing hum orous in th at laugh. “Has it not been th at way down through all ages? Females my age are never girls, they are always women. B ut Steven? A twenty-three-yearold boy! T hat is the one they have chosen to saint! I t’s a mockery!” 164

" W h y did he die, Miss Adams?” T he dark eyes became hidden again. “H e simply died, l i e ’s there, a corpse. And they want him there, because they never had an honest-to-God m artyr before!” “W h y is he a martyr? M artyr for what?’’ “For what they wanted of him! C a n ’t you understand that, M ister Forest? O r do you w ant m e to go down to the streets w ith you and let you see how they look at me?” “B ut you can’t guess how he died?” “N o!” “W e have to know.” “W hy?” “T o retain the balance betw een planets.” “Som ething so small, so insignificant, as one boy— ” “ It doesn’t take m uch to ruin balances, Miss Adams. W e have to know.” “How then will you find out?” “W e ’ll do som ething nobody else has seen fit to do, on this planet. W e ’ll go up and inspect his body.” She was breathing quickly. H er eyes had becom e black fire. “You’re going to do that?” “W e ’re going to do th at.” H er voice came out w ith low, throaty intensity: “N o t w ith­ out me, you’re no t.” W e sat in the circular cabin of the W ardben, as Stoke care­ fully found his position. I looked out the wide window at the white-suited body of Steven Terry m oving through space five hundred feet away. I could imagine them down there, watch­ ing us, as Stoke maneuvered. T h e girl sat opposite me. Benny was directly beside the win­ dow, peering at th e body intently. “Closer, Stoke,” I said. 16S

T h e girl was staring at her gloved hands folded across her knees. She was wearing a flier suit exactly like the one worn by the dead Terry. She would not look out. She would n o t look at me. Benny finally nodded. “I ’d have to get out there, to make absolutely sure. B ut I ’ve got it figured now.” I w atched the girl now, steadily; I saw her lids flicker. “How, Benny?” “H e deactivated the suit. H e’s a suicide.” T h e girl drew in her breath. She looked a t m e w ith fright and pain showing in the dark depths of her eyes. “ I’ll put on a thruster and go out to verify,” I said softly. H er head moved from side to side. “T h a t last night we were together— he wanted m e to marry him. R ight away. T hey’d asked him to run for th e office of First M inister. H e was frightened. C an you believe that? Steven Terry frightened? B ut d o n ’t you see w hat they’d asked of him? T h e impossible! And h e’d known it!” “G o on, Reecie,” I said gently. “H e needed me, as his wife. B ut I couldn’t. I simply couldn’t!” “W h y not?” “I d id n ’t love him! H e was only a child. D o n ’t you under­ stand? H e was brought up for the first part of his life in th a t hom e of machines! N o m atter his intellect, no m atter his skills, no m atter anything, he was underdeveloped in th at em otional area he wanted to share with me. H ow can a child love any way other than he m ight a parent? I wasn’t his par­ ent. I was a woman, M ister Forest! In tim e— yes; it m ight have worked. W h e n his em otional developm ent reached everything else he’d accomplished, then, yes. I m ight have loved him properly in return. B ut not that night. It was the first defeat for him in his entire life! Please understand, M ister Forest! H e tried to be everything they w anted him to be, b u t he 166

wasn’t truly. U nderneath all, he was a frightened boy. I couldn’t . . ” I looked out at th at orbiting statue. T hey had wanted some­ thing of him, all right, and it had been merely everything. H e’d known he couldn’t give it to them , if h e’d gone on living. And this way, orbiting in this fashion, a space-lofted m onu­ m ent to the hopes, desires, dreams, to all th a t they wanted, lie had not let them down. O ne defeat, created by this girl’s natu­ ral failure to love him back as he’d hoped she could, had shaken the foundation of everything h e’d hoped to represent to his people. It had been enough to make him create th at final self-destructive act . . . She was looking out there, too. H er eyes were still wide and frightened and wholly hurt. "H e couldn’t have,” she whis­ pered. " It m ust have been som ething else. Fate, G od, the gods . . .” “I ’m going out there, Reecie, to make sure.” She shook her head quickly. “D o n ’t, please. W e don’t w ant to know. I told First M inister Prinz w hat had happened th at last night. M aybe he thought of it this way all along. T h a t’s why there was no investigation. D on’t you understand, M ister Forest? Suicide? T hey can’t know that. It would ruin the legend!” " W e have to know.” “I ’ll go out then. Let m e use your thruster. Please, M ister Forest. If I know positively th a t he . . .” “I t ’s my job.” "B ut they’re watching! I t w on’t be right for you. T hey’ll ac­ cept me. Please. L et me be the one to know for sure!” I was silent for an interval. Finally I nodded. Benny and I w atched her swing skillfully through space in her w hite suit. T here was som ething dreamlike about her m ovem ent, and I could understand how they would feel down 167

there, watching the screens, staring through their binoculars. She glided nearer to him , then her delicate, gloved hands were reaching out. H er face-window touched his. She knew now, I thought . . . I saw the m ovem ent of her right hand, hidden from the thousands upon thousands watching below. She m ade a cut­ th ro at m otion directly beneath her chin. “M y G od!” I sat frozen for a few seconds, then I jum ped up. B ut Benny said: “N o good, W arden. N o tim e. She’s . . .” I forced myself to look again. She’d moved his arms so th at they were around her. And hers were around him . T hey were in orbit in th at embrace. I moved to the visio-radio. “First M inister Prinz, Stoke.” M om ents later Stoke nodded. “Okay, W ard en .” I looked at the image form ing on the screen. T h e flat-silver eyes of Prinz stared back at me. “She’s dead,” I said wearily. “How ?” “I don’t know. She w anted to go out, to see him again. I ’d judge . . . heartbreak.” H e nodded slowly. “F ate.” “A ct of G od . . . the gods.” “T hank you, M ister Forest.” I nodded, knowing th a t our work was done here now. “Good-bye, sir.”

168

To the Dark Star by Robert Silverberg

W e came to the dark star, th e m icrocephalon and the adapted girl and I, and our struggle began. A poorly assorted lot we were, to begin with. T h e m icrocephalon hailed from Q uendar IV , where they grow their people w ith greasy gray skins, loom ing shoulders, and virtually no heads at all. H e—it — was wholly alien, at least. T h e girl was not, and so I hated her. She came from a world in the Procyon system, where the air was m ore or less Earth-type, b u t the gravity was double ours. T here were other differences, too. She was thick through the shoulders, thick through th e waist, a block of flesh. T h e ge­ netic surgeons had begun w ith hum an raw material, b u t they had transform ed it into som ething nearly as alien as the mi­ crocephalon. Nearly. W e were a scientific team , so they said. Sent out to observe th e last m om ents of a dying star. A great interstellar effort. Pick three specialists at random , p u t them in a ship, hurl them halfway across the universe to observe w hat m an had never observed before. A fine idea. Noble. Inspiring. W e knew our subject well. W e were ideal. 169

B ut we felt no urge to cooperate, because we hated one an­ other. T h e adapted girl— M iranda— was at the controls the day th a t the dark star actually came into sight. She spent hours studying it before she deigned to let us know th a t we were at our destination. T h e n she buzzed us out of our quarters. I entered the scanning room. M iranda's m uscular bulk over­ flowed the glossy chair before th e m ain screen. T h e microcephalon stood beside her, a squat figure on a tripodlike ar­ rangem ent of bony legs, the great shoulders hunched and vir­ tually concealed the tiny cupola of the head. T here was no real reason why an organism ’s brain had to be in its skull, and n ot safely tucked away in the thorax; b u t I had never grown accus­ tom ed to th e sight of the creature. I fear I have little tolerance for aliens. “Look,” M iranda said, and the screen glowed. T h e dark star hung in dead center, at a distance of perhaps eight light-days— as close as we dared to come. I t was n o t quite dead, and not quite dark. I stared in awe. I t was a huge thing, some four solar masses, the imposing rem nant of a gi­ gantic star. O n the screen there glowed w hat looked like an enorm ous lava field. Islands of ash and slag the size of worlds drifted in a sea of m olten and glowing magma. A dull red illu­ m ination burnished the screen. Black against crimson, the ruined star still throbbed w ith ancient power. In the depths of th a t m onstrous slag heap, compressed nuclei groaned and gasped. O nce the radiance of this star had lit a solar system; b u t I did not dare think of the billions of years th at had passed since then, nor of the possible civilizations th a t had hailed the source of all light and w arm th before the catastrophe. M iranda said, “ I ’ve picked up the therm als already. T he sur­ face tem perature averages about nine hundred degrees. T here’s no chance of the landing.” 170

I scowled a t her. “W h a t good is th e average tem perature? G et a specific. O ne of those islands— ” “T h e ash masses are radiating at two hundred and fifty de­ grees. T h e interstices go from one thousand degrees on up. Everything works out to a m ean of nine hundred degrees, and you’d m elt in an instant if you w ent down there. Y ou’re wel­ come to go, brother. W ith my blessing.” “ I didn’t say— ” “You implied th a t there’d be a safe place to land on th at fireball,” M iranda snapped. H er voice was a basso boom ; there was plenty of resonance space in th at vast chest of hers. “You snidely cast doubt on my ability to— ” “W e will use the crawler to make our inspection,” said the m icrocephalon in its reasonable way. “T here never was any plan to make a physical landing on the star.” M iranda subsided. I stared in awe at the sight th at filled our screen. A star takes a long tim e to die, and the relict I viewed im ­ pressed m e w ith its colossal age. It had blazed for billions of years, until the hydrogen th at was its fuel had at last been exhausted, and its therm onuclear furnace started to sputter and go out. A star has defenses against growing cold; as its fuel supply dwindles, it begins to contract, raising its density and converting gravitational potential energy into therm al energy. I t takes on new life; now a white dwarf, with a density of tons per cubic inch, it burns in a stable way until a t last it grows dark. W e have studied white dwarfs for centuries, and we know their secrets— so we think. A cup of m atter from a white dwarf now orbits the observatory on Pluto for our further illum ina­ tion. B ut the star of our screen was different. I t had once been a large star— greater than th e C handra­ 171

sekhar lim it, 1.2 solar masses. Thus it was not content to shrink step by step to the status of a w hite dwarf. T he stellar core grew so dense th a t catastrophe came before stability; when it had converted all its hydrogen to iron-56, it fell into catastrophic collapse and w ent supernova. A shock wave ran through the core, converting the kinetic energy of collapse into heat. N eutrinos spewed outward; the envelope of th e star reached tem peratures upwards of two hundred billion degrees; therm al energy became intense radiation, streaming away from the agonized star and shedding the lum inosity of a galaxy for a brief, fitful m om ent. W h a t we beheld now was the core left behind by the super­ nova explosion. Even after th a t awesome fury, w hat was intact was of great mass. T h e shattered hulk had been cooling for eons, cooling toward the final death. For a small star, th at death would be th e simple death of coldness: the ultim ate burnout, the black dwarf drifting through the void like a hide­ ous m ound of ash, lightless, w ithout warm th. B ut this our stellar core was still beyond the Chandrasekhar lim it. A spe­ cial death was reserved for it, a weird and im probable death. A nd th a t was why we had come to watch it perish, the m icrocephalon and the adapted girl and I. I parked our small vessel in an orbit th a t gave the dark star plenty of room. M iranda busied herself w ith her m easure­ m ents and com putations. T h e m icrocephalon had m ore ab­ struse things to do. T h e work was well divided; we each had our chores. T he expense of sending a ship so great a distance had necessarily lim ited the size of the expedition. T hree of us: a representative of the basic hum an stock, a representative of the adapted colonists, a representative of the race of microcephalons, the O uendar people, the only other intelligent be­ ings in the known universe. T hree dedicated scientists. And, therefore, three who would live in serene harm ony during the course of the work, since as 172

everyone knows scientists have no em otions and think only of their professional mysteries. As everyone knows. W h e n did th at m yth start to circulate, anyway? I said to M iranda, “W h ere are the figures for radial oscilla­ tion?’' She replied, “See my report. I t ’ll be published early next year in— ” “D am n you, are you doing th at deliberately? I need those figures now!” “Give me your totals on the mass-density curve, th en .” “They aren’t ready. All I ’ve got is raw data.” “T h a t’s a lie! T he com puter’s been running for days! I ’ve seen it,” she boom ed at me. I was ready to leap at her throat. It would have been a m ighty battle; her three-hundred-pound body was not trained for personal com bat, as m ine was, b u t she had all the advan­ tages of strength and size. C ould I club her in some vital place before she broke m e in half? I weighed my options. T h en the m icrocephalon appeared and m ade peace once more, w ith a few feather-soft words. O nly the alien among us seemed to conform at all to the stereotype of th at emotionless abstraction, “the scientist.” It was n o t true, of course; for all we could tell, th e m icrocepha­ lon seethed w ith jealousies and lusts and angers, b u t we had no clue to their outward m anifestation. Its voice was as flat as a vocoder transmission. T he creature moved peacefully among us, the m ediator betw een M iranda and me. I despised it for its mask of tranquility. I suspected, too, th a t the microcephalon loathed the two of us for our willingness to vent our emotions, and took a sadistic pleasure from asserting superiority by calm­ ing us. W e returned to our research. W e still had some tim e before th e last collapse of the dark star. I t had cooled nearly to death. N ow there was still some 173

therm onuclear activity w ithin th at bizarre core, enough to keep the star too warm for an actual landing. I t was radiating primarily in the optical band of the spectrum , and by stellar standards its tem perature was nil, b u t for us it would be like prowling the heart of a live volcano. Finding the star had been a chore. Its lum inosity was so low th a t it could n ot be detected optically at a greater distance th an a light-m onth or so; it had been spotted by a satelliteborne X-ray telescope th at had detected the em anations of the degenerate neutron gas of the core. N ow we gathered around and perform ed our functions of m easurem ent. W e recorded things like neutron drip and electron capture. W e com puted th e tim e rem aining before th e final collapse. W h ere necessary, we collaborated; m ost of the tim e we w ent our separate ways. T h e tension aboard ship was nasty. M iranda w ent out of her way to provoke me. And, though I like to think th at I was beyond and above her beastliness, I have to confess th a t I m atched her, obstruction for obstruction. O ur alien com pan­ ion never m ade any overt attem p t to annoy us; b u t indirect aggression can be m addening in close quarters, and the microcephalon’s benign indifference to us was as potent a force for dissonance as M iranda’s outright shrewishness or my own de­ liberately m ulish responses. T h e star hung in our viewscreen, bubbling w ith vitality th a t belied its dying state. T h e islands of slag, thousands of miles in diam eter, broke free and drifted at random on the sea of inner flame. Now and then spouting eruptions of stripped par­ ticles came heaving up out of the core. O ur figures showed th a t the final collapse was drawing near, and th a t m eant th a t an awkward choice was upon us. Someone was going to have to m onitor the last m om ents of the dark star. T h e risks were high. It could be fatal. N one of us m entioned th a t ultim ate responsibility. 174

W e moved toward the climax of our w ork M iranda contin­ ued to annoy me in every way, sheerly for the devilishness of it. H ow I hated her! W e had begun this voyage coolly, with nothing dividing us b u t professional jealousy. B ut the m onths of proxim ity had turned our quarrel into a personal feud. T h e m ere sight of her m addened me, and I’m sure she reacted the same way. She devoted her energies to an im m ature attem p t to trouble me. Lately she took to walking around the ship in the nude, I suspect trying to stir some spark of sexual feeling in m e th a t she could douse w ith a blunt, m ocking refusal. T h e trouble was th a t I could feel no desire whatever for a gro­ tesque adapted creature like M iranda, a m ound of muscle and bone twice my size. T he sight of her massive udders and m on­ um ental buttocks stirred nothing in m e b u t disgust. T h e witch! W as it desire she was trying to kindle by expos­ ing herself th at way, or loathing? E ither way, she had me. She m ust have known that. In our third m onth in orbit around the dark star, the m icro­ cephalon announced, “T h e coordinates show an approach to the Schwarzschild radius. I t is tim e to send our vehicle to the surface of the star.” “W h ich one of us rides m onitor?” I asked. M iranda’s beefy hand shot out at me. “You do.” “ I think you’re better equipped to make the observations,” I told her sweetly. “T hank you, no.” “W e m ust draw lots,” said the m icrocephalon. “ U nfair,” said M iranda. She glared at me. “H e’ll do some­ thing to rig the odds. I couldn’t trust him .” “ How else can we choose?” the alien asked. “W e can vote,” I suggested. “I nom inate M iranda.” “ I nom inate him ,” she snapped. T h e m icrocephalon p u t his ropy tentacles across the tiny 175

nodule of skull betw een his shoulders. "Since I did not choose to nom inate myself,” he said mildly, “it falls to m e to make a deciding choice betw een the two of you. I refuse the responsi­ bility. A nother m ethod m ust be found.” W e let the m atter drop for the m om ent. W e still had a few m ore days before the critical tim e was at hand. W ith all my heart I wished M iranda into th e m onitor cap­ sule. I t would m ean at best her death, at worst a sober m uting of her abrasive personality, if she were the one who sat in vicar­ iously on the throes of the dark star. I was willing to stop at nothing to give her th a t rem arkable and demolishing experi­ ence. W h a t was going to happen to our star may sound strange to a layman, b u t the theory had been outlined by E instein and Schwarzschild a thousand years ago, and had been confirmed m any times, though never until our expedition had it been observed at close range. W h e n m atter reaches a sufficiently high density, it can force the local curvature of space to close around itself, forming a pocket isolated from the rest of the universe. A collapsing supernova core creates just such a Schwarzschild singularity. A fter it has cooled to near-zero tem ­ perature, a core of the proper Chandrasekhar mass undergoes a violent collapse to zero volume, simultaneously attaining an infinite density. In a way, it swallows itself and vanishes from this universe ■ —for how could the fabric of the continuum tolerate a point of infinite density and zero volume? Such collapses are rare. M ost stars come to a state of cold equilibrium and rem ain there. W e were on the threshold of a singularity, and we were in a position to p u t an observer ve­ hicle right on the surface of the cold star, sending back an exact description of th e events up until the final m om ent when the collapsing core broke through the walls of the uni­ verse and disappeared. 176

Som eone had to ride gain on the equipm ent, though. W h ic h m eant, in effect, vicariously participating in the death of the star. W e had learned in other cases th at it becomes difficult for the m onitor to distinguish betw een reality and effect; he accepts the sensory percepts from the distant pickup as his own experience. A kind of psychic backlash results; often, an unwary brain is burned out entirely. W h a t im pact would the direct experience of being crushed out of existence in a singularity have on a m onitoring ob­ server? I was eager to find out. B ut not with myself as the sacrificial victim. I cast about for some way to get M iranda into th a t capsule. She, of course, was doing the same for me. I t was she who m ade the first move by attem pting to drug m e into com pli­ ance. W h a t drug she used, I have no idea. H er people are fond of the non-addictive hallucinogens, which help them break the m onotony of their stark oversized world. Somehow M iranda interfered with the program m ing of my food supply and intro­ duced one of her pet alkaloids. I began to feel the effects an hour after I had eaten. I walked to th e screen to study the surging mass of the dark star— m uch changed from its appear­ ance of only a few m onths before— and as I looked, the image on the screen began to swirl and m elt, and tongues of flame did an eerie dance along th e horizons of th e star. I clung to the rail. Sweat broke from my pores. W as the ship liquefying? T h e floor heaved and bucked beneath me. I looked at the back of my hand and saw continents of ash set in a grouting of fiery magma. M iranda stood behind me. “C om e with m e to the capsule,” she m urm ured. “T h e m onitor’s ready for launching now. Y ou’ll find it wonderful to see the last m om ents.” Lurching after her, I padded through the strangely altered 177

ship. M iranda’s adapted form was even m ore alien than usual; her m usculature rippled and flowed, her golden hair held all the colors of the spectrum , her flesh was oddly puckered and cratered, w ith wiry filaments emerging from th e skin. I felt quite calm about entering the capsule. She slid back the hatch, revealing the gleaming console of th e panel w ithin, and I began to enter, and then suddenly the hallucination deep­ ened and I saw in the darkness of the capsule a devil beyond all imagination. I dropped to the floor and lay there twitching. M iranda seized me. T o her I was no m ore than a doll. She lifted me, began to thrust m e into the capsule. Perspiration soaked me. Reality returned. I slipped from her grasp and wriggled away, rolling toward the bulkhead. Like a beast of prim ordial forests she came ponderously after me. “N o,” I said. “I w on’t go.” She halted. H er face twisted in anger, and she turned away from m e in defeat. I lay panting and quivering until my m ind was purged of phantom s. It had been close. I t was my tu rn a short while later. F ight force with force, I told myself. I could not risk m ore of M iranda’s treachery. T im e was running short. From our surgical kit I took a hypnoprobe used for anesthe­ sia, and rigged it in series w ith one of M iranda’s telescope an­ tennae. Program m ing it for induction of docility, I left it to go to work on her. W h e n she m ade her observations, the hypno­ probe would purr its siren song of sinister coaxing, and— per­ haps— M iranda w ould bend to my wishes. I t did not work. I watched her going to her telescopes. I saw her broadbeam ed form settling in place. In my m ind I heard the hypnoprobe’s gentle whisper, as I knew it m ust sound to M iranda. I t was telling her to relax, to obey. “T he capsule . . . get into 178

th e capsule . . . you will m onitor the crawler . . . you . . . you . . . you will do it. . . I waited for her to arise and move like a sleepwalker to the waiting capsule. H er tawny body was motionless. M uscles rip­ pled beneath th a t obscenely bare flesh. T h e probe had her! Yes! I t was getting to her! No. She clawed at the telescope as though it were a steel-tipped wasp drilling for her brain. T he barrel recoiled, and she pushed herself away from it, whirling around. H er eyes glowed w ith rage. H er enorm ous body reared up before me. She seemed half berserk. T h e probe had had some effect on her; I could see her dizzied strides, and knew th a t she was awry. B ut it had n ot been p o ten t enough. Som ething w ithin th a t adapted brain of hers gave her the strength to fight off the m urky shroud of hypnotism . "You did that!” she roared. "You gimm icked the telescope, d id n ’t you?” "I don’t know w hat you m ean, M iranda.” "Liar! Fraud! Sneak!” "C alm down. Y ou’re rocking us out of orbit.” " I ’ll rock all I want! W h a t was th a t thing th at had its fin­ gers in my brain? You p u t it there! W h a t was it, th e liypnoprobe you used?” “Yes,” I adm itted coolly. “A nd w hat was it you p u t into my food? W h ich hallucinogen?” “ It didn’t work.” "N either did m y hypnoprobe. M iranda, som eone’s got to get into th at capsule. In a few hours we’ll be at the critical point. W e don’t dare come back w ithout the essential obser­ vations. M ake the sacrifice.” “For you?” "F or science,” I said, appealing to th at noble abstraction.

I got the horselaugh I deserved. T h en M iranda strode to ­ ward me. She had recovered her coordination in full, now, and it seemed as though she were planning to thrust m e into the capsule by m ain force. H er ponderous arms enfolded me. T h e stink of her thickened hide m ade me retch. I felt ribs creaking w ithin me. I ham m ered at her body, searching for the pressure points th a t would drop her in a felled heap. W e punished each other cruelly, grunting back and forth across th e cabin. I t was a fierce contest of skill against mass. She would not fall, and I would n o t crush. T h e toneless buzz of the m icrocephalon said, "Release each other. T h e collapsing star is nearing its Schwarzschild radius. W e m ust act now.” M iranda’s arms slipped away from me. I stepped back, glowering at her, to suck breath into my battered body. Livid bruises were appearing on her skin. W e had come to a m utual awareness of m utual strength; b u t the capsule still was empty. H atred hovered like a globe of ball lightning betw een us. T h e gray, greasy alien creature stood to one side. I would not care to guess which of us had the idea first, M iranda or I. B ut we moved swiftly. T he m icrocephalon scarcely m urm ured a word of protest as we hustled it down the passage and into the room th a t held the capsule. M iranda was smiling. I felt relief. She held the alien tight while I opened the hatch, and then she thrust it through. W e dogged the hatch together. "Launch the crawler,” she said. I nodded and w ent to the controls. Like a dart from a blowgun the crawler housing was expelled from our ship and jour­ neyed under high acceleration to the surface of the dark star. I t contained a com pact vehicle with sturdy jointed legs, con­ trolled by rem ote pickup from the observation capsule aboard ship. As the observer moved arms and feet w ithin the control 180

harnesses, servo relays actuated the hydraulic pistons in the crawler, eight light-days away. It moved in parallel response, clam bering over the slag heaps of a solar surface th a t no or­ ganic life could endure. T h e m icrocephalon operated the crawler with skill. W e watched through the shielded video pickups, getting a closerange view of th at inferno. Even a cold sun is m ore terrifyingly h o t than any planet of man. T h e signals coming from the star altered w ith each m o­ m ent, as the full force of the red-shift gripped the fading light. Som ething unutterably strange was taking place down there; and the m ind of our m icrocephalon was rooted to the scene. T idal gravitational forces lashed the star. T h e crawler was lifted, heaved, compressed, subjected to strains th at slowly ripped it apart. T h e alien witnessed it all, and dictated an ac­ count of w hat he saw, slowly, methodically, w ithout a flicker of fear. T h e singularity approached. T he tidal forces aspired toward infinity. T h e m icrocephalon sounded bewildered at last as it attem pted to describe the topological phenom ena th a t no eye had seen before. Infinite density, zero volume— how did the m ind com prehend it? T h e crawler was contorted into an in­ conceivable shape; and yet its sensors obstinately continued to relay data, filtered through the m ind of the m icrocephalon and into our com puter banks. T h en came silence. O u r screens w ent dead. T h e unthinka­ ble had at last occurred, and the dark star had passed w ithin th e radius of singularity. It had collapsed into oblivion, taking w ith it th e crawler. T o the alien in the observation capsule aboard our ship, it was as though he too had vanished into th a t pocket of hyperspace th a t passed all understanding. I looked toward the heavens. T he dark star was gone. O ur detectors picked up the outpouring of energy th a t marked its 181

annihilation. W e were buffeted briefly on the wave of force th a t ripped outward from th e place where th e star had been, and th en all was calm. M iranda and I exchanged glances. “L et the m icrocephalon ou t,” I said. She opened the hatch. T h e alien sat quite calmly at the control console. It did not speak. M iranda assisted it from the capsule. Its eyes were expressionless; b u t they had never shown anything, anyway. W e are on our way back to the worlds of our galaxy, now. T h e mission has been accomplished. W e have relayed price­ less and unique data. T h e m icrocephalon has n o t spoken since we removed it from the capsule. I do n o t believe it will speak again. M iranda and I perform our chores in harmony. T h e hostil­ ity betw een us is gone. W e are partners in crime, now; edgy w ith guilt th at we do not adm it to one another. W e tend our shipm ate w ith loving care. Som eone had to m ake the observations, after all. T here were no volunteers. T h e situation called for force, or the dead­ lock would never have been broken. B ut M iranda and I hated each other, you say? W hy, then, should we cooperate? W e both are hum ans, M iranda and I. T h e m icrocephalon is not. In the end, th at m ade the difference. In the last analysis, M iranda and I decided th at we hum ans m ust stick together. T here are ties th a t bind. W e speed onward toward civilization. She smiles at me. I do n o t find her hateful now. T h e micro­ cephalon is silent.

A Night in Elf Hill by Norman Spïnrad

D ear Fred: Yeah, it’s your brother Spence after all these years, and of course I ’m yelling for help. Just spare m e th e I-told-you-sos and th e psychiatrist’s pounce. So I’m a black sheep and a mis­ creant and a neurotic personality. W e never could quite stand each other even when we were kids, and when you becam e a shrink and I Shipped O ut, th at really tore it. T h e reality of inner space versus th e escapism of outer space, m aturity versus perpetual adolescence, isn’t th at w hat you said? Sometimes I think you were born speaking th a t jargon, and if you’ll pardon my saying so, I still think it’s horse-hockey. B ut the bitch is th a t now I find myself urgently in need of your brand of horse-hockey. I ’ve got som ething I’ve got to tell to somebody, som ething th a t’s been eating m e up for a year, som ething way over my head. Som ething you only tell a brother or a shrink— and for all your squareness, Fred, at least you’re both. I suppose I ’ve got you good and confused by now, just like in the bad old days, b u t I hope I ’ve got you as intrigued as bugged. 183

D o n ’t go putting things in my m outh, though; I ’ve got no regrets. Seventeen years in space, and I don’t regret a m inute of it. B ut you never could understand that. Rem em ber? I ’d tell you about the kick of ten new planets every year, of a new wom an on every one of ’em, of the greener grass just beyond the planet beyond the next one, and what I ’d get from you is long lectures on “flight from reality” and “compulsive satyrism.” T h e only reason I’m raking up these tired old coals, H err D oktor, is th at it all bears on the problem th a t I ’m going to do my dam nedest to try and dum p in your lap. Yeah, space is my oyster, always has been, always will be— and th a t’s my only regret. T h e knowledge th at eighteen years of it is all I can ever have. You know how the tim e lim it on M erchant Service Papers works, or at least you should, since shrinks like you stuck us w ith the system. W h e n you apply for Papers, they give you a solid week of physical and m ental examinations, everything in the book and some things th at aren’t, and they tell you just how long they figure you can stand the jum ping in and out of subspace, th e accelerations, the pressures, the tensions. T hey tell you how long, and they p u t it down on your Papers. This m an is certified for eighteen years in space and n o t a millisec­ ond longer. T he moving finger writes, and all that. . . . Ac­ tually, I’ve got no fair reason to com plain: eighteen years is G ood Tim e. T h e average is closer to fifteen. I t ’s a nice safe system. N o one suddenly goes ape and wrecks a ship, like in the bad old days. N o spacer, shipping far beyond his endurance, comes hom e a shattered hulk from Farside Syndrome anymore. Yeah, a good, safe, secure system. T h e only thing wrong w ith it is th a t you know you have th a t date hanging over your head, and you know th at under the rules the day will com e when you start collecting th at M ustering O u t Pension (a nice piece of change every year as long as you live— even to a high184

priced shrink like you, F re d ), and get th at last free ride to the planet of your choice. Sure, you think it’s a sweet set-up. You would. Eighteen years of your life in return for financial security in perpetuity. W h y don’t you go to Port Kennedy and take a good hard look at all those old m en sitting in the sun, living off their nice fat pensions and watching the ships taking off for the stars like one-eyed cats peeping in a seafood store? O ld m en of thirtyfive or forty. Ask them if it’s such a sweet set-up! How would you like to be p u t out to pasture when you’re forty? After eighteen years, w hat do you have to live for b u t the next planet? T h a t last free ride back to Earth is the sickest joke there is. I t ’s not for me. In the bad old days, they let you ship o ut till it killed you, and ask any of the hulks th a t hau n t Port Kennedy if th at wasn’t the m ore merciful way. M an, I ’m sure glad this is a letter, because I can all b u t hear you bellowing “I told you so.” W h a t was it you used to call Shipping O ut, “A night in Elf H ill”? W h ere a m an goes into th e hall of the elves for one night of partying, and the next day, when he comes out, a hundred years have passed, and he’s an old, old m an and his life is over. . . . I can hear you telling m e th at I can’t find myself by searching the galaxy, th a t I’ve got to look within, and now look at you, Spence, you’re a hol­ low shell, a thirty-eight-year-old adolescent. I can see you shak­ ing your head with infinite sadness and infinite wisdom, and you should be glad this isn’t face-to-face too, ’cause I ’d kick your sanctimonious teeth down your throat, and you know th a t I always could lick you. Suffice it to say th a t unless you can come up with some pearl of wisdom from out of your bottom less pit of middleaged m aturity, and don’t get m e wrong, Fred, I hope to G od you can, when I ’m M ustered O u t next Year, th at last trip w on’t be back to Earth. I t ’ll be to M indalla. I know, I know, you never heard of M indalla. W h o has? I t’s 185

a nothing little planet orbiting a G-4 sun. Colonized about a century ago. M aybe fifteen m illion yokums living off a pid­ dling m ining industry on one continent. T h a t’s M indalla. T en thousand mudballs just like it scattered all over the galaxy. B ut I ’m afraid, really afraid, th at unless you can stop me, I ’m going back. G oing back to stay. I m ade my first planetfall on M indalla a little over a year ago, on a freighter from Sidewinder, carrying the kind of cargo we just don’t talk about. Fortunately, it’s a big, big galaxy, and there are so m any planets in it th at you never have to go back to a single one, even if your Papers go all the way to the twenty-year maximum. A nd so, I believed at th e time, this would be my first and last visit to M indalla. I m ean, when you’ve been in space as long as I have, seen hundreds of cities on hundreds of planets — G ’dana, Hespa, the R uby Beach of M odow, the whole wild lot— M indalla is strictly nowheresville. T h e population is small, there’s only one town with nerve enough to call itself a city, the outback has been pretty thoroughly explored by air, no interesting local beasties, no natives. And th e colony is just not old enough to have really m arinated, if you dig, becom e decadent enough to appeal to my peculiar tastes. . . . B ut let’s not get into that. Still, like it or not, I had three days on this m udball, and I knew from long experience th a t a planet’s just too big a place to be a total nonentity. T h a t’s why I w ent into space in the first place; th a t’s where it’s really at. N o t all th a t crap about “ the vast spaces betw een the stars.” Space itself is creation’s m ost total bore. W h a t makes a m an Ship O u t is just being a kid on E arth, and looking up at all those stars, and knowing th a t they all own whole worlds, and th a t each of ’em is a world, as full of surprises as E arth was when Adam and his 186

chick got themselves booted out of Eden. I guess th a t’s it— you’ve got to dig surprises. M an like m e hates security as m uch as you love it. So I knew there had to be som ething for m e on M indalla, a new taste, a new sound, a new woman. A nice surprise. . . . W ell, I wandered from bar to bar, my usual S.O.P., and to make a long, tedious story short, I came up with only two little goodies, and one of ’em seemed to be just a fairy story at first. B ut the second concerned the Race W ith N o N am e. T h e Race had left one of its weird ruins on M indalla. Even you m ust know about the Race W ith N o Nam e. Bil­ lions of years ago, before M an was even a far-distant gleam in some dinosaur’s eye, before the ’Bodas or the Dreers, or any of the other races th at are around today ever existed, the Race W ith N o N am e owned this galaxy, from the C enter clear to the M agellanic Clouds. A billion years ago, they disappeared, died out, or m igrated elsewhere, or God-knows-what, leaving nothing b u t ruins on thousands of planets. If you can call lum ps of some m etal th at assay out stainless steel b u t hasn’t rusted at all in a billion-years ruins. A lum p of the stuff here, a whole m ountain of it there, weathered to dust by a billion years of tim e and wind, tw enty or so artifacts th at no one under­ stands, scattered throughout the known galaxy— the Race W ith N o Nam e. B ut you know that. W h a t you don’t know is w hat the Race m eans to spacers. I t’s our own private little nightm are th at somewhere, somehow, some of ’em are still around, and th at one day we’re going to run into them , in subspace, or on some forgotten planet on the Rim . . . . A race a billion years gone, a race th a t was young when th e galaxy was coalescing, a race th a t had as m uch in com m on with us as we do with worms . . . A race th at we can’t be sure doesn’t still exist, some­ where . . . 187

And the Race W ith N o N am e left a few lum ps of m etal on M indalla, as they did on thousands of other planets. N othing unusual . . . B ut then there was th at local fairy story. . . . I t seems th at a few decades ago, a M indallan who had been a spacer settled down on his pension near som ething called the G reat Swamp. Apparently, he wigged out— was known to rave about someplace in the Swamp th at was the “m ost beau­ tiful city in the galaxy.” O f course, there was no such thing in the Swamp. And one day, he just disappeared and they never found his body. T h e locals claimed th at other m en had disap­ peared into the G reat Swamp, b u t nobody I talked to could nam e names. Just the usual crock, eh? B ut the Race W ith N o N am e had left a ruin on M indalla, and when you added th a t to the fairy story, you came up with som ething th at smelled of artifact. I guess they’ve found maybe two dozen intact artifacts of the Race W ith N o Nam e. I lose count. T h ere’s the Solid H ole on Beaucham p, the T im e T rap on Flor del Cielo, the Sub­ space Block on Misty, th at horrible thing they haven’t even nam ed on C hanning, the thing th at turns living creatures in­ side out. . . . N o one knows w hat any of the dam ned things really are, and I suppose we never will. M aybe I hope we never will. B ut I got the smell of artifact on M indalla. Somewhere in th a t swamp was . . . something. N o m atter how m any m en have died, or worse, because of them , I still never heard of a spacer who could resist the lure of discovering an artifact. D o n ’t ask me why. W h y do people pick at scabs, H err D oktor? So I rented a flitter, bought some tinned food, leased an energy-rifle which everyone assured m e was about as necessary as a Conversion Bom b, and set out for the G reat Swamp. T h e Swamp was where it was supposed to be— about four hundred miles east of the city. “G reat Swam p” turned out to 188

be local hyperbole, of course— you could lose it in the Everglades. I set the flitter down in a clearing near the center of the Swamp. T h e clearing was ringed with trees— som ething be­ tween palms and mangroves; gnarled, ringed trunks, big, bright-green, feathery leaves. T h e ground was coal-black, th e way it sometimes is around a volcano on E arth, only here it was soggy, half-mud, interlaced with hundreds of sluggish lit­ tle streams. In short, a swamp. I p u t a small radio direction finder in my pocket, turned on the flitter’s beacon, hoisted my small pack, slung the encrgyrifle over my shoulder, and set off rather noisily to get the lay of the land. O ne weird thing— th e trees were lousy with a kind of feath­ ery stuff like Spanish moss, long globs of it hanging every­ where. It was a deep, deep red, and it gave you the feeling th at you were walking through perpetual sunset. Kind of eerie, maybe, b u t also sort of soothing. Q uite a few critters around— ugly little lum py fish like m udpuppies in the streams, small six-legged blue lizards all over the place, octopoid things swinging in the trees by their tentacles like monkeys— b u t nothing big enough to worry about, even w ithout the rifle. Actually, I suppose you’d go for the place— you always were a nature nut, and this swamp had w hat you’d call atm osphere, w hat with th at red moss all over everything and th e black soil, and those octopoids in the trees, covered with a golden fuzz and gabbling like turkeys. Now you know me, Fred, I ’m strictly a city boy, my idea of beauty is G reater N ew York, or Bay City, or Riallo. B ut I m ust adm it th a t I sort of dug the place. It p u t m e at ease, it even smelled kind of sweet and musky, as I w ent deeper into it. A nd, of course, th a t’s when I should’ve started to sweat. I 189

don’t care how tam e a planet is, it just shouldn’t seem harm ­ less if it isn’t Earth. Every planet is different from every other in thousands of ways, and a t least one of those differences should be the kind th at makes a m an look behind him . Be­ sides, every other extraterrestrial swamp I ’ve ever seen stank like an open cesspool. W ell, I m ust’ve just wandered around for hours before I felt . . . how can I describe it? A kind of scratchy shiver in my head, like running a broken fingernail down a piece of slate. A n awful feeling, b u t it just came and w ent in a m om ent, and all of a sudden, things got kind of dreamylike. T h e moss seemed to get thicker, the light richer, heavier. A nd all of a sudden, the air was full of tiny, neon-colored birds, no bigger than beetles, like a whole aquarium full of flying tropical fish, and they alm ost seemed to be whistling in harm ony. I w ent on in a kind of daze, and th a t scratchy feeling came and w ent again, and a very funny thing happened. I found myself rem em bering all kinds of things: wom en I had known, th e taste of Blandi wine and fried prawns, the smell of Shondor aphrofum e, the sun flashing on th e R uby Beach, the carni­ val feel of Riallo. . . . G ood things, a whole lifeful of good things, all w hipping through my m ind like someone had re­ corded the best m om ents of my life on tape and was playing the whole tape back, a hundred times norm al speed. I t was like being high on mescal and bhang and duprish all at once, and I got flashes of that too, I m ean memories of w hat being high was really like, mixed in with the rest of it. I forgot everything— th e reason I was in the Swamp, the fact th at I had to be back on th e ship in two days, even my depression at my im pending M ustering O ut. I just wandered around reliving the best m om ents of my life at breakneck speed. 190

A nd th en I felt th at awful, nerve-tingling feeling again, stronger this tim e. I t seemed to last for hours, and then it was gone again, and . . . I was standing on top of a little hill. A nd there below me, where it just couldn’t possibly be, was a city. T h e city. T h e city the M indallan spacer had raved about. And he had been dead right. I t was the m ost beautiful place in the galaxy. I ’ve seen a thousand cities on hundreds of planets. I ’ve seen Riallo on T opaz which makes G reater N ew York look like a dirty little m illtown. Fred, this place m ade Riallo look like a cluster of m ud huts. T ranslucent towers of em erald a m ile high, piercing the clouds like artificial m ountains, hundreds of them , and the streets of the city wound around their feet, streets jam m ed with buildings from a hundred planets and cultures— Argolian force-pavilions, mosques, Boharaanan fhars, skyscrapers, sta­ dia, ziggurats— all shim m ering and flickering in the everchanging light th a t seemed to come from th e towers, th at m ade the sky above th e city a great rainbow aurora. A river separated the foot of my hill from the city. A bridge crossed th e river, and a road crossed th e bridge. T h e road was a ribbon of burnished silver. T h e bridge was a single, arching, dazzling living crystal th a t m ight’ve been diam ond. T h e river was a flow of liquid gold. T h e capital city of the universe. U tterly stupefying, utterly impossible . . . and yet, I had that, w hat do you call it, déjà vu feeling th a t I had somehow seen it before. W h a t can I say, Fred? I m ust’ve been out of my head. It couldn’t be there, b u t it was, and I couldn’t even think of all the impossibilities of th e situation, the sheer insanity of it all. I ran down th a t hill like a sex-starved herm it toward a M exi­ can border town, down the silver road, across the diam ond bridge, and I was there, totally there. 191

Ever been in Rio at th e height of Carnival? Ever spent M ardi Gras in O ld N ew Orleans? Ever heard of how Riallo becomes one great city wide party on Settling Day Eve? W ell, triple that. Raise it to its own power, take a big drag of opium , and, m an, you won’t even come close. I t just sucked me in— whoosh. T he streets were simply boil­ ing w ith people and beings. G olden W o m e n from Topaz, tall green Jungle M asters from M izzan, Steppenvolke from Sieg­ fried dressed in clinging mirror-suits, lemur-faced Cheeringbodas, wom en w ith their hair piled into nests for shim m ering Grellan Glass Butterflies . . . Beings from a thousand plan­ ets, all babbling, laughing. . . . Carnival sounds: laughter, singing, music. Carnival smells: perfum e, frying food, hashish smoke, wine, women. I felt as if I had stepped into the Arabian Nights. Any m in­ ute a flying carpet m ight float by. I felt as if I had been search­ ing for this place, this huge Carnival, this m om ent in tim e, all my life. I wanted to laugh and scream and cry. A nd then I felt th at itching in my m ind again, and I saw her com ing toward me, straight toward me through th at packed throng, which seemed to drift away before her like fog m elting away in the sun. She was wearing those now-opaque, now-transparent golden robes from Topaz. She was alm ost my height, had exotic ori­ ental features b u t bone-white skin. Lum inous emerald hair cascaded onto her shoulders. She had a slim-but-full body, and through a m om entary transparency in her robes, I saw that her nipples were an impossible blood-red, m atching the color of her small, full lips. She was like no woman anyone had ever seen, and yet as she stood before m e, I had th a t uncanny déjà vu feeling again. I knew her, b u t from where? Ridiculous. H ow could any m an forget a woman like this? 192

She touched my hand, and a thrill w ent through me like a jolt from a Pleasurebox. “H e llo ” she said, and the sound of her voice turned my knees to jello. “ I’ve been waiting for you. W e ’ve all been waiting, a long, long tim e. Just for you. Come! C om e join the Carnival!” “W h a t . . . ? U h . . . ? How . . . ?” I stam m ered like some pole-axed yokum. M e, Fred, old Supercharged Spence. She laughed, reached up, curled her hands around my neck and kissed me. H er m outh was warm and open, and the taste of her breath m ade me forget everything. I moved my body against her, asking the question, and she answered m e w ith a counter-pressure th at was m ore than a compliance, m ore cer­ tain than an open ixrvitation. She snaked her hands down my neck, over my shoulders, across my chest, and took both my hands in hers. She nodded toward the choked, swirling streets. “C om e on,” she said. “T h e best night of your life is waiting for you, and the dark­ ness is just beginning.” “H ow long . . . ? H ow long does all this go on?” I somehow managed to say. She laughed, a long, wild laugh th at m ade m e burn and m ade m e shiver. “Forever!” she cried maniacally. “For you, this can be the night th at lasts forever!” And before I could say a word, before I could tell w hether I was eager or afraid, she tugged at my hands, and we were off into the carnivaling city together. I t was dusk— I don’t know w hat tim e it was by the revolu­ tion of M indalla, b u t in th a t impossible city it was a winey, misty, red dusk, and dusk it rem ained as long as I stayed there, a heady night th a t always seemed about to fall. She led m e through th e streets, through the laughing, packed streets, past knots of hum ans and ’Bodas and Dreers, 193

open stands offering food and wine and drugs from all over the galaxy, and finally into . . . a house? a room? a place? A great round hall, the “walls” a circle of m arble columns, past which I caught glimpses of other halls and rooms and passageways beyond, th at seemed to go on and on and on, a labyrinth of rooms and hallways packed w ith people and beings and tables bearing food and drink, an endless, continuous party th a t wound through the hall and the rooms beyond and per­ haps the entire city, w ithout lim its, w ithout end. W e ate from tables piled w ith the delicacies of scores of cultures, dozens of worlds: caviar, mulgish, roast boar, sharshu-ding, pilaf, cheeses, cakes, breads, m ajoun. . . . And strangely, my hunger, though never sharp, lasted through it all, through a feast th a t seemed to go on for hours. W e drifted from crowded room to packed courtyard. A dark cham ber where naked wom en danced to the pounding beat of African drums. . . . An open court by the golden river where we sat on white sands, inhaling m outar from Topaz, and w atched the G olden Ones do their insidious W a te r Dance. . . . A neon-lit room where weirdly dressed kids danced to the music of an ancient T erran rock band. . . . T h e am orphous building seemed to be the city itself, and the city was one wild carnival of food and music and dancing, swirling, laughing, com pletely carrying m e away. I t seemed th a t I had b u t to think of som ething— a certain food, a wine I rem em bered, a music I had heard, and it was there, anything I ever wanted, ever could want. And when the tim e came when there was only one more thing I wanted, we turned a corner, stepped through a door­ way, and . . . W e were suddenly alone. W e were floating in a dark cham ­ ber, floating in nothing at all. A velvet, buoying nothing, softer somehow than free-fall itself. She threw aside her robes, and

all at once her body seemed to glow with a warm, golden light. She plucked at my clothes, and then I was naked too, and my body was glowing from w ithin like hers. W h e n we m ade love, it seemed as if we were alone in the whole universe, the light of our bodies the only light there was. She was perfect . . . and I was better. You know m e, Fred, so you know w hat I m ean when I say it was the best I had ever had, and the best I had ever been. It m ade m e forget every wom an I had ever known. And afterward I wasn’t tired at all— I was full of vitamins and ready for another night of partying. So we laughed and kissed, and it was back to th a t endless, fantastic party. And this tim e around, I felt th a t the eyes of every woman there were on me. Ever have th at feeling? I suppose you never have, Fred. B ut I felt like the cock of the walk; I somehow knew th a t any wom an there I w anted would be m ine, and glad to be of service. B ut it only m ade m e eager for another go at the chick with the white, white skin and the green hair. I somehow knew th a t I would have plenty of tim e to sample the rest of them , all the tim e in the world. . . . So the spirit moved m e again, and we were alone again. W e swam nude in a pool of golden water heated to blood-heat under a huge silver m oon (on moonless M indalla), and then we stretched out on a lawn of bright green grass while a warm, perfum ed breeze swiftly dried our bodies. I reached out, touched one perfect breast. . . . “Spence . . .” she m oaned. It brought m e up short. I suddenly w ent cold. I had never told her my name. T h a t one impossibility somehow rem inded m e th a t I was in the m iddle of a swamp, a swamp where there was no city, where . . . I was afraid, furious and afraid. I pulled my hand away. “W h o are you?” I snapped. “W h a t is—•”

195

She leaned toward me, kissed me, and the question seemed stupid, trivial. . . . B ut som ething in me was still fighting it. I shoved her away. “W h a t the hell is all this? W h a t’s going on here?” She looked at m e, a strange, pleading look in her eyes. She laughed a wicked, sensual laugh. “D o you really have to know?” she sighed. B ut I wasn’t buying. Som ething was being done to me, and I had to know what. “Tell m e!” I roared. “Tell me or— ” She began to cry, wilt, whimper. I felt like a heartless m on­ ster. “ If you insist . . .” she said, “I ’ve got to tell you. B ut don’t insist— take my word for it, Spence, you w on’t like w hat you hear. W h a t do you care w hat we are, where you are? Look around you, smell the air, hear the music, touch my body. Do you w ant to lose all this? C an any place be like this for you again? W ill you ever have another night like this, ever, ever?” I felt a terrible, aching sadness. I knew she was right, knew th at this m om ent, right now, this night and no other, past or future, was the best I could ever know. I was a spacer w ith less than two years left on my Papers, and suddenly I felt like an old, old m an— from this m om ent the rest of my life could only be a long, gray downhill slide to nothingness. “ It doesn’t have to be,” she said, as if reading my m ind. “This m om ent, this night, this place, this Carnival, never has to end. N o t for you. Forever, Spence. I t can last forever, and forever is a long, long tim e. . . “Tell m e!” I screamed, shaking her shoulders, driven by some savage compulsion, perhaps the knowledge th at I was being offered som ething th a t in another m om ent I would be powerless to resist. Suddenly, a terrible pain sheered through my head, and the city, the pool, her, flickered for a m om ent and were gone. 196

I was lying on the m oist black swamp earth. I was dressed. M y clothes were clammy, my stomach ached w ith hunger. It was night. And I was alone. T h en I heard a voice in my m ind, a cold, chitinous voice like a m illion crabs clicking their claws in my head. “A billion years,” the voice said, and the very sound, the sandpaper feel of it, filled me with dread. “A billion years is a long tim e to be alone, unused, discarded like a broken toy.” “W h o . . . W h a t are you? H er . . . ? T h e city . . . ?” “You . . the voice in my m ind rasped. “M ostly you, a little of me. I looked into your m ind, read your memories, your desires, things you d idn’t even know yourself, and I gave it to you. W h a t you wanted, w hat you really wanted. I t was easy. T h a t’s what I was . . . m ade for doing. A billion years ago.” “All an illusion?” I stam m ered. “Just a reflection of my dreams?” T he voice laughed, a hideous, crawling m ental sound th at set every nerve in my body screaming. “You underestim ate the subtlety of the M asters,” the voice said. “Those you call the Race W ith N o Nam e. N o mere wish-fulfillment for them . Every world in this galaxy was theirs, b u t it was not enough for them . T hey craved new worlds, subjective worlds, worlds th a t lived and breathed and reflected their private whims, b u t worlds th a t were still apart from their minds, worlds th at held surprises for their dirty, jaded minds. N one of them mere dreams, b u t none of them real.” “B ut you . . . you’re real! You’re talking to m e now!” “ I ’m real,” the voice said, words dripping sour acid. “You would call m e an . . . artifact. T hey created me out of metal and force . . . and things you could never understand. They gave m e the power to read the innerm ost thoughts and desires

■ of all sentient beings, the power to spin dreams, beautiful dreams w ithout end. A toy, just a toy. B ut they wanted more, they wanted passion. So they m ade m e sentient, a living, car­ ing thing, a thing w ith a will and only one m otivation— the passion to please a sentient being, any sentient being. And then, a billion years ago, they left for I know n o t where, and they left m e here to rot, flung aside w hen they no longer were amused by their toy. T hey left me here to rot and suffer and yearn to please a sentient being. F or a billion years, a billion em pty years till hum ans came to this planet.” I shivered in the warm night, felt m onstrous things staring at me from out of the black, black night, from o ut of the un­ thinkable, distant past. “ B ut . . . you’re not a wom an?” I said. “ I can give you every woman you could ever learn to w ant,” the voice said. “I . . . I w ant to see you . . . ” I stammered. “ I cannot disobey the order of a sentient being,” the voice said. “N o m atter how m uch I w ant to. . . .” T here was a m ovem ent in the trees, and I saw a dark shape, a slithering, m etallic thing, a lum p of darkness blacker than the night . . . A w et sound . . . A cold, cold wind across m y face, a vortex of . . . of som ething my eyes could not focus on. I felt myself falling into a black, black pool, eaten alive by green squamous things. . . . I screamed and screamed and screamed. A nd all at once I was standing in the m iddle of the dia­ m ond bridge, and she was standing before me. “I can’t keep you from going,” she said. She kissed m e and gestured toward the great emerald spires, the Carnival th a t w ent on and on and on . . . “All yours, Spence,” she said. “Your own private heaven. A universe all for you, a universe th at was m ade for you. T h in k 198

of it— being m ade love to by a whole universe. A night of pleasure th at never ends. Forever, Spence, a special kind of forever.” “W h a t . . . w hat kind of forever?” She laughed, touched m e lightly on th e lips. “W h a t docs it m atter?” she said. “A second, an hour, a day, a year, a billion years. If it seems like forever, it is forever, isn’t it, Spence? And I can make it seem like forever. You know I can. I can’t keep you from going . . . b u t can you keep you from coming back?” T hen she was gone, and the city was gone, and I was alone in the silence of the Swamp. I stum bled forward a few steps, and my feet clattered against som ething in the dark, some­ thing hard and round. I reached down, touched it, and pulled my hand back. I t was a skull. A hum an skull. I rem em bered the M indallan spacer, and I felt the gnawing hunger in my guts, and I re­ m em bered th at in the city I had eaten and eaten and eaten . . . W h a t kind of forever? N ow you know why I ’m writing to you, Fred. Soon my Pa­ pers will expire, and I ’ll have to pick one lousy planet out of a whole galaxy on which to spend the rest of my life . . . Please, Fred, talk m e out of it! Say som ething, anything, th at will make it seem wrong. B ut m ake it good, brother mine, make it good. Say som ething, anything, th a t will keep me from going back to M indalla. Spence

199

Sulwen’s Planet ............................................................

byJack Vance

1 Professor Jason G ench, Professor V ictor Kosmin, D r. Lawrence Drewe, and twenty-four others of equal note filed from the spaceship, to contem plate the scene on Sulwen Plain below. T h e wondering m utters dwindled to silence; a hollow facetiousness m et no response. Professor G ench glanced sidelong toward Professor Kosmin, to encounter Pro­ fessor Kosm in’s bland stare. G ench jerked his gaze away. Boorish bum bling camel, thought G ench. Piffling little jackanapes, thought Kosmin. Each wished the other twelve hundred and four light-years distant: which is to say, back on Earth. O r twelve hundred and five light-years. T h e first m an on Sulwen Plain had been James Sulwen, an em bittered Irish N ationalist turned space-wanderer. In his memoirs Sulwen wrote: “T o say I was startled, awed, dumfounded, is like saying th e ocean is wet. O h, b u t it’s a lone­ some place, so far away, so dim and cold, the m ore so for the mystery. I stayed there three days and two nights, taking pic­ tures, wondering about the history, all the histories of the 200

universe. W h a t had happened so long ago? W h a t had brought these strange folk here to die? I became haunted; I had to leave . . Sulwen returned to E arth with his photographs. His discov­ ery was hailed as “the single m ost im portant event in hum an history.” Public interest reached a level of dizzy excitem ent; here was cosmic drama at its m ost vivid: mystery, tragedy, cat­ aclysm. In such a perfervid atm osphere the “Sulwen Planet Survey C om m ission” was nom inated, and instructed to perform a brief investigation upon which a full-scale program of research could be based. N o one thought to point out th at the function of Professor V ictor Kosrnin, in the field of comparative lin­ guistics, and that of Professor Jason G ench, a philologist, over­ lapped. T h e D irector of th e commission was Dr. Lawrence Drewe, Fellow of M athem atical Philosophy at V idm ar Insti­ tute: a mild wry gentlem an, superficially inadequate to the job of controlling the personalities of the other m em bers of the commission. Accom panied by four supply transports with m en, m ateri­ als, and m achinery for th e construction of a perm anent base, the commission departed Earth. 2 Sulwen had understated the desolation of Sulwen’s Plain. A dwarf white sun cast a wan glare double, or possibly triple, the intensity of full m oonlight. Basalt crags rim m ed the plain to north and east. A mile from the base of the crags was the first of the seven wrecked spaceships: a collapsed cylinder of blackand-white m etal two hundred and forty feet long, a hundred and two feet in diam eter. T here were five such hulks. In and o ut of the ships, perfectly preserved in the scant atm osphere of frigid nitrogen, were the corpses of a squat pallid race,

som ething under hum an size, with four arms, each term inat­ ing in two fingers. T h e rem aining two ships, three tim es the length and twice the diam eter of the black-and-white ships, had been conceived and constructed on a larger, more flamboyant, scale. Big Pur­ ple, as it came to be known, was undam aged except for a gash down th e length of its dorsal surface. Big Blue had crashed nose-first to the planet and stood in an attitude of precarious equilibrium , seemingly ready to topple at a touch. T h e design of Big Purple and Big Blue was eccentric, refined, and cap­ tious, implying esthetic in te n t or some analogous quality. These ships were m anned by tall slender blue-black creatures w ith m any-horned heads and delicate pinched faces half­ concealed behind tufts of hair. They became know n as W asps and their enemies, the pale creatures, were labeled Sea Cows, though in neither case was the m etaphor particularly apt. Sulwen Plain had been the site of a terrible battle betw een two spacefaring races: so m uch was clear. T hree questions oc­ curred simultaneously to each of the com m issioners: W h e re did these peoples originate? H ow long ago had the b attle occurred? H ow did th e technology of th e W asps and Sea Cows com ­ pare with th at of Earth? T here was no im m ediate answer to the first question. Sulw en’s Star controlled no other planets. As to th e tim e of th e battle, a first estim ate derived from the deposition of m eteoric dust, suggested a figure of fifty thousand years. M ore accurate determ inations ultim ately p u t th e tim e at sixty-two thousand years. T h e third question was more difficult to answer. In some cases W asp, Sea Cow, and m an had come by different routes to similar ends. In other cases, no comparison was possible. T here was endless speculation as to the course of the battle. T he m ost popular theory envisioned the Sea Cow ships sweep­ 202

ing down upon Sulwen’s Plain to find Big Blue and Big Purple at rest. Big Blue had lifted perhaps half a m ile, only to be crippled and plunge nose first to the surface. Big Purple, with a m ortal gash down the back, apparently had never left the ground. Perhaps other ships had been present; there was no way of knowing. By one agency or another five Sea Cow ships had been destroyed. 3 T he ships from E arth landed on a rise to th e southeast of the battlefield, where James Sulwen originally had p u t down. T h e commissioners, debarking in their out-suits, walked out to th e nearest Sea Cow ship: Sea Cow D , as it becam e known. Sulwen’s Star hung low to th e horizon, casting a stark pallid light. Long black shadows lay across the putty-colored plain. T h e commissioners studied the ruptured ship, inspected the twisted Sea Cow corpses, then Sulwen’s Star dropped below the horizon. Instant darkness came to the plain, and the com­ missioners, looking often over their shoulders, returned to their own ship. A fter the evening meal, D irector Drewe addressed the group: “T his is a preliminary survey. I reiterate because we are scientists: we w ant to know! W e are n ot so m uch interested in planning research as in th e research itself. W ell— we m ust practice restraint. For m ost of you, these wrecks will occupy m any years to come. I myself, alas! am a formalist, a m athe­ matical theorist, and as such will be denied such an opportu­ nity. W ell, then, my personal problem s aside: Tem porarily we m ust resign ourselves to ignorance. T h e mystery will rem ain a mystery, unless Professor G ench or Professor Kosmin instantly is able to read one of the languages.” H ere Drewe chuckled; he had intended the rem ark jocularly. N oticing the quick, suspi­ cious glance exchanged by G ench and Kosmin, he decided th at the rem ark had not been tactful. “For a day or two I suggest a 203

casual inspection of the project, to orient ourselves. T here is no pressure on us; we will achieve m ore if we relax, and try to achieve a wide-angle view of the situation. A nd by all means, everyone be careful of the big blue ship. I t looks as if it m ight topple at a breath!” Professor G ench smiled bitterly. H e was th in as a shrike, w ith a gaunt crooked face, a crag of a forehead, a black angry gaze. “ 'N o pressure on us,’ ” he thought. “W h a t a joke!” “ 'Relax!’ ” thought Kosrnin, with a sardonic tw itch of the lips. “W ith th at preposterous G ench underfoot? Pah!” In contrast to G ench, Kosrnin was massive, alm ost portly, w ith a big pale face, a tu ft of yellow hair. His cheekbones were heavy, his forehead narrow and back-sloping. H e m ade no effort to project an ingratiating personality; no more so did G ench. Of th e two, G ench was perhaps the more gregarious, b u t his ap­ proach to any situation, social or professional, tended to be sharp and doctrinaire. “I will perform some quick and brilliant exposition,” G ench decided. “I m ust p u t Kosrnin in his place.” “O ne m an eventually will direct the linguistics program ,” m used Kosmin. “W h o b u t a comparative linguist?” Drewe concluded his remarks. “I need hardly urge all to caution. Be careful of your footing; do not venture into closed areas. You naturally will be wearing out-suits; check your re­ generators and energy levels before leaving the ship; keep your com m unications channels open at all times. A nother m atter: let us try to disturb conditions as little as possible. This is a m onum ental job, there is no point rushing forth, worrying at it like a dog with a rag. W ell, then: a good n ight’s rest and tomorrow, have at it!” 4 T h e commissioners stepped out upon the dreary surface of the plain, approached the wrecked ships. T h e closest a t hand 204

was Sea Cow D, a black-and-white vessel, battered, broken, littered w ith pale corpses. T h e m etallurgists touched analyzers to various sections of hull and m achinery reading off alloy compositions; the biologists w ent to examine the corpses; the physicists and technicians peered into the engine com part­ m ents, marveling at the engineering of an alien race. G ench, walking under the hulk, found a strip of w hite fiber, covered w ith rows of queer smears. As he lifted it, th e fiber, brittle from cold and age, fell to pieces. Kosrnin, noticing, shook his head critically. “Precisely what you m ust not do!” he told G ench. “A valuable piece of infor­ m ation is lost forever.” G ench drew his lips back across his teeth. “ So m uch is selfevident. Since the basic responsibility is m ine, you need n o t trouble yourself with doubts or anxieties.” Kosmin ignored G ench’s remarks as if he had never spoken. “ In the future, please do n o t move or disturb an im portant item w ithout consulting m e.” G ench turned a withering glare upon his ponderous col­ league. “As I interpret th e scope of your work, you are to com ­ pare the languages after I have deciphered them . You are thus happily able to indulge your curiosity w ithout incurring any im m ediate responsibility.” Kosmin did not trouble to refute G ench’s proposition. “Please disturb no further data. You have carelessly destroyed an artifact. C onsult me before you touch anything.” A nd he moved off across the plain toward Big Purple. G ench, hissing betw een his teeth, hesitated, then hastened in pursuit. Left to his own devices, Kosmin was capable of any excess. G ench told himself, “Tw o can play th at game!” M ost of the group now stood about Big Purple, which, enorm ous and alm ost undamaged, dom inated Sulwen Plain. T h e hull was a rough-textured lavender substance striped with four horizontal bands of corroded m etal: apparently a com po­ 205

n e n t of th e drive-system. O nly a powdering of dust and crys­ tals of frozen gas gave an intim ation of its great age. T h e commissioners walked around the hull, b u t the ports were sealed. T h e only access was by the gash along the top surface. A m etallurgist found an exterior ladder welded to the hull: he tested th e rungs: they seemed sound. W h ile all w atched he clim bed to the ruptured spine of the ship, gave a jaunty wave of the hand and disappeared. G ench glanced covertly at Kosmin, who was considering the handholds with lips pursed in distaste. G ench m arched for­ ward and clim bed the ladder. Kosmin started as if he had been stung. H e grimaced, took a step forward, p u t one of his big legs on the first rung. Drewe came forward to counsel caution. "B etter not risk it, Professor Kosmin; why take chances? I ’ll have technicians open th e port, th en we all can enter in safety. W e are in no haste, none whatever.” Kosmin thought, “You’re in no haste, of course not! And while you dither, th a t stick-insect in hum an form walks inside preem pting th e best of everything!” T his indeed was G cnch’s intent. Clam bering down through the torn hull with his dome-light on, he found him self in a marvelous environm ent of shapes and colors which could only be characterized, if tritely, by the word “weird.” * C ertain functional details resembled those of E arth ships, b u t with odd distortions and differences of proportion th a t were subtly jarring. “Naturally, and to be expected,” G ench told himself. “W e alter environm ent to th e convenience of our needs: the length of our tread, the reach of our arms, th e sensitivity of ¢ In Drewe’s book Sulwen’s Planet he remarked: “Color is color and shape is shape; it would seem incorrect to speak of human shape and human color, and W a sp shape and W a sp color; but somehow, by some means, the distinction exists. Call me a mystic if you like . . .” 206

our retinas, m any other considerations. And these other races, likewise . . . Fascinating . . . I suspect th at a m an, con­ fined for any length of tim e in this strange ship, m ight becom e seriously disturbed, if n ot deranged.” W ith great interest G ench inspected the W asp corpses which lay sprawled along the corridors: blue-black husks, chitinous surfaces still glossy where dust had not settled. H ow long would corpses remain unaltered, G ench wondered. Forever? W h y not? A t 100° K, in an inert atm osphere, it was difficult to imagine changes occur­ ring except those stim ulated by cosmic rays . . . B ut to work. N o tim e now for speculation! H e had stolen a m arch 011 the torpid Kosmin, and he m eant to m ake the m ost of it. O ne encouraging m atter: there was no lack of writing. Ev­ erywhere were signs, plaques, notices in angular interweaving lines which at first glance offered no hope of decipherm ent. G ench was pleased rather than otherwise. T h e task would be challenging, b u t with the aid of com puters, pattern-recogniz­ ing devices, keys, and correlations derived from a study of the context in which the symbols occurred (here indeed lay the decipherer’s basic contribution to the process) the language eventually would be elucidated. A nother m atter: aboard a ship of this size there m ight well exist not only a library, b u t rosters, inventories, service manuals pertaining to the various m echanism s: a wealth of material! A nd G ench saw his prob­ lem to be, n o t the decipherm ent, b u t the presence of Professor Kosmin. G ench shook his head fretfully. A dam nable nuisance! H e m ust have a word with D irector Drewe. Kosmin perhaps could be assigned to another task: indexing m aterial to be trans­ shipped to Earth, som ething of the sort. G ench proceeded through the corridors and levels of Big Purple, trying to locate either a central repository of w ritten materials or, failing this, th e control center. B ut the ship’s ar­

chitecture was n o t instantly com prehensible and G ench was initially unsuccessful. W andering back and forth, he found him self in w hat appeared to be a storage hold, stacked with cases and cartons, then, descending a ramp, he came to the base level and an entry foyer. T h e port had been forced; com ­ missioners and technicians were passing in and out. G ench halted in disgust, then returned the way he had come: through th e storage hold, along corridors, up and down ramps. H e began m eeting other m em bers of the commission, and hurried his steps to such an extent th a t his colleagues turned to look after him in surprise. A t last h e came to the control room, though it bore no resemblance to the corresponding office of any E arth ship, and in fact G ench had passed through before w ithout recognizing its function. Professor Kosmin, already on hand, glanced around at G ench, then resum ed th e exam ination of w hat appeared to be a large book. G ench m arched indignantly forward. “Professor Kosmin, I prefer th a t you do not disturb the source materials, or move them , as th e context in which they are found may be im por­ tan t.” Kosmin gave G ench a m ild glance and returned to his scru­ tiny of the book. “Please be extremely careful,” said Professor G ench. “ If any materials are damaged through m ishandling— well, they are ir­ replaceable.” G ench stepped forward. Kosmin moved slightly, b u t somehow contrived to thrust his ample haunch into G ench, and thus barred his way. G ench glared at his colleague’s back, then turned and de­ parted the chamber. H e sought o ut D irector Drewe. “D irector, may I have a word with you?” “C ertainly.” 208

“ I fear th at my investigations, and indeed the success <>! the entire translation program, are being com prom ised by I lie eon duct of Professor Kosmin, who insists upon intruding into my scope of operation. I am sorry to trouble you with a plaint of this sort, b u t I feel th at a decisive act now 011 youi pari will enorm ously facilitate my work.” D irector Drewe sighed. “Professor Kosmin has taken a simi lar position. Som ething m ust be done. W h ere is he now?” “ In the control chamber, thum bing through an absolutely vital elem ent of the investigation, as if it were a discarded mag­ azine.” Drewe and G ench walked toward the control chamber. G ench said, “I suggest th a t you use Professor Kosmin in some adm inistrative capacity: logging, indexing, com pilation, or the like, until th e translation program is sufficiently advanced th at he may employ his specialized talents. As of now—ha, ha!— there are no languages for him to com pare!” Drewe m ade no com m ent. In the control room they found Kosmin still absorbed in the book. “W h a t have we here?” inquired Drewe. “H m m . U m ph . . . A highly im portant find. I t appears to be— I may be over-optimistic— a dictionary, a word-book, a correspondence betw een the languages of the two races.” “If this is the case,” declared G ench, “I had better take charge of it at once.” Drewe heaved a deep sigh. “G entlem en, temporarily, at any rate, we m ust arrange a division of function so th at neither you, Professor Kosmin, nor you, Professor G ench, are ham ­ pered. T here are two races here, two languages. Professor Kosmin, which of the two interests you the more profoundly?” “T h a t is difficult to say,” rum bled Kosmin. “I am not yet acquainted with either.” “W h a t about you, Professor G ench?” 209

W ith his eyes fixed on the book, G ench said, “M y first em ­ phasis will be upon the records of this ship, though naturally, when th e inquiry is expanded and I assemble a staff, I will devote equal effort to the other ships.” “Bah!” declared Kosmin, w ith as m uch emphasis as he ever perm itted himself. “ I will work first a t this ship,” he told Drewe. “ I t is m ore convenient. O n th e other hand, I would wish to insure th at source m aterial elsewhere is handled com ­ petently. I have already reported the loss of one irreplaceable record.” Drewe nodded. “ It seems th at there is no possibility of agreem ent, let alone cooperation. V ery well.” H e picked up a small m etal disk. “W e will consider this a coin. T his side with the two nicks we will call heads. T h e other will be tails. Pro­ fessor G ench, be so good as to call heads or tails while the disk is in the air. If you call correctly, you may concentrate your research on the two large ships.” H e tossed the disk. “H eads,” called Gench. “T h e coin is tails,” said Drewe. “Professor G ench, you will survey th e five black-and-white ships. Professor Kosmin, your responsibility will be the two larger ships. T his seems a fair division of effort, and neither will inconvenience the other.” Kosmin m ade a guttural sound. G ench scowled and b it his lip. N either was satisfied with the decision. W ith each familiar with only half of th e program, a third m an m ight be ap­ pointed to supervise and coordinate the labors of both. Drewe said, “You both m ust rem em ber th a t this is a survey expedition. W h a t is required are suggestions as to how the re­ search should be perform ed, n ot the research itself.” Kosmin turned to examine th e book he had found. G ench threw his hands in the air and strode furiously away. 210

5

T h e season seemed to be summ er. Sulwen’s Star, a glitter­ ing sequin, rose far to the southeast, slanted up into the northern sky, slanted back down into the southwest, and black shadows shifted in consonance around the wrecked hulks. T h e construction crews erected a pair of polyhedric bubbles and th e commission moved into m ore com fortable quarters. O n the fourth evening, as Sulwen’s Star touched the edge of the plain, Drewe called his fellow-commissioners together. “By now,” he said, “I th ink we all have come to grips with the situation. I myself have done little b u t wander here and there. In fact, I fear I am b u t excess baggage on th e expedi­ tion. W ell— as I have said before— enough of m y personal hopes and fears. W h a t have we learned? T here seems a consensus th a t both races were technically m ore advanced than ourselves, though this may only be an intuition, a guess. As to their relative level— who knows? B ut let us have an in­ ventory, an assessment of our m utual findings.” T h e physicists expressed astonishm ent at the radically different solutions to the problem of space-drive reached by th e three races: m an, Sea Cow, and W asp. T h e chemists spec­ ulated as to the probable atm osphere breathed by W asp and Sea Cow, and com m ented upon some of the new com pounds they had encountered aboard the ships. T h e engineers were som ew hat nonplussed, having noticed unorthodox systems n o t readily susceptible to analysis which could n o t be dis­ missed out of hand as th e result of incom petence. T h e bio­ chemists could provide no im m ediate insight into the m eta­ bolic processes of either W asp or Sea Cow. D rew e called for an opinion on the languages, and the pos­ sibility of translation. Professor G ench rose to his feet, cleared his throat, only to hear th e hated voice of Professor Kosmin 211

issuing from another quarter of the room. “As of yet,” said Kosmin, “I have given little attention to the Sea Cow lan­ guage or system of writing. T h e W asps, so I have learned from Professor H idem an and D octor M iller, lack vocal cords, or equivalent organs. They seem to have produced sound by a scraping of certain bony parts behind a resonating m em brane. T h eir conversation, it has been suggested, sounded like a cheap violin played by an idiot child.” A nd Kosmin gave one of his rare oily chuckles. “T h e writing corresponds to this ‘speech’ m uch as hum an writing corresponds to hum an speech. In other words, a vibrating, fluctuating sound is tran­ scribed by a vibrating, fluctuating line: a difficult language to decipher. Naturally, not impossible. I have m ade one very im ­ p ortant find: a com pendium or dictionary of Sea C ow pictographs referred to their equivalent in the W asp w ritten system — a proof, incidentally, th a t the work of translating both lan­ guages m ust be entrusted to a single agency, and I will form u­ late a scheme to this end. I welcome the help of all of you; if anyone notices a clear-cut correspondence betw een symbol and idea, please call it to my attention. I have entrusted to Professor G ench the first cursory examination of the Sea Cow ships, b u t as of yet I have n ot checked through his findings.” Kosmin continued a few m inutes longer, then Drewe called on Professor G ench for his report. G ench leaped to his feet, lips twitching. H e spoke w ith great care. “T h e program Profes­ sor Kosmin m entions is naturally standard procedure. Professor Kosmin, a com parator of known languages, may well be ex­ cused for ignorance of deciphering techniques. W ith two such difficult languages no one need feel shame— ha, ha!— for working beyond his depth. T h e dictionary m entioned by Pro­ fessor Kosmin is a valuable item indeed and I suggest th at D i­ rector Drewe p ut it into safe custody or entrust it into my care. W e cannot risk its abuse by untrained am ateurs and dilet­ 212

tantes. I am pressing my search for a similar com pendium aboard the Sea Cow ships. “ I would like to announce a small b u t significant accnm plishm ent. I have established th e Sea Cow numerical system and it is m uch like our own. A n unbroken black rectangle e. zero. A single bar is one. A cross-bar is two. An inverted ir. conventionalized perhaps from a triangle, is three. A digit re sem bling our own two is th e Sea Cow four. A nd so on. IVi haps Professor Kosmin has established the W asp num eia tion?” Kosmin, who had been listening w ithout expression, said, "I have been busy with the work for which I was appointed: the form ation and supervision of a decipherm ent program. N um bers at th e m om ent are no great m atter.” “I will look over your form ulations,” said G ench. “ If any aspects seem well conceived I will include them in the master program I am preparing. H ere I wish to u tter a testim onial to Professor Kosmin. H e was urged into the commission against his better judgm ent, he was assigned a task for which he had no training; nonetheless he has uncom plainingly done his best, even though he is anxious to return to E arth and the work he so generously interrupted in our behalf.” A nd G ench, w ith a grin and bob of the head, bowed toward Kosmin. From th e other m em bers of the commission came a spatter of dubi­ ous applause. Kosmin rose ponderously to his feet. “T hank you, Professor G ench.” H e reflected a m om ent. “I have not heard any report on the condition of Big Blue. I t seems precariously balanced, b u t on the other hand it has rem ained in stasis for thousands of years. I wonder if there has been any decision as to the fea­ sibility of boarding this ship?” H e peered toward the engi­ neers. D irector Drewe responded: “I don’t think there has been 213

any definite verdict here. For the present I think we had better stand clear of it.” “ U nfortunate,” said Kosmin. “I t appears th a t th e damage suffered by Big Purple destroyed th at cham ber which served as a repository of w ritten materials. T h e corresponding location of Big Blue by some freak is quite undamaged, and I am anx­ ious to investigate.” G ench sat kneading his long chin. “ In due course, in due course,” said Drewe. “Yes, Professor G ench?” G ench frowned down at his hands. H e spoke slowly, “ It may interest the commission to learn th at aboard Sea Cow B, the ship north of Big Purple, I have located just such a reposi­ tory of Sea Cow docum ents, though I haven’t checked the contents yet. T his repository is in Room Eleven on the second deck from ground level and seems to be the only such reposi­ tory undam aged.” “ Interesting news,” said Drewe, squinting sidelong toward G ench. “ Interesting indeed. W ell, then, to th e drive techni­ cians: what, offhand, do you make of the W asp and Sea Cow space-drives, vis-à-vis each other and our own?” T h e m eeting lasted another hour. D irector Drewe m ade a final announcem ent. “O ur primary goal has alm ost been achieved, and unless there is a pressing reason to the contrary, I think th a t we will start back to E arth in two days. Kindly base your thinking upon this tim etable.”

6 T h e following m orning Professor G ench continued his in­ vestigations aboard Sea Cow B. A t lunch he appeared highly excited. “I believe I have located a W asp-Sea Cow com pen­ dium in Room Eleven of Sea Cow B! An amazing docum ent! T his afternoon I m ust check Sea Cow E for a similar store­ room .” 214

Professor Kosmin, sitting two cables distant, lowered his head over his plate. 7 G ench seemed som ew hat nervous, and his fingers trem bled as he zipped himself into his out-suit. H e stepped out upon the plain. Directly overhead glittered Sulwen’s Star: T h e wrecked ships stood like models, w ithout hum an reality or rel­ evance. Sea Cow E lay a mile to the south. G ench m arched stiffly across th e plain, from tim e to tim e glancing back at other per­ sonnel, unidentifiable in out-suits. His course took him past Big Blue and he veered so as to pass close under the great broken ship. H e turned another quick glance over his shoul­ der: no one in his field of vision. H e glanced up at the precari­ ously balanced hulk. “Safe? Safe as jelly-bread.” H e stepped through a gap in the hull, into a picturesque tangle of girders, plates, m em branes, and fibers. Professor Kosmin, watching G ench veer toward Big Blue, nodded: three jerks of the massive head. “W ell, then. N ow we shall see, we shall see.” H e walked n orth toward Sea Cow B, and presently stood by the crushed hull. “T h e entrance? Yes . . . T o the second deck th en . . . Surprising architecture. W h a t peculiar coloring . . . H m m . Room Eleven. T h e n u ­ merals are clear enough. T his is the one, the single bar. And here th e two.” Kosmin proceeded along th e corridor. “Six . . . seven . . . Strange. T en. W h e re is eight and nine? W ell, no m atter. U nlucky num bers perhaps. H ere is ten and here eleven. A ha.” Kosmin pushed aside th e panel and entered C ham ber Eleven.

8 Sulwen’s Star slanted down to the gray horizon and past; darkness came instantly to the plain. N either G ench nor 215

Kosmin appeared for the evening meal. T h e steward called D irector Drew e’s attention to the fact. Drewe considered the two em pty seats. “ I suppose we m ust send o ut to find them . Professor G ench will no doubt be ex­ ploring Big Blue. I presum e we will find Professor Kosmin hard at work in Sea Cow B.” 9 Professor G ench had suffered a broken collar-bone, contu­ sions, and shock from the blow of the heavy beam which Pro­ fessor Kosmin— so G ench claimed— had arranged to fall upon whoever m ight enter Big Blue’s control cabin. “N o t so!” boom ed Professor Kosmin, both of whose legs had been broken as a result of his fall through the floor of C ham ber Eleven on the second deck of Sea Cow B. “You were warned expressly n o t to set foot in Big Blue. H ow could I set a trap in a place you were forbidden to visit? W h a t of the detestable pitfall by which you hoped to kill me? Aha, b u t I am too strong for you! I caught the floor and broke my fall! I survived your worst!” “You survive your own stupidity,” sneered G ench. “ Sea Cows, w ith two fingers on each of four arms, use base eight in their enum erations. You w ent into C ham ber N ine, n o t C ham ber Eleven. A person as obtuse and as m urderous as yourself has no place in the field of science! I am lucky to be alive!” “W e re my legs sound I would tread upon you for the roach you are!” shouted Professor Kosmin. D irector Drewe intervened. “G entlem en, calm yourselves. Reproaches are futile; remorse is m ore appropriate. You m ust realize th at neither of you will head the decipherm ent pro­ gram .” “ Indeed? And why not?” snorted Gench. 216

“ U nder the circumstances I fear th at I can recom m end nei­ th er of you.” “T hen who will be appointed?” dem anded Kosmin. “T h e field is not crowded with able m en.” Drewe shrugged. “As a m athem atician, I may say th a t deci­ phering appeals to me as a fascinating exercise in logic. I m ight be persuaded to accept the post myself. T o be candid, it is probably my only chance for continued association w ith the project.” D irector Drewe bowed politely and left the room. Professor G ench and Professor Kosmin were silent for sev­ eral m inutes. T h en G ench said, “Peculiar. V ery peculiar in­ deed. I arranged no pitfall in C ham ber N ine. I adm it I had noted th at the panel could be opened from one direction only, from th e corridor . . . A person venturing into C ham ber N ine m ight find himself in a hum iliating position . . . Strange.” “H m m ,” rum bled Kosmin. “Strange indeed . . .” T here was another period of silence as the two m en re­ flected. T hen Kosmin said, “ O f course I am n o t altogether innocent. I conceived th a t if you ventured into Big Blue against orders you would incur a reprim and. I propped up no beam .” “M ost peculiar,” said Professor G ench. “A puzzling situa­ tion . . . A possibility suggests itself— ” “Yes?” “W h y kill us?” “T o th e m athem atical m ind the m ost elegant solution is the sim plest,” reflected Professor Kosmin. “A canceling of the unknow ns,” m used Professor Gench.

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