DO YOU KNOW WHAT WOULD HAPPEN ...

IF: All the Television sets went blank?

IF: Atomic war became a reality?

IF: The last People on Earth were father and three daughters?

IF: The Civil Rights issue became a hot, all out war?

IF: A racer had to kill people as well as get to the finish line first?

IF: In a far future world man had forgotten science?

IF: The world were over-populated and the old people had to be done away with like old dogs?

IF: All crime were outlawed by a machine which could warn the authorities before the crime was committed?

Do you wonder what your life in 1977 and beyond will be like?

The possible answers to all these questions, and many more, are offered here, in a series of exciting, and sometimes frightening, stories by some of the top science fiction writers of the world.

by Charles Nuetzel

WHODUNIT?

HOLLYWOOD STYLE

(BOOK CO. OF AMERICA 008)

IF  THIS GOES  ON

edited by

Charles Nuetzel

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

THE TEST by Richard Matheson, Copyright November 1954 by Fantasy House, reprinted by permission of the Harold Mat-son Company, Inc.

THE EARTH KILLERS by A. E. Van Vogt, Copyright 1949 by Fictioneers, Inc.; 1964 by A. E. Van Vogt.

THE RACER by lb Melchior, Copyright 1956 by Dee Publishing Co.

ALL THE TROUBLES OF THE WORLD by Isaac Asimov, Copyright 1958 by Headline Publications, Inc.

FRIENDS AND ENEMIES by Fritz Leiber, Copyright 1957 by Fritz Leiber. Reprinted from Infinity.

NO LAND OF NOD by Sherwood Springer, Copyright 1952 by Standard Magazines, Inc.; 1953 by Sam Mines.

A VERY CULTURED TASTE by George Frederic, Copyrighted by Billingsley Publications 1960.

THE MUTE QUESTION by Forrest J. Ackerman, Copyrighted 1948, David Maclnnes; 1950, Clark Publishing Co.; 1951, Ken-dell Foster Crossen; 1953, The Bodley Head Ltd.; 1964, A. Van Hageland.

HOMO SAP by Charles Nuetzel, printed by permission of author.

AQUELLA by Donald A. Wollheim, Copyright 1942 by Fictioneers, Inc.; 1948, Avon Publishing Co., Inc.

THE CLIMBING WAVE by Marion Zimmer Bradley, by permission of Scott Meredith, author's agent.

ALMOST THE END OF THE WORLD by Ray Bradbury, Copyrighted 1964 by Ray Bradbury, from his THE MACHINERIES OF JOY.

YOUR LIFE IN 1977 by Willy Ley, copyright by Willy Ley, reprinted by permission of author.

PREPOSTEROUS by Fredric Brown, copyright 1954 by Fred-ric Brown, by permission of Scott Meredith, author's agent.

To my parents—

Who lived through the younger years.

To my wife, Brigitte—

Who has helped to make all this possible.

INTRODUCTION

byForrest 3. Ackerman

TfhiS is the first science fiction anthology edited by Charles Nuetzel. To the majority of you the name will mean nothing—yet. He does not have the anthological reputation of a Groff Conklin, a Fred Pohl, a Don Woll-heim.

In fact, if anything, you may confuse him with Albert Nuetzell, and ask, "What is an artist doing putting together a story collection?" As tho Finlay or Emsh or Bonestell suddenly blossomed out as story-selecters after establishing reputations as brush-wielders.

Charles Nuetzel is, in fact, the son of the sci-fi artist whose work has graced the covers of imaginative magazines from Amazing Stories to Famous Monsters of Filmland and reached across the sea to Sweden & Germany. Father Nuetzell spells the name with an extra "1" for artistic esthetics, originally began painting otherworldly & otherwhenly pictures because young son wanted a sci-fi artist for a pop!

Nuetzel the younger has been an s.f. fan since his early teens. When I first made his acquaintance; about a dozen years ago, I should imagine; he was the sparkplug of a science fiction fan club in one of the suburban towns surrounding Los Angeles, out around Tarzana. As a matter of fact he was a great Burroughs enthusiast and among ERB fans can claim the distinction of having

acquired the last couple of books ever autographed by Barsoom's gift to the planet Jasoom.

Early in his career as a fan, Nuetzel published at least 2 articles by or about 2 of the contributors to this present volume—A. Elton van Vogt & F. James Ackerman ... better known as "AE" & "FJA".

A natural born fiction factory, young Nuetzel has turned out a torrent of words in his early 20s, writing & selling 30 novels and around 100 short stories & articles under about as many pseudonyms as the late Henry Kuttner. He chums out salable pocketbooks in about 20 hours. One of the latter, Lovers: 2075, is science fiction, "a startling & exciting book which takes the reader into the courtrooms of the 21st century and exposes the degenerate single-mindedness of human hate for something it does not understand"—hate, in this case, for the androids of Ersatz, Inc. When Nuetzel heard Naomi Gordon, the songwriter, discussing the philosophical-sociological implications of his ersatz-culture in the same breath with Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" concepts, he decided he had better devote more serious attention to the science fiction side of the writing field.

In putting together this anthology, Charlie tells me, he set aside several times as many excellent stories as he has selected. For instance, either of Fritz Leiber's frightening dystopias of kill-car cultures, "Ctorning Attraction" or "X Marks the Pedwalk", would have fitted admirably into the anthology but at the expense of lb Melchior's slickly told (it should be: it came from the slick pages of one of the upper-echelon Playboy-type magazines) "The Racer". My, how time flies! (to express the perhaps one unoriginal thought in this book)— it is nearly 10 years since I first read "The Racer" in manuscript form. But 2 lustrums have not served to erase the lustre of this grease-slick story in my memory—and I predict it will stick in yours with all the thrill of an Indianapolis classic with yourself at the shift-stick!

"The Test" by Richard Matheson is another story that has stood the test of time since 1954 when editor Anthony Boucher first said of it when presenting it in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction: "It treats, poignantly

& perceptively, a many-valued human problem to which even the advanced future will find no simple answer." The Esquimaux have a cold equation solution; S. Fowler Wright wrote a whole novel on the subject in The Adventure of Wyndham Smith, about a world of the future accustomed to euthanasia.

"I'll prophecy that Mrs. Bradley will soon be a Name of considerable importance," predicted Anthony Boucher in introducing "The Climbing Wave", the novella featured on the cover of the Feb. '55 FdcSF, and he predicted well. With 4 pocketbooks now to her credit from Ace, Marion, who recently changed the Bradley to Breen and became the mother of a science fiction author of 1985, is more & more frequently mentioned in the same breath with such feminine aces of science fiction as Leigh Brackett, Andre Norton & Catherine Moore.

In 1953 Sherwood Springer's "No Land of Nod" was anthologized in the hard cover collection, The Best from Startling Stories, which was a good trick considering the story was originally published in Thrilling Wonder Stories. (However, TWS was a companion to Startling, under the same editorship, so we won't quibble.) A taboo-breaker in its time, "No Land of Nod" followed Philip Jose" Farmer's breakthru neoclassic, "The Lovers", and of it readers said:

"A splendid piece of work. Never have I come across such a wonderful statement. What realism and what a great lesson it bears."—Walter Scott, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. After reading s.f. magazines for 20 years, Big Name Fan Don Ford broke down and wrote his first letter because of the story, saying "I do want to let you know that I appreciated what you have done in printing 'No Land of Nod'. I don't consider it the best story I have ever read or anything like that; but I do consider it a milestone in the steps toward breaking down the taboos of the pulp field." Gregg Calkins: "Absolutely outstanding." And no less a giant than Theodore Sturgeon devoted approximately 800 words to the trail-blazer, critical that it had not been daring enough, yet laudatory that Springer had made the attempt at all.

My own little 400-worder has proven to be the most popular piece of fiction I ever wrote. I originally gave it away to a fanzine. Ray Palmer later paid me the magnificent sum of $4 for its first professional publication in Other Worlds. Anthologist Kendell Foster Crossen did better (by 21 bucks) when he picked it up and used it to follow Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains" in Adventures in Tomorrow. It was reprinted in the British edition of the latter and republished in the English Authentic Science Fiction magazine. It was published in Mexico in Los Cuentos Fantásticos, under the pseudonym of Nick Beal. It was translated into French by Francine Sternberg and, if I recall correctly, reprinted one Sunday in the New York Post. My greatest triumph was one day when I was in an automobile with a motion picture producer (he later made Heinlein's PROJECT MOON-BASE) and he, little dreaming that I was the author of it, quoted me the punchline of "The Mute Question" as tho it were an especially witty saying he had just made up on the spur of the moment! And when Famous Monsters was born, I appropriated my own punchline as a garfiñe for captioning a foto of one of the mutants from WORLD WITHOUT END.

The other shortest story in this collection, Fred Brown's "Preposterous", is a kind of parallel world version of Heinlein's slightly longer "Columbus Was a Dope".

Speaking of Heinlein, I am told that the title of this anthology does not derive from his famous novel of the same name (whose working title 'way back in '39 was "Vine & Fig Tree") but that Nuetzel does give a nod in the direction of the master Hugo-winner. If there is a companion to this present volume, as I have reason to believe there will be, I shall strongly urge the inclusion of "The Discovery of the Future", the speech made by Guest of Honor Heinlein at the 3d World Science Fiction Convention in 1941, and still the greatest speech I have ever heard in a quarter century of s.f. conven-tioneering—matched only by Heinlein's address his second time around as Guest of Honor 20 years later on.

It is fitting & proper that Isaac Asimov should be represented in this collection for he was in the vanguard of sociological science fiction when his "Trends" set a trend for "gozon" stories when it first appeared in the July 1939 Astounding Science-Fiction. I remember reading it on the train on my way to the First World Science Fiction Convention over the 4th of July. Among other things it prophesied the beginning of World War 2 in 1940. As we know now, the fireworks for the USA began on 7 Dec. '41, ending in the mightiest military pyrotechni-cal display of all time with the nuclear explosions at war's end. There is included in this collection a story, "Almost the End of the World", by Ray Bradbury, who was with me in New York at that first coming together of the s.f. clan, and for young Bradbury it was the beginning of a new world, a world he has done wond'rous well in conquering with a cornucopia of ensorcelled words & concepts in the ensuing quarter century.

But I had not said all I wished to say about Asimov, which was this: it would be unfitting & improper to overlook including "Ike" in this anthology, for statistics just recently released in WRCole's masterwork, A Checklist of Science Fiction Anthologies, establish the good doctor as the most anthologized sci-fi author, with a fabulous 56 (now make that 57) stories to his credit.

In the beginning (1946) when sci-fi authors started to sprout like dragon's teeth, their compilers. were content to simply present great selections of s.f., such as Adventures in Time & Space (Healy & McComas), The Best of Science Fiction (Conklin) and soon the Annual Bests. Then Martin Greenberg introduced the theme-anthologies {Men Against the Stars, The Robot and the Man, etc.). Now Nuetzel, an untried quantity in the anthology arena, enters the lists with an impressive list of names and the integrity to pick quality even if the name be not among the Top Ten. If this comes off, and this goes 'on, Nuetzel will become a name to reckon with in the sci-fi field.

The easiest—and most pleasurable—way to make up your mind is to read the selected stories herewith presented.

Forrest J. Ackerman 22 December 1964 Los Angeles 90035

PREFACE

Even before the Atomic Bomb was exploded in 1945 to bring a final end to a long and bloody war, many of the writers in this book were already on their way to becoming nationally and internationally famous as predictors of the future. Not that they made any serious attempt to actually predict what would happen five, fifty or fifty-five million years in the future, but they had in the process of inventing new ideas for a loyal and devoted reading public automatically hit upon many events, inventions and trends which would, in the much nearer future than they could have imagined, come true.

A short time before the Atomic Bomb became public information, one author and magazine was investigated by the FBI because it was believed that a leak had sprung in the tight security wall around the Manhattan Project. The story in question had described the atomic bomb so closely that the government was sure that secret information was being channeled out to foreign nations. They hadto plug the leak up. The editor, John Campbell, Jr., pointed out that if he stopped publishing atomic bomb stories it would be all too obvious what had happened, since science fiction writers had been talking about such .bombs for decades!

In the early fifties, scientists were advising the government to start a space program, and there were some rumors that government officials were actually consider

ing a Space Station project, but nothing happened. Scientists were told, officially, to forget their science fiction ideas and get down to reality.

Two years before the Russians beat the U.S. to the punch, we had the actual equipment necessary to put up a satellite, but again the scientists in question were told to forget their science fiction dreaming and come down to earth. Two years later in 1957, the world was rocked on its ears when the USSR beat the United States in making the first step into outer space. In desperation, the government turned to those very scientists they had been snubbing so long, and begged for fast help, to save our national face. Within a month of being given a go-ahead, the United States had made a "Me too" statement, one which had been repeated time and again, all because there were not enough people listening to advanced thinking, to the scientists!

Today, finally, we are beginning to struggle to our feet, attempting to climb out of the cloud of ignorance and put up a good fight to show off what the American people and government is able to do to advance man toward the stars.

We are catching up. We are even making a few vital "firsts" which have managed to get international recognition.

The public is now alive to the simple facts which some of the authors represented here knew about years in advance, because their thinking, their oudooks, their dreams, were searching out toward the future, looking for worlds yet to be. They looked at the trends of the day and asked, "If this goes on, what will happen?"

Some of the questions have been obvious, especially since the first A-bomb dropping over Japan. What would happen if we have an Atomic War, the kind which will wipe out civilization, which will finish off Mankind. Because the question is so vital, so important to everybody living in the world today, almost every writer has touched upon the subject of an all-out Atomic War. In this collection there are several such stories, besides the outstanding NO LAND OF NOD. George Frederic's A VERY CULTURED TASTE, Forrest J. Ackerman's

PREFACE

THE MUTE QUESTION, my own THE HOMO SAP, touch upon the theme in their own different ways.

But Atomic War is not the only possible future which we might face.

As Isaac Asimov's ALL THE TROUBLES OF THE WORLD so nicely points out, there might be a world in which a machine could predict any crime, long before it happened! But what about the machine? Could there be such a device? Mechanical brains are already a reality. Yet they have been in "existence" in the science-fiction magazines for decades. So who can tell? Mr. Asimov created what is now known as the "Three Laws of Robotics", a "fact" which is accepted by many science fiction writers when they deal with the final and most sophisticated form of mechanical brain—the robot.

Yet it is not the desire to introduce each story here; this is not, in any way or form, an introduction. The stories will have to speak for themselves.

Here we set the tone, indicate the direction, point the path which was taken in picking out the stories for this science-fiction anthology.

It has been our desire to present a collection of ideas, thoughts, concepts, and suggest not only possible outcomes to modern-day trends, but to examine some of the ideals and attitudes of our present day through the eyes of possible future worlds, created by some of the masters of imaginative social science-fiction.

From THE TEST by Richard Matheson, through YOUR LIFE IN 1977 by Willy Ley, to the last story PREPOSTEROUS by Fredric Brown, every attempt has been made to find material which would not only be thoughtful in its approach, or artistic, as with Ray Bradbury's ALMOST THE END OF THE WORLD, but also entertaining

Each author here has looked at today, seen something which forces him to ask, "If this goes on what will be the end result?" and then has written a story which attempts to answer that question.

I wish to extend my personal thanks to Mr. Science Fiction, Mr. Monster himself, Forrest J. Ackerman, who has over the years taken the time to help me, among so many others, to find my way through the jungle of tangled difficulties which stand between the amateur and professional writer. In this instant, his help and suggestions, freely given in odd hours between putting out issues of his three Monster magazines, made the difficulties of getting the right stories from the right authors a possibility rather than a dream.

Beyond that, the only thing left to say is to express my personal hope that you, the reader, will find the following stories as delightful as I found them to be.

CHARLES NUETZEL

1965

Richard Matheson's first story sky-rocketed him into orbit as an established author some years back. That story, BORN OF MAN AND WOMAN, became a science fiction classic almost the first week it appeared on the magazine stands.

He wrote the original story and screenplay of THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN and co-scripted— and written—many other motion picture films, including BURN, WITCH, BURN, one of the movie productions of Fritz Leiber's Conjure Wife. His reputation as a writer of outstanding accomplishment was acknowledged by a World Science Fiction Convention which greeted him as a Guest of Honor.

When the editor first read the following story in magazine form he found himself both horrified and emotionally shaken. The story is based on the problem of population explosion and extrapolates it into a chilling horror, skillfully blended with very human emotions and problems.

THE TEST

byRichard Matheson

THE NIGHT BEFORE the test, Les helped his father study in the dining room. Jim and Tommy were asleep upstairs and, in the living room, Terry was sewing, her face expressionless as the needle moved with a swiftly rhythmic piercing and drawing.

Tom Parker sat very straight, his lean, vein-ribbed hands clasped together on the table top, his pale blue eyes looking intently at his son's lips as though it might help him to understand better.

He was 80 and this was his fourth test.

"All right," Les said, reading from the sample test Doctor Trask had gotten them. "Repeat the following sequences of numbers."

"Sequence of numbers," Tom murmured, trying to assimilate the words as they came. But words were not quickly assimilated any more; they seemed to lie upon the tissues of his brain like insects on a sluggish carnivore. He said th&^wprds in his mind again—sequence of . . . sequence of numbers—there he had it. He looked at his son and waited.

"Well?" he said, impatiently, after a moment's silence.

"Dad, I've already given you the first one," Les told him.

"Well . . ." His father grasped for the proper words. "Kindly give me the—the . do me the kindness of..."

Les exhaled wearily. "Eight-five-eleven-six," he said.

The old lips stirred, the old machinery of Tom's mind began turning slowly.

"Eight . . . f—ive . . ." The pale eyes blinked slowly. "Elevensix," Tom finished in a breath, then straightened himself proudly.

Yes, good, he thought—very good. They wouldn't fool him tomorrow; he'd beat their murderous law. His lips pressed together and his hands clasped tightly on the white table cloth.

"What?" he said then, refocusing his eyes as Les said something. "Speak up," he said, irritably. "Speak up."

"I gave you another sequence," Les said quietly. "Here, I'll read it again."

Tom leaned forward a little, ears straining.

"Nine-two-sixteen-seven-three," Les said.

Tom cleared his throat with effort. "Speak slower," he told his son. He hadn't quite gotten that. How did they expect anyone to retain such a ridiculously long string of numbers?

"What, what?" he asked angrily as Les read the numbers again.

"Dad, the examiner will be reading the questions faster than I'm reading them. You—"

"I'm quite aware of that," Tom interrupted stiffly. "Quite aware. Let me remind you . . . however, this is . . . not a test. It's study, it's for study. Foolish to go rushing through everything. Foolish. I have to learn this —this . . . this test," he finished, angry at his son and angry at the way desired words hid themselves from his mind.

Les shrugged and looked down at the test again. "Nine-two-sixteen-seven-three," he read slowly. "Nine-two-six-seven—" "Sixteen-seven, Dad." "I said that." "You said six, Dad."

"Don't you suppose I know what I said!" Les closed his eyes a moment. "All right, Dad," he said. "Well, are you going to read it again or not?" Tom asked him sharply.

Les read the numbers off again and, as he listened to his father stumble through the sequence, he glanced into the living room at Terry.

She was sitting there, features motionless, sewing. She'd turned off the radio and he knew she could hear the old man faltering with the numbers.

All right, Les heard himself saying in his mind as if he spoke to her. All right, I know he's old and useless. Do you want me to tell him that to his face and drive a knife into his back? You know and I know that he won't pass the test. Allow me, at least, this brief hypocrisy. Tomorrow the sentence will be passed. Don't make me pass it tonight and break the old man's heart.

"That's correct, I believe," Les heard the dignified voice of his father say and he refocused his eyes on the gaunt, seamed face.

"Yes, that's right," he said, hastily.

He felt like a traitor when a slight smile trembled at the corners of his father's mouth. I'm cheating him, he thought.

"Let's go on to something else," he heard his father say and he looked down quickly at the sheet. What would be easy for him? he thought, despising himself for thinking it.

"Well, come on, Leslie," his father said in a restrained voice. "We have no time to waste."

Tom looked at his son thumbing through the pages and his hands closed into fists. Tomorrow, his life was in the balance and his son just browsed through the test paper as if nothing important were going to happen tomorrow.

"Come on, come on," he said peevishly.

Les picket-up a pencil that had string attached to it and drew a half-inch circle on a piece of blank paper. He held out the pencil to his father.

"Suspend the pencil point over the circle for three minutes," he said, suddenly afraid he'd picked the wrong question. He'd seen his father's hands trembling at meal times or fumbling with the buttons and zippers of his clothes.

Swallowing nervously, Les picked up the stop watch, started it, and nodded to his father.

Tom took a quivering breath as he leaned over the paper and tried to hold the slightly swaying pencil above the circle. Les saw him lean on his elbow, something he wouldn't be allowed to do on the test; but he said nothing.

He sat there looking at his father. Whatever color there had been was leaving the old man's face and Les could see clearly the tiny red lines of broken vessels under the skin of his cheeks. He looked at the dry skin, creased and brownish, dappled with liver spots. Eighty years old, he thought—what does a man feel when he's 80 years old?

He looked in at Terry again. For a moment, her gaze shifted and they were looking at each other, neither of them smiling or making any sign. Then Terry looked back to her sewing.

"I believe that's three minutes," Tom said in a taut voice.

Les looked down at the stop watch. "A minute and a half, Dad," he said, wondering if he should have lied again.

"Well, keep your eyes on the watch then," his father said, perturbedly, the pencil penduluming completely out of the circle. "This is supposed to be a test, not a—a—a party."

Les kept his eyes on the wavering pencil point, feeling a sense of utter futility at the realization that this was only pretense, that nothing they did could save his father's life.

At least, he thought, the examinations weren't given by the sons and daughters who had voted the law into being. At least he wouldn't have to stamp the black INADEQUATE on his father's test and thus pronounce the sentence.

The pencil wavered over the circle edge again and was returned as Tom moved his arm slightly on the table, a motion that would automatically disqualify him on that question.

"That watch is slow!" Tom said in a sudden fury.

Les caught his breath and looked down at the watch. Two and a half minutes. "Three minutes," he said, pushing in the plunger.

Tom slapped down the pencil irritably. "There," he said. "Fool test anyway." His voice grew morose. "Don't prove a thing. Not a thing."

"You want to do some money questions, Dad?"

"Are they the next questions in the test?" Tom asked, looking over suspiciously to check for himself.

"Yes," Les lied, knowing that his father's eyes were too weak to see even though Tom always refused to admit he needed glasses. "Oh, wait a second, there's one before that," he added, thinking it would be easier for his father. "They ask you to tell time."

"That's a foolish question," Tom muttered. "What do they—"

He reached across the table irritably and picked up the watch and glanced down at its face. "Ten fifteen," he said, scornfully.

Before Les could think to stop himself, he said, "But it's 11:15, Dad."

His father looked, for a moment, as though his face had been slapped. Then he picked up the watch again and stared down at it, lips twitching, and Les had the horrible premont-tion that Tom was going to insist it really was 10:15.

"Well, that's what I meant," Tom said abruptly. "Slipped out wrong. Course it's 11:15, any fool can see that. Eleven fifteen. Watch is no good. Numbers too close. Ought to throw it away. Now—"

Tom reached into his vest pocket and pulled out his own gold watch. "Here's a watch," he said, proudly. "Been telling perfect time for . . . sixty years! That's a watch. Not like this."

He tossed Les's watch down contemptuously and it flipped over on its flfce and the crystal broke.

"Look at that," Tom said quickly, to cover the jolting of embarassment. "Watch can't take anything."

He avoided Les's eyes by looking down at his own watch. His mouth tightened as he opened the back and looked at Mary's picture; Mary when she was in her thirties, golden-haired and lovely.

Thank God, she didn't have to take tests, he thought—at least she was spared that. Tom had never thought he could believe that Mary's accidental death at 57 was fortunate, but that was before the tests.

He closed the watch and put it away.

"You just leave that watch with me, tonight," he said grumpily. "I'll see you get a decent . . . uh, crystal tomorrow."

"That's all right, Dad. It's just an old watch."

"That's all right," Tom said. "That's all right. You just leave it with me. I'll get you a decent . . . crystal. Get you one that won't break, one that won't break. You just leave it with me."

Tom did the money questions then, questions like How many quarters in a five dollar bill? and If I took 36 cents from your dollar, how much change would you have left?

They were written questions and Les sat there timing his father. It was quiet in the house, warm. Everything seemed very normal and ordinary with the two of them sitting there and Terry sewing in the living room.

That was the horror.

Life went on as usual. No one spoke of dying. The government sent out letters and the tests were given and those who failed were requested to appear at the government center for their injections. The law operated, the death rate was steady, the population problem was contained—all officially, impersonally, without a cry or a sensation.

But it was still loved people who were being killed.

"Never mind hanging over that watch," his father said. "I can do these questions without you . . . hanging over that watch."

"Dad, the examiners will be looking at their watches." "The examiners are the examiners," Tom snapped. "You're not an examiner." "Dad, I'm trying to help y—"

"Well, help me then, help me. Don't sit there hanging over that watch."

"This is your test, Dad, not mine," Les started, a flush of anger creeping up his cheeks. "If—"

"My test, yes, my test!" his father suddenly raged. "You all saw to that, didn't you? All saw to it that—that—"

Words failed again, angry thoughts piling up in his brain.

"You don't have to yell, Dad." "I'm not yelling!"

"Dad, the boys are sleeping!" Terry suddenlv broke in.

"I don't care if—!" Tom broke off suddenly and leaned back in the chair, the pencil falling unnoticed from his fingers and rolling across the table cloth. He sat shivering, his thin chest rising and falling in jerks, his hands twitching uncontrollably on his lap.

"Do you want to go on, Dad?" Les asked, restraining his nervous anger.

"I don't ask much," Tom mumbled to himself. "Don't ask much in life."

"Dad, shall we go on?"

His father stiffened. "If you can spare the time," he said with slow, indignant pride. "If you can spare the time."

Les looked at the test paper, his fingers gripping the stapled sheets rigidly. Psychological questions? No, he couldn't ask them. How did you ask your 80-year-old father his views on sex?—your flint-surfaced father to whom the most innocuous remark was "obscene."

"Well?" his father asked in a rising voice.

"There doesn't seem to be anymore," Les said. "We've been at it almost four hours now."

"What about all those pages you just skipped?'-'

"Most of those are for the      the physical, Dad."

He saw his father's lips press together and was afraid Tom was going to say something about that again. But all his father said was, "A fine friend. Fine friend."

"Dad, you—"

Les's voice broke off. There was no point in talking about it anymore. Tom knew perfectly well that Doctor Trask couldn't make out a bill of health for this test the way he'd done for the^hree tests previous.

Les knew how frightened and insulted the old man was because he'd have to take off his clothes and be exposed to doctors who would probe and tap and ask offensive questions. He knew how afraid Tom was of the fact that when he re-dressed, he'd be watched from a peephole and someone would mark on a chart how well he dressed himself. He knew how it frightened his father to know that, when he ate in the government cafeteria at the midpoint of the day-long examination, eyes would be watching him again to see if he dropped a fork or a spoon or knocked over a glass of water or dribbled gravy on his shirt.

"They'll ask you to sign your name and address," Les said, wanting his father to forget about the physical and knowing how proud Tom was of his handwriting.

Pretending that he grudged it, the old man picked up the pencil and wrote. I'll fool them, he thought as the pencil moved across the page with strong, sure motions.

Mr. Thomas Parker, he wrote, 2719 Brighton Street, Blairtown, New York.

"And the date," Les said.

The old man wrote, January 17, 2003, and something cold moved in the old man's vitals. Tomorrow was the test.

They lay beside each other, neither of them sleeping. They had barely spoken while undressing and when Les had leaned over to kiss her goodnight she'd murmured something he didn't hear.

Now he turned over on his side with a heavy sigh and faced her. In the darkness, she opened her eyes and looked over at him.

"Asleep?" she asked softly.

"No."

He said no more. He waited for her to start.

But she didn't start and, after a few moments, he said, "Well, I guess this is . . . it." He finished weakly because he didn't like the words; they sounded ridiculously melodramatic.

Terry didn't say anything right away. Then, as if thinking aloud, she said, "Do you think there's any chance that—"

Les tightened at the words because Jie knew what she was going to say.

"No," he said. "He'll never pass."

He heard Terry swallowing. Don't say it, he thought, pleadingly. Don't tell me I've been saying the same thing for fifteen years. I know it. I said it because I thought it was true.

Suddenly, he wished he'd signed the Request For Removal years before. They needed desperately to be free of Tom; for the good of their children and themselves. But how did you put that need into words without feeling like a murderer? You couldn't say: I hope the old man fails, I hope they kill him. Yet anything else you said was only a hypocritical substitute for those words because that was exactly how you felt.

Medical terms, he thought—charts about declining crops and lowered standard of living and hunger ratio and degrading health level—they'd used all those as arguments to support passage of the law. Well, they were lies—obvious, groundless lies. The law had been passed because people wanted to be left alone, because they wanted to live their own lives.

"Les, what if he passes?" Terry said.

He felt his hands tightening on the mattress.

"Les?"

"I don't know, honey," he said.

Her voice was firm in the darkness. It was a voice at the end of patience. "You have to know," it said.

He moved his head restlessly on the pillow. "Honey, don't push it," he begged. "Please."

"Les, if he passes that test it means five more years. Five more years, Les. Have you thought what that means?"

"Honey, he can't pass that test."

"But, what if he does?"

"Terry, he missed three-quarters of the questions I asked him tonight. His hearing is almost gone, his eyes are bad, his heart is weak, he has arthritis." His fist beat down hopelessly on the bed. "He won't even pass the physical," he said, feeling himself tighten in self-hatred for assuring her that Tom was doomed.

If only he could forget the past and take his father for what he was now—a helpless, mid-jading old man who was ruining.,their lives. But it was hard to forget how he'd loved and respected his father, hard to forget the hikes in the country, the fishing trips, the long talks at night and all the many things his father and he had shared together.

That was why he'd never had the strength to sign the request. It was a simple form to fill out, much simpler than waiting for the five-year tests. But it had meant signing away the life of his father, requesting the government to dispose of him like some unwanted garbage. He could never do that.

And yet, now his father was 80 and, in spite of moral upbringing, in spite of life-taught Christian principles, he and Terry were horribly afraid that old Tom might pass the test and live another five years with them—another five years of fumbling around the house, undoing instructions they gave to the boys, breaking things, wanting to help but only getting in the way and making life an agony of held-in nerves.

"You'd better sleep," Terry said to him.

He tried to but he couldn't. He lay staring at the dark ceiling and trying to find an answer but finding no answer.

The alarm went off at 6. Les didn't have to get up until 8 but he wanted to see his father off. He got out of bed and dressed quietly so he wouldn't wake up Terry.

She woke up anyway and looked up at him from her pillow. After a moment, she pushed up on one elbow and looked sleepily at him.

"I'll get up and make you some breakfast," she said.

"That's all right," Les said. "You stay in bed."

"Don't you want me to get up?"

"Don't bother, honey," he said. "I want you to rest."

She lay down again and turned away so Les wouldn't see her face. She didn't know why she began to cry soundlessly; whether it was because he didn't want her to see his father or because of the test. But she couldn't stop. All she could do was hold herself rigid until the bedroom door had closed.

Then her shoulders trembled and a sob broke the barrier she had built in herself.

The door to his father's room was open as Les passed. He looked in and saw Tom sitting on the bed, leaning down and fastening his dark shoes. He saw the gnarled fingers shaking as they moved over the straps.

"Everything all right, Dad?" Les asked.

His father looked up in surprise. "What are you doing up this hour?" he asked.

"Thought I'd have breakfast with you," Les told him.

For a moment they looked at each other in silence.

Then his father leaned over the shoes again. "That's not necessary," he heard the old man's voice telling him.

"Well, I think I'll have some breakfast anyway," he said and turned away so his father couldn't argue.

"Oh ... Leslie."

Les turned.

"I trust you didn't forget to leave that watch out," his

father said. "I intend to take it to the jeweler's today and

have a decent                  decent crystal put on it, one that

won't break."

"Dad, it's just an old watch," Les said. "It's not worth a nickel."

His father nodded slowly, one palm wavering before him as if to ward off argument. "Never-the-less," he stated slowly, "I intend to—"

"All right, Dad, all right. I'll put it on the kitchen table."

His father broke off and looked at him blankly a moment. Then, as if it were impulse and not delayed will, he bent over his shoes again.

Les stood for a moment looking down at his father's gray hair, his gaunt, trembling fingers. Then he turned away.

The watch was still on the dining room table. Les picked it up and took it in to the kitchen table. The old man must have been reminding himself about the watch all night, he thought. Otherwise he wouldn't have managed to remember it.

He put fresh water in the coffee globe and pushed the buttons for two servings of bacon and eggs. Then he poured two glasses of orange juice and sat down at the table.

About fifteen- minutes later, his father came down wearing his dark blue suit, his shoes carefully polished, his nails manicured, his hair slicked down and combed and brushed. He looked very neat and very old as he walked over to the coffee globe and looked in.

"Sit down, Dad," Les said. "I'll get it for you."

"I'm not helpless," his father said. "Stay where you are."

Les managed a smile. "I put some bacon and eggs on for us," he said.

"Not hungry," his father replied.

"You'll need a good breakfast in you, Dad."

"Never did eat a big breakfast," his father said, stiffly, still facing the stove. "Don't believe in it. Not good for the stomach."

Les closed his eyes a moment and across his face moved an expression of hopeless despair. Why did I bother getting up? he asked himself defeatedly. All we do is argue.

No. He felt himself stiffening. No, he'd be cheerful if it killed him.

"Sleep all right, Dad?" he asked.

"Course I slept all right," his father answered. "Always sleep fine. Fine. Did you think I wouldn't because of a—"

He broke off suddenly and turned accusingly at Les. "Where's that watch?" he demanded.

Les exhaled wearily and held up the watch. His father moved jerkily across the linoleum, took it from him and looked at it a moment, his old lips pursed.

"Shoddy workmanship," he said. "Shoddy." He put it carefully in his side coat pocket. "Get you a decent crystal," he muttered. "One that won't break."

Les nodded. "That'll be swell, Dad."

The coffee was ready then and Tom poured them each a cup. Les got up and turned off the automatic griller. He didn't feel like having bacon and eggs either now.

He sat across the table from his stem-faced father and felt hot coffee trickling down his throat. It tasted terrible but he knew that nothing in the world would have tasted good to him that morning.

"What time do you have to be there, Dad?" he asked to break the silence.

"Nine o'clock," Tom said.

"You're sure you don't want me to drive you there?"

"Not at all, not at all," his father said as though he were talking patiently to an irritably insistent child. "The tube is good enough. Get me there in plenty of time."

"All right, Dad," Les said and sat there staring into his

heard. "It's early, Dad," he said, loudly, his voice shaking a little.

"Never-the-less," his father said.

"But you haven't eaten anything."

"Never did eat a big breakfast," Tom started. "Not good for the—"

Les didn't hear the rest of it—the words about lifetime habit and not good for the digestion and everything else his father said. He felt waves of merciless horror breaking over him and he wanted to jump and throw his arms around Ihe old man and tell him not to worry about the test because it didn't matter, because they loved him and would take care of him.

But he couldn't. He sat rigid with sick fright, looking up at his father. He couldn't even speak when his father turned at the kitchen door and said in a voice that was calmly dispassionate because it took every bit of strength the old man had to make it so, "I'll see you tonight, Leslie."

The door swung shut and the breeze that ruffled across Les's cheeks chilled him to the heart.

Suddenly, he jumped up with a startled grunt and rushed across the linoleum. As he pushed through the doorway he saw his father almost to the front door.

"Dad!"

Tom stopped and looked back in surprise as Les walked across the dining room, hearing the steps counted in his mind—one, two, three, four, five.

He stopped before his father and forced a faltering smile to his lips.

"Good luck, Dad," he said. "Ill ... see you tonight." He had been about to say, "I'll be rooting for you"; but he couldn't.

His father nodded once, just once, a curt nod as of one gentleman acknowledging another.

"Thank you," his father said and turned away.

When the door shut, it seemed as if, suddenly, it had become an impenetrable wall through which his father could never pass again.

Les moved to the window and watched the old man walk slowly down the path and turn left onto the sidewalk. He watched his father start up the street, then straighten himself, throw back his lean shoulders and walk erect and briskly into the gray of morning.

At first Les thought it was raining. But then he saw that the shimmering moistness wasn't on the window at all.

He couldn't go to work. He phoned in sick and stayed home. Terry got the boys off to school and, after they'd eaten breakfast, Les helped her clear away the morning dishes and put them in the washer. Terry didn't say anything about his staying home. She acted as if it were normal for him to be home on a weekday.

He spent the morning and afternoon puttering in the garage shop, starting seven different projects and losing interest in them.

Around 5, he went into the kitchen and had a can of beer while Terry made supper. He didn't say anything to her. He kept pacing around the living room, staring out the window at the overcast sky, then pacing again.

"I wonder where he is," he finally said, back in the kitchen again.

"Hell be back," she said and he stiffened a moment, thinking he heard disgust in her voice. Then he relaxed, knowing it was only his imagination.

When he dressed after taking a shower, it was five forty. The boys were home from playing and they all sat down to supper. Les noticed a place set for his father and wondered if Terry, had set it there for his benefit.

He couldn't eat anything. He kept cutting the meat into smaller and smaller pieces and mashing butter into his baked potato without tasting any of it.

"What is it?" be asked as Jim spoke to him.

"Dad, if grandpa don't pass, the test, he gets a month, don't he?"

Les felt his stomach muscles tightening as he stared at his older son. Gets a month, don't he?—the last of Jim's question muttered on in his brain.

"What are you talking about?" he asked.

"My Civics book says old people get a month to live after they don't pass their test. That's right, isn't it?"

"No, it isn't," Tommy broke in. "Harry Senker's grandma got her letter after only tvo weeks."

"How do you know?" Jim asked his nine-year-old brother. "Did you see it?"

"That's enough," Les said.

"Don't have t'see it!" Tommy argued, "Harry told me that—"

"That's enough!"

The two boys looked suddenly at their white-faced father.

"We won't talk about it," he said. "But what—"

"Jimmy," Terry said, wamingly.

Jimmy looked at his mother, then, after a moment, went back to his food and they all ate in silence.

The death of their grandfather means nothing to them, Les thought bitterly—nothing at all. He swallowed and tried to relax the tightness in his body. Well, why should it mean anything to them? he told himself; it's not their time to svorry yet. Why force it on them now? They'll have it soon enough.

When the front door opened and shut at 6:10, Les stood up so quickly, he knocked over an empty glass.

"Les, don't," Terry said suddenly and he knew, immediately, that she was right. His father wouldn't like him to come rushing from the kitchen with questions.

He slumped down on the chair again and stared at his barely touched food, his heart throbbing. As he picked up his fork with tight fingers, he heard the old man cross the dining room rug and start up the stairs. He glanced at Terry and her throat moved.

He couldn't eat. He sat there breathing heavily, and picking at the food. Upstairs, he heard the door to his father's room close.

It was when Terry was putting the pie on the table that Les excused himself quickly and got up.

He was at the foot of the stairs when the kitchen door was pushed open. "Les," he heard her say, urgently.

He stood there silently as she came up to him.

"Isn't it better we leave him alone?" she asked.

"But, honey, 1—"

"Les, if he'd passed the test, he would have come into the kitchen and told us."

"Honey, he wouldn't know if—"

"He'd know if he passed, you know that. He told us about it the last two times. If he'd passed, he'd have—"

Her voice broke off and she shuddered at the way he was looking at her. In the heavy silence, she heard a sudden splattering of rain on the windows.

They looked at each other a long moment. Then Les said, "I'm going up."

"Les," she murmured.

"I won't say anything to upset him," he said, "111 . . ."

A moment later they stared at each other. Then he turned away and trudged up the steps. Terry watched him go with a bleak, hopeless look on her face.

Les stood before the closed door a minute, bracing himself. I won't upset him, he told himself; I won't.

He knocked softly, wondering, in that second, if he were making a mistake. Maybe he should have left the old man alone, he thought unhappily.

In the bedroom, he heard a rustling movement on the bed, then the sound of his father's feet touching the floor.

Les caught his breath. "It's me, Dad," he said.

"What do you want?"

"May I see you?"

Silence inside. "Well . . ." he heard his father say then and his voice stopped. Les heard him get up and heard the sound of his footsteps on the floor. Then there was the sound of paper rattling and a bureau drawer being carefully shut.

Finally the door opened.

Tom was wearing his old red bathrobe over his clothes and he'd takers off his shoes and put his slippers on.

"May I come in, Dad?" Les asked quietly.

His father hesitated a moment. Then he said, "Come in," but it wasn't an invitation. It was more as if he'd said, This is your house; I can't keep you from this room.

Les was going to tell his father that he didn't want to disturb him but he couldn't. He went in and stood in the middle of the throw rug, waiting.

"Sit down," his father said and Les sat down on the upright chair that Tom hung his clothes on at night. His father waited until Les was seated and then sank down on the bed with a grunt.

For a long time they looked at each other without speaking like total strangers each waiting for the other one to speak. How did the test go? Les heard the words repeated in his mind. How did the test go, how did the test go? He couldn't speak the words. How did the—

"I suppose you want to know what . . . happened," his father said then, controlling himself visibly.

"Yes," Les said, "I . . ." He caught himself. "Yes," he repeated and waited.

Old Tom looked down at the floor for a moment. Then, suddenly, he raised his head and looked defiantly at his son.

"I didn't go," he said.

Les felt as if all his strength had suddenly been sucked into the floor. He sat there, motionless, staring at his father.

"Had no intention of going," his father hurried on. "No intention of going through all that foolishness. Physical tests, m-mental tests, putting b-b-blocks in a board and . . . Lord knows what all! Had no intention of going."

He stopped and stared at his son with angry eyes as if he were daring Les to say he had done wrong.

But Les couldn'tsay anything.

A long time passed. Les swallowed and managed to summon the words. "What are you . . . going to do?"

"Never mind that, never mind," his father said, almost as if he were grateful for the question. "Don't you worry about your Dad. Your Dad knows how to take care of himself."

And suddenly Les heard the bureau drawer shutting again, the rustling of a paper bag. He almost looked around at the bureau to see if the bag were still there. His head twitched as he fought down the impulse.

"W-ell," he faltered, not realizing how stricken and lost his expression was.

"Just never mind now," his father said again, quietly, almost gently. "It's not your problem to worry about Not your problem at all."

But it is! Les heard the words cried out in his mind. But he didn't speak them. Something in the old man stopped him; a sort of fierce strength, a taut dignity he knew he mustn't touch.

"I'd like to rest now," he heard Tom say then and he felt as if he'd been struck violently in the stomach. I'd like to rest now, to rest now—the words echoed down long tunnels of the mind as he stood. Rest now, rest now...

He found himself being ushered to the door where he turned and looked at his father. Goodbye. The word stuck in him.

Then his father smiled and said, "Good night, Leslie." "Dad."

He felt the old man's hand in his own, stronger than his, more steady; calming him, reassuring him. He felt his father's left hand grip his shoulder.

"Good night, son,'' his father said and, in the moment they stood close together, Les saw, over the old man's shoulder, the crumpled drugstore bag lying in the corner of the room as though it had been thrown there so as not to be seen.

Then he was standing in wordless terror in the hall, listening to the latch clicking shut and knowing that, although his father wasn't locking the door, he couldn't go into his father's room.

For a long time he stood staring at the closed door, shivering without control. Then he turned away.

Terry was waiting for him at the foot of the stairs, her face drained of color. She asked the question with her eyes as he came down to her.

"He . . . didn't go," was all he said.

She made*S«tiny, startled sound in her throat. "But—"

"He's been to the drugstore," Les said. "I . . . saw the bag in the corner of the room. He threw it away so I wouldn't see it but I... saw it."

For a moment, it seemed as if she were starting for the stairs but it was only a momentary straining of her body.

"He must have shown the druggist the letter about the 37

test," Les said. "The . . . druggist must have given him ... pills. Like they all do.'^

They stood silently in the dining room while rain drummed against the windows.

"What shall we do?" she asked, almost inaudibly.

"Nothing," he murmured. His throat moved convulsively and breath shuddered through him. "Nothing."

Then he was walking numbly back to the kitchen and he could feel her arm tight around him as if she were trying to press her love to him because she could not speak of love.

All evening, they sat there in the kitchen. After she put the boys to bed, she came back and they sat in the kitchen drinking coffee and talking in quiet, lonely voices.

Near midnight, they left the kitchen and, just before they went upstairs, Les stopped by the dining room table and found the watch with a shiny new crystal on it. He couldn't even touch it.

They went upstairs and walked past the door of Tom's bedroom. There was no sound inside. They got undressed and got in bed together and Terry set the clock the way she set it every night. In a few hours they both managed to fall asleep.

And all night there was silence in the old man's room. And the next day, silence.

A. E. van Vogt has been a giant in the science fiction field for over two decades. His name was already well established when his book SLAN came out in the forties—a classic in the field, having seen publication twice in magazine and book form and as a pocket book in the United States alone. With such credits as THE WORLD OF NULL-A to add to the reputation he gained with SLAN, Mr. van Vogt approached the mainstream of literature with a major book about Communist China titled THE VIOLENT MAN, which saw both hard cover and pocket book publication a short while ago. An almost unknown novel, PLANETS FOR SALE, originally published only under his wife's name (E. Mayne Hull) though actually written by both husband and wife, has just come out under both author's names, released by Book Co. of America (   ).

The following story, THE EARTH KILLERS, was originally published in 1949, yet the pace and excitement is still up-to-date, keeping the reader fairly glued to his seat. But in order to fit the story into the present collection, Mr. van Vogt felt that certain changes should be made in it, and now, with great pleasure, we bring you, for the first time, the new version of his classic story . . .

THE EARTH KILLERS

byA. E. Tan Yogi

THE S29A climbed steeply up on a column of crooked fire. In the machine, Morlake could feel the turbulent impulses of the gyroscopic stabilizers. But the flow of upward movement was as slick as oil, and the acceleration brought nothing more than a feeling like that of a hand squeezing the stomach.

At sixty miles above Kane Field he leveled off and put the new plane through its paces. After five minutes he turned on the radio and spoke softly.

"Morlake calling Gregory."

"Yeah?"Laconically.

"She likes the climate."

"How's the ultraviolet?"

"Blocked."

"Cosmics?"

"Registering."

"Good." The engineering officer sounded satisfied. "Until somebody figures out a way of blocking cosmic rays completely, we'll be satisfied with minimums. Speed?"

"About one banana." That was code for seven hundred MPH.

"Feel anything?" "She's singing a lullaby."

"Sweet, huh, at one banana. What do you think, generally?"

"Sadie's going to be with us for quite a while."

"As smug as that, eh?" The engineer turned away from the mike. His voice, though still ■audible, grew tiny. "Well, general, there you are. She ticks."

"Ought to," was the faint reply. "We were beginning to sweat. She cost four billion to develop."

The engineer's voice had a grin in it. "Where do we go from here? Mars? Or the moon?"

"Sadie is our top, boy. And we're lucky to have her. The new Congress is tired of our costly little experiment, and wants to reduce taxes. The new President thinks the development of weapons leads to war. He doesn't like war, and so in this year of 1969—"

He must have thought better of what he intended to say. There was silence, though not for long. Gregory's faraway voice said, "What's next?"

"Dive," said the general.

The engineer's voice approached the mike:

"Morlake."

"I heard."

"Okay. See if you can hit O'Ryan."

Morlake grinned. The three test pilots of Kane Field played a game against the famous racist publisher. Each time they dived they chose as target the Star-Telegram building, which peered seventy stories into the sky beside the flat, dead-looking waters of Lake Michigan. The idea was, if anything went wrong, they might as well take O'Ryan and his penthouse into hell with them. And they meant it too, after a fashion.

The plane began to shudder. At eighty miles the jets were silent and useless, and the hammering of the rockets was a sharp sound carried by the metallic frame. The rockets were not meant to carry the load alone. All the smoothness^fras gone from his marvellous machine. Morlake paused for a final look at the universe.

It was tremendously, unnaturally dark outside. The stars were pinpoints of intense brightness, that did not twinkle or glitter. The sun, far to his left, was only approximately round. Streamers of flame and fire mist made it appear lopsided and unnatural. A quarter moon rode the blackness directly overhead.

The S29A, moving very slowly, not more than a hundred miles an hour, was over Chicago now. The city was lost in haze, quite invisible to the naked eye. But on the radar screen every building was etched, and there was no mistaking the Star-Telegram structure. Morlake waited until the hairline sights directed under his seat were touching the shadow of the building, and then he carefully tilted the nose of the plane downward.

He was in no hurry, but presently the front aiming device was pointed directly at the image on the radar screen. The speedometer was edged over to a thousand miles an hour, when there was a dazzlingly bright flash in the sky behind and above him. Something big and hot as hell itself flashed past him, and began to recede into the distance below.

Morlake cringed involuntarily. He had time to think: A meteorite! Speed about fourteen hundred miles an hour. Below him, the bright flame fuzzed and winked out. He stared at it astounded, removed his foot from the accelerator; and then, there, twenty feet away, was the object. And it was not a meteorite at all.

Morlake gazed at the thing in blank horror, as the radio embedded in the cushions beside bis ears clicked on, and Gregory's voice shouted:

"Morlake, we've just got word: New York, Washington, scores of cities destroyed in the last ten minutes by giant atomic bombs. Morlake—get away from Chicago with Sadie. She's our only working S29A. Morlake, you hear me?"

He heard, but he couldn't speak. He sat frozen to the controls, glaring at the atomic bomb twenty feet away.

After a blank period, Morlake stirred like a sick dog. His reflexes began to function in a dream-like fashion. His eyes shifted heavily over the instrument board. Slowly, he grew aware that the world around was becoming brighter. A faint dawn glimmered in the distance to either side, and the blaze of light below was like a vast fire bowl into which the bomb and the ship were falling.

He thought: the flame that had seared his ship when 42

the bomb first passed him—that must have been its forward rocket tubes slowing the thing so that it wouldn't burn up from sheer speed in the thick atmosphere lower down.

The thought passed as though it had never been, as if the thin, shrieking wind building up outside had torn it from his brain. In its place, a formless mind stuff, seeking shape, pressed and quivered inside him. Plans too fleeting to be comprehended multiplied and coalesced. Impersonal plans involving death for his body. Impersonal, because the city below was not his city. No one in it knew him or cared about him, not even a secondary girl friend. He hated the place. Windy, dirty, wretched, miserable, hot in summer, cold in winter . . . No, there was nothing there, nothing at all. But the yeast of plans fermented with violence and direction.

"Morlake, damn your soul, answer me!"

Answer me, answer me, answer me! Over all the mad schemes that were now springing full-grown into his head, one took precedence. If he could deflect the bomb into the lake, five million people would have a chance for life.

He knew better. Even as he shoved his plane over on fingers of wan jetfire, and felt the metal frame jar against the bomb, he knew that the greater bombs needed only to fall into the vicinity of the cities. Direct hits were unnecessary.

But he pushed with the plane's vertical jets. His body shrank, expecting the blow of radiation. And at first nothing happened. There was not enough air to give power even to those superjets.

"Morlake, for God's sake, where are you?"

He was tj^a.intent for words to reach him. He had a fear that he would push the plane too hard, and that the curved fuselage would roll itself away from the streamlined bomb. Delicate manipulation, touch, pressure, oh, so delicate.

The movement began slowly. He noticed it first on the hairline sighting device in front of him. O'Ryan was no longer directly below. At that instant of infinitesimal success, the bottom of the bomb flashed white fire. One burst only, but it jarred his precious contact. He felt his machine slip clear of the bomb, and with a shock he saw that his sights were once more pointing straight at the newspaper skyscraper.

The bomb has reacted to his pressure. It must be on a beam, and couldn't be diverted. Almost instantly, the bomb offered one more surprise. As he sat in a haze of uncertainty as to his next move, it sent a flare of light billowing over the S29A. Morlake shrank, and then the light was gone. He had no time to think about it, because—

"Morlake, you damned idiot, save Sadie!"

Anger, despair, hate, frustration and the beginning of insanity—all were in that shout. Morlake would have ignored it too, would have been almost unaware, but at that split instant his gaze touched the altimeter. Twenty miles. Only twenty miles to earth.

The fever of his purpose burned out of him. Suddenly, he thought of Sadie as those desperate men at Kane Field were thinking of her. Sadie, the sleek, the gorgeous, Sadie of the high tail, the first of a fleet not yet built.

He spurted his forward jets. And saw the bomb sink below him. Instantly, it was gone into the mist. He began to turn, to try to pull her out of her dive. Three times he blanked out, and came to again, dizzy but alive. Finally, the plane was level. Morlake brought her nose up, and climbed on a long slant at an acceleration that clenched his body.

Behind him, below him, there was a glare as of a thousand times ten thousand suns. A supernal blaze it was, unmatched in the sidereal universe" except by the unthinkable fires of a Nova-O sun at its moment of ultimate explosion.

Catastrophe for a continent! Forty million people in fifty major cities died in a space of not more than thirty minutes. It was later estimated that each of the bombs dropped generated flash heats of forty thousand billion degrees centigrade. Everywhere, the forces released were too great to be confined. The balance of a hemisphere was shaken. Earthquakes convulsed regions that had never known a tremor. And all that afternoon and night the ground settled and quivered with a violence that had not been paralleled in the history of mankind.

By mid-aftemoon of the first day, a stricken people had begun to rally and reintegrate. Senator Milton Tor-mey, recovering from food poisoning in Florida, brought together two aged, ailing Congressmen in a resort hotel, and the three issued a manifesto ordering a six-month period of martial law. In Berlin, General Wayne, commanding American forces in Germany, demanded that all countries in Europe and Asia open their borders to American planes. Delay or refusal would be construed as a confession of guilt, and would bring instant retaliation from secret American atomic bomb bases and from the navy.

The national guard was called out. Radar and sonar stations were put on battle alert, and throughout the night hastily-armed men and women stared sleeplessly up into the skies, waiting for the paratroop armies that would surely arrive with the dawn to conquer a devastated nation.

Morning broke over the thousand horizons of America, and the sky and land were still untouched by alien sounds and alien purposes. The sun came up out of the east. People were able to look at their red-eyed neighbors, and to realize that the complete end of their world was not yet at hand. After a week the enemy had still shown no sign. It took a month for American plane patrols, fleets of planes and divisions of men to discover that no nation on earth was organizing for war. Everywhere, peaceful scenes met the frenzied searchers. They retreated finally, reluctandy, from lands they had so summarily entered^

Day by day it grew clearer that the enemy had struck a mortal blow at Earth's most powerful nation. And he had done it so skillfully that he was going to get away with it.

Twice, Morlake, returning to base after his wild flight, made the sweep over Kane Field. The first time, he was past before he recognized the super-airfield. The second time he savored the desolation.

The surface buildings, the control towers, the markers, the lights were down. Planes in twisted heaps on the field and beyond. The wreckage spread into the distance southward as far as he could see! Planes and parts in every degree of destruction, sections of metal buildings, chunks of cement, of brick, of plastic and glass, and miles of splintered lumber. A giant had trod this land.

Morlake settled his machine on its vertical jets, like a helicopter, near one of the underground entrances. As he came down, he saw a score of human figures sprawled almost at the mouth of the entrance. When he rolled nearer, they ceased to look so human. He glanced away quickly, and carefully guided his machine between them and the shelter.

A fierce wind was blowing as he climbed to the ground, but except for that, silence lay over the military air hub of the continent. He stepped gingerly over the wreckage of the underground entrance, and made his way down cracked steps. Plexiglass lights glowed in the upper corridors, untouched by the secondary violence that had raged through the corridors themselves.

Everywhere the walls were smashed. Ceilings had crashed down, and he could hear the remote thunder of loosened girders and earth and cement, tumbling to form barriers in the depths of the supposedly impregnable chambers. Morlake fumbled past two such partial obstacles, came to a third that blocked his passage completely. Then, as the ceiling a few yards behind him rumbled ominously, he began his retreat to the surface.

He reached the open air, breathing hard, and forced himself out of pity to examine the less damaged bodies. All were dead. He floated around the field, landing a dozen times to search shells of buildings, and to peel into underground entrances. He found two men whose pulses flickered with faint life.

They failed to react to the stimulants in his first aid kit, so he loaded them into the jet. Up on the air again, he turned on his radio, and at first the ether seemed silent. It was only when he turned the volume almost to full that a faraway voice scratched through to him. It kept fading out, but each time it came back in, so that he did not lose the continuity:

". . . People in cities over fifty thousand are ordered to leave, but all merchants in those cities must remain in their stores. Repeat: merchants must remain. Those who leave without authorization will be shot . . . Sell your goods to anyone who comes in, rationing all customers . . . One suit, one blanket. Groceries, about two weeks supply....

"People in cities or towns of less than fifty thousand, stay at home. Understand—stay at home! . . . Repeat emergency warning to people on Lake Michigan. A tidal wave is sweeping up from Chicago at a speed of approximately four hundred miles an hour. All shore towns will be destroyed. Wait for nothing. Leave at once!

". . . Flash! London. Great Britain announces declaration of war against unknown enemy. Other countries following ..."

Morlake's mind couldn't hold to the words. The selectivity was too poor, the voice a mere segment of a remote sound. And besides, the first stunned calm was slipping from him. He sat in his plane, thinking of millions of men and women whose bodies had been reduced not to ashes but to atoms ... He was profoundly relieved when he reached his first destination, a small military airport near a sizeable city in Iowa. The two men were rushed off to the local hospital. While his machine was being refueled, Morlake had a brief conference with three worried executive officers. They agreed that his best course was to fly to one of the secret bases,sij* was to them that he mentioned for the first time that he had seen the Chicago bomb.

All three men grew excited, and he had a hard time getting away. They were certain that experts would be able to make much of his experience.

It was some time before he was allowed to approach the secret field. His radio roared with alarms and warnings that he "must leave at once." He insisted that the commanding officer be informed of his presence, and finally he was permitted to set his machine down into a cavernous elevator, and was drawn underground.

He was ushered into the office of General Herrold, and at that time he made only a brief report. He told the general the circumstances under which he had seen the Chicago bomb, and paused, waiting for the flood of questions he expected.

For a long time the old man looked at him, but he asked for no details. And Morlake was being ushered into his quarters on the next tier down before the meaning of the man's thin-lipped hostility penetrated. "By God," he thought, "he didn't believe me!"

It was staggering, but it couldn't be helped. No matter how incredible it sounded, it was his duty to tell what had happened.

He wrote his report as best he could, then phoned the general's office that it was ready. After some delay he was told to remain in his quarters, that an officer would come for the report. That was chilling, but Morlake pretended to see nothing wrong. When the officer had come and gone with the document, Morlake lay down, conscious of unutterable weariness. But his brain was too active for sleep.

Reaction to all the straining tensions of the day took the form of blank horror, of a frank disbelief in what his eyes had seen. Slowly, his emotions became more personal. He began to picture the possibilities of his own situation here, where a suspicious martinet was in command. "Damn him," he thought in a fury. "All the radar stations designed to spot bombs coming down near cities must have been destroyed. And that leaves only what I saw."

But what did this experience prove? It was the one major clue, so far, to the identity of the enemy. And it seemed valueless.

Weeks had still to pass before he would realize how tremendous a clue it really was.

11

"ORDER in the court."

The hastily convened court-martial was about to begin.

"It is the intention of the prosecution," said the judge advocate after the preliminaries were over, "to bring evidence that will establish one or the other of two charges against Captain Morlake. The first charge is that he did not, as he has claimed, see an atomic bomb, and that in fact, his purpose was to procure cheap notoriety for himself out of a nation's most profound agony. It is the opinion of the prosecution that, if the court finds him guilty of this charge, the penalties should be severe in proportion to the monstrousness of the disaster that has befallen our country.

"The second charge," the judge advocate continued, "is more serious. It assumes that Captain Morlake did, in fact, see the bomb, as he has stated, but that he has deliberately falsified his report, or else was grossly negligent in failing to observe the direction from which the bomb was coming."

For Morlake, the deadly part was that he knew no one. He was not permitted to subpoena character witnesses from fields to which men he had known had been scattered. By the time the two rocket experts had testified, he recognized that he was doomed. Shortly after his arrest, when one of his guards had whispered that fully half the officers of the secret field had lost members of their families in the bombing, he realized what weight of emotion was against him. These men, twisted by disaster, could not feel, see, or think straight.

The crisis came swiftly after he himself was called to the stand.

"There is no doubt in your mind," the judge advocate said, "that what ypu saw was an atomic bomb?" "It was an atomic bomb." "And it was coming straight down?" "Yes, it was. Absolutely straight." "This was about how high above the ground?" "At least seventy-five miles." Pause; then, gravely:

"Captain Morlake, you have heard experts testify that any bomb accurately aimed from any point on the earth's surface would have been describing a parabolic curve of some kind at the height?" "I have heard the witnesses."

"And what do you conclude from their testimony?"

Morlake was firm. "A short time ago I was convinced that our rocket science was superior to that of any other country. Now, I know that we've been surpassed."

"That is your sole comment on the death of forty million Americans. We have been surpassed."

Morlake swallowed hard, but he controlled himself. "I did not say that. The bomb was coming straight down."

"Hadn't you better think that over, Captain?"

Insinuating words. He knew what they wanted. In the short time since the trial had been scheduled, the prosecution had had several bright ideas. The previous night they had come to him with drawings of hypothetical trajectories of bombs. Every drawing was on a map of the world, and there were three different points of origin illustrated. If he would agree that the bomb had been slanting slightly in any one of the three directions, he would be a hero.

"You still have an opportunity, Captain," said the judge advocate silkily, "of being of great service to your country."

Morlake hesitated miserably. "I'm sorry," he said at last, stiff with fear, "but I cannot change my testimony. It was coming straight down."

The sentence was thirty years, and he was lucky. Within a month of his trial men were being hanged from lamp posts, and sedition trials sprouted like weeds over a land that could not discover its attacker.

On the ninety-fourth morning, Morlake put on his fatigue suit as usual. He had only the vaguest sense of ever having done anything else, the routine was so much a part of him. On the way to breakfast he glanced at the bulletin board, where the day's work sheet had already been posted. Ploughing the east field. Planting potatoes in the valley. Repairing the east fence. Cleaning the stables. Transferring feed to a new barn.

It was the usual pattern, with only one thing missing.

His own name was not attached to any one of the details. Immediately after breakfast he reported the omission to the day sergeant.

"Okay, you go along with the potato planting detail."

Morlake went, telling himself that, if his name were ever again missing from the board, he would report to the office of the clerks who made up the work sheet.

It wasn't that the work hadn't been good for him. He had always been as hard as nails, and his internal muscles were so perfectly balanced and organized that, in all the army air forces, he had proved by actual test that he could withstand more acceleration than any other man.

And he felt better now, healthier, more awake, more alive, more appreciative of life. But he didn't like planting potatoes. The army farm used the old, primitive method of bending down to place each seed-spud by hand ... By noon, he was sweating and tired.

The mid-day dinner was eaten in the field. Men squatted on the grass with their plates and cups. And the chatter took exactly the same form as on the day before, and the day before that, and so on back into infinity.

"The bombs . . ." "Hey, did you hear what that new guy said the other day, about somebody staggering out of an undamaged basement in New York City?" "Some character in the Middle West is saying that bombs could only have come from the Moon . . ." ". . . It's the Chinese, or I'll be dipped in . . ." "I'll put my money in Russia . . ." "Hell, if I was General Wayne in Berlin, I'd—"

The detail sergeant climbed lazily to his feet. "Okay, generals, up and at those potatoes, before the bugs move in "

The afterncxm lengthened. About four o'clock a car detached itself from the haze that hid the farm buildings five miles to the north. It came lazily along a dirt road, disappearing behind trees and into gullies, but always it came into view again, each time nearer, and obviously as puzzling to the detail sergeant as to the prisoners. The sergeant and his corporal walked slowly towards the road as the car approached, and stood waiting for it.

Up, down, up, down—The remaining guards kept things moving. The ploughs whuffed and thudded through the soil folding the fresh dirt over the seed potatoes. The horses champed and swished their tails. One of them noisily passed water. Up down, up, down—Morlake, sweating and breathing hard, alternated the rhythmic movement with glances at the nearing car and with his own thoughts.

Of the various articles and newpaper editorials that he had read in the farm library, only one, it seemed to Morlake, contained a sensible idea: The purpose of the bombing had not been to destroy the nation or conquer it, but simply to change its political character. With the vociferous, noisy, highly-educated, politically conscious people of America's world-cities out of the way, power would revert to the isolationist agricultural communities. Every capitalistic state in the world would benefit from the markets from which American industry would have to withdraw. And the dozen Communist states had their own reasons for appreciating the end of American influence in Europe, Africa and Asia.

If the enemy were not discovered for several years, it was likely that the elected representatives of cautious farm states would not dare to retaliate. Already, old prejudices were showing. The South reinstituted Jim Crow-ism. And there was no one to stop them.

Only three facts were known about the aggressor: He existed. He had left no clues in his own countries. And he had dropped his bombs straight down onto at least one city.

Unfortunately, the one man who believed the third item was Robert Morlake, and so far his sole thought was that the bombs must have been launched from the Moon . . . Morlake smiled wryly. He could imagine himself trying to convince other men that they must go to the Moon to find out the name of their enemy.

"Morlake!"

Morlake straightened slowly and turned. It was the corporal who had gone with the sergeant to the car. In the near distance, the machine was turning noisily around. Morlake saluted.

"Yessir?"

"You're wanted at the office. You weren't supposed to come out on a detail this morning. "Come along."

Five minutes later, Morlake knew that he was being presented with an opportunity, to escape.

What had happened Morlake discovered gradually. On the East Coast, General Mahan Clark, ranking staff officer surviving, declared martial law on the afternoon of the bombing. For three months he worked eighteen to twenty hours a day, to integrate the shattered armed forces and to organize the country. Railway, telephone and telegraph lines were repaired, and postal services resumed. Priorities and rationings were instituted, and an industrial census taken.

At the end of seventy days he had a picture of the country's resources. By the eightieth day, industries that needed each other's products were being coordinated on a vast scale. Troops patrolled cities and towns; a national curfew was put into effect; severe penalties were invoked-against mobs and mob leaders. Mass hangings of known Communists ceased. People with foreign accents were still being molested, but the cases grew more isolated daily.

From the eighty-fifth to the eighty-eighth day, the general took a holiday, during which time he played dice, ate, rested and slept, and listened only to emergency reports. Back at his headquarters, he moved into a new office.

"From now on," he told reporters, "I'll delegate all except a minimum of administrative work. I will devote my attention to picking up technical matters at the highest level. I'nt^n engineer, not a politician. What I want to know is, what the hell happened to our advanced stuff on the day of the bombing? Where is it, and who's alive that knows something about it?"

Late in the afternoon of the ninety-first day, he looked up bleary-eyed from a mass of papers, and called in an adjutant.

"There's a report here that S29A was scheduled for a 53

test flight on B-day. Was the test made? If so, what happened?"

Nobody knew until the following morning, when a lieutenant produced a report form Field R3 in Texas that the S29A had landed there a few hours after the destruction of its base, Wayne Field, ninety-two days before.

"Who the hell," said Clark, "is the misbegotten incompetent in charge of R3? Herrold? Oh!"

He subsided. He had once been under Herrold's command, and one observed certain amenities with former superiors. Later, though, he remarked to a ranking officer: "Herrold is an old fool. If a man under him has twice as much sense as another, he can't tell the difference. Drive, ability, leadership—he can't see them." He scowled. "Well, the best bet, I suppose, is to have the machine brought here. Inform Herrold, will you?"

The order for the plane caused a turmoil in the upper officialdom of Field R3. No one there could fly the ship.

"It's a special plane," an air-force major explained to General Herrold. "I remember that the man who was to test it had to go to the factory and learn all kinds of preliminary things before he was even allowed to warm her jets. The difficulties, I understand, derive from an intricate combination of rocket and jet drives."

"Oh!" said General Herrold. He thought about it for some minutes, then, "It wouldn't take you long," he suggested, "to learn to fly it, would it?"

The big young man shrugged. "I've been flying jets for years—" he began.

He was interrupted. "Uh, Major Bates," Herrold said, "the officer in question, Captain Robert Morlake, is in prison for a most heinous offence. It would be a grave setback for discipline if he were freed merely because he can fly a plane. Accordingly, I shall have him brought here, and no doubt he can teach you to fly the plane in a day or so. I want you to hold no conversations with him except on purely technical matters. You will carry a gun, and remember that the plane is more valuable than the man."

Bates saluted. "I'll handle him, sir," he said confidently.

The moment the S29A was high enough, Morlake zipped her over into a power dive. Behind him, Major Bates clawed for the nearest handhold;-,

"Hey!" he yelled. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Morlake wasn't sure. He had decided at the moment he was sentenced to virtual life imprisonment that he would not accept the verdict of the court. But exactly what was going to happen now he didn't know.

"Now, look, Morlake," Bates said in a voice that trembled slightly, "this is not going to get you anywhere. There's hardly any fuel in the tanks."

That was why he had wasted no time. Morlake said nothing, but sat blank-brained, waiting events. The day was clear as glass, the earth below plainly visible. It looked closer than it was.

"For God's Sake, man!" he other's nerve was tottering badly. "You swore you still stood by your oath of allegiance to the United States."

Morlake broke his silence. "I do."

"Then what—"

"I happen to be the only man who knows how to find the enemy. If I let myself stay locked up, I'd be violating my oath."

It sounded wild even to Morlake. It probably seemed pure insanity to Bates. And Morlake did not fool himself. He felt emotional about this. It was not reasoned, objective, what he was doing. He had had a three-month's taste of a life sentence of hard labor, and the passionate beliefs he held, his justification for this, were rooted as much in horror of his fate as in patriotism.

The bomb had come straight down. If, as the experts maintained, jfcouldn't have come from Earth, then it had come from'Tab Moon. Since that was not an idea to which Americans would take easily, it was up to the one man who knew the facts to persuade them.

His thought ended. He jumped, as he saw that the ground was really rushing towards him now. Behind him:

"Morlake, for God's sake, what do you want?"

"Your gun."

"Do you intend to kill me?"

"Don't be a fool. Hurry."

The earth was a huge valley, with rearing hills no longer looking so flat. Morlake felt the gun shoved past his shoulder. He snatched at it, shouting:

"Get back! Back, away from me!"

He knew that would be hard, like climbing the side of a house. But he waited while the sweating officer fumbled away from his seat. He could hear the man cursing with fear. And his own heart was pounding, his body rigid, when at last he came out of his dive, and began to climb towards the black regions of the stratosphere.

The stars were as bright as jewels before he leveled off and began his race with the diminishing supply of fuel. At the machine's most economical speed, thirty-five miles a minute, he sped through the darkness above an ocean of light.

He had two intermingled hopes: That he would be able to reach Kane Field and that he would find it deserted. The first hope was realized as the field swam into view in the distance. The second ended in dismay, as he saw that the entire area swarmed with men, with tractors, cranes, trucks and piles of material.

Morlake came down from behind a low hill some distance from the nearest group of workers.

"Get out!" he said to Bates.

"I'll see you hanged for this!" the big man snarled. But he got out. He did not move off immediately nor did Morlake. There was a prolonged silence, then:

"Tell them," Morlake said, "that I'm taking the plane because—because—" He paused. He felt a desperate desire to justify himself. He went on, "Tell them the top speed of Sadie is 67 miles a minute, and that she can climb 80 miles in 7 minutes plus, but tell them—" He hesitated, for if his words were given publicity, the unknown enemy would read them also— "tell them not to waste any more time building duplicates of Sadie. She isn't fast enough, she can't go high enough to reach the men who dropped the atomic bombs. And that's why I'm taking her. Because she's only a second-rater, and therefore worthless. Goodby."

He waved his hand. The vertical jets hissed with power.

The machine reared slowly, then the rockets fired several bursts, and the ground began to flow below like a tremendously swift river. Morlake headed over the hills, straight towards a place where there had once been pipes leading up from an underground fuel tank. Men were working there amid a tangle of twisted metal, but some order had already been established. He landed.

A foreman, a slim, rugged-looking young man, came over, and said, "Sure, we've got all the fuel you want. None of the tanks were busted by the earthquakes. Roll her over this way."

He was in no hurry, but talkative, curious. While his men attached piping to the tanks Morlake indicated, he asked pointed questions, which Morlake answered or evaded with a laugh. He knew how to talk to this kind of man, and the only trouble was that out of the corner of one eye, he saw Bates come into sight over the hill, and flag down a truck. The truck headed swiftly toward Morlake. When it was a third of a mile away, Morlake climbed into the plane.

"Thanks," he said.

The foreman waved cheerfully. "Give my regards to the general."

The truck was tooting its horns madly as the S29A became airborne.

Morlake's sense of exultation did not last long. He had enough fuel to fly around the earth. But his problem was to convince the people in authority that only by continuing the abandoned moon project could they ever again hope to be free of danger. Where, how would he start? What ought his pattern of action to be?

When he came right down to it, he hadn't really given that much (fcyppjht,

m

NINE BULLET-PROOF cars drew up before General Clark's headquarters one day some ten months after the bombing. There was a scurrying of men from the first four and the last four. Everywhere guns showed prominently, as the guards drew a cordon around the center car. As soon as the maneuvers were completed, a flunkey hurried forward and graciously opened the door of the big machine. Then he moved back.

Senator Tormey stepped out. He frowned as he saw that no one had yet come out of the general's office to meet him. Then as the general himself appeared in the doorway, a smile wreathed the handsome though heavy face, and he walked over and shook hands with the officer.

"Got all the Morlake stuff ready to show me?" he asked.

"All ready," Clark nodded. "I'd have invited you to see it before if I'd known you were interested."

Tormey took that as an apology. He had come a long way in the past four months. On B-day he had called for martial law, to last for six months, and had then found that the army was not prepared to turn the government over to him at the specified time. The available press and radio echoed with the senator's protests. He had no ambitions himself, but it was time for the government to be returned to civilians. As the ranking survivor of the federal congress, it was his duty—and so on. And so on and so on.

That was the beginning. And as army ruthlessness, as personified by tens of thousands of officers, had as usual alienated ninety per cent of the population, the senator was soon riding a crest of protest meetings, of which the army, in the person of General Clark, finally took cognizance.

The senator was invited to headquarters, and taken into the confidence of the military. He became a habitual member of General Clark's dice club, and his advice was sought on every important administrative problem. It was the army's bid for civilian support, and it seemed to work.

"This way," said General Clark, "to what we call the Morlake room."

It was a small room. There was a desk and a chair in it, and a filing cabinet. On one wall was a huge map of North America, with pins stuck into it. The red pins indicated that Robert Morlake had definitely been seen in those areas. The green pins meant that he had "almost certainly" been in the vicinity. The yellow pins were rumors, and the blue pins represented points at which a plane resembling S29A had been observed. Each pin was numbered and the numbers referred to a card index file, which contained a synopsized history of the hunt for Robert Morlake. The index itself was based on files of documents, which were kept in a cabinet beside the map.

"At first," General Clark explained. "Morlake's idea seemed to be to contact old friends of his. On the second day after refueling at Kane Field, he approached the residence of Professor Glidden in California. . . ."

After watching Glidden Grove one whole day, Morlake got up at dawn and walked two miles to where the low, long building of Dr. Glidden's research institute spread beside the banks of a winding stream. A caretaker was puttering beside the open door of a stucco, Holly-woodish laboratory. He answered Morlake's query curiously:

"Dormart? He lives with the professor. I guess the cook will be up by this time. That's the house, over there."

It was a glassed, tree-sheltered bungalow. As Morlake strode along a walk lined with towering shrubs, a woman emerged from a side path that led up from the creek, and they almost collided.

It was the woman who was startled. Morlake said nothing. Ninety-four days on the prison farm had frozen his nerves.

The woman was dark-haired and blue-eyed; she wore a wrap-around dressing gown and a bathing cap. "Mr. Dor-man," she ecrfeed. "Oh, you mean the secretary." Her manner became indifferent. "Probably still in bed. It's a habit of people like that to sleep until it's time to punch the clock."

Her tone was carelessly contemptuous. Morlake, who had been about to pass on politely, paused for a second look. She was not the world's most beautiful woman, but it seemed to him that he had never seen a more passionate face. Her lips were full and sensuous, her eyes large and bright, her manner immensely assured.

"Aren't you a litde early," she asked, "for visiting the help?"

She was irritating, and Morlake didn't like her at all. "May I by any chance," he asked, "be speaking to Professor Glidden?"

The remark pleased her, for she laughed. She stepped confidently up to him, and hooked her arm in his. She said, "I'll ask the cook which room is your friend's. You mustn't mind me too much. I like to get up when the birds start singing, and it makes me cross to have to wait five hours before there's anybody to talk to. I'm the physical type. Immense energy; and the only reason my brain is any good at all is because I never worry. Do you know anything about endocrinology?"

"Never heard of it," said Morlake, truthfully.

"Thank God," said the woman. She added, "I've been swimming in the old swimming hole—enlarged by damming, cemented into a pool, and improved by a ten-thousand-dollar heating system for cool days and nights. Just a litde gadget of the professor's, hot and cold running water. Would you like to know all the local gossip? I've only been a guest twenty-four hours, but I already know everything there is to know here."

Morlake did not doubt it. He was beginning to be fascinated. It cost him an effort to keep his mind to his purpose. The woman said: "The world is absolutely wretched, detestable and incorrigible. Here it is little more than three months after B-day, and—"

"After what?".

"Bomb day. That's what the army calls it. You can't go on saying 'the day the atomic bombs were dropped,' or 'day of the catastrophe.' You can't even expect people to remember that B-day was July 17th, can you?"

She did not wait for an answer, for they had reached the house.

"Wait here," she said. "I'll slip into my bedroom, and open the living-room door for you."

Morlake did not wait. The moment she disappeared around the corner, he followed. It had taken him a minute to catch on, but he was too conscious of danger to be fooled by a fast-talking woman. She had recognized him, and she would probably telephone the police before opening the front door.

There were three patio doors, along the side and all of them were unlocked, but only the third one opened into an unoccupied room.

He knew it was possible that the woman had snatched up a gun in passing, but he was beyond that kind of fear. . . . The situation in the living-room was ideal for melodrama. She was at the phone, her back to him, saying urgently, "Keep trying! There must be an answer!" Morlake put his hand over the mouthpiece, and took the receiver from her instantly acquiescent fingers. For a long moment the woman sat frozen, and then slowly she turned and looked at him, her eyes widened.

Morlake did not replace the receiver, but stood there holding it tightly. He said in a monotone:

"How did you recognize me?"

She.shrugged. "Newspaper pictures all over the house. Your friend, Dorman, talking about you, saying he can't believe you're guilty. But you are, aren't you? I've seen desperate men before."

Where? Morlake wondered, but all he said was:

"Who were you phoning?"

"The police, of course."

Answering that required no thought.

"The police would have replied—" he began. And then he stopped, as the operator's voice sounded from the earphone. He jerked the instrument up. "Yes," he said. "Hello."

"The party jfie lady called does not answer," trilled the female voiced

Morlake said, "Are you sure you have the right number?" Beside him the woman gasped. Before he could guess her intention, she reached down, snatched the cord, and, with a jerk that must have jarred her body, tore the wires out of the box....

In the Morlake room at supreme headquarters, General

Clark paused in his narrative. Senator Tormey said slowly:

"Who was the woman? Did you find out?"

The officer shook his head. "I can't remember the alias she used at Glidden Grove, but that name and a dozen others that she employed are all in the index there." Clark motioned toward the cabinet.

"You think she was after Morlake?"

"Definitely."

"How did she happen to be at that particular spot within two days after Morlake's escape?"

"That," said the general, "was what worried Morlake. Then and there he abandoned his plan to approach old friends of his, and attempt, through them, to build up the nucleus of his organization. He realized that he had been forestalled by a group that had anticipated his plans and made a thorough study of his life history. When we came on the scene we found that virtually every friend he ever possessed had been under surveillance on that morning. A hundred different methods were used to gain intimate access to the different people involved. It was very thorough."

"How do you account for their preparation?" The senator was standing with closed eyes.

"It is our opinion," said Clark, "that they intended to rescue him from the prison farm and kill him."

"But how did they know about him?"

The general hesitated. "Our theory there is a little wild, but the men who have gone over Morlake's written statement and court-martial evidence grew interested in the flare of light that enveloped the plane immediately after the bomb had rebuffed Morlake's attempt to throw it off-course. We think that that light was used to take a television picture of the S29A.

"Oh!" Tormey was silent. Finally, "What did Morlake do next?"

It was Morlake who broke the silence in the living room of Professor Glidden's bungalow. "Where is your car?" he said.

The woman seemed resigned. "I'll get my car keys, and drive you back to your plane. I suppose that's where you're heading."

He went with her, conscious that he could trust no one, now that he knew. And that there wasn't time to talk to Dan Dorman, or to ask the questions he had intended to ask Dan's employer, Professor Glidden. He had come to Dan first of all, because of his connection with the world-famous physicist. Depressing to be here at the spot, and realize that he had to leave without having accomplished anything.

Ten minutes later, the woman parked the car a hundred feet from where Sadie was drawn up under trees. "It's a pretty plane," she said. "How fast can it go?"

"Just over a hundred miles a minute," said Morlake carelessly. "Get out."

"W-what?" She must have thought he was going to kill her, for she turned pale. "Please," she begged, "I'm as innocent as you are. I know nothing."

Morlake gazed at her curiously, but he said nothing. Let her sweat for a minute. He didn't have time to question her, and so he couldn't judge how deeply she was involved. Not that it would have made any difference. He was neither judge nor executioner. He locked the car doors, then slipped the keys into his pocket. He saw that the woman had regained control.

"It's only two miles," she said. "I ought to get there before breakfast. Goodby and—good luck."

He sent the plane straight up until the world was black, and stars were points of light above him. Then he flashed out over the Pacific, and, turning, came back in, coasting over trees straight into a deep arroyo. His new hiding place was less than half a mile from Manakee, California, the town four^rniles from Glidden Grove, where the telephone exchangemusf be located.

A bus coming along the nearby highway made his trip easy, and enabled him to inquire about the location of the exchange. . . . There were three girls at the switchboard. One of them, a washed-out looking blonde, said:

"Something went wrong with the line, so I drove in. Did you get the party?"

"Yep, I got her, then I couldn't get you."

Another woman! Morlake felt a thrill, then a sharp anxiety. It was as he had feared. The connection had been established. He hesitated, but there was no drawing

"Will you call again?" "Sure. Got the number?"

Morlake was as ready for that as he could be. "Let me see. Hmmm, can't think of it offhand. But I have it here somewhere."

As he began to search aimlessly through his pockets, he saw that she was examining her notebook. She looked up.

"Never mind, I wrote it down. Lucy Desjardins, 476 Hartford Street, Crestolanto 9153."

For a moment Morlake could only trust himself to nod, then it was time to speak again.

"Just a moment," he said.

"Yes?"

"Did the party, uh, say anything, when you couldn't get her through to me?"

"Yeah, she said it didn't matter or something like that."

"Oh!" said Morlake. "In that case don't bother." He mustered a laugh. "She's a damned touchy woman. I don't want to get her down on me again."

He went out, perspiring but momentarily relieved and jubilant. The feeling didn't last long. The woman had said it didn't matter. That meant she had understood. The gang would be swinging into action.

He hailed a cruising taxi, and had it take him to the suburbs. As soon as it was out of sight, he raced along the highway and across the fields to his machine. The moment he was inside the cockpit, he turned on the radar, and waited.

At first there was nothing. The sky was empty, except for a haze of immensely high clouds. After thirty-seven minutes, a shadow darkened the screen. It was too far away, too high to form a clear image. But it was unmistakable, and it moved along with great speed at a height of about a hundred and twenty-five miles.

Morlake kept spinning his radio dial, and suddenly it caught and stopped, as a voice said:

". . . Got away, looks like. We've been east and north and south, and out over the water, and there's not a sign of anything moving. His machine must be capable of far greater speed than we believed."

The answering voice was faint. "Don't give up. Take nothing for granted."

A third voice broke in loudly, "Hey, who's that talking. This is army station Miklaw. Identify yourself."

There was a faint laugh from the nearest voice, then silence.

IV

FOR MORLAKE, hiding, waiting, planning, in the arroyo near Manakee, time passed slowly. It was a strangely sad period, one man alone wondering how he could convince a nation that he was right and their leaders were wrong. Ghosts of forty million dead adults and children haunted his dreams, but already the fact that they had existed was a shadowy fact in his mind. To him, who had no family, and who had had the experience of friends dying in a war, death was not the ogre that it was to those who had never been trained to face it.

Far more real than the death that had struck was the knowledge that out there somewhere on the surface of the Earth, cunning devil-men were waiting for the slightest hint that their identity had been discovered that, to save themselves, they must be prepared to rend the entire Earth.

Their leaders would deny all accusations, would charge a conspiracy, and, with the tremendous advantage of control of the Moon, would be able to launch bombs toward any target at will.

Morlake qu^led at the picture, and knew that his new plan to seek brit the gang must parallel and complement his greater purpose of forcing a reluctant people to crawl up from the caves of fear into which their minds had collapsed, up to the special bravery or imagination that would be needed for the conquest of space.

At dawn, on his third morning in the arroyo, Morlake made sure the radar screen was blank, and then flew in a great circle around the Capistrano radar station of the army, to Crestolanto. He spent all that day watching 476 Hartford Street. It was a plain two-story structure, and during the morning it showed no sign of life. About mid-afternoon, a woman came out of the front door and walked to the nearby market. It was not the woman who had been visiting Professor Glidden's home, but a slim, distinguished-looking young woman with hair slightly greying at the temples.

When she had come back, he wrote a letter to General Clark, describing what he intended to do. He mailed the letter shortly after dark, and then he waited for black night. It was half-past nine by his watch when he crawled through a window, and moved stealthily toward the living-room, where a light was visible through a partly open door....

Senator Tormey asked, "And then what happened?" General Clark shook his head. "We have no direct information."

He pointed to a red pin rooted in a small west-coast city.

"There, Morlake made one of his four attempts to interest the general public. According to our reports, a woman did all the preliminary advertising for a lecture Morlake intended to give. According to our information, it was this second woman. The lecture was a flop. About a dozen people turned up, most of them old women, who thought it was a new religion, in which the Moon had been proved to be heaven."

"Then it would appear that Morlake and this, uh, nameless woman joined forces."

"Never," said the general, "have I had reports of a bolder couple. They were quite cautious at first. Now they're absolutely fearless."

The senator was silent. He wore contact lenses, behind which his intense blue eyes gleamed with alert fires.

General Clark walked to a window, and gazed out past the formal park toward the distant blue of hills. Without looking around he said:

"Last night you asked me about Morlake, and I invited you to come here. This is in line with the army's policy of cooperating with elected representatives of the people. As you know, we intend to permit the congressional elections next fall and the presidential elections in 1972 and so the country will resume its normal democratic functioning. What you dp not know is that, though the elections will be held as scheduled, the announcement about them was made with the intention of lulling the enemy."

From behind him, Tormey said slowly, "I don't think I understand."

The general turned to face the bigger man. "When Morlake escaped with S29A, I received a garbled account of what had happened. It was so garbled, in fact, the loss of the plane so important, that I flew to Texas by jet, saw the court-martial papers of Morlake, and began to realize what tremendous information had been bottled up. Naturally, I relieved Herrold of bis command instantly, and by the end of the week we had the information which I have described. Better still, our radar station at Capis-tranp saw the image of the enemy spaceship which was searching for Morlake, and so we had definite evidence that what he stated in his letter was correct.

"When Capistrano saw it, the spaceship was about two hundred miles up. They couldn't estimate the speed, but it was terrific."

He went on matter-of-factly:

"Normally, we might have paid no attention to such a report. So many, many reports come in hour after hour to all military districts. But at this time, on the basis of Morlake's written statement to General Herrold, our experts decided that they had narrowed the possible origins of the bombs to three:

"Two of jtient werp the likeliest points on Earth. If we decided on emier bf these, we*d have to assume that our men or our instruments for detecting radioactivity were at fault. We rejected these possibilities because the piles necessary for the creation of vast quantities of radioactive materials could not escape detection. That left the third alternative, which assumed the bombs to be of extraterrestrial origin. I accordingly ordered the resumption of the moon project, which—as you know—had actually completed nearly 30 ships when Congress cut off its funds."

Senator Tormey said gravely, "I regret that I had something to do with that cut-off, but it was a matter of too much deficit spending."

"Unfortunately," said the General, "one of the storage places for the spaceships was in Georgia, and that entire base was destroyed by a direct hit. Twenty-two spaceships were destroyed. However, there is another storage area —it would be unwise for me to tell you where it is."

"Perhaps, I could inspect them," said the senator. "How many ships are there?"

"Five."

"That many?" Tormey sounded impressed.

"They'll be operational next week," said General Clark.

The senator made a strange sound. It was not a word, and he did not repeat it. Instead, he walked unevenly to a chair and sat down.

"General," he mumbled at last, "you make me dizzy. You mean that all this uproar about Morlake has been unnecessary?"

"Very necessary," Clark was deadly serious. "His desperate efforts to get us to do something made it look as if we were paying no attention to him. We even ridiculed Morlake's propaganda. Personally, I think Morlake caught on, but right now I'd give a lot to have a talk with him. The time has come for coordinated action."

The senator said blankly, "But this means war."

"We'll smash them in one day," Clark said coldly. "No one else has dared to mobilize, for fear of rousing our suspicion. We'll put a million men into their cities overnight. We'll execute every man who had anything to do with the bombing of this country. For once, no one will have an excuse."

"And all this in about two weeks?"

"Possibly less."

There was a long silence. At last the senator climbed to his feet.

"It seems kind of funny after that, to talk of social activity, but are you still having your crap game tonight?" "We don't dare change our habits now."

"How many will be there?" "Six, besides yourself."

"Wonder if I could bring along a yourlg friend of my wife's?"

"Why, sure.Which rerninds me. When is your lady coming down here?"

Tormey smiled. "Couldn't fell you. She thinks I ought to retire from politics, and therefore she won't establish an official residence. She's pretty much of a traveler."

They parted on that note.

"Gentlemen," said Senator Tormey, "this is my friend, Morley Roberts."

There was a grunting response. Morlake sat down, and watched the dice bounce briskly from the far end of the table. He did riot look immediately at General Clark, but concentrated on making his first bet. Presently, he picked up his winnings for .the' roll, and pressed his arm ever so lightly against the gun in his shoulder holster. It was still there/ready for the crisis which ought to come in a few minutes. "

He lost twice in a row, and then won three times on his own roll. As he gave up the dice finally, he took his first good look at General Clark. A pair of eyes as sharp as his own met that one searching glance. The general said casually:

"So it's me you're here to contact, Roberts?"

Morlake brought his hand to the edge of the table, with the fingers held slightly downward and barely touching the surface. From there it was one foot to his gun.

He said steadily:

''General, y^r*re a smart man, but you haven't figured it quite right.'^*1

There was an undertone in his voice, the beginning of tension, the beginning of deadly intent. Like darkness blotting out day, the atmosphere of the room changed. Some of the officers looked at each other, puzzled. Senator Tormey said:

"It's getting warm in here. Uh, I'll call one of my guards and have him open the windows wider."

"I'll do it, sir." Morlake was on his feet, without waiting for acquiescence.

He examined the windows and, as he had expected, the "glass" was a bullet-proof plastic. What he did then was rooted in a profound discovery he had made during the previous six months: the discovery that if you say you will do something and then go and do something similar, no one will notice the difference—for a while.

Without a qualm, he closed and locked the three windows, and then he returned to the table. The dice rolled whitely against the background of the green cloth. Senator Tormey won from several of the officers. As he was raking in it, General Clark said:

"Morley Roberts. The name is familiar, but it is the face that makes a better identification. Suppose we change the name around a little, and say Robert Morlake, former Captain, army air forces, court-martialed, thirty years at hard labor. Am I getting warm?"

The general's voice went up, "Wait, gentlemen!" The men at the table froze, two with their chairs pushed back, one with a hand under his coat. The senator was the first to relax. He was sitting at the side of the table, and he hummed a small tune under his breath. Clark said softly:

"You came here tonight as the guest of Senator Tormey. I presume he knows who you are."

"I'm sure," Morlake said, "that the senator must have recognized me, but you will know better than I if he's made inquiries about me in the last two days. But now I'd better hurry. Gentlemen, this is a dangerous moment, not because of me directly—I'm only a catalytic agent— but because my appearance gave a certain person an opportunity to carry out a previously conceived plan.

"It was my intention," Morlake went on, "that he should use me for this purpose so that I might use him for mine.

"A brief case history is in order: Picture a wealthy congressman, unscrupulous and with unlimited ambitions. It is very easy for him to think of himself as a man of destiny, frustrated by the stupidity of others. Having become senator, he discovered in two successive presidential campaigns that he had no chance to become chief of state. His wife began to realize shortly after she married him in 1964 that his rage at his failure was irrational, his lust for revenge completely unbalanced, But she didn't guess at the meaning of his schemes nor at the purpose of the organization he set up in the South until B-Day; the total violence and hate in thé man—she told me—was concealed by a superficial courtesy and a courtly manner. As you know, he was in a safe place on B-Day—very fortuitous. Afterwards, his main opposition was the army. It was clever of him to authorize martial law—which would have been done anyway. It was clever because he was later able to use it in his propaganda."

Morlake paused, and smiled to relax his eyes, to loosen his body, because the moment had come.

"His big opportunity came—it seemed to him—when I appearedon the scene, as guest of his wife. He saw it as his chance to kill General Clark and his staff, and throw the blame on me.. L,,.of course, the highly publicized escaped army convict, would also be found dead, and—"

Mprlake broke off. He said, "What's the matter, senator, has-your nerve gone? You're not going to go down like a weakling, are you?"

The sweat was almost a mask on the heavy face. Tormey brought his hand up, and put it in his vest pocket. He fumbled for a long moment. Morlake said:

"I see, senator, that you're activating your little radio, calling your agents outside."

As if to punctuate the words, there was a crash of bullets on the window. Everybody except Morlake jumped. Morlake said tantalizingly:

"Too bad."

He reached,.across the table, and snatched a tiny instrument frojLthe senator's vest pocket. The man grabbed angrily at hisniand; 6ut he was too slow.

"Hmmm," said Morlake. "One of the printed variety."

With a visible effort, the other man straightened. "Never heard such nonsense," he snarled. "You've arranged this drama with bullets against the window. If you think such a simple scheme is going to work against me, you're—"

He stopped. His eyes, staring straight into Morlake's widened. He must have realized that his denials were meaningless here, that the plans already boiling in his mind, to use the radio and the press, his control of the party, of the country, his skill at propaganda—all that meant nothing to this deadly young man. He had not even time to cry out in sudden terrified realization of his fate.

The two shots that Morlake fired broke the big man's lungs. Tormey slumped over on the table, then slid down to the floor. Morlake paid no attention to the armed officers in the room. They could have shot him as he knelt beside the dying man, but his very helplessness was his safeguard. They watched, their bodies rigid, and they must have been restrained, too, by the knowledge that he had acted with remorseless logic.

Morlake neither saw nor worried. The senator's eyes were open and staring widely. There was blood on his lips.

"Senator, what is the name of the enemy?"

That got them. General Clark came closer. An officer who had gone to calm the guards at the door half turned back into the room. Even Senator Tormey stiffened.

"You can go to hell," he muttered.

Morlake said, "Hurry, man, you've only got a minute—a minute."

The horror of that struck deep. The thick face twisted. "Die!" the senator mumbled. "Why—I'm going to die." The idea seemed to grow on him. He struggled, gasping for breath, then subsided. He lay so still for a second that he looked dead. His eyes opened wearily. He looked up, and mumbled:

"Was that my wife ... at Crestolanto, in that house?"

Morlake nodded. "She used your organization. She received all California reports. That enabled her to locate me no matter which local agent saw me first. She had decided that if I came to Crestolanto she would ask me to help her. It was she who toured the country with me for all those weeks."

General Clark dropped down beside Morlake. "Senator," he said, "for God's sake, the name of the country, the enemy?"

The dying man looked at him with the beginning of a sneer on his lips.

"We got even with you nigger lovers, didn't we?" he

said. He laughed a satanic laughter, that ended hideously

in a gush of blood. Slowly, the big head grew limp, the

eyes though still open took on^ sightless glare. A dead

man lay on the floor.                     ;

The two men, Clark and Morlake, climbed to their feet. Morlake said in a low voice, "Gentlemen, you have your answer." He saw they still did not comprehend what he had suspected for long now.

General Clark was grim- "When I think we've been giving him our inmost secrets for months—" He choked, and held out his hand. "Thanks."

Morlake said nothing. His first sharp sense of victory was yielding to an intense gloom. He grew aware that the older man's penetrating gaze was on him. Clark misread his expression.

"I know what's ailing you," Clark said. "But you're wrong. We have .spaceships." He described the planned attack on the Moon.

Morlake nodded, but his depression remained. Such an attack-would be necessary, to locate the launching sites of the bombs, and to find out where and how in America Tormeyand his group had obtained them. But that was incidental. He accepted Tormey's last words literally.

The first atomic war had been, not an international, but a civil war. And now that Tormey was dead, the gang would scatter. A gang of race-prejudiced Americans.

The war was over. Irrevocably.

The name "Melchior" is identified with the world renowned singer, ^Lauritz Melchior who is well known for his successÊQtiflts: thé^Metropolitan Opera, in motion pictures and on television.

The name "Melchior" is identified by science fiction movie fans as the writer and director of such films as THE ANGRY RED PLANET and THE TIME TRAVELERS. Ib Melchior, the son of the famous singer has had much of his words made available to the public by the New York Post.

This story reveals some of the brutal facts about rac-

"~ "                           IF THIS GOES ON

ing and about our own human nature as well. Ts modern sport so very much different from the sport of the Roman arenas? Is there any difference at all between the gladiator and the boxer; the charioteer and . . .

THE RACER

bylb Melcbior

WILLIB felt the, familiar, intoxicating excitement. His mouth was dry; his heart beat faster, all his senses seemed more aware than ever. It was a few minutes before 0800 hours-^-his time to start.

This was the day. From all the Long Island Starting Fields the Racers were taking off at 15-minute intervals. The sputter and roar of cars warming up were everywhere. The smell of oil and fuel fumes permeated the air. The hubbub of the great crowd was a steady din. This was the biggest race of the year—New York to Los Angeles—100,000 bucks to the winner! Willie was determined to better his winning record of last year; 33 hours, 27 minutes, 12 seconds in Time. And although it was becoming increasingly difficult he'd do his damndest to better his Score too!

He took a last walk of inspection around his car. Sleek, low-slung, dark brown, the practically indestructible plastiglass^tbp looking deceptively fragile, like a soap bubble, rrot bad for an old-fashioned diesel job. He kicked the solid plastirubber tires in the time honored fashion of all drivers. Hank was giving a last minute shine to the needle sharp durasteel horns protruding from the front fenders. Willie's car wasn't nick-named "The Bull" without reason. The front of the car was built like a streamlined bull's head complete with bloodshot, evil looking eyes, iron ring through flaring nostrils

—and the horns. Although most of the racing cars were built to look like tigers, or sharks, or eagles, there were a few bulls—but Willie's horns were unequalled.

"Car 79 ready for Start in five minutes," the loudspeaker blared. "Car 79. Willie Connors, driver. Hank Morowski, mechanic. Ready your car for Start in five minutes."

Willie and Hank took their places in "The Bull". At a touch by Willie on the starter the powerful diesel engine began a low purr. They drove slowly to the starting fine.

"Last Check!" said Willie.

"Right," came Hank's answer.

"Oil and Fuel?"

"40 hours."

"Cooling Fluid?"

"Sealed."

"No-Sleeps?"

"Check."

"Energene Tabs?" "Check." "Thermo Drink?" "Check."

The Starter held the checkered flag high over his head. The crowds packing the grandstands were on their feet. Hushed. Waiting.

"Here we go!" whispered Willie.

The flag fell. A tremendous cry rose from the crowd. But Willie hardly heard it. Accelerating furiously he pushed his car to its top speed of 190 miles an hour within seconds—shooting like a bullet along the straightaway toward Manhattan. He was elated; exhilarated. He was a Racer. And full of tricks!

Willie shot through the Tunnel directly to Jersey.

"Well?" grumbled Hank. "Can you tell me now?"

"Toledo," said Willie. "Toledo, Ohio. On the Thru-way. We should make it in under three hours."

He felt a slight annoyance with Hank. There was no reason for the man to be touchy. He knew a driver didn't tell anyone the racing route he'd selected. News like that had a habit of getting around. It could cost a Racer his Score.

"There's not much chance of anything coming up until after we hit Toledo," Willie said, "but keep your eyes peeled. You never know."

Hank merely grunted.

It was exactly 1048 hours when "The Bull" streaked into the deserted streets of Toledo.'

"O.K.—what now?" asked Hank.

"Grand Rapids, Michigan," said Willie laconically.

"Grand Rapids! But that's—that's an easy 300 miles detour!"

"I know."

"Are you crazy? It'll cost us a couple of hours."

"So Grand Rapids is all the way up between the Lakes, So who'll be expecting us up there?"

"Oh! Oh, yeah, I see," said Hank.

"The Time isn't everything, my friend. Whoever said the shortest distance between two points is a straight line? The Score counts too. And here's where we pick up our Score!"

The, first Tragi-Acc never even knew the Racer had arrived. "The-Bull" struck him squarely, threw him up in the air and let him slide off its plastiglass back, leaving a red smear behind and somewhat to the left of Willie—all in a split second ...

Near Calvin College an imprudent coed found herself too far from cover when the Racer suddenly came streaking down the campus. Frantically she sprinted for a safety, but she didn't have a chance with a driver like Willie behind the wheel. The razor sharp horn on the right fender sliced through her spine so cleanly that the jar wasn't even felt inside the car.

Leaving town, the Racer was in luck again. An elderly woman had J^t the sanctuary for her stone-walled garden to rescue a straying cat. She was so easy to hit that Willie felt a little cheated.

At 1232 hours they were on the speedway headed for Kansas City.

Hank looked in awe at Willie. "Three!" he murmured dreamily, "a Score of three already. And all of them Kills—for sure. You really know how to drive!"

Hank settled back contentedly as if he could already feel his 25,000 dollar cut in his pocket. He began to whistle "The Racers Are Roaring" off key.

Even after his good Score it annoyed Willie. And for some reason he kept remembering the belatedly pleading look in the old woman's eyes as he struck her. Funny that should stay with him . . .

He estimated they'd hit Kansas City at around 1815 hours, CST. Hank turned on the radio. Peoria, Illinois, was warning its citizens of the approach of a Racer. All spectators should watch from safety places. Willie grinned. That would be him. Well—he wasn't looking for any Score in Peoria.

Dayton, Ohio told of a Racer having made a Tragic Accident Score of one, and Fort Wayne, Indiana was crowing over the fact that three Racers had passed through without scoring once. From what he heard it seemed to Willie he had a comfortable lead, both in Time, and Score.

They were receiving Kansas City now. An oily voiced announcer was filling in the time between Racing Scores with what appeared to be a brief history of Racing.

". . . and the most popular spectator sports of the latter half of the 20th Century were such mildly exciting pursuits as boxing and wrestling. Of course the spectators enjoyed seeing the combatants trying to maim each other, and there was always the chance of the hoped-for fatal accident.

"Motor Racing, however, gave a much greater opportunity for the Tragic Accidents so exciting to the spectator. One of the most famed old Speedways, Indianapolis, where many drivers and spectators alike ended as bloody Tragi-Accs, is today the nation's racing shrine. Motor racing was already then held all over the world, sometimes with Scores reaching the hundred mark, and long distance races were popular.

"The modern Race makes it possible for the entire population to ..."

Willie switched off the radio. Why did they always have to stress the Score? Time was important too. The speed—and the endurance. That was part of an Ace Racer as well as his scoring ability. He took an Energene Tab. They were entering Kansas City.

The check point officials told Willie that there were three Racers with better Time than he, and one had tied his Score. "The Bull" stayed just long enough in the check point pit for Hank to make a quick engine inspection—then they took off again. It was 1818 hours, CST, when they left the city limits behind. They'd been driving over nine hours.

About 50 miles along the Thruway to Denver, just after passing through a little town called Lawrence, Willie suddenly slowed down. Hank who'd been dozing sat up in alarm.

"What's the matter?" he cried, "what's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong," Willie said irritably. "Relax. You seem to be good at that."

"But why are you slowing down?"

"You heard the, check point record. Our Score's already been tied; We've got to better it," Willie answered grimly.

The plastirubber tires screeched on the concrete speedway as Willie turned down an exit leading to a Class II road.

"Why down here?" asked Hank. "You can only go about 80 MPH."

A large lumi-sign appeared on the side of the road ahead—

LONE STAR 11 Miles

it announced.

Willie pointed. "That's why," he said curtly.

In a few minutes Lone Star came into view. It was a small village; 'Willie was traveling as fast as he could on the second^Sjftroad. He plowed through a flock of chickens, hurtled over a little mongrel dog, which crawled yelping towards the safety of a house and the waiting arms of a little girl, and managed to graze the leg of a husky youth who vaulted a high wooden fence—then they were through Lone Star.

Hank activated the little dashboard screen which gave them a rear view.

"That's not going to do much for our Score," he remarked sourly.

"Oh, shut up!" Willie exploded, surprising both himself and Hank.

What was the matter with him? He couldn't be getting tired already. He swallowed a No-Sleep. That'd help.

Hank was quiet as they sped through Topeka and took the Thruway to Oklahoma City, but out of the comer of his eyes he was looking speculatively at Willie, hunched over the wheel.

It was getting dusk. Willie switched on his powerful headbeams. They had a faint reddish tint because of the coloring of "The Bull's" eyes. They had just whizzed through a little burg named Perry, when there was a series of sharp cracks. Willie started.

"There they go again!" chortled Hank. "Those dumb hinterland hicks will never learn they can't hurt us with their fly-poppers." He knocked the plastiglass dome affectionately. "Takes atomic pellets to get through this baby."

Of course! He must be on edge to be taken by surprise like that. He'd run into the Anti-Racers before. Just a handful of malcontents. The Racing Commission had already declared them illegal. Still—at every race they took pot shots at the Racers; a sort of pathetic defiance. Why should anyone want to do away with Racing?

They were entering the outskirts of Oklahoma City. Willie killed his headbeams. No need to advertise.

Suddenly Hank grabbed his arm. Wordlessly he pointed. There—garrish and gaudy—gleamed the neon sign of a theatre . ..

Willie slowed to a crawl. He pulled over to the curb and the dark car melted into the shadows. He glanced at the clock. 2203 hours. Perhaps ...

Down the street a man cautiously stuck his head out from the theatre entrance. Warily he emerged completely, looking up and down the street carefully. He did not see "The Bull." Presently he ventured out into the center of the roadway. He stood still listening for a moment Then he turned and beckoned towards the theatre. Immediately a small group of people emerged at a run.

Now!

The acceleration slammed the Racers back in their seats. "The Bull" shot forward and bore, down on the little knot of petrified people with" appalling speed.

This time there was no mistaking the hits. A quick succession of pars had Willie calling upon all his driving skill to keep from losing control. Hank pressed the Clean-Spray button to wash the blood off the front of the dome. He sat with eyes glued to the rear view screen.

"Man, oh man," he murmured. "What a record; What a Score!" He turned to Willie. "Please," he said, "please stop. Let's get out. I know it's against regulations, but I've just gotta see how we did. It won't take long. We can afford a couple of minutes Time now!"

Suddenly Willie felt he had to get out too. This was the biggest Tragi-Acc he'd ever had. He had a vague feeling there was something he wanted to do. He brought the car to a stop. They stepped out.

Within seconds the deserted street was swarming with people. Now the Racers were out of their car they felt safe. And curious. A few of them pressed forward to take a look at Willie. Naturally he was recognized. His photo had been seen in one way or another by everyone.

Willie was gratified by this obvious adulation. He looked about him. There were many people in the street now. But—but they were not all fawning and beaming upon him. Willie frowned. Most of them looked grim —even hostile. Why? What was wrong? Wasn't he one of their greatest Racers? And hadn't he just made a record Score? Given them a Tragi-Acc they wouldn't soon forget? What was the matter with those hicks?

Suddenly the crowd parted. Slowly a young girl walked up, to Willie.^he' was beautiful—even with the terrible anger burnihfrm net face. In her arms she held the still body of a child. She looked straight at Willie with loathing in her eyes. Her voice was low but steady when she said:

"Butcher!"

Someone in the crowd called: "Careful, Muriel!" but she paid no heed. Turning from him she walked on through the crowd, parting for her.

Willie was stunned.

"Come on, let's get out of here," Hank said anxiously.

Willie didn't answer. He was looking back through the crowd to the scene of his Tragi-Acc. Never before had he stopped. Never before had he been this close. He could hear the moaning and sobbing of the Maims over the low murmur of the crowd. It made him uneasy. Back there they worked hurriedly to get the Tragi-Accs off the street. There were so many of them Butcher? ...

All at once he was conscious of Hank pulling at him. "Let's get roaring! Let's go!"

Quickly he turned and entered the car. Almost at once the street was empty. He turned on his headbeams and started up. Faster—and faster. The street was dead— empty...

No! There! Someone! Holding a . . .

It was butcher—no, Muriel. She stood rooted to the spot in the middle of the street holding the child in her arms. In the glaring headlights her face was white, her eyes terrible, burning, dark ...

Willie did not let up. The car hurtled down upon the lone figure—and passed ...

They'd lost 13 minutes. Now they were on their way to El Paso, Texas. The nagging headache Willie'd suffered the whole week of planning before the race had returned. He reached for a No-Sleep, hesitated a second, then took another.

Hank glanced at him, worriedly. "Easy boy!" Willie didn't answer.

"That Anti-Racer get under your skin?" Hank suggested. "Don't let it bother you."

"Butcher," she'd said. "Butcher!"

Willie was staring through the plastiglass dome at the racing pool of light from the headbeams. "The Bull" was tearing along the Thruway at almost 180 MPH.

What was that? There—in the light? It was a face— terrible, dark eyes—getting larger—larger—Muriel! It was butcher—no, Muriel! No—it was a Racer,—a Racing Car with Muriel's face, sheriking down upon him—closer —closer ...

He threw his arms in front of his face. Dimly he heard Hank shout "Willie!" He felt the car lurch. Automatically he tightened his grip on the wheel. They had careened close to the shoulder of the speedway. Willie sat up. Ahead of him the road was clear—and empty.

It was still dark when they hit El Paso. The radio told them their Oklahoma Score; Five and eight. Five Kills— eight Maims! Hank was delighted. They were close to setting a record. He'd already begun to spend his $25,000.

Willie was uneasy. His headache was worse. His hands were clammy. He kept hearing Muriel's voice saying: "Butcher"—"Butcher"—"Butcher!" . . .

But he was not a butcher. He was a Racer! He'd show them. He'd win this race.

El Paso was a disappointment. Not a soul in sight. Phoenix next.

The clock said 0658 hours, MST, when they roared into Phoenix. The streets were clear. Willie had to slow down to take a comer. As he sped into the new street he saw her. She was running to cross the roadway. Hank whooped^

"Go, Willie! Go!"

The girl looked up an instant in terror. Her face!

It was the old woman with the cat! No!—it was Muriel. Muriel with the big, dark eyes . . .

In the last split second Willie touched the power steering. "The Bull" responded immediately, and shot past the girl as she scampered to safety.

"What the hell is the matter with you?" Hank roared at Willie. "You could've scored! Are you out of your head?"

"We dqjjjf need ,her. We'll win without her. I—I—" Yes, wh^nadri't lie scored? It wasn't Muriel. Muriel

was back in butcher—in—Oklahoma City. Damn this

headache!

"Maybe so," said Hank angrily. "But I wanna be sure. And what about the bonus for setting a record? Ten thousand apiece. And we're close." He looked slyly at Willie. "Or—maybe you've lost your nerve. Wonder what the Commission will say to that?"

"I've got plenty of nerve," Willie snapped.

"Prove it!" said Hank quickly. He pointed to the dashboard map slowly tracing their progress. "There. See that village? With the screwy name? Wikieup! Off the Thruway. Let's see you score there!"

Willie said nothing. He hadn't lost his nerve, he knew that. He was the best of the Racers. No one could drive like he could; constant top speed, and stamina it took, the split-second timing, the unerring judgment—

"Well?"

"All right," Willie agreed.

They hadn't even reached Wikieup when they spotted the farmer. He didn't have a chance. "The Bull" came charging down upon him. But in the last moment the car veered slightly. One of the horns ripped the man's hip open. In the rear view screen Willie saw him get up and hobble off the road.

"You could've made it a Kill," Hank growled accusingly. "Why didn't you?"

"Bad road," Willie said. "The wheel slipped on a stone."

That's what must have happened, he thought. He didn't consciously veer away from the man. He was a good Racer. He couldn't help a bad road.

Needles was left behind at 1045 hours, PST. No one had been out. Hank turned on the radio to a Needles station:

"...has just left the city going West. No other Racer is reported within twenty minutes of the city. We repeat: A Racer has just left..."

Hank clicked it off. "Hear that?" he said excitedly. "Twenty minutes. They don't expect anyone for twenty minutes!" He took hold of Willie's arm. "Turn around! Here's where we can get ourselves that Record Score. Turn around, Willie!"

"We don't need it."

"I do! I want that bonus!"

Willie made no answer.

"Listen to me, you two-bit Racer!" Hank's tone was menacing. "You or nobody else is going to cheat me out of that bonus. You've been acting mighty peculiar. More like a Anti-Racer! Ever since you stopped at that Tragi-

Acc back there. Yeah! That girl—that Anti-Racer who called you a—a butcher. Listen! You get that record Score, or I'll report you to the Commission for having snooped around a Tragi-Acc. Ypull never race again!"

'Never race again!' Willie's bjain was whirling. But he was a Racer. Not a butcher. A Racer. Record Score? Yes —that's what he had to do. Set a record. Be the best damned Racer of them all.

Without a word he turned the car. In minutes they were back at the Needles suburbs. That building. A School House. And there—marching orderly in two rows with their teacher, a class, a whole class of children . ..

"The Bull" came charging down the street. Only a couple of hundred feet now to that Record Scores . .

But what was that—it was . . . they were Muriel— they were all Muriel. Terrible, dark eyes. No!—They were children,—the child in Muriel's arms. They were all the child in Muriel's arms! Were they already moaning and screaming? Butcher! Butcher! No! He couldn't butcher them—he "was a Racer—not a Butcher. Not a butcher! Deliberately he swung the car to the empty side of the street.

Suddenly he felt Hank's hands up on the wheel. "You— dirty—lousy—Anti-Racer!" the mechanic snarled as he struggled for the wheel.

The car lurched. The two men fought savagely for control. They were only yards from the fleeing children.

With a violent wrench Willie turned the wheel sharply. The car was going 165 miles an hour when it struck the school house and crashed through the wall into the empty building.

The voice^xajBae to Willie through thick wads of cotton—and theykept fading in and out.

". . . dead instantaneously. But the Racer is still. ..''

It sounded like the voice of Muriel. Muriel . . .

"... keeps calling for..."

Willie tried to open his eyes. Everything was milky white. Why was there so much fog? A face was bending over him. Muriel? No—it was not Muriel. He lost consciousness again.

When he opened his eyes once more he knew he was not alone. He turned his head. A girl was sitting at his bedside. Muriel...

It was Muriel.

He tried to sit up.

"It's you! But—but, how ...?"

The girl put her hand on his arm.

'The radio. They said you kept calling for 'Muriel'. I knew. Never mind that now."

She looked steadily at him. Her eyes were not terrible —not burning—only dark, and puzzled.

"Why did you call for me?" she asked earnestly.

Willie struggled to sit up.

"I wanted to tell you," he said, "to tell you,—I—I am not a butcher!"

The girl looked at him for a long moment. Then she leaned down and whispered to him:

"Nor a Racer!"

Isaac Asimov has been around long enough to have gained several reputations—which he has done quite effectively. In the forties he became famous as a science fiction writer, a profession which he has neglected recently in favor of writing technical and non-technical books on science for the lay-reader. Unknown to many of his science fiction fans, Mr. Asimov's output to date has reached up to 61 books, (with at least half a dozen already on the presses, and more in preparation.) Few contemporary writers have come near matching this record. Besides being a deadly-serious full time writer, Mr. Asimov has been an Associate Professor of Biochemistry at the Boston University School of Medicine for many years—a post which has since 1958 required from him only two or three lectures per year.

Mr. Asimov has been a Hugo winner and Guest of Honor at a science fiction convention, which testifies to his popularity as a fiction writer.

A question which Mr. Asimov surely must have asked himself when writing the following story, is: "What would happen if there were a machine—a gigantic Brain

—which could record all the human personalities of the

world and then inform the authorities about any possible

crime, before it happened?"                          ^

Well, his answer came up with,?. . .

wALL THE TROUBLES OF THE WORLD"

byIsaac Asimov

THE greatest industry on Earth centered about Multivac —Multivac, the giant computer that had grown in fifty years until its various ramifications had filled Washington, D.C. to the suburbs and had reached out tendrils into every city and town on Earth.

An army of civil servants fed it data constantly and another army correlated and interpreted the answers it gave. A corps of engineers patrolled its interior while mines and factories consumed themselves in keeping its reserve stocks of replacement parts ever complete, ever accurate, ever satisfactory in every way.

Multivac directed Earth's economy and helped Earth's science. Most important of all, it was the central clearing house of all known facts about each individual Earth-man.

And each day it was part of Multivac's duties to take the four billion sets of facts about individual human beings that filled its vitals and extrapolate them for an additional day of time. Every Corrections Department on Earth received the data appropriate to its own area of jurisdiction, and the over-all data was presented in one large piece to the Central Board of Corrections in Washington, D.C.

Bernard Gulliman was in the fourth week of his year term as Chairman of the Central Board of Corrections and had grown casual enough to accept the morning re-

port without being frightened by it. As usual, it was a sheaf of papers some six inches thick. He knew by now, he was not expected to read it. (No humqn could.) Still, it was amusing to glance through it.

There was the usual list of predictable crimes: frauds of all sorts, larcenies, riots, manslaughters, arsons.

He looked for one particular heading and felt a slight shock at finding it there at all, then another one at seeing two entries. Not one, but two. Two first-degree murders. He had not seen two in one day in all his term as Chairman so far.

He punched the knob of the two-way intercom and waited for the smooth face of his co-ordinator to appear on the screen.

"Ali," said Gulliman. "There are two first-degrees this day. Is there any unusual problem?"

"No, sir." The dark-complexioned face with its sharp, black eyes seemed restless. "Both cases are quite low probability."

"Isknow that," said Gulliman. "I observed that neither probability-is higher than 15 per cent. Just the same, Multivac has a reputation to maintain. It has virtually wiped out crime, and the public judges that by its record on first-degree murder which is, of course, the most spectacular crime."

Ali Othman nodded. "Yes, sir. I quite realize that."

"You also realize, I hope," Gulliman said, "that I don't want a single consummated case of it during my term. If any other crime slips through, I may allow excuses. If a first-degree murder slips through, I'll have your hide. Understand?"

"Yes, sir. The complete analyses of the two potential murders are^afee&dy at the district offices involved. The potential crnmSafs arid victims'are under observation. I have rechecked the probabilities of consummation and they are already dropping."

"Very good," said Gulliman, and broke connection.

He went back to the list with an uneasy feeling that perhaps he had been overpompous. —But then, one had to be firm with these permanent civil-service personnel and make sure they didn't imagine they were running everything, including the Chairman. Particularly this Othman, who had been working with Multivac since both were considerably younger, and had a proprietary air that could be infuriating.

To Gulliman, this matter of crime was the political chance of a lifetime. So far, no Chairman had passed through his term without a murder taking place somewhere on Earth, some time. The previous Chairman had ended with a record of eight, three more {more, in fact) than under his predecessor.

Now Gulliman intended to have none. He was going to be, he had decided, the first Chairman without any murder at all anywhere on Earth during his term. After that, and the favorable publicity that would result—

He barely skimmed the rest of the report. He estimated that there were at least two thousand cases of prospective wife-beatings listed. Undoubtedly, not all would be consummated. But the incidence was dropping and the consummations were dropping even more quickly.

Multivac had added wife-beating to its list of predictable crimes only some five years ago and the average man was not yet accustomed to the thought that if he planned to wallop his wife, it would be known in advance. As the conviction percolated through society, woman would first suffer fewer bruises and then, eventually, none.

Some husband-beatings were on the list, too, Gulliman noticed.

Ali Othman closed connections and stared at the screen from which Gulliman's jowled and balding head had departed. Then he looked across at his assistant, Rafe Leemy and said, "What do we do?"

"Don't ask me. He's worried about just a lousy murder or two."

"It's an awful chance trying to handle this thing on our own. Still if we tell him, he'll have a first-class fit. These elective politicians have their skins to think of, so he's bound to get in our way and make things worse."

Leemy nodded his head and put a thick lower lip between his teeth. "Trouble is, though, what if we miss out? It would just about be the end of the world, you know."

"If we miss out, who cares what happens to us? We'll just be part of the general catastrophe." Then he said in a more lively manner, "But > hell, the probability is only 12.3 per cent. On anything else, except maybe murder, we'd let the probabilities rise a bit before taking any action at all. There could still be spontaneous correc-

tion;

"I wouldn't count on it," said Leemy dryly.

"I don't intend to. I was just pointing the fact out. Still, at this probability, I suggest we confine ourselves to simple observation for the moment. No one could plan a crime like this alone; there must be accomplices."

"Multivac didn't name any."

"I know. Stiil-r-'' His voice trailed off.

So they stared at the details of the one crime not included on the list handed out to Gulliman; the one crime much worse than first-degree murder; the one crime never»before attempted in the history of Multivac; and wondered what to do.

Ben Manners considered himself the happiest sixteen-year-old in Baltimore. This was, perhaps, doubtful. But he was certainly one of the happiest, and one of the most excited.

At least, he was one of the handful admitted to the galleries of the stadium, during the swearing-in of the eighteen-year-olds. His older brother was going to be sworn in so his parents had applied for spectator's tickets and they had allowed Ben to do so, too. But when Multivac chose,;among all the applicants, it was Ben who

would be sworn himself, but

watching big brother Michael now was the next best thing.

His parents had dressed him (or supervised the dressing, at any rate) with all care, as representative of the family and sent him off with numerous messages for Michael, who had left days earlier for preliminary physical and neurological examinations.

The stadium was on the outskirts of town and Ben, just bursting with self-importance, was shown to his seat. Below him, now, were rows upon rows of hundreds upon hundreds of eighteen-year-olds (boys to the right, girls to the left), all from the second district of Baltimore. At various times in the year, similar meetings were going on all over the world, but this was Baltimore, this was the important one. Down there (somewhere) was Mike, Ben's own brother.

Ben scanned the tops of heads, thinking somehow he might recognize his brother. He didn't, of course, but then a man came out on the raised platform in front of all the crowd and Ben stopped looking to listen.

The man said, "Good afternoon, swearers and guests. I am Randolph T. Hoch, in charge of the Baltimore ceremonies this year. The swearers have met me several times now during the progress of the physical and neurological portions of this examination. Most of the task is done, but the most important matter is left. The swearer himself, his personality, must go into Multivac's records.

"Each year, this requires some explanation to the young people reaching adulthood. Until now" (he turned to the young people before him and his eyes went no more to the gallery) "you have not been adult; you have not been individuals in the eyes of Multivac, except where you were especially singled out as such by your parents or your government.

"Until how, when the time for the yearly up-dating of information came, it was your parents who filled in the necessary data on you. Now the time has come for you to take over that duty yourself. It is a great honor, a great responsibility. Your parents have told us what schooling you've had, what diseases, what habits; a great many things. But now you must tell us a great deal more; your innermost thoughts; your most secret deeds.

"This is hard to do the first time, embarrassing even, but it must be done. Once it is done, Multivac will have a complete analysis of all of you in its files. It will understand your actions and reactions. It will even be able to guess with fair accuracy at your future actions and reactions.

"In this way, Multivac will protect you. Jf you are in danger of accident, it will know. If someone" plans harm to you, it will know. If you plan harm, it will know and you will be stopped in time so that it will not be necessary to punish you.

"With its knowledge of all of you, Multivac will be able to help Earth adjust its economy and its laws for the good of all. If you have a personal problem, you may come to Multivac with it and with its knowledge of all of you, Multivac will be able to help you.

"Now you will have many forms to fill out. Think carefully and answer all questions as accurately as you can. Do not hold back through shame or caution. No one will ever know your answers except Multivac unless it becomes necessary to learn the answers in order to protect you. And then only authorized officials of the government will know.

"It may occur to you to stretch the truth a bit here or there. Don't do this. We will find out if you do. All your answers put together form a pattern. If some answers are false, they will not fit the pattern and Multivac will discover them. If all your answers are false, there will be a distorted pattern of a type that Multivac will recognize. So you must tell the truth."

Eventually, it was all over, however; the form-filling; the ceremonies and speeches that followed. In the evening, Ben, standing tiptoe, finally spotted Michael, who was still carrying the robes he had worn in the "parade of the adults." They greeted one another with jubilation.

They shared a light supper and took the expressway home, alive and'alight with the greatness of the day.

They were nHfeiprepared, then, ior the sudden transition of the home-coming. It was a numbing shock to both of them to be stopped by a cold-faced young man in uniform outside their own front door; to have their papers inspected before they could enter their own house; to find their own parents sitting forlornly in the living room, the mark of tragedy on their faces.

Joseph Manners, looking much older than he had that morning, looked out of his puzzled, deep-sunken eyes at his sons (one with the robes of new adulthood still over his arm) and said, "I seem to be under house arrest."

Bernard Gulliman could not and did not read the entire report. He read only the summary and that was most gratifying, indeed.

A whole generation, it seemed, had grown up accustomed to the fact that Multivac could predict the commission of major crimes. They learned that Corrections agents would be on the scene before the crime could be committed. They found out that consummation of the crime led to inevitable punishment. Gradually, they were convinced that there was no way anyone could outsmart Multivac.

The result was, naturally, that even the intention of crime fell off. And as such intentions fell off and as Multivac's capacity was enlarged, minor crimes could be added to the list it would predict each morning, and these crimes, too, were now shrinking in incidence.

So Gulliman had ordered an analysis made (by Multivac, naturally) of Multivac's capacity to turn its attention to the problem of predicting probabilities of disease incidence. Doctors might soon be alerted to individual patients who might grow diabetic in the course of the next year, or suffer an attack of tuberculosis or grow a cancer.

An ounce of prevention—

And the report was a favorable one!

After that, the roster of the day's possible crimes arrived and there was not a first-degree murder on the list.

Gulliman put in an intercom call to Ali Othman in high good humor. "Othman, how do the numbers of crimes in the daily lists of the past week average compared with those in my first week as Chairman?"

It had gone down, it turned out, by 8% and Gulliman was happy indeed. No fault of his own, of course, but the electorate would not know that. He blessed his luck that he had come in at the right time, at the very climax of Multivac, when disease, too, could be placed under its all-embracing and protecting knowledge. Gulliman would prosper by this.

Othman shrugged his shoulder?. "Well, he's happy."

"When do we break the bubble?" said Leemy. "Putting Manners under observation just raised the probabilities and house arrest gave it another boost."

"Don't I know it?" said Othman peevishly. "What I don't know is why."

"Accomplices, maybe, like you said. With Manners in trouble, the rest have to strike at once or be lost."

"Just the other way around. With our hand on one, the rest would scatter for safety and disappear. Besides, why aren't the accomplices named by Multivac?"

"Well, then, do we tell Gulliman?"

"No, not yet. The probability is still only 17.3 per cent. Let's get a bit- more drastic first."

Elizabeth Manners said to her younger son, "You go to your room, Ben."

"But what's it all about, Mom?" asked Ben, voice breaking at this strange ending to what had been a glorious day.

"Please!"

He left reluctantly, passing through the door to the stairway, walking up it noisily and down again quietly.

And Mike Manners, the older son, the new-minted adult and the hope of the family, said in a voice and tone that mirrored his brother's, "What's it all about?"

Joe Manners said, "As heaven is my witness, son, I don't know. I haven't done anything."

"Well, sure^gu'haveji't done anything." Mike looked at his small-boned, mild-mannered father in wonder. "They must be here because you're thinking of doing something."

"I'm not."

Mrs. Manners broke in angrily, "How can he be thinking of doing something worth all—all this?" She cast her arm about, in a gesture toward the enclosing shell of government men about the house. "When I was a little girl, I remember the father of a friend of mine was working in a bank, and they once called him up and said to leave the money alone and he did. It was fifty thousand dollars. He hadn't really taken it. He was just thinking about taking it. They didn't keep those things as quiet in those days ,.s they do now; the story got out. That's how I know about it."

"But I mean," she went on, rubbing her plump hands slowly together, "that was fifty thousand dollars; fifty— thousand—dollars. Yet all they did was call him; one phone call. What could your father be planning that would make it worth having a dozen men come down and close off the house?"

Joe Manners said, eyes rilled with pain, "I am planning no crime, not even the smallest. I swear it."

Mike, filled with the conscious wisdom of a new adult, said, "Maybe it's something subconscious, Pop. Some resentment against your supervisor."

"So that I would want to kill him? Nol"

"Won't they tell you what it is, Pop?"

His mother interrupted again, "No, they won't. We've asked. I said they were ruining our standing in the community just being here. The least they could do is tell us what it's all about so we could fight it, so we could explain."

"And they wouldn't?"

"They wouldn't."

Mike stood with his legs spread apart and his hands deep in his pockets. He said, troubled, "Gee, Mom, Multi-vac doesn't make mistakes."

His father pounded his fist helplessly on the arm of the sofa. "I tell you I'm not planning any crime."

The door opened without a knock and a man in uniform walked in with sharp, self-possessed stride. His face had a glazed, official appearance. He said, "Are you Joseph Manners?"

Joe Manners rose to his feet. "Yes. Now what is it you want of me?"

"Joseph Manners, I place you under arrest by order of the government," and curtly he showed his identification as a Corrections officer. "I must ask you to come with me."

"For what reason? What have I done?"   >»,

"I am not at liberty to discuss, that."

"But I can't be arrested just for planning a crime even if I were doing that. To be arrested I must actually have done something. You can!t arrest me otherwise. It's against the law."

The officer was impervious to the logic. "You will have to come with me."

Mrs. Manners shrieked and fell on the couch, weeping hysterically. Joseph Manners could not bring himself to violate the code drilled into him all his life by actually resisting an officer, but he hung back at least, forcing the Corrections officer to use muscular power to drag him forward.       „....■>'

And Manners called out as he went, "But tell me what it is. Just tell me. If. I knew— Is it murder? Am I supposed to be planning murder?"

The door closed behind him and Mike Manners, white-faced and-suddenly feeling not the least bit adult, stared first at the door, then at his weeping mother.

Ben Manners, behind the door and suddenly feeling quite adult, pressed his lips tightly together and thought he knew exactly what to do.

If Multivac took away, Multivac could also give. Ben had been at the ceremonies that very day. He had heard this man, Randolph Hoch, speak of Multivac and all that Multivac could do. It could direct the government and it could also unbend and help out some plain person who came to it for help.

Anyone could,,»ask help of Multivac and anyone meant Ben. Neither h^^otherv nor Mike were in any condition to stop him now, and he had s'6me money left of the amount they had given him for his great outing that day. If afterward they found him gone and worried about it, that couldn't be helped. Right now, his first loyalty was to his father.

He ran out the back way and the officer at the door cast a glance at his papers and let him go.

Harold Quimby handled the complaints department of the Baltimore substation of Multivac. He considered himself to be a member of that branch of the civil service that was most important of all. In some ways, he may have been right, and those who heard him discuss the matter would have had to be made of iron not to feel impressed.

For one thing, Quimby would say, Multivac was essentially an invader of privacy. In the past fifty years, mankind had had to acknowledge that its thoughts and impulses were no longer secret, that it owned no inner recess where anything could be hidden. And mankind had to have something in return.

Of course, it got prosperity, peace, and safety, but that was abstract. Each man and woman needed something personal as his or her own reward for surrendering privacy, and each one got it. Within reach of every human being was a Multivac station with circuits into which he could freely enter his own problems and questions without control or hindrance, and from which, in a matter of minutes, he could receive answers.

At any given moment, five million individual circuits among the quadrillion or more within Multivac might be involved in this question-and-answer program. The answer might not always be certain, but they were the best available, and every questioner knew the answer to be the best available and had faith in it. That was what counted.

And now an anxious sixteen-year-old had moved slowly up the waiting line of men and women (each face in that line illuminated by a different mixture of hope with fear or anxiety or even anguish—always with hope predominating as the person stepped nearer and nearer to Multivac).

Without looking up, Quimby took the fiUed-out form being handed him and said, "Booth 5-B."

Ben said, "How do I ask the question, sir?"

Quimby looked up then, with a bit of surprise. Pre-adults did not generally make use of the service. He said kindly, "Have you ever done this before, son?"

"No, sir."

Quimby pointed to the model on his desk. "You use this. You see how it works? Just like a typewriter. Don't you try to write or print anything by hand. Just use the machine. Now you take booth 5-B, and if you need help, just press the red button and someone will come. Down that aisle, son, on the right."

He watched the youngster go down the aisle and out of view and smiled. No one was ever turned away from Multivac. Of course, there was always a certain percentage of trivia: people who asked personal questions about their neighbors or obscene questions about prominent personalities; college youths trying to outguess their professors or thinking it clever to stump Multivac by asking it Russell's class-of-all-classes paradox and so on.

Multivac could take care Of all that. It needed no help.

Besides, each question and answer was filed and formed but another item in the fact assembly for each individual. Even the most trivial question and the most impertinent, insofar as it reflected the personality of the questioner, helped humanity by helping Multivac know about humanity.

Quimby turned his attention to the next person in line, a middle-aged woman, gaunt and angular, with the look of trouble in her eye.

Ali Othman strode the length of his office, his heels thumping desperately on the carpet. "The probability still goes up. It's 22.4 per cent now. Damnation! We have Joseph Manners under actual arrest and it still goes up." He was perspiring freely.

Leemy turned away from the telephone. "No confession yet. He's under Psychic Probing and there is no sign of crime. Hfem'ay be telling the truth."

Othman said, "Is Multivac crazy then?"

Another phone sprang to life. Othman closed connections quickly, glad of the interruption. A Corrections officer's face came to life in the screen. The officer said, "Sir, are there any new directions as to Manners' family? Are they to be allowed to come and go as they have been?"

"What do you mean, as they have been?"

"The original instructions were for the house arrest of Joseph Manners. Nothing was said of the rest of the family, sir."

"Well, extend it to the rest of the family until you are informed otherwise."

"Sir, that is the point. The mother and older son are demanding information about the younger son. The younger son is gone and they claim he is in custody and wish to go to headquarters to inquire about it."

Othman frowned and said in almost a whisper, "Younger son? How young?"

"Sixteen, sir," said the officer.

"Sixteen and he's gone. Don't you know where?"

"He was allowed to leave, sir. There were no orders to hold him."

"Hold the line. Don't move." Othman put the line into suspension, then clutched at his coal-black hair with both hands and shrieked, "Fool! Fool! Fool!"

Leemy was startled. "What the hell?"

"The man has a sixteen-year-old son," choked out Othman. "A sixteen-year-old is not an adult and he is not filed independently in Multivac, but only as part of his father's file." He glared at Leemy. "Doesn't everyone know that until eighteen a youngster does not file his own reports with Multivac but that his father does it for him? Don't I know it? Don't you?"

"You mean Multivac didn't mean Joe Manners?" said Leemy.

"Multivac meant his minor son, and the youngster is gone, now. With officers three deep around the house, he calmly walks out and goes on you know what errand."

He whirled to the telephone circuit to which the Corrections officer still clung, the minute break having given Othman just time enough to collect himself and to assume a cool and self-possessed mien. (It would never have done to throw a fit before the eyes of the officer, however much good it did in purging his spleen.)

He said, "Officer, locate the younger son who has disappeared. Take every man you have, if necessary. Take every man available in the district, if necessary. I shall give the appropriate orders. You must find that boy at all costs." "Yes, sir."

Connection was broken. Othriian said, "Have another rundown on the probabilities, Leemy."

Five minutes later, Leemy said, "It's down to 19.6 per cent. It's down."

Othman drew a long breath. "We're on the right track at last."

Ben Manners sat in Booth 5-B and punched out slowly, "My name is Benjamin Manners, number MB-71833412. My father, Joseph Manners, has been arrested but we don't know what crime he is planning. Is there any way we can help him?"

He sat arid waited. He might be only sixteen but he was old enough to know that somewhere those words were being whirled into the most complex structure ever conceived by man; that a trillion facts would blend and co-ordinate into a whole, and that from that whole, Multi-vac would abstract the best help.

The machine clicked and a card emerged. It had an answer on it, a long answer. It began, "Take the expressway to Washington, D.C. at once. Get off at' the Connecticut Avenue stop. You will find a special exit, labeled "Multivac" with a guard. Inform the guard you are a special courier for Dr. Trumbull and he will let you enter.

"You will be in a corridor. Proceed along it till you reach a small door labeled 'Interior.' Enter and say to the men inside, 'Message for Doctor Trumbull' You will be allowed to pass. Proceed on—"

It went on* in this fashion. Ben could not see the application t<*§his question, but, he had complete faith in Multivac. He left at a run, heading for the expressway to Washington.

The Corrections officers traced Ben Manners to the Baltimore station an hour after he had left. A shocked Harold Quimby found himself flabbergasted at the number and importance of the men who had focused on him in the search for a sixteen-year-old.

"Yes, a boy," he said, "but I don't know where he went to after he was through here. I had no way of knowing that anyone was looking for him. We accept all comers here. Yes, I can get the record of the question and answer."

They looked at the record and televised it to Central Headquarters at once.

Othman read it through, turned up his eyes, and collapsed. They brought him to almost at once. He said to Leemy weakly, "Have them catch that boy. And have a copy of Multivac's answer made out for me. There's no way any more, no way out. I must see Gulliman now."

Bernard Gulliman had never seen Ali Othman as much as perturbed before, and watching the co-ordinator's wild eyes now sent a trickle of ice water down his spine.

He stammered, "What do you mean, Othman? What do you mean, worse than murder?"

"Much worse than just murder."

Gulliman was quite pale. "Do you mean assassination of a high government official?" (It did cross his mind that he himself—)

Othman nodded. "Not just a government official. The government official."

"The Secretary-General?" said Gulliman in an appalled whisper.

"More than that, even. Much more. We deal with a plan to assassinate Multivac!" "WHAT!"

"For the first time in the history of Multivac, the computer came up with the report that it itself was in danger."

"Why was I not at once informed?"

Othman half-truthed out of it. "The matter was so unprecedented, sir, that we explored the situation first before daring to put it on official record."

"But Multivac has been saved, of course? It's been saved?"

"The probabilities of harm have declined to under 4 per cent. I am waiting for the report now."

"Message for Dr. Trumbull," said Ben Manners to the 102

man on the high stool, working carefully on what looked like the controls of a stratojet cruiser, enormously magnified.

"Sure, Jim," said the man. "Go" ahead."

Ben looked at his instructions and hurried on. Eventually, he would find a tiny control lever which he was to shift to a DOWN position at a moment when a certain indicator spot would light up red.

He heard an agitated voice behind him, then another, and suddenly, two men had him by his elbows. His feet were lifted off the floor.

One man said, "Come with us, boy."

Ali Othman's face did not noticeably lighten at the news, even though Gulliman said with great relief, "If we have the boy,-then Multivac is safe."

"For the moment."

Gulliman put a trembling hand to his forehead. "What a half hour I've had. Can you imagine what the destruction of Multivac for even a short time would mean? The government would have collapsed; the economy broken down. It would have meant devastation worse—" His head snapped up, "What do you mean for the moment?"

"The boy, this Ben Manners, had no intention of doing harm. He and his family must be released and compensation for false imprisonment given them. He was only following Multivac's instructions in order to help his father and it's done that. His father is free now."

"Do you mean Multivac ordered the boy to pull a lever under circumstances that would burn out enough circuits to require a month's repair work? You mean Multivac

those instructions but selected the Manners family in the first place because Ben Manners looked exactly like one of Dr. Trumbull's pages so that he could get into Multivac without being stopped."

"What do you mean the family was selected?"

"Well, the boy would have never gone to ask the question if his father had not been arrested. His father would never have been arrested if Multivac had not blamed him for planning the destruction of Multivac. Multivac's own action started the chain of events that almost led to Multivac's destruction."

"But there's no sense to that," said Gulliman in a pleading voice. He felt small and helpless and he was virtually on his knees, begging this Othman, this man who had spent nearly a lifetime with Multivac, to reassure him.

Othman did not do so. He said, "This is Multivac's first attempt along this line as far as I know. In some ways, it planned well. It chose the right family. It carefully did not distinguish between father and son to send us off the track. It was still an amateur at the game, though. It could not overcome its own instructions that led it to report the probability of its own destruction as increasing with every step we took down the wrong road. It could not avoid recording the answer it gave the youngster. With further practice, it will probably learn deceit. It will learn to hide certain facts, fail to record certain others. From now on, every instruction it gives may have the seeds in it of its own destruction. We will never know. And however careful we are, eventually Multivac will succeed. I think, Mr. Gulliman, you will be the last Chairman of this organization."

Gulliman pounded his desk in fury. "But, why, why, why? Damn you, why? What is wrong with it? Can't it be fixed?"

"I don't think so," said Othman, in soft despair. "I've never thovight about this before. I've never had the occasion to until this happened, but now that I think of it, it seems to me we have reached the end of the road because Multivac is too good. Multivac has grown so complicated, its reactions are no longer those of a machine, but those of a living thing."

"You're mad, but even so?"

"For fifty years and more we have been loading humanity's troubles on Multivac, on this living thing. We've asked it to care for us, all together and each individually. We've asked it to take all our secrets into itself; we've asked it to absorb our evil and guard us against it. Each of us brings his troubles to it, adding his bit to the bur-

den. Now we are planning to load the burden of human

disease on Multivac, too." „

Othman paused a moment, then burst out, "Mr. Gul-liman, Multivac bears all the troubles of the world on its shoulders and it is tired."

"Madness. Midsummer madness," muttered Gulliman.

"Then let me show you something. Let me put it to the test. May I have permission to use the Multivac circuit line here in your office?"

"Why?"

"To ask it a question no one has ever asked Multivac before?"

"Will you do it harm?" asked Gulliman in quick alarm. •

"No. But it will tell us what we want to know." The Chairman .hesitated a trifle. Then he said, "Go ahead."

Othman used the instrument on Gulliman's desk. His fingers "punched out the question with deft strokes: "Multivac, ..what do you yourself want more than anything else?"

The moment between question and answer lengthened unbearably, but neither Othman nor Gulliman breathed.

And there was a clicking and a card popped out. It was a small card. On it, in precise letters, was the answer:

"I want to die."

Fritz Leibe^, a Hugo winner and Guest of Honor at a World ScietitifrFictiSh Convention, son of the well-known Shakespearean actor—Fritz Leiber, Sr.—has been famous in his own right for many years. His CONJURE WIFE, a witch story, appeared twice as a motion picture (the latest was BURN, WITCH, BURN) and once on television. For some years he was working on the editoral staff of Science Digest, and more recently he was writing the Buck Rogers comic strips. But his real claim to fame is sampled here, in a story which pictures a dialog of science vs art in a dramatic, exciting yarn set in the not too distant future when the world is sitting much closer to the edge of atomic destruction than it is today.

FRIENDSAND ENEMIES by Fritz Leiber

THE SUN hadn't quite risen, but now that the five men were out from under the trees it already felt hot. Far ahead, off to the left of the road, the spires of New Angeles gleamed dusky blue against the departing night. The two unarmed men gazed back wistfully at the little town, dark and asleep under its moist leafy umbrellas. The one who was thin and had hair flecked with gray looked all intellect; the other, young and with a curly mop, looked all feeling.

The fat man barring their way back to town- mopped bis head. The two young men flanking him with shotgun and squirtgun hadn't started to sweat yet.

The fat man stuffed the big handkerchief back in his pocket, wiped his hands on his shirt, rested his wrists lightly on the pistols holstered either side his stomach, looked at the two unarmed men, indicated the hot road with a nod, and said, "There's your way, professors. Get going."

The thin man looked at the hand-smears on the fat man's shirt. ^But you haven't even explained to me," he protested sofdy, "why I'm being turned out of Ozona College."

"Look here, Mr. Ellenby, I've tried to make it easy for you," the fat man said. "I'm doing it before the town wakes up. Would you rather be chased by a mob?"

"But why—?"

"Because we found out you weren't just a math teacher, Mr. Ellenby." The fat man's voice went hard. "You'd been a physicist once. Nuclear physicist."

The young man with the shotgun spat. Ellenby watched the spittle curl in the dust like a little brown worm. He shifted his gaze to a dead eucalyptus leaf. "I'd like to talk to the college board of regents," he said tonelessly.

"I'm the board of regents," the fat man told him. "Didn't you even know that?"

At this point the other unarmed man spoke up loudly. "But that doesn't explain my case. I've devoted my whole life to warning people against physicists and other scientists. How they'd smash us with their bombs. How they were destroying our minds with 3D and telefax and handies. How they were blaspheming against Nature, killing all imagination, crushing all beauty out of life!"

"I'd shut my mouth if I were you, Madson," the fat man said critically, "or at least lower my voice. When I mentioned a mob, I wasn't fooling. I saw them burn Cal Tech. In fact, I got a bit excited and helped."

The young man with the shotgun grinned.

"Cal Tech," Ellenby murmured, his eyes growing distant. "Cal Tech burns and Ozona stands."

"Ozona stands for the decencies of life," the fat man grated, "not alphabet bombs and pituitary gas. Its purpose is to save a town, not help kill a world.

"But why should / be driven out?" Madson persisted. "I'm just a poet singing the beauties of the simple life unmarred by science."

"Not simple enough for Ozona!" the fat man snorted. "We happen to know, Mr. Poet Madson, that you've written some stories about free love. We don't want anyone telling Ozona girls it's all right to be careless."

"But those were just ideas, ideas in a story," Madson protested. "I wasn't advocating—"

"No difference," the fat man cut him short. "Talk to a woman about ideas and pretty soon she gets some." His voice became almost kindly. "Look here, if you wanted a woman without getting hitched to her, why didn't you go to shantytown?"

Madson squared his shoulders. "You've missed the

whole point. I'd never do such a thing. I never have."

"Then you shouldn't have boasted," the fat man said. "And you shouldn't have fooled around with Councilman Classen's daughter."

At the name, Ellenby came oukof his trance and looked sharply at Madson, who said indignantly, "I wasn't fooling around with Vera-Ellen, whatever her crazy father says. She came to my office because she has poetic ability and I wanted to encourage it."

"Yeah, so she'd encourage you," the fat man finished. "That girl's wild enough already, which I suppose is what you mean by poetic ability. And in this town, her father's word counts." He hitched up his belt. "And now, professors, it's time you started."

Madson and,Ellenby looked at each other doubtfully. The young man with'the squirtgun raised its acid-etched muzzle. The fat man looked hard at Madson and Ellenby. "I think I hear alarm clocks going off," he said quietly.

They watched the two men trudge a hundred yards, watched Ellenby shift the rolled-up towel under his elbow to the other side, watched Madson pause to thumb tobacco into a pipe and glance carelessly back, then shove the pipe in his pocket and go on hurriedly.

"Couple of pretty harmless coots, if you ask me," the young man with the shotgun observed.

"Sure," the fat man agreed, "but we got to remember peoples' feelings and keep Ozona straight. We don't like mobs or fear or girls gone wild."

The young man with the shotgun grinned. "That Vera-Ellen," he murmured, shaking his head.

"You better keep your mind off her too," the fat man said sourly. "She's wild enough without anybody to encourage her pftgric ability or anything else. It's a good thing we gave those two their walking papers."

"They'll probably walk right into the arms of the Harvey gang," the young man with the squirtgun remarked, "especially if they try to short-cut."

"Pretty small pickings for Harvey, those two," the young man with the shotgun countered.

"Which won't please him at all."

The fat man shrugged. "Their own fault. If only they'd 109

had sense enough to keep their mouths shut. Early in life."

"They don't seem to realize it's 1993," said the young man with the shotgun.

The fat man nodded. "Come on," he said, turning back toward the town and the coolness. "We've done our duty."

The young man with the squirtgun took a last look. "There they go, Art and Science," he observed with satisfaction. "Those two subjects always did make my head ache."

On the hot road Madson began to stride briskly. His nostrils flared. "Smell the morning air," he commanded. "It's good, good!"

Ellenby, matching his stride with longer if older legs, looked at him with mild wonder.

"Smell the hot sour grass," Madson continued. "It's things like this man was meant for, not machines and formulas. Look at the dew. Have you seen the dew in years? Look at it on that spiderweb!"

The physicist paused obediently to observe the softly twinkling strands. "Perfect catenaries," he murmured.

"What?"

"A kind of curve," Ellenby explained. "The locus of the focus of a parabola rolling on a straight line."

"Locus-focus hocus-pocus!" Madson snorted. "Reducing the wonders of Nature to chalk marks. It's disgusting."

Suddenly each tiny drop of dew turned blood-red. Ellenby turned his back on the spiderweb, whipped a crooked little brass tube from an inside pocket and squinted through it.

"What's that?" Madson asked.

"Spectroscope," Ellenby explained. "Early morning spectra of the sun are fascinating."

Madson huffed. "There you go. Analyzing. Tearing beauty apart. It's a disease." He paused. "Say, won't you hurt your eyes?"

Turning back, Ellenby shook his head. "I keep a smoked glass on it," he said. "I'm always hoping that some day I'll get a glimpse of an atomic bomb explosion."

"You mean to say you've missed all the dozens they dropped on this country? That's tog bad.'*'

"The ball of fire's quite fleering. The opportunities haven't been as good as you think."

"But you're a physicist, aren't you? Don't you people have all sorts of lovely photographs to gloat over in your laboratories?"

"Atomic bomb spectra were never declassified," Ellenby told him wistfully. "At least not in my part of the project. I've never seen one."

"Well, you'll probably get your chance," Madson told him harshly. "If you've been reading your dirty telefax, you'll know the Hot Truce is coming to a boil. And the Angeles area will be a prime target." Ellenby nodded mutely.

They trudged on. The sun began to beat on their backs like an open fire. Ellenby turned up his collar. He watched his companion thoughtfully. Finally he said, "So you're the Madson who wrote those Enemies of Science stories about a world ruled by poets. It never occurred to me back at Ozona. And that nonfiction book about us—what was it called?"

"Murderers of Imagination," Madson growled. "And it would have been a good thing if you'd listened to my warnings instead of going on building machines and dissecting Nature and destroying all the lovely myths that make life worthwhile."

"Are you sure that Nature is so lovely and kind?" Ellenby ventured. Madson did not deign to answer.

They passed a crossroad leading, the battered sign said, one way to B^mdale, 4he other to San Bernardino. They were perhaps a hundred yards beyond it when Ellenby let go a little chuckle. "I have a confession to make. When I was very young I wrote an article about how children shouldn't be taught the Santa Claus myth or any similar fictions."

Madson laughed sardonically. "A perfect member of your dry-souled tribe! Worrying about Santa Claus, when all the while something very different was about to come flying down from over the North Pole and land on our housetops."

"We did try to warn people about the intercontinental missiles," Ellenby reminded him.

"Yes, without any success. The last two reindeer— Donner and Blitzen!"

Ellenby nodded glumly, but he couldn't keep a smile off his face for long. "I wrote another article too—it was never published—about how poetry is completely pointless, how rhymes inevitably distort meanings, and so on."

Madson whirled on him with a peal of laughter. "So you even thought you were big enough to wreck poetry!" He jerked a limp, thinnish volume from his coat pocket. "You thought you could destroy this!"

Ellenby's expression changed. He reached for the book, but Madson held it away from him. Ellenby said, "That's Keats, isn't it?"

"How would you know?"

Ellenby hesitated. "Oh, I got to like some of his poetry, quite a while after I wrote the article." He paused again and looked squarely at Madson. "Also, Vera-Ellen was reading me some pieces out of that volume. I guess you'd loaned it to her."

"Vera-Ellen?" Madson's jaw dropped.

Ellenby nodded. "She had trouble with her geometry. Some conferences were necessary." He smiled. "We physicists aren't such a dry-souled tribe, you know."

Madson looked outraged. "Why, you're old enough to be her father!"

"Or her husband," Ellenby replied coolly. "Young women are often attracted to father images. But all that can't make any difference to us now."

"You're right," Madson said shortly. He shoved the poetry volume back in his pocket, squeezed the sweat out of his eyes, and looked around with impatience. "Say, you're going to New Angeles, aren't you?" he asked, and when Ellenby nodded uncertainly, said, "Then let's cut across the fields. This road is taking us out of our way." And without waiting for a reply he jumped across the little ditch to the left of the road and into the yellowing wheat field. Ellenby watched him for a moment, then hitched his rolled towel further up under his arm and followed.

It was stifling in the field. The wheat seemed to paralyze any stray breezes. Their boo£s"hissed against the dry stems. Far off they heard a lazy drumming. After a while they came to a wide, briniful irrigation ditch. They could see that some hundreds- of feet ahead it was crossed by a little bridge. They followed the ditch.

Ellenby felt strangely giddy, as if he were looking at everything through a microscope. That may have been due to the tremendous size of the wheat, its spikes almost as big as corncobs, the spikelets bigger than kernels—rich orange stuff taut with flour. But then they came to a section marred by larger and larger splotches of a powdery purple blight.

The lazy drumming became louder. Ellenby was the first to see the low-swinging helicopter with its thick, trailing plume of greenish mist. He knocked Madson on the shoulder and both men started to run. Purple dust puffed. Once Ellenby stumbled and Madson stopped to jerk him-to his feet. Still they would have escaped except that the copter swerved toward them. A moment later they were, enveloped in sweet oily fumes.

Madson heard jerring laughter, glimpsed a grotesquely long-nosed face peering down from above. Then, through the cloud, Ellenby squeaked, "Don't breathe!" and Madson felt himself dragged roughly into the ditch. The water closed over him with a splash.

Puffing and blowing, he came to his feet—the water hardly reached his waist—to find himself being dragged by Ellenby toward the bridge. It was all he could do to keep his footing on the muddy bottom. By the time he got breath engugfa to.voice his indignation, Ellenby was saying, "That's far enough. Thcstuff's settling away from us. Now strip and scrub yourself."

Ellenby unrolled the towel he'd held tightly clutched to his side all the while, and produced a bar of soap. In response to Madson's question he explained, "That fungicide was probably TTTR or some other relative of the nerve-gas family. They are absorbed through the skin."

Seconds later Madson was scouring his head and chest.

He hesitated at his trousers, muttering, "They'll probably have me for indecent exposure. Claim I was trying to start a nudist colony as well as a free-love cult." But Ellenby's warning had been a chilly one.

Ellenby soaped Madson's back and he in turn soaped the older man's ridgy one.

"I suppose that's why he had an elephant's nose," Madson mused.

"What?"

"Man in the copter," Madson explained. "Wearing a respirator."

Ellenby nodded and made them move nearer the bridge for a change of water.

They started to scrub their clothes, rinse and wring them, and lay them on the bank to dry. They watched the copter buzzing along in the distance, but it didn't seem inclined to come near again. Madson felt impelled to say, "You know, it's your chemist friends who have introduced that viciousness into the common man's spirit, giving him horrible poisons to use against Nature. Otherwise he wouldn't have tried to douse us with that stuff."

"He just acted like an ordinary fanner to me," Ellenby replied, scrubbing vigorously.

"Think we're safe?" Madson asked.

Ellenby shrugged. "We'll discover," he said briefly.

Madson shivered, but the rhythmic job was soothing. After a bit he began to feel almost playful. Lathering his shirt, he got some fine large bubbles, held them so he could see their colors flow in the sunlight.

"Tiny perfect worlds of every hue," he murmured. "Violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, red."

"And dead black," Ellenby added.

"You would say something like that!" Madson grunted. "What did you think I was talking about?"

"Bubbles."

"Maybe some of your friends' poisons have black bubbles," Madson said bitingly. "But I was talking about these."

"So was I. Give me your pipe."

The authority in Ellenby's voice made Madson look 114

around startledly. "Give me your pipe," Ellenby repeated firmly, holding out his hand.

Madson fished it out of the pocket of°the trousers he was about to wash and handed if over. Ellenby knocked out the soggy tobacco, swished it in the water a few times, and began to soap the inside of the bowl.

Madson started to object, but, "You'd be washing it anyway," Ellenby. assured him. "Now look here, Madson, I'm going to blow a bubble and I want you to watch. I want you to observe Nature for all you're worth. If poets and physicists have one thing in common it's that they're both supposed to be able to observe. Accurately."

He took a breath. "Now see, I'm going to hold the pipe mouth down and let the bubble hang from it, but with one side of the bowl tipped up a bit, so that the strain on the bubble's skin- will be greatest on that side."

He blew a big bubble, held the pipe with one hand and pointed with a finger of the other. "There's the place to watch now. There!" The bubble burst.

"What was that?" Madson asked in a new voice. "It really was black for an instant, dull like soot."

"A bubble bursts because its skin gets thinner and thinner," Ellenby said. "When it gets tiiin enough it shows colors, as interference eliminates different wavelengths. With yellow eliminated it shows violet, and so on. But finally, just for a moment at the place where it's going to break, the skin becomes only one molecule thick. Such a monomolecular layer absorbs all light, hence shows as dead black."

"Everything's got a black lining, eh?"

"Black can be beautiful. Here, I'll do it again."

Madson put *bj[s hand on Ellenby's shoulder to steady himself. Ths^feiwere standing hip-deep in water, their bodies still flecked with suds. Their heads were inches from the new bubble. As it burst a voice floated down to them.

"Is this the Ozona Faculty Kindergarten?" They whirled around, simultaneously crouching in the water.

"Vera-Ellen, what are you doing here?" Madson demanded.

"Watching the kiddies play," the girl on the bridge replied, running a hand through her touseled violet hair. She looked down at her slacks and jacket. "Wish I'd brought my swim suit, though I gather it wouldn't be expected."

"Vera-Ellen!" Madson said apprehensively.

"It doesn't look very inviting down there, though," she mused. "Guess I'll wait for Aqua Heaven at New Angeles."

"You're going to New Angeles?" Ellenby put in. It is not easy to be conversationally brilliant while squatting chest deep in muddy water, acutely conscious of the absence of clothes.

Vera-Ellen nodded lazily, leaning on the railing. "Going to get me a city job. With its reduced faculty Ozona holds no more intellectual interest for me. Did you know math's going to be made part of the Home Eck department, Mr. Ellenby?"

"But how did you know that we—"

"Daughter of the man who got you run out of town ought to now what the old bully's up to. And if you're worrying that they'll come after me and find us together, I'll just head along by myself."

Madson and Ellenby both protested, though it is even harder to protest effectively than to be conversationally brilliant while squatting naked in coffee-colored water.

Vera-Ellen said, "All right, so quit playing and let's get on. You have fb tell me all about New Angeles and the kind of jobs we'll get."

"But—?"

"Modest, eh? I'm afraid Pa wouldn't count it in your favor. But all right." She turned her back and sauntered to the other side of the bridge.

Madson and Ellenby cautiously climbed out of the ditch, brushed the water from their skins, and wormed into their soggy clothes.

"We've got to persuade her to go back," Madson whispered.

"Vera-Ellen?" Ellenby replied and raised his eyebrows. Madson groaned softly.

"Cheer up," Ellenby said. And he seemed in a cheer-

ful humor himself when they climbed to the bridge.

"Vera-Ellen," he said, "we've beeu having an argument

as to whether man ruined Nature Or Nature ruined man to

start with."                                            >

"Is this a class, Mr. Ellenby?"

"Of sorts," he told her. Behind him Madson snorted, flipping his Keats to dry the pages. They started off together.

"Well," said Vera-Ellen, "I like Nature and I like . . . human beings. And I don't feel ruined at all. Where's the argument?"

"What about the bombs?" Madson demanded automatically. "By man our physicist here means Technology. Whereas I mean—", v

"Oh, the bombs,"'she said with a shrug. "What sort of job do you think I should get in New Angeles?"

"Well . . ." Madson began.

"Say, I'm getting hungry," she raced on, turning to Ellenfey., _

"So am I," he agreed.

They looked at the road ahead. A jagged hill now hid all but the tips of the spires of New Angeles. On the top of the hill was a tremendous house with sagging roofs of cracked tiles, stucco walls dark with rain stains and green with moss yet also showing cracks, and windows of age-blued glass, some splintered, flashing in the sun, which tempted Ellenby to whip out his spectroscope.

Curving down from the house came a weedy and balding expanse that had obviously once been a well-tended lawn. A few, iStalwart patches of thick grass held out tenaciously, -d^..

Pale-trunked eucalyptus trees towered behind the house and to either side of the road where it curved over the hill.

In a hollow at the foot of the one-time lawn, just where it met the road, something gleamed. As Madson, Ellenby and Vera-Ellen tramped forward, they saw it was an old automobile, one of the jet antiques that were the rage around 1970—in fact, a Lunar '69. Corning closer Ellenby realized that it had custom-built features, such as jet brakes and collision springs.

A man with an odd cap was poking a probe into the air intake, while in the back seat a woman was sitting, shadowed by a hat four feet across. At the sound of their footsteps the man whirled to his feet, quickly enough though unsteady. He stared at them, wagging the probe. Just at that moment something that looked like an animated orange furpiece leaped from the tonneau.

"George!" the woman cried. "Widgie's got away."

The small flattish creature came on in undulating bounds. It was past the man in the cap before he could turn. It headed for Ellenby, then changed direction. Mad-son made an impulsive dive for it, but it widened itself still more and sailed over him straight into Vera-Ellen's arms.

They walked toward the car. Widgje wriggled, Vera-Ellen stroked his ears. He seemed to be a flying fox of some sort. The man eyed them hostilely, raising the probe. Madson stared puzzledly at the cap. Out of his older knowledge Ellenby whispered an explanation: "Chauffeur."

The woman stood in the back seat, swaying slightly. She was wearing a white swim suit and dark teleglasses under her hat. At first she seemed a somewhat ravaged thirty. Then they began to see the rest of the wrinkles.

She received Widgie from Vera-Ellen, shook him out and tucked him under her arm, where he hung limply, moving his tiny red eyes.

"Come in with me, my dear," she told Vera-Ellen. "George, put down that crazy pole. Pay no attention to George—he can't recognize gentlefolk when he sees them, especially when he's drunk. Gentlemen, she continued, waving graciously to Madson and Ellenby, "you have the thanks of Rickie Vickson." As she pronounced the name she surveyed them sharply. Her gaze settled on Ellenby. "You know me, don't you?"

"Certainly," he answered instantly. "You were my first —my favorite straight 3D star."

"Are you in 3D?" Vera-Ellen asked, a sudden gleam in her eyes.

"Was, my dear," Rickie said grandly. She ogled Ellen-by through the fish-eye glasses. "Ah, straight 3D," she sighed. "Simple video-audio in d^pth—there was a great art-form." She began to sway again and they caught the reek of alcohol. "You know, {gentlemen, it was handies that ruined my career. I had the looks and the voice, but I lacked the touch. Something in me shrank from the whole idea—be still, Widgie—and the girls with itchy fingers took over. But I'm talking too much about myself. It's hot and you wonderful gentlemen must be thirsty. Here, have a—"

The chauffeur glared at her as she reached fumblingly down into the tonneau. She caught the look and quailed slightly.    '     ' ,vr>

"—sandwich," she finished, coming up with a shiny can.

Madson accepted.it-from her, clicking the catch.The top popped four feet in the air, followed lazily by the uppermost sandwich which he caught deftly. He handed the can to Ellenby, who served himself and handed it up to Vera-Ellen. Soon all three of them were munching.

"Miss Vkkson," Vera-Ellen asked between mouthfuls, "do you think I could get a job in broadcast entertainment?"

Rickie looked at her sideways, leaning away to focus. "Not with that ghastly atomglow hair," she said. "Violet is old hat this year—it's either black, blonde or bald. But give me your hand, my dear."

"Going to tell my fortune?"

"After a fashion." She held up Vera-Ellen's hand, squeezing and prodding it thoughtfully, as if she were testing, the carcas&^F an alleged spring chicken. Then she nodded. "You^rdb. Good strong hand, that's all that's needed, so you can really crunch the knuckles of the bohunks. They love it rough. Of course the technicians could step up the power when they broadcast your hand-squeeze, but the addicts don't feel it's the same thing." She looked sourly at her own delicate claws. "Yes, my dear, you'll have a chance in handies if you don't mind cuddling with two million dirty-minded bohunks every night and if Rickie Vickson's still got any entree at the studios." She made a face and dipped again into the tonneau, apparently to gulp something, for the chauffeur's glare was intensified.

"You're from New Angeles?" Madson asked politely when Rickie came up beaming.

"Old Angeles," she corrected. "My home's in a contaminated area. After 3D lighting I've never been afraid of hard radiations. But this time my psychic counselor told me—Widgie, I'm going to put you away in a nice little urn—that the bombs are going to miss New Angeles and fall on Old. That's why George is jetting me to the mountains. Others drink to still their fears. I do something about it—too."

"You mean you're going away from the studio?" Vera-Ellen demanded incredulously while Ellenby mumbled "Bombs?" through a mouthful of sandwich.

"Of course," Rickie nodded. "Don't you know? Russia's touched a match to the Hot Truce. You charming gentlemen should keep up with these things."

"You see, I told you!" Madson said to Ellenby. "One

more victory for science!"                              v

"Miss Vickson, we better be getting on," the chauffeur interrupted, speaking for the first time. His voice was drunkenly thick. "We aren't out of the fusion fringe by a long shot and I don't like the looks of this place."

Rickie ignored him. Ellenby asked, "Was the news about Russia telefaxed?"

"Of course not." Rickie's smile was scornful. "They never tell the real truth these days. But they said to get out of our houses, and what else could that mean?"

"Miss Vickson, we better—" George began again.

"Quiet, George," Rickie ordered.

George groaned faintly, shrugged his shoulders, and reached out an arm to her without looking. Rickie handed him a red, limp plastic bottle. Just as he was putting it to his lips, he jerked as if stung, vaulted into the car, and began to stamp and punch at the controls.

With a mighty pouf the jet took hold. Ellenby skittered away from the hot blast. The Lunar '69 jumped forward.

Things hissed and snicked through the air. From nowhere, men began to appear. With a great lurch the car gained the road, roared toward the bridge. Vera-Ellen jumped up as if to get out, then was thrown back into the tonneau. Rickie lunged forward across the seat to save the red bottle. Her four-foot hat leaped upward, hesitated, and then spun off like a flying saucer.

A man rose from the wheat near the bridge. As the car jounced across it, he leveled a rapid-fire weapon. But just as he got it trained on the car, Rickie's hat landed on him. He went over backwards, firing at the sky.

Madson and Ellenby looked around in bewilderment. There must have been a dozen men. As they stared, another bunch came hurrying down the ruined lawn from the house on the hill.

The man by the bridge got up, went over to Rickie's hat and stamped on it.

Madson and Ellenby jumped as the sky-climbing missiles from his gun pattered down around them. When they looked around again, the men from the house on the hill weredosing in.

Their leader was about five feet tall, but thick. His head had -been formed in a bullet mold, bis features looked drop-forged.

"I'm Harvey," he told them blankly. "What you got?"

Harvey's people wore everything from evening dress to shorts. There were even two women (who drifted toward Harvey) one in a. gold kimono, the other in an off-the-bosom frock of filthy white lace. Everybody was armed.

"What you got?" Harvey repeated sharply. "I know you're loaded,^! saw you talking with that rich-witch in the jet." H^lQoked. them over and grabbed at Mad-son's side pocket. "Books, huh!"" he said like a hangman, dangling the Keats by a stray page. Then he turned to Ellenby. "Come on, Skinny," he said, "shell out."

When Ellenby hesitated, two of Harvey's men grabbed him, dumped him, and passed the contents of his pockets to their chief. When the spectroscope turned up, Harvey grinned. The eyes of his people twinkled in anticipation.

"Science gadget, huh?" he said. "Folks, there's been too much science in the world and too many words. Any minute now, more bombs are gonna fall. I do my humble bit to help 'em. I'm a great little junkman." He let the brass tube fall to the ground and lifted his foot. "Blow it a good-bye kiss, Skinny."

"Wait," Madson said abruptly, taking a step toward Harvey. "Don't do it." Then the poet's eyes grew wide and alarmed, as if he hadn't known he was going to say it.

Breaths sucked in around them. Harvey's turret head slowly turned toward Madson, its expression seemingly vacuous. "Why not?" Harvey whispered.

"Don't pay any attention to my friend," Ellenby interjected rapidly. "He just said that on account of me. Actually he hates science as much as you do. Don't—"

"Shaddup!" Harvey roared. Then his voice instantly went low again. "Ain't nobody hates science more'n me, but ain't nobody tells me so. Shoulda kept your mouth shut, Skinny. Now there's gonna be more'n gadgets stomped, more'n books tore."

Silence came except for the faint sucks of breath, the faint scuffle of shoes on grit as Harvey's people slowly moved in. Ellenby stood helplessly, yet at the same time he felt a widening and intensification of his sensory powers. He was aware of the delicately lace-edged tree shadows cast from the hill ahead by the westering sun. At the other limit of his vision the copter no longer trailed its green caterpillar; for some reason it was buzzing closer along the road. At the same time he was conscious with a feverish clarity of the page by which Harvey dangled the Keats, and without reading the words he saw the lines:

Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Suddenly the slowly advancing faces seemed to freeze and Ellenby was aware of something spectral and ominous about the yellowing sunlight and the whole acid-etched scene around him. It was something more than the physical threat to him and Madson—it was some-

thing that seemed to well up menacingly from the

ground under his feet.         ^.

There was a sudden faint thunder and even as something inside Ellenby said, "That &n't it, that isn't what the sky's waiting for," he saw the chrome muzzle of the Lunar '69 bulleting toward' them across the bridge with Vera-Ellen's violet mop above the wheel.

But even as the braking blasts gouted out redly from under the hood and the car crunched toward a stop in their midst, even as Harvey's people broke to either side and pistols popped with queerly toylike reports, the thunder multiplied until it was impossible that the Lunar '69 was causing it, until it was like the thunder of a thousand invisible jets crushing the air around them. The sky shifted, rocked. The road shook. There came a shock that numbed Ellenby's feet and sent everyone around him reeling, and a pounding, smashing sound that made any remembered noise seem puny.

The'X-unar '69, which had stopped a dozen feet from Ellenby, was" pitching and tossing like a silver ship in a storm. Vera-Ellen was gripping the steering wheel with one hand and motioning to him frantically with the other. In the seat beyond her Rickie Vickson was jouncing as if in a merry-go-round chariot.

Ellenby lurched as a hand clutched his shoulder and a staggering Madson howled in his ear through the tumult, "Now you've got your rotten bombs!" Between him and the car Harvey's bullet head reared up and as suddenly dropped away. Looking down, Ellenby saw that a chasm four feet wide had split the road between him and the car. Its, walls were raw, smoking earth and rock. Down it Ellenjj-y Saw vanishing, in one frozen moment, Harvey and theKeats and the little brass spectroscope.

Then Ellenby realized he had grabbed Madson by the shoulder and thrown the two of them forward and shouted "Jump!" For a moment the chasm gaped beneath them and a white little face stared upward. Then the chasm closed with a giant crunch and Ellenby's hand caught the side of the heaving car and he pitched into the back seat.

Through the diminishing thunder and shaking there came the toy roar of the car's jet and a new movement tipped him backward and he was looking toward the hill and it was getting bigger. He tried to put his feet down and felt something bulk under them. For a moment he thought it was Madson, but Madson was beside him on the seat, and then he saw it was George. He looked up and Rickie Vickson was watching him from where she was crouched in the front seat, her eyes without the tele-glasses looking as foxy as Widgie's, whom she was holding close to her wrinkle-etched cheek.

"Vera-Ellen had to conk him," she explained, her gaze dipping to George. "The bum tried to betray us."

The pitching of the car had given way to a steady forward lunge. Ellenby nodded dully at Rickie and hitched himself around and looked back.

Harvey's people were scattering like ants through a dust cloud rising from the road.

The house on the hill still stood, though there were more and larger cracks in it and a nimbus of whiter dust around it.

By the bridge the copter had crashed and was flaming brightly. A tiny figure was running away from it.

Ellenby's face slowly lightened with understanding.

"We were on the San Andreas Rift," he said softly. "Madson, that wasn't the bombs at all. That wasn't Technology or Man." A smile trembled on his lips. "That was Nature. An earthquake."

Madson was the first to comment. "All right," he said, "it was Nature—Nature showing her disgust for Man."

"An idea like that is the sheerest animism," Ellenby reacted automatically. "Now if you try analyzing—"

"Analyzing!" Madson snorted with a touch of the old fire. "You scientists are always—"

"Whoa, boys," Rickie Vickson interrupted. "If it hadn't been for that little quake to confuse things, Vera-Ellen couldn't have snatched you out no matter how pretty she tried. And I'm in no mood for arguments now. I'm not the arty type and all the science I know is what my psychic counselor tells me. Widgie, quit pounding your heart; it's all over now."

Ellenby touched her arm. "Do I understand," he asked, "that Vera-Ellen made you turn back just 'to save us?"

"Of course not," Rickie assured'him. "Her father and his pals tried to stop us a couple' of miles back. They'd been radioed by a farmer in a copter and had the road blocked. George wanted to hand you all over to Vera-Ellen's father, but we conked George—he's such a weakling—and got away. Picking you up was an afterthought."

Vera-Ellen flashed a wicked smile over her shoulder.

Ellenby realized he was feeling vastly contented. He started to lift his feet off George, then settled them more comfortably. He looked at the violet-topped new chauffeur handling the Lunar as if she'd never done anything else, and she picked that moment to flash him another half friendly, half insulting grin. He nudged Madson and said, "We'll continué bur argument later—all our argument.", Madson looked at him sharply and almost grinned too. Ellenby-wondered idly what jobs they had for poets and physicists in 3D and handie studios.

Rickie Vickson's eyes widened. "Say," she said, "if they were just warning us about that little old earthquake, then Old Angeles isn't radioactive—I mean any more radioactive than it's ever been."

"Oh boy," Vera-Ellen crowed as the car topped the hill and the blue spires came back in sight, "New Angeles, here we come."

Sherwood Springer has been a professional newspaper man for many^/ears. He is not well known in the science fiction worldjot a large output; However, of all the stories presented here, his story book science fiction readers as though an atomic bomb was dropped in their laps.

The hyper-tense tightrope on which our world is balanced poses a continued threat to our very existence. The possibility that our entire population might indeed be wiped out frequently seems more than just a writer's fantasy.

Repopulating the world might very well become the responsibility of a few survivors. What happens when those survivors are a solitary man and his three children? And, unlike the Bible, there is....

NO LAND OF NOD by Sherwood Springer

FAR TO THE south, in the direction of the Baldwin Hills, a wild dog howled lonesomely. The sound died and was not repeated.

The bearded man, his ears straining to register the slightest whisper, stirred uneasily at the sound. He turned his head and listened intently, half fearful he might have missed, in that, mement of distraction, some faint cry from the interior of the shadowed house behind him.

The silence was unmarred, and the man turned his eyes once more to the unbroken gloom of the valley that stretched for miles below and beyond him toward the sea. Twenty-one years. From how many other hills on how many other countless nights had those same tired eyes sought painfully for a distant pinpoint message that somewhere again man was challenging the night? No more. Hope dies slowly, but it dies.

It was a Valley >of Shapes. Hollow as the bleached shell of a long-dead ^iSBistacea'n, the city stretched away into the darkness, mile upon mile, a vast decaying monument to the memory of his race. Already, he knew, structures were crumbling, man's pretty little lawns and gardens had long ago vanished in rank jungles of growth; trees, quick to root in pavement cracks, grew fat and ruthless, bullying the concrete into defeated fragments.

Water from a ruptured main had undermined buildings on the fabled Strip just below him, had burst forth from

the rubble and gouged a new, ever-deepening channel toward the Pacific. How many centuries, the man wondered, would nature require to complete its erasure of the silent metropolis? Westward toward La Cienega his eye caught a faint patch of white, dimly reflecting the cold light of the Milky Way. He knew what lay there—and everywhere from the uplands to the sea. It was a Valley of Bones.

Somehow, he knew it was a world of bones. Not always had he believed that. Not twenty-one years ago when he and Ann had stepped out of the space room at Cal Tech to find a city of death; not twenty years ago after their heartbreaking eight-thousand mile trek across the States in search of survivors; not even sixteen years ago when he still gazed out over the blue Pacific at intervals, scanning the horizon half fearfully, half hopefully, for a ship from . . . over there. Somewhere people must be living, just as their ancestors had lived for thousands of years ... in the land of the enemy, perhaps, waiting to come and claim the western world they had destroyed. But as the months wheeled away into years, and the sea remained desolate as a grave, the realization grew in him that he had known the truth from the very beginning, known it while denying it blindly with every fiber of his being.

He and Ann were the last people on earth.

As the bearded one waited on the shadowy slope above the valley, he pondered once more the baffling destiny that had selected him, out of all the millions, to become the second Adam. He remembered as if it were yesterday the time he had first put it into words. . . .

"Doesn't it strike you as funny, Ann," he had mused, "that an ordinary guy like me gets picked to become the father of a race?"

"Does the choice bother you?" Ann had quipped.

"I'm serious," he persisted. "Sometimes I think one of God's file clerks must have come up with the wrong name."

"Why do you say that?"

"You know what I mean. What cockeyed standards

could possibly rate me this job? I never won any medals. Nobody ever called me 'the brain.' Never went to college. Read western stories and science fiction whan I was a kid instead of doing homework. Didn'tg'6 to church after I grew up, or think much about it. ^ever killed anybody, of course, or kicked a dog, but I guess I did plenty of other things God would have raised His eyebrow about if He'd been watching. And physically, you've got to admit that plain Jim Clay doesn't look much like Charles Atlas. Seems to me I got in here on a fluke."

"Jim!" She grasped his shoulders sharply, her eyes lev-elly trapping his. "That's nonsense. In the first place, you are here, and the choice, if choice it was, has been made, and all the self-deprecation in the world isn't going to give our descendants a different ancestor."

"No.but-^"

"Has it occurredto you," she went on doggedly, "that maybe it makes a great deal of sense? You said something just now that reveals more about you than you realize. Kicking a dog, in your mind, is as heinous as murder. That's your great quality, Jim—kindness. Tell me, the civilization we knew—why is it lying around us as dead as . . . Gomorrah? Those great brains you admire were building atomic piles, computing machines and planes that flew faster than sound, but were they doing anything about intolerance and selfishness and the greed for power? It seems to me trifles like 'loving thy neighbor' were sort of lost in the shuffle. Maybe God finally decided to let man wipe himself out and then start all over again—this time with the little things . . . like kindness."

A cold wind from the sea began to stir the leaves of the eucalyptus tfee beside the house. The bearded man shivered slightjajarid drew his jacket collar more snugly about his throatTHe glanced up at the night sky, dusty with swarming stars. Even the heavens were different then, he thought. Back in '68 the moon itself had difficulty getting through sometimes. He smiled grimly. Man had solved the smog problem at last.

Twenty-one years. His mind sped down the long time track to that morning he had met Ann Banning. He was then working for Cal Tech, which was doing some experimentation for NASA. The government wanted to know what the physical and psychological effects on the human nervous system might be when a male and female were put in a hermetically sealed chamber that had been prepared to simulate as closely as possible the interior of an interplanetary rocket.

Jim Clay had been picked as the male half of the team, and Ann Banning was the other half. Ann was an accomplished research scientist in her own right who had insisted she be permitted to make the test. She was 37; he was 39. How little importance he had attached to those figures at the time, yet how desperately serious they became later when destiny began its mocking game.

How symbolic was the closing of the air lock that shut them off from the world of May, 1968, the civilization they were never to see again. The Cold War had met a new danger in China and Africa. Too many nations were already in possession of atomic weapons. The fear of war was now a real thing. The people of the world waited, scarcely breathing at times . . . waited for the bombs. When would they drop? The atom bombs, the hydrogen bombs, the dreaded nerve gas? Fear crept like a serpent among the nations. Who would be first to strike? Who would be stricken?

The answer soared in a high arc across the Pole on the night of May 7, three days after Ann and Jim had entered the space room.

One bomb.

That was all. It exploded just south of Berkeley, California, on the edge of the bay. Approximately .071 of a second later the world ended for two and a half billion people.

The scientists had erred. The bomb had been a gesture, a warning; the nerve gas it contained was a modified type. Thousands would be temporarily paralyzed but few fatalities would result. America must be shown how vulnerable it was.

By what deadly miscalculation the catalyst was unforeseen the world would never know. But catalyst there was, and the resulting chain reaction in the atmosphere swept the globe with the speed of light. From America to the Orient, from pole to pole, in ships, in homes, in offices and factories, in the deepest caverns, wherever the breath of an atom linked air to air, the Wight struck. Paralysis. The nerve system congealed, lungs struggled vainly to function, and suffocation p/as followed by death —quickly in most cases, days later in others. Only the comparative handful of humanity who happened to be in pressure cabins, submerged submarines, air locks and similar sealed compartments escaped the initial wave of devastation. But these had no way of knowing the doom that awaited them. Planes landed, underseas craft surfaced, locks were opened. And death was waiting.. ..

Strangely enough, man alone of all the animal kingdom found breathing fatal. The oxygen content of the atmosphere remained undisturbed and, although several other species among the higher mammals were temporarily affected, scarcely a death resulted.

Gradually, as the days passed, the deadly vapor dissipated. The slow absorption by soil, sea and stone demonstrated once more nature's wily resourcefulness in coping with unnatural and contra-survival developments. By the fourth week in May the atmosphere's lethal content had dropped well within the tolerance level.

Like the spinning facets in a kaleidoscope, memories flared momentarily, then scurried to merge with other memories in a spiraling montage, as the bearded man waited on the hillside. The unforgettable bewilderment as he and Ann had emerged from the space room to find a laboratory peopled with corpses, the rapidly mounting horror as they sped from room to room, and finally the numbing shock as they stepped outdoors and their ears registered the most stunning fact of all. The campus, and the great city beyohd,'"lay wrapped in an incredible, unnatural silence.

Their search for survivors in the days that followed was grimly dogged, but the mounting stench of death that hung like a pall over the Los Angeles kettle drove them finally to flight. Northward over the mountains they went, transportation presenting little difficulty. Automobiles by the thousands were to be had for the taking. The material world was theirs. Many vehicles, of course, had been damaged or demolished in final crashes, but the number was comparatively small. Occasionally they encountered road blocks caused by multiple collisions but they were able to bypass these in most cases, or as a last resort, they could always trudge past on foot and take possession of another car farther on—as they did when gasoline ran low.

On through Bakersfield, Fresno and Modesto, with hope dying within them. The San Francisco area was fetid, and they realized without crossing the bridge there would be no life there. As they turned right toward Berkeley, determined to push north and eastward across the Sierras, they discovered the crater. It was that, coupled with the threatening communique of the enemy revealed in one of the last editions of now defunct newspapers, that had enabled Ann to formulate an hypothesis which explained the disaster. But its scope was still far from suspected. There must be life to the east. Telephones and radios were dead, it was true, but as evidence that was not necessarily conclusive.

He could write, the man thought, a new Genesis of their wanderings during the year that followed. Over Dormer Pass they went, down into Reno, the long trek across the wastelands to the east, St. Louis, Chicago, and on across Pennsylvania to the mighty tomb that was now New York. New England. On their return through the South despair rode with them and a realization of the stupendous responsibility to the race that might be theirs. They began to discuss it as mile after mile of desolation disappeared behind them.

"Have you tried to think," Ann asked him one day, "what it means if we've been wrong all along, and the rest of the world is just like this?"

He grinned wryly, making an effort to speak lightly. "Of course. It means we're elected Adam and Eve II ... and with no Garden of Eden."

"I'm quite serious, Jim. We've got to begin thinking— as no one has ever had to think before."

He eyed her with assumed incomprehension, reluctant to tackle the problem that was beginning to loom in his own mind. "What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean. It's possible that we're the last people alive."

"There must be others somewhere." He emphasized

the word stubbornly.                               '

"I hope so." She laid a hand on his arm. "But, Jim, we must begin thinking on the basis of facts we know. We've found no one. It's been almost a year. If the people in Europe or Asia survived, why haven't they sent ships or planes to investigate our silence? Why haven't we been able to pick up foreign broadcasts on battery radios?"

"Maybe their planes did come over," he countered. "Maybe we just weren't in the right place at the right time to see them."

"You don't believe that, and you know I don't believe it, either." Her fingers tightened on his arm. "Jim," she said in a low voice as his eyes left the road for a moment to meet hers, "let's face it. Our time is running out. I've given this more thought than you know. I'll be thirty-nine years olid in the fall."

She fell silent for a while and then suddenly the man saw with terrible clarity what she meant. "That means » . ." he began, then his voice trailed off.

"Four or five years," she finished for him. "Seven or eight at the most."

They drove on in silence for a time, each wrapped in his own thoughts. Mississippi lowland was rolling by. Meridian lay behind them; its bodies, no longer either black or white, had reached equality at last, the equality of bones. Furred and feathered scavengers, insects and decomposition, name's efficient decontamination crew, had completed their work, and once again the air was sweet.

"We're no longer children," she resumed at last. "And we're facing something no one ever faced before. I've learned to love you, Jim. It wasn't hard to do. In fact, I can scarcely see how I could have avoided it under the circumstances. We've spent about eleven months together and it looks as if there's no logical alternative to our living together in the future. Maybe it's time we began to think in terms of that future."

Jim was silent for many minutes. "It's a funny thing, Ann," he said finally. "I can remember reading several science fiction yarns long, long ago. They ended with a man and a girl gazing into the sunset, or maybe the dawn, the last two people on earth, or the only two people on some planet, and they were looking forward brightly to founding a new race. The stories always ended there, I mean, and it was sort of frustrating. I wanted to know what happened after that, and it almost seemed as if the writers never had the courage to tell you."

Ann smiled grimly. "Now you're going to get your answers the hard way."

He resisted the impulse to grin as he went on doggedly, "I mean, here we are alone in the world. After a while we have two or three children. They grow up. Then what?"

She hesitated before answering. "That's a decision we have to make," she said gently, "before we have the two or three children."

He shook his head.

"But suppose we do decide to have them. What happens then? Where are their children coming from? You can't mate brother and sister. Look at the idiots that have been born just because cousins married."

"That's the decision I mentioned. Genetics wasn't my field but I know a little about the subject. You're not altogether right about the idiots. Idiots have been born to cousin matings, I'll grant you, but thousands have also been born to couples who were not even distantly related. Heredity is a matter of genes, passed down from generation to generation, and whether your child is an idiot or not depends most on whether the black gene of idiocy runs in both blood lines. If it runs in yours, and the girl is also your cousin, it will probably be found in hers too. A mating, in that case, would be almost sure to bring out the worst.

"But suppose you took healthy, intelligent parents who were both free of black genes. The chances are their children would be superior to the ones born from the average marriage. And if you bred these superior children there's DO reason to suppose the third generation would be a bit less superior. A dominant strain strengthens itself. Surely you remember something of what the farmers, and breeders were doing with animals and crops?'*'

"You almost make it sound all right," Jim admitted. "But how do we know about these Black genes? You and I might be crawling with them."

Ann was forced to smile at his words. "We'll see. When we get to Jackson I want you to find a bookstore or library. I think we can get the information we need, and then we can take inventory."

She put her head on his shoulder.

Jackson, like scores of other cities they had seen, bore desolate black scars of the fifes that had raged in the days that followed^1 the bomb. But the business section, one of the most modern in the South, was, strangely enough, almost intact. While An^ was busily scanning store fronts, Jim slowly piloted their vehicle along the almost deserted main streets.

"There!"-she cried suddenly. "Stop, Jim."

The huge gasoline tanker they had picked up in Birmingham as a solution to the increasing problem of fuel evaporation, ground to a halt and, as Jim set the brake, Ann climbed down from the cab and made for the doorway of a bookstore. When she reappeared thirty minutes later she carried seven or eight volumes under her arm.

They lunched on interminable canned chicken and canned fruit and soon were rumbling off again toward the west, with Ann deeply engrossed in the books. Occasionally, as she skimmed over page after page, she would look up and comment pn some information she encountered.

"How much cjoyOu know about Cleopatra?" she asked, after a long mtervaToi reading.

"Well," Jim smiled hesitantly, "she was a little before my time, but I hear she was a pretty sharp tomato."

"It might interest you to know that the parents of your 'sharp tomato' were brother and sister."

"They were?" There was frank astonishment in Jim's tone.

"They were. And not only that, but their parents were 135

brother and sister. And so on back for six generations."

"My God," Jim said in awe. "How did they get away with it?"

"It wasn't a matter of getting away with it. It was accepted as custom among the Pharaohs. The rulers in ancient Peru felt the same way about it, too, and married their own sisters whenever it was possible. And if you want to go back to Bible days, Abraham married his half-sister, and Moses, his aunt."

Jim digested it slowly. "Sounds immoral to me."

"That's why we've got to talk about it," Ann went on. "We've got to change our whole idea of what's moral and what's immoral. We have to realize that moral standards are arbitrary and change when customs and conditions change. A year ago there were a hundred and sixty million people in this country, and there were laws that said cousins couldn't marry. Now there are two people, and to say that conditions have changed is putting it mildly. As a matter of fact, there's no one left even to issue us a marriage license."

"So we save two bucks."

"You see! You don't seem to have a bit of trouble adjusting to that. It's just another step to what lies ahead for our children."

"Maybe you're right," Jim admitted grudgingly, but he was reluctant to relinquish his deeply embedded feeling.

They drove on toward Shreveport, and Ann resumed her reading. The sun had set and dusk was obscuring the landscape as they entered the outskirts of a small Louisiana town. Jim soon slowed the tanker to a crawl, his eyes peering ahead for the familiar sign. It was a lesson they had learned long ago, in searching for places to spend the night. The bomb had struck Berkeley shortly after midnight; it had been 3 A.M. on the east coast, and 2 A.M. here. The vast majority of Americans east of the Rockies had died in their sleep. Jim and Ann had found by grim experience that there was one place that invariably provided beds free from grisly remains. Furniture stores.

He spotted the sign a few moments later, under the once proud lettering, "J. J. Beauregard & Sons," and Jim pulled to the curb.

That night, while rows of bedsteads and dusty bureaus threw jet shadows on the walls, Ann and Jim sat near their gasoline camp lantern and took the strangest inventory in history.

"It amounts to this," Ann explained. "Are we going to become the Adam and Eve of a new race of human beings, or will we just live out our lives as the last two people on earth, and then let the dogs and the ants take over? I know little of your folks and you know less of mine. If it develops there is a serious genetic fault in our blood lines, it may be far better to let the whole thing drop right here, rather than pass on untold misery to unborn generations."

"Seems to me," Jim put in, "people have been having babies for a good many years, and I can't remember anybody who ever got so worked up over whether they ought to have babies as,.we- are. We'll work out our own problems; let our children handle theirs."

"Jim!" she said sharply. "That's not the point. We've been over this before, and you know it's not our children I'm thinking about. We could have babies just as other people did,- without ^considering the possibilities. But those other people's children grew up, remember, and then married someone who lived down the street or over in Burbank. Well, there is no Burbank now, and there is no down the street. You can see what I mean. It's the third generation we've got to think of."

"O.K.," Jim acquiesced resignedly, as he fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette. "Let's get on with it."

Ann leaned over and kissed him gently on the cheek. "My poor, long-suffering Adam."

They got on twith it. Ann opened one of the books to a page she had^gg^eared. the beginning of a long list of the particular genes that science had demonstrated were responsible for most of the hereditary ills of mankind.

"For once," Ann began, "we must be completely honest with ourselves. If either of us is, or has been, affected by any of the conditions listed here we must make a note of it. Our parents and grandparents, too—let's rack our memory of them, and other members of our family trees. Think hard while I call the roll.

"Diabetes."

Their answers were both negative. "Insanity, or feeblemindedness." Again negative.

"Epilepsy. There seems to be some dispute about this one's being hereditary, but let's not skip it."

"Nope," Jim said. "No epilepsy." Ann added her "No" and they went on.

"Deaf-mutism."

Negative.

"Spastic paralysis.'*

Negative.

"Hemophilia."

"No royalty in my blood," Jim grinned. "Strictly peasant."

Ann returned his grin and then continued through the other serious diseases and on into the almost ^terminable array of minor hereditary defects.

It was revealed that Ann had affixed ear lobes. Her father and one grandfather had been partly bald. Jim confessed partial color blindness. His father had been hard of hearing late in life and a brother had astigmatism. It was odd that the single "black" gene common to both their families was one considered relatively rare. Webbed toes. Jim recalled two cases, an aunt and a cousin, who were born with that peculiarity involving the two smallest toes on each foot. Ann's mother had had six-toed feet, the small toes and the super-numerary toes growing as one.

"That's a dominant qualified characteristic," Ann pointed out. "Even though neither of us shows it, it may pop up later on. Do you think," she managed a mock plaintiveness, "that we should risk it? Picture the world five thousand years from now—two billion people. All web-footed." Her laughter held a new note, and Jim, who had not quite shared her tension throughout the inventory, suddenly perceived the strain she had been under.

"Maybe they could develop it," he said, keeping his face stony. "If they could grow webbed arms, they could learn to fly."

Then, as she threw him one brief incredulous glance, 138

he, too, broke down, and their laughter echoed together from the shadow fretted walls.

They pushed rapidly westward ,,riow, their objective clear in mind. Fort Worth, El Paso, Phoenix, across the hot desert miles to Indio, and finally, a full three weeks from that night in J. J. Beauregard's, they limped into the huge sprawling silence that was Los Angeles.

They had seen cows grazing along the San Gabriel River a few miles to the east, and, after two days of rec-onnoitering among the fire-ravaged ruins of the metropolis, they decided to return to that area. There, in a modest but well-built rancho, they set up their home. Water still flowed in the mains, and a super food market stood undamaged on the highway a scant half mile to the north. There was neither gas nor electricity but an enclosed patio provided a barbecue pit for cooking purposes, and within a few days Jim was able to locate and install a gasoline powered home lighting plant. The fuel itself, he knew, fwould be available in almost inexhaustible quantities in the "storage tanks that dotted this region, after more accessible sources had run dry.

Months sped away. New problems of wresting a living from a deserted and non-producing world confronted them almost daily, and it seemed to Jim and Ann that they were eternally faced with so much more to do than there was time for. Many evenings were spent in study. Ann had amassed a comprehensive library of technical and reference books, and, at her urging, Jim joined her in adding to their store of knowledge. One of the books they carefully devoured was a big leather-bound volume on "Obstetrics."

^'Doctor" EJiib-£lay-> delivered their first baby the following summer. A girl. They named her Esther after Ann's mother, and Ann pretended disappointment at finding the baby didn't have six toes. Jim, on his part, stroked his chin thoughtfully after the ordeal was over, and seemed deliberating a momentously grave decision.

"Do you suppose," he mused, eyeing the husky infant speculatively, "they really do bounce?"

When Charlotte, their second child, was born seventeen months later, it was a different story. Complications arose which taxed Jim's knowledge and resources to their limit. For weeks Ann lay on the verge of death, and Jim, desperately drawing on the almost super-human stamina with which he suddenly seemed endowed, grappled night and day with the malignant forces that threatened to break up humanity's tiny nucleus. He pored over the medical books, caught his sleep in brief naps, and never left the room containing Ann and the two babies, except for the briefest of intervals. He had tethered one of their cows in a grassy patch near the patio, insuring a supply of fresh milk, and other necessities were close at hand.

Finally, late in January, Jim, haggard now, knew the gruelling battle had been won. Ann's fever abated suddenly one morning and she awoke with the ghost of the old sparkle in her eye. She reached for his hand and pulled him closer.

"Bend down, you old quack," she smiled wanly. "Put that thermometer away. I want to be kissed."

During Ann's convalescence and in the months that followed, some measure of their old spirit returned. They were able to joke once more about their tasks and minor setbacks. But somehow there was a difference now. Underneath, both knew, there was an indefinable feeling of unsureness, of sham, about their jocularity. From month to month they postponed, nor even mentioned, the discussion that both knew would be inevitable. The foetus of fear had begun to grow in both their hearts.

Charlotte was two years old when it happened. Ann, almost from that first day of horror nearly five years before, had realized the importance of keeping some record of time, and she had scrupulously marked off the days in her Utile notebook throughout all the months they had been together. During her period of delirium, of course, the task had fallen to Jim, and although secretly he could never be certain he hadn't missed a day here and there, to Ann he maintained steadfastly that he hadn't been remiss.

Thus it was, when Ann entered the room bearing a huge frosty cake and announced, "Gather 'round, everybody.

Charlotte is two!" Jim smiled slyly to himself and added for no ears but his own: "Give or take a day."

That evening, after the children were asleep, Ann stood

by the bay window and watched e torrential winter rain

turn the slope in front of the rancho into a pattern of

rushing yellow rivers.                            '

"Our time is running out, Jim," she said quietly as he joined her at the window. "The roads are breaking up with every rain." As his eyes followed hers out into the darkness and storm he sensed the solemn allegory her tone conveyed. The world of man was crumbling, the ties that bound them to civilization were fraying and snapping one by one, and their hopes, their faith in the Plan, these, too, had strangely dimmed.

"It's fear, Jim!" she said suddenly and fiercely. "Fear. We've got to drive it out." She turned to him, a grim light of decision in her eyes. "We haven't talked of it. We've been thinking, of ourselves. Oh, Lord, the time we've wasted. We must hurry, Jim. We've got to try again." She buried her face on his chest, but he was able to hear the whisper that followed. "We've got to have a boy, dear God. We've got to have a boy."

His arms encircled her, and they stood like that for seemingly interminable minutes as the rain beat .against the glass and fled in defeated rivulets outside the sill.

"You mean more to me, darling," Jim said at last, "then posterity does. I almost lost you once, remember?"

"I know," she murmured. Then she looked up and met his eyes. "It's been my fault. It seemed so much easier to put things off and forget. But we're forgetting, too, there's Esther and Charlotte now. What of them? You see, we have to go on. Lhope we're not too late."

Jim knew iteras', useless to try to sway her. . . .

Their trurd cnfld was born the week before Thanksgiving, five and one-half years after the bomb. Esther, now a precocious girl of almost four, proved of much more help than Jim had dreamed possible. She performed quickly the little chores and errands that had distracted the "Doctor" when Charlotte had been born; in addition she attended to the needs of her younger sister almost singlehandedly.

But at best it was another nightmare. Ann fought for life with a dogged tenacity, and Jim, his forebodings crystalized, knew that this would be their last. At dawn on the third day a thin wail heralded the arrival of the new world's fifth bit of humanity. Ann, in a brief period of consciousness, sought Jim's eyes, appealing for an answer to the mute question burning deep in her own. He smiled reassuringly, but the message she read there was not to be concealed by his dissembling.

The baby was another girl.

Ann survived, but she needed surgery that Jim had not the skill to perform. This time she did not recover. The next five years of her life were spent almost entirely in bed and in a wheelchair Jim had secured for her. The children were growing up, however, and she took over the teaching duties of the household, as if her handicap were of no import. The bedroom was converted into a part-time schoolroom, complete with blackboard, globe, and shelves of books, and five days a week Esther and Charlotte bent studiously over their pursuit of the three R's.

"Books," Ann said to Jim one day, "will be the key to the future, as they are to the past. Adam and Eve had to start from scratch; we have the knowledge of the ages at our fingertips. Reading must not die."

"But—" Jim started to object before he was able to check the protesting voice of his subconscious.

Ann smiled cunningly. "I know what you were going to say, Jim. But you're wrong. I haven't given up," She would say no more, and it was a puzzled man who left the room shortly after. It was his first inkling of the destiny that lay ahead.

Ann died on a day in March that was so beautiful it seemed that Nature had deliberately marshaled all her most priceless handiwork to provide a farewell of superlative loveliness to the departing. After several days of fog and rain the skies had cleared suddenly and only a few fantastically white clouds drifted across a sky of sheerest cobalt. Velvety breezes danced out of the southland, laden with the sweet scents of new spring blooms, and grass and trees vied with each other to see which could provide the more sparkling green background for

the vermillion and gold, the crimson, azure and purple of

the riotous flowers.              ^

Esther was nine. Intelligent, tails "and performing the work of an adult, she was developed far beyond her years. She had entered that morning with her mother's breakfast, when the latter gestured Weakly toward a table.

"Put the tray down, dear," she said. "Go and bring your sisters."

Charlotte and Little Ann, now five, pushed puzzled faces into the room a moment later. It was too early for their customary classes, and Esther, a few steps behind them, had given no reason for the summons.

"Come closer, girls," the mother beckoned. "I have much to say, and you must listen and remember." She closed her eyes a, moment and then began, while the children stood in a silent semi-circle by the bed. She talked in a low voice^for a long time, principally to Esther, halting now and again to touch her tongue to her drying lips. Little Ann was whimpering when she had finished, but the two older girls remained dry-eyed, stoically fighting against the impending reality.

"Leave me now for a little while," Ann requested. "I must speak to Jim."

Brown visaged, lean as ever, his sandy hair now sprinkled with gray, Jim strode in a few minutes later, closing the door softly behind him. He crossed to the bed and, with much concern in his eyes, reached for her left wrist.

Ann smiled wanly. "Forget the pulse, Jim. We may not have much time."

He started up ,as if to turn toward the medicine shelf, but^she stoppejUiun quickly.

"No, please! There is something much more important now."

He let her pull him down beside her on the bed. Their eyes met for a long moment. Then she spoke in a voice that seemed to come a long way from within and beyond her frail body.

"I've failed you, Jim. We'll never have the son we planned . . . the son the world depended on. I think God must have arranged it this way ... to see if the race of man had the courage to go on in spite of the failure of the Plan. I've been reading the Bible again, Jim . . . It's still the world's most comforting book. Do you remember in Genesis? 'And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.' Cain found a wife there, and they begat and begat. It's different now. Have you wondered where our girls will go to find husbands this time? Have you?"

Uncomfortable at the trend of her words, Jim sat staring at the tendons on the back of his fist as he tensed and relaxed them at nervous intervals.

"I've failed you, Jim," she repeated. "You must give me your oath you will not fail me. The Plan needs revision."

Incredulous suspicion stirring deep within him, he raised his eyes questioningly to hers.

"We have no land of Nod, Jim. But there will still be a man . . . and, in a few years, a woman . . . three women. You see, God did not intend that our race should perish from ... the earth."

Ann's voice faltered and a strange grayness began to

pervade her face. In sudden fear the man bent closer.

"Hold me," she said, barely above a whisper. "It's getting

... so cold." As Jim's arms tightened about her, the

whisper seemed to recede farther and farther into the

misty recesses of some fathomless corridor. "Tighter . . ."

it seemed to plead from a vast distance. "Tighter . . .

tighter____ "

Then it was gone, and the graying man could only lie there, choked with a numbing grief that knew no outlet.

Ann was buried in the shadow of the rose arbor behind the house. They held a simple ceremony, with Jim reading from a worn Bible held in taut fingers while the girls stood in a silent row, their arms cradling their flowered tributes. Later Jim laboriously tore up a path of Arizona flagstones to erect a cairn over her grave.

The months sped by. Packs of wild dogs ranging the countryside year by year were growing more ravenous and menacing. The two older girls had become proficient with rifles, and scores of the marauders were slain, but

more and more Jim realized they would soon have to move

from the unprotected rancho.           t      **,

He dimly remembered some of the-1 homes he had seen in the Hollywood Hills, and one bright morning he set out on an exploring expedition to the west. The place he chose was perfectly preserved and secure as a fortress. It was perched on a shelf halfway up the hillside, sheer mountain at its back and concrete retaining walls dropping away a full twenty feet to the roadway below. Steps leading to the shelf were protected by a heavy grilled gate.

Automobile batteries had long ago become useless, but Jim had rigged a booster to get the vehicles operating. On trips away from the rancho he either left the motor running continuously or simply parked on a sharp grade. A truck was commandeered and prepared for use, and the move begun. The roads, however, had fallen into a hopeless state of disrepair, and the many trips across town were painfully slow. The livestock was also transported, and Jim installed the animals on other shelves below the house. In all, the operation consumed five days.

Little Ann was thirteen now, tow-headed, and gangly, but a full adult in the measure of her duties. Cooking was her special love, and for more than a year she had been in full charge of the kitchen and household duties. Charlotte, always more frail than her sisters, was the student. Learning had become a mania with her, and her mother's fine library provided drink for her avidly thirsting brain. At fifteen, she was journal-keeper and barber for the family, musician, dentist and veterinarian, doctor and nurse.,

Esther, sixteen now, was fast developing into womanhood. Sun-bronzed and tall, with the wide-spaced gray eyes of her father and the firm chin and rich dark hair of her mother, Esther gave promise of the striking beauty that was soon to be hers. She made little effort, however, to enhance that beauty, preferring, instead, to spend her days at Jim's side, aiding him in the heavier out-door tasks of gardening, building, repairing, hauling, hunting and caring for the animals and fowl, tasks so necessary for their existence.

As season continued to merge imperceptibly into season in Southern California's characteristic way, Jim fell to seeking solitude under the stars after the long day's labors were completed. For hour after hour he would keep his vigil on the edge of the parapet, his eyes roving the shadowy reaches of the valley while the constellations above him wheeled in slow measured majesty toward the west. "Watching for lights," he had explained, but somehow he knew there would be no lights. His real search lay deep within his own heart, and the parapet was his Gethsemane. It was there he must find an answer, some measure of peace for his troubled soul.

Months passed, and the spirit of Ann began to live for him during those hours of his strange loneliness. At times she seemed so near he felt he could hear her comforting whisper, or if he moved his hand he could touch her warm, smooth skin. Thus, it seemed, that drowsy night in August, that Ann's arms tenderly embraced him and her lips stealthily crept across his cheek until they met and clung to his own. His eyes were closed and somewhere far within him rang a voice in wild, clear song: "Ann . . . Ann... ." The kiss ended, but the dream lingered. The girl in his arms was still Ann, but the quiet voice that began speaking was suddenly Esther's.

"I'll be eighteen tomorrow, Jim. I read mother's last letter tonight."

"Letter?" Jim repeated numbly, struggling to distinguish reality from dream.

"You never knew, did you? She wrote a long series of them, and every birthday, I've opened one, just as I promised her. Tonight was the last. She taught me so much, Jim . . . how to be a woman, and many things I could never tell you. Above all, she was afraid you would forget a promise. .. ."

In the silence that followed, Jim marveled anew at the indomitable purpose of the woman, at her incredible foresight, even in little things. The letters. And his name. From the very beginning she had taught the girls to address him as Jim. Never dad or father. It had seemed a trifling eccentricity then . . . now the subtle significance emerged in startling clarity.

Esther kissed him lightly once mqre, and then snuggled close to his breast.

"You old faker," she murmuíted. "I believe you really would have fogotten. I'm going to see that you don't."

Far to the west, in the direction of Pacific Palisades, another wild dog sent his mournful howl wafting toward the stars. The bearded man, startled from his revery, turned his head once more to regard the shadowed house behind him. Eucalyptus and Jacaranda leaves were quivering and clicking in the west wind, and the man realized suddenly how chill the night had become.

Then abruptly his awareness of all those things vanished.

His eyes had caught, the quick thin panel of light from the house that told him a door had been opened and swiftly shut. He leaped up expectanüy as a white-frocked figuré flew across the lawn.

"Jim, Jim, it's over!" Little Ann gasped as she raced into his arms and hugged him with childish intensity. "Charlotte says you can stop your pacing now, and come in."

"But how is—?" he began, as the teen-ager disengaged herself suddenly and began tugging at his arm.

"Come on," she urged. "Everybody's peachy-dory. Hurry!"

"But tell me—" he persisted, trying to resist her bubbling exuberance, "is it... is it a—?"

"Oh!" she trilled, as if surprised at his stupidity. " 'Course, it's a' boy. What'd you think?"

Jim let hftfitelf be led toward the house. A dreamlike current engulfed him and he seemed being borne on the crest of a great river, outward and upward toward the dim reaches of eternity. The parapet and the Valley of Shapes, the sea winds and the crying of wild dogs, the dark vigils and the restless turbulence in his soul, to their last vestige seemed retreating into a distant and forgotten past.

,.. The race of man would live again.

Though George Frederic is new to the science fiction field, his writing has been appearing in the men's magazines, under a dozen different pen-names, for the last five years. Some of his stories, including the following, have been reprinted several times. This little horror story has never been available to the sci-fi reader until now.

If the cold war continues into a hot one, and if a man wanted to keep a little island of culture, it is highly possible that he might be a man like Revis Montrey, a man with...

AVERY CULTURE© TASTE by George Frederic

HE SAT alone in his room, listening to the exciting, mellow sounds of tHe recorder playing stereo reproductions of great jazz moments of a history now gone, a time demolished, from a Civilization destroyed. He, was alone and happy.

He had seen nobody except his servant Tommy for a long time; ever since the rotting sickness had finished off most of those who had survived the bombs.

He laughed, both bitterly and ironically.

A war that started and ended the same instant! he mused.

The war had destroyed Mankind, and those it hadn't killed it had driven insane, or changed into savage animals, lusting for each other, fighting and killing for a bite of food, a drink of water.

But not Revis Montrey. Revis was a cultured man, with cultured, well rounded tastes.

Like this excellent French Chablis, he thought almost savagely, sippmg'frbm the small hand cut crystal glass gripped in his thin wrinkled fingers.

He ran a few drops of the liquid around in his mouth and dreamily closed his eyes, as he listened to the mellow, soft rounds of Don Bagley's bass move through the air of the tiny, comfortable room.

His eyes surveyed the furnishing surrounding him. The dark leather chair set between the two stereo speakers on

the far wall, the coffee table sitting beside him, hand carved by a German craftsman, the Dali original hanging on the wall to his left.

Yes, Revis, a cultured man of taste, had preserved a little portion of a now dead civilization, here on the mountain side, all for himself. His art gallery displayed a collection of some of the finest art work of all time. He had been lucky, far-seeing enough to be aware of the end of a world which had taken thousands of years for Man to perfect into such a complicated civilization that ate upon itself like a cannibal, leaving nothing but the rotting, twisted guts to digest itself away to dust.

His lined, narrow face crinkled, the thin wine-red lips snarled into a cruel twist of contempt. Anybody with intelligence would have realized the end was near. It was in all the papers, all the magazines, even since the first atomic bomb was exploded on a Japanese town.

But none had believed, none would believe that the danger was real.

Only Revis Montrey.

He had prepared years in advance, far before the lines of insanity closed around the civilized head of Man and choked off its life.

He had lived in his mountain "castle" with his servant Tommy many years before the bombs had finished off human culture.

Revis had had to take cruel cutting remarks from the surrounding countrymen who thought him mad. Sure he was mad, like a fox, until the end of the world had proven him a sane man.

That was when everybody had come begging at his door for food and clothing, shelter and help.

What had they thought he was? There had been only so much room to store food. The fools!

What did they think him—truly mad?

"Oh, no, sir, you are not mad," they had pleaded the day after civilization's end.

But you thought so yesterday; why not today?

"Please pardon our outrageous actions of then—we did not realize; did not know!"

But you had your fun, your jokes, at my expense.

"But it was harmless. Only a joke. It did not hurt you."

You had your fun, "jokes". Now, I'll have mine!

And he had closed his doors upon the savage madmen, who kept on hounding and, pounding until hunger forced them to eat upon each other.

It was a good thing he had been careful and kept his food supply for himself and Tfommy. Already it was running low. It would have run out a long time before if he had not taken measures. There was nothing like a good steak or fried chicken—but now they were so scarce.

Yes, they had been all fools, and they paid the price!

They had not prepared.

He had his atomic-powered reactor, that generated all the electricity he would ever need for the rest of his life. He had a freezer full of food which would last for years— as long as he continued to keep the priceless meats of civilization for only special moments.

Revis flipped a .switch at the side of his chair, and a machine somewhere in the paneling of his huge "castle" fortress clicked off and another one turned on, filling the room with the music and voice of Charles English.

Yes, he thought, this was the life, no worries, no struggles....

He lived the life of a cultured man, even now, when all that had made culture did not exist anymore. A knock sounded at his door.

His insides shook with violent rage, his face darkened, the wrinkles pulling tight.

Tommy knew he was not to be disturbed when he was listening to his music. Tommy knew that the Music Room was off-limits when he was enjoying the relaxation of listening to his music tapes.

"Master, tfigf^ls someone knocking at your door!"

"Well, hefiyyou know what to do—shoot him!"

Servants! The damn fools had to be told every move to make!

"But it is a woman!"

A woman? It had been a long time. Maybe too long! His face relaxed and he thought dreamily of all the women he had known.

There weren't many women left since the rotting sickness ate its away into the very bones of all those who had survived the bombs. Women and children had been first to die. Some had survived, but all too few. But that did not really bother him, since he had been very cultured even in his taste for women. Some men, well, they would take anything offered. But even when the women had come offering themselves to him for the price of a meal, he had picked carefully—turning the others over to his servant Tommy, whose taste in such matters were more coarse. Maybe that was why Tommy and himself got along so well together.

Still the idea of a woman appealed to Revis in a completely different way than it did to Tommy. Maybe that was good, too.

But now there was a woman wanting to get entrance into their castle fortress.

"Pretty?" Revis called out.

"Yes, Master . . . thin. Ragged, but pretty," came the voice of Tommy through the door paneling.

"Okay, let me have a look. Let her in."

Revis waited silently, listening to the music. It seemed to take forever. Then finally a knock sounded once again on his door.

"Master, I've brought the girl."

Revis touched the button on the chair, and the door opened, the room flooded with light.

Tommy walked in, leading a shabbily dressed woman into the room. Her hair was filthy, knotted, matted and tangled. Her face, clothing and skin were covered with grime and dust, smeared thick. She had the haunted look of a wild animal in her eyes as she took in the finely furnished room.

Revis' stomach knotted slightly at the smell of her. His nose revolted, his eyes squinted against the sight of her body. He controlled the impulse to be crude and cutting about her appearance.

"Hello," he greeted in a pleasant voice, forcing a smile onto his aged lips. "My name is Revis, I'm Master of the house."

"Hello, I'm Betty Wilson." She looked timidly at the Dali painting, then at him, her eyes falling on the empty trousers hanging where his legs should have been. They

hovered there momentarily, pulled away and then snapped

back.      ,»

He smiled more broadly, feeling^ a strange satisfaction

at her embarrassment.                         /

"The rotting sickness," he explained in the soft, patient voice of a father to a daughter.

At his announcement she shrank suddenly back, fear lighting the shallow fire in her haunted eyes. Her feet stepped back towards the door. Her still well shaped lips trembled as thin hands clawed at her breasts.

Tommy quickly barred her way.

"Let me out! Let me out!" she screamed in sudden, blind terror.

"Calm her!" Revis snapped.

Tommy slapped Betty across the face, gripping her right shoulder so* that she could not get away from his cruel blows. Time and; again his thick, pudgy fingers brutally hammered against her cheeks, until her screaming turned, into sobs of pain.

"That's enough!" Revis motioned her over to the center of the room as Tommy released his grip on her arm. Revis smiled warmly. "There's nothing to be afraid of, Betty. The sickness was over more than a year ago. It just left me a little scarred in the face and body, and I had to have Tommy here cut off my legs before I rotted all the way up to my heart."

She didn't look too reassured, her eyes were still large fires of fear, but she moved to the center of the room, as ordered.

"Turn around and let me have a better look at you." She just stood there, frozen in terror, her arms huddled

"Come, cbme;Tio"w, we're not going to bite you!" He made a circular motion with his right arm. "Turn!" She didn't move.

"Oh, Tommy, turn her!" Revis commanded his servant.

The squat man quickly, eagerly obeyed, letting his hands run along Betty's body as he did so. His thick, large hps spread open, his small dark eyes twinkled as his fingers pressed her chest greedily.

"Stop that, Tommy! I'm a cultured man, I won't put up with that kind of thing in my presence. After all, the lady's already frightened to death!" Revis screamed insanely, gripping the arms of the chair with both hands, half raising from the seat.

"Yes, Master," Tommy said in a sad, disappointed voice, "I'm sorry—it's just been so long!"

Revis made an irritated action of his hands which meant the subject was closed. "She's not too good . huh?" he asked, indicating the woman's figure with a nervous flick of his fingers.

"No, Master, very good!" Tommy fingered the front of her blouse, grinning widely again.

"Stop that!" Revis ordered in a high screech.

Betty was trembling, and tears began running down her face.

"All I want is food," she whimpered in such a low, shaking voice that it was hard to understand her words. "Sure, my child. Food it is!"

"What do you think, Master?" Tommy asked, his eyes now glistening with eagerness. He rubbed his palms nervously together. "Sexy little dish—no?"

Revis laughed at that. His whole face contorted into humor wrinkles, his hps trembled against the force of his laughter. "Sexy little dish?" he repeated, drying his eyes with the cuff of his laced shirt.

Betty was looking from one man to the other in bewilderment.

"I only want food and water—I thought you might—"

"Please, Betty, only speak when spoken to!" Revis demanded. "Come over here!"

Tommy pushed her forward. She half whimpered in despair. But she did not move away from Revis. She stood there, waiting, her lips set hard, as if she were holding back a scream of horror.

He reached out and felt her fingers. They were bony, thin, hard. "You certainly could use a little fattening up, I must say."

She smiled slightly, quickly reacting to his kinder sounding words.

"Please, lady, forgive me—but I must do this!" He placed trembling fingers on her chest, feeling the hard muscular swells there. He then reached down and felt the firmness in her legs. They were sinqwy, thin, coarse.

She winced at his touch, but didtiot move away.

"Take off your clothing," Re^Vis finally demanded in a tired voice.

Betty's body stiffened as 0 it had been jolted by an electric shock. She started to step backwards, but Tommy grabbed her from behind, his fingers squeezing hard against her arms.

"No, please! Let me go—please let me leave."

"Now, Betty, I'm not going to hurt you. I just want to see your figure. After all, you can't deny an old man such a simple pleasure in return for what you are asking!"

She stood there, frozen for a long time, as if thinking over what he*liad>just said. Then, slowly, her hands moved up to the'top of her dress.

It had been a long-time since he had seen a live worn-man's body, and he was almost trembling with excitement.

Her skin was coarse and muscular, hard. Her breasts tight knots; Unattractive and disappointing.

One look at her small, narrow, bony hips, thin, starved looking legs, and Revis sighed turning his eyes away from the sight.

Very disappointing, he thought. "Not my type, but she'll do, Tommy. Take her out and fix her up—and be sure and scrub her good. I can't stand a dirty girl!"

"The usual?" Tommy grinned, smiling anxiously.

Revis simply nodded, he had already lost most of his eagerness.

Tommy moved closer to Revis and leaned over, whispering in his ear. "I have a little fun, first, Master?"

Revis mojj£jped the.man out with a shrug of his shoulders, which meant fie didn't care what Tqmrny did.

"Oh, thank you, sir," Betty cried, gathering up her clothing and following Tommy out of the room. Her step was lively and firm, her movement that of a woman who has been freed from a long prison term, or who has escaped a terrible fate.

Revis smiled as Betty slipped out of his sight, then he pressed the chair button which closed the door, dimmed the lighting and turned up the volume of the music.

It was some minutes before Revis heard Betty's first scream from the room above.

He turned up the volume of the music, hoping that would drown out the sound of the woman.

But her screams cut through the blasting blare of the stereo music. The screams sounded again and again, first in terror and then finally in agony.

Revis shuddered inwardly. Tommy just wasn't a cultured man! He never had been.

Betty kept on screaming for a long, long time, then finally there was one last pain-filled screech, ending with a desperate final moan. The sound of a heavy body falling was the last interruption to the blare of Stan Kenton's jazz band playing its theme song.

Revis sighed out his relief, and then took another sip of his wine, savoring its full-bodied taste. His ears followed the musical lines of jazz soloist as they fingered through complicated runs and arpeggios. An hour later there was a knock on the door.

"Master, dinner is ready!"

Revis pressed the button at the side of his chair, which opened the door, so that his servant could enter. Tommy came in and placed a large tray filled with dishes, on the table before his master.

"Sexy girl! Real wow! Crazy dish!" Tommy smiled as he left the room.

Revis looked over the large servings, and a horrid sickness threatened his stomach.

His mouth had been watering for chicken or steak, but he realized that such luxuries had to be doled out carefully, otherwise they would disappear in a very short time.

The food wasn't fit for a cultured man! But what else could he really expect? He shrugged and forced himself to start eating. After all, there was only one way to fill out the food supplies!

Each bite was sickening to him. He'd never get used to it.

Well, anyway it was at least fresh food.

And he'd have to admit she tasted one hell of a lot better than she'd looked!

Over two hundred science fiction stories, features and articles are credited to F of rest J. Ackerman. He has been a collector of science fiction since the initial appearance of Amazing Stories, the first all science fiction magazine in 1926. He now edits three movie, horror magazines: Famous Monsters of Filmland, Monster World and Spacemen.

As a literary agent, he was responsible for the motion pictures THIS ISLAND EARTH and FIEND WITHOUT A FACE. In 1964, he appeared in a cameo role in THE TIME TRAVELERS.

Mr. AckermSh who is the winner of a Hugo and was a Guest of Honor at the first International Science Fiction Convention, held in London, is rightfully known as "Mr.. Science Fiction."

If man as we know him was wiped out by an atomic war, and the new inhabitants asked about Man, you have..

THE MUTE QUESTION

byForest J. Ackerman

TWTNHEAD was puzzled over the old problem. "Do you think," he reflected, in the queer lisp that was the heritage of his cleft tongue, "that Man could have made mutant in his own image?"

His acquaintance of the twilight hour vouchsafed no opinion.

The mutant's second head arched its neck forward from the cave wall against which it rested. With its twang, characteristic of its double tongue, it argued, "But if Man's son, Adam, created us all with the Adam bomb—?"

"I don't hold with that Bomb birth story," his opposite head lisped in negation. "Do you, stranger?"

Still the stranger did not respond; why, it could not be directly discerned, for it was very dark in the cave.

Twang-tongue declared: "But for Man to have made mutie in His own image, He would have had to have been a polymorph! Part of Him would have had to have been two-headed, like us, and part like our Siamese sisters and part like little Roll Ball and part like the Octo-Arms we met last week and part like the Centi-Feets and part like our cousin Snaky. Why, He would have been a monster! Don't you agree, stranger?"

In the dark recess of the cave the stranger stirred, but still no sound issued from his direction. And so this

THE MUTE QUESTION

philosophical discussion of the late 1900s stalemated itself.

Then the moon's clouded rays, slowlyf»as though fearful of what they might reveal, crept into the cave. The wavering shaft moved hesitantly up the misshapen body of Twinhead, and at last reluctantly illumined the entire mutie. Was it an illusion, or did the face of the Man in the Moon pale? There was no man left on Earth to tell.

The beam's slow progress continued, until the second mutie too was visible. Then it became evident why this stranger did not speak.

Rather, it must be put this way: It would have been evident, had there been a man there with eyes to see. It remained a mystery to Twinhead for, though he had more than his share of eyes—six, to be exact—they were all albino white, pupilfess ovals of jellyfish flesh that failed to function. Twinhead, since birth, was blind.

And the stranger^well, he was silent because . . .

The Muties have a proverb: Two heads are better than. none.

The editor now shamelessly selects one of his-own stories. Enough to say the temptation was far too great.

The question here is, what happens if the human race were really finished off by atomic war? Let us assume that this terrible moment took place, and then ask ourselves what would happen then?

What will be the next link of evolution? It might be ...

THE HOMO SAP

byCharles Nnetzel

SOMEBODY pushed the panic button!

And that is where the story began.

The world exploded, rumbled, shook, great ripples of atomic fire bloomed into existence over every civilized center of Man, and the Earth became alight with atomic fire which flooded radioactivity across its surface. Monstrous tidal waves reached out like hungry, gigantic arms, flooding the coastlines of every land the world over.

The human race gave one last fluttering moan, and died. Man had had his chance and now it was over. Man had fumbled the ball beginning with the mistake of Eve and Adam, right down to the mistake of Russia and the United States thinking they were the only two countries who might start war.

The problems of Man didn't exist any more, didn't count. Right at the edge of the Space Age the homo sap had fooled around with the wrong "apple" and got pushed out of existence.

Still all was not lost.

As the good Gods will allow, intelligence isn't, and never was, really limited to just one being. And lucky it was, too.

Since homo sap came from a common stock with the monkeys, there is every reason to believe another homo-intellect might spring forth from that same tree of evolution.

And so it came about, much sooner than any human would have been willing to imagine, that a homo-monk of rather shrewd preception stepped from, the ruins of Mankind's crumbling cities and/looked at the world around him, sadly shaking his head from side to side.

If the truth were to be known, this homo-monk was outstanding because of several scientific experiments which it had been put through, both physically and mentally. Or maybe it was the other way around. Maybe the scientists had picked him for experimentation because of his unusual intelligence. Either way it doesn't make much difference. The long and the short of it all (and he was rather tiny, at that) was that this homo-monk did have an entirely different outlook on life than any of his fellow monks. And strangely enough, considering what the bombs had done,, to the human race, there were plenty of monks running around—most of them much larger than himself.

But in the words of a wise Man: a small child shall lead them!

Yet' with- all his special ability, this little monk was rather unhappy. After all, his only playmates were just a bunch of apes. Or at least a bunch of "little" apes. Regardless of what one would call them, they didn't have that final stamp of personality which was his mark of superiority.

Well, anyway, being a rather far-seeing little guy, he naturally was determined to discover at least one superior girl homo-monk, so that he could give birth to a lot of little monks, and thus repopulate the world with homo-monks like himself.

As you can see, he was a very ambitious fellow. And he wasn't having^iueh luck in finding the girl-monk of his dreams. But TBI^11 didn't let this deter him in his ultimate plans. Since he came across many attractive members of the opposite sex, even though rather stupid, he did his duty to them, presenting them with future children which he hoped would be gifted with the finer features of their father's intelligence. Thus he was planting the seeds of a possible future evolution of homo-monks, just in case he was not lucky in finding a suitable mate.

These were always rather degrading to his moral sense, being only "animal" attractions. But the cause must go on!

So as the years progressed, and he populated the world with hundreds of seedlings for a future generation of superior-type personalities much like his own, he began to doubt that there was another creature to match the genes within himself.

He became down-hearted; but didn't give up.

Years passed, and slowly he traveled across the surface of the world, searching for his perfect mate.

Then one day, when he was just about to give up, he heard murmurings. Just a suggestion. But the mutter-ings sent him off in a new direction.

It was rumored that way to the north was a rather stand-offish little female monk, who had superior ways. She wouldn't let the local boys touch her, and had a reputation of being snooty in her relations with other members of her species.

It was also hinted that she was very beautiful and desirable. Monks from all around would go to her in hopes of attaining her favors; but she turned them all down, cold!

Well, he reasoned, jumping over a jagged and broken light post, it would be interesting to see if she turned him down—even if she did turn out to be but another ordinary monk. No girl had said "no" to him yet! And his own homo pride forced him onwards, even though he doubted the rumblings that she really was different.

The closer he got to where she was living, the more talk he heard about her. And finally, when he arrived in her area the general attitude was that this girl definitely was something special.

"She can even write her own name . .." one male monk told him with awed surprise. "In Human lettering, too!"

That did say something for her, he thought with pleasure.

Then he was given directions to where she lived. After making sure that he was spruced up, with neady combed fur, cleanly bathed and looking his best, he approached her living quarters.

She lived in the courtyard of a once rich, human family.

It was a beautiful place, grown thick with trees, flowers of every color, low, soft grass—a paradise to a weary traveler like our friend.

The moment he saw her he fairly-flipped with joy. How beautiful she looked. Her fur was; carefully combed, her teeth gleaming, yellow, the fangs so dainty and attractive. Such tiny, delicate hands. And her figure! She was the most!

He was mad about her from the first instant.

After all, he was almost human, and you can't blame him for being knocked cold by a beautiful and attractive female! Even Humans were famous for their weakness for the opposite sex.

She was drawing pictures on the ground with a stick as he approached her.

His first glance at her artwork didn't impress him much, but after all, one couldn't expect a woman to be artistic.

"My dear lady," he said in homo-monk language.

She looked up with a cold expression in her eyes. But the moment she saw him her eyes widened with surprise and then suddenly sparkled with inner excitement which she couldn't control. All at once she jumped up and down excitedly, then did a rolling back flip.

It was love at first sight.

He had found his woman at last!

And there was no doubt in his mind that she felt the same way about him.

If birds of a feather flock together, then obviously two homo-monks would immediately recognize one another at first glance!

They hugged each other in wild happiness, and in an ecstasy of overturning joy they ran and jumped and swung into theTrfts ■ leaping from branch to branch. They fairly leaped from one end of the garden to the other in their ecstatic happiness.

But, as the old saying goes, if homo-sap had been made a monkey of by a beautiful female of ITS kind, then a monkey was able to be made a homo-sap by a girl-monk.

Suddenly she stopped in her mad flight through the lush garden. She scampered to a large tree.

He came out of the bushes after her, and then stopped short.

Shock showed on his features. In alarm his hand slapped up at his face.

"Oh, my gosh!" he screeched, looking at what this female temptress was holding out toward him. "Not again?"

The object in her hand was, of course, red and round and juicy looking.

He hesitated for only a moment and then helplessly shrugging his narrow shoulders, stepped forward and took the gift.

Somewhere in the tree above, of course, he heard a rattling and soft hissing, but tried to ignore it.

What the hell! he thought, taking a bite from the apple. So it was a repeat preformance?

The race of homo-saps had begun againl

Donald A. Wollheim has been an important name and influence in the science fiction field for more than a quarter of a century. In the beginning he started by editing such magazines as STIRRING SCIENCE FICTION and COSMIC, and later controlled AVON SCIENCE FICTION READER and ORBIT. Last year he received the Hugo for his achievements at spearheading the editorial department of Ace Pocket Books. He wrote the first definition of science fiction, and with Forest J. Ackerman and Sam Moskowitz is one of the top authorities in the field.

A first class editor, Wollheim has also been a first class writer who turns out excellent stories like the following under his own name, and many pen-names. He is the author of a juvenile novel science fiction series called THE MIKE MARS ADVENTURES. The following story, a highly artistic approach to a hollowing idea, had a high emotional impact on its readers when it first appeared in print. The only thing which must be hoped is that beautiful as the story is, it will never come true. . .

AQUELLA byDonald A. Wollheim

WHEN I SAW that beautiful blue planet shining in the sky before me, I felt that here was a place I ideally wished to set my space-yacht''down and end my long wandering. Among the endless reaches of the stars, for many months >I had traveled, idly, easily. My vacation was still young and I yearned for the pleasures of the myriad wonder worlds .of space.

I had visited the shimmering coppery worlds of Altair, I had peeked into the caverns of Polaris. I had walked among the magnificient spanned cities of a hundred civilized planets and among the steaming jungles of a hundred colonial worlds. And yet, when I saw that globe, all blue with tranquil water and its Utile islands dotting the surface, I said to myself that here was the place to stop and relax. So I set my silvery ship down outside a small town that nestled by a lagoon on one of the larger islands.

As I emerged* and the warm, flower-laden breeze wafted against «ia$ .nostrils and the soft swishing of the green trees carried their message of peace to me, I rejoiced—for it was indeed a place of rest. And when the pink-skinned, golden-haired, sad-eyed people came and welcomed me, I was happy.

Aquella was the name of the planet, they told me, and few were the strangers from the stars that honored them with visits. I wondered at this, for the planet was located in a populous section of space and surely such an idyllic

world could not escape the attention of parties of plea-j sure-seekers vacationing from their work-a-day worlds.'

If there were ever a planet for vacation, this was it, 1 thought to myself. Industry seemed neglected here. I saw no factory or machine. A world of water, with a handful of islands scattered on its surface. A population of perhaps not more than a few million in a world of consider-j able proportion. No dangerous beasts, no disease, no vioj lent weather. It was, I was assured, always warm, always fruitful.

There should have been nothing to spoil my pleasure] yet there was something which seemed to trouble tha back of my mind. The natives were friendly enough, still' there was a certain reserve in their manner. It was hardj to place, one sensed it. These pink people lived so simplyi and so pleasantly, yet one could see they were not savj ages. No, far from it. There was a certain way of manner that depicted the civilized man, and their learning, though indolent and indifferent to the problems of the Stellar, Federation, was nonetheless able.

My black skin and Nufrikan clothes should have excited their children at least, for these people had few visitors, yet even there I felt a certain reserve in their approach. Their children showed not the enthusiasm with which I had been greeted by the young of other worlds— filled with romantic ideas of many stars.

The natives were affable, but it slowly penetrated into

my consciousness that something was wrong.                              t

I could not place it, yet, after several days I felt slighdyj ill at ease. Perhaps the first thing was the lack of othei visitors. Why was this beautiful planet not a haven ol vacationers? It had everything. The wide oceans—shallow, I was told for the most part—in other parts verj deep—the green smiling islands—the people and theu languid, soft songs. Yet, there was that reserve.

After I had been there a few days I made friends witl one Salur, a fair youth of the island on which I stayed He often would accompany me, seeming to gain a sort o reflected pleasure from my delights in his world.

From him I gained some information, in an indirecl

I

way. He professed not to know why others did not visit the planet more often. He admitted partially one supposition that began to be borne in on me—Hthat Aquella was partly a colonial world. I had surmised it from the apparent lack of industry, but Salnr said that such was erroneous. He said it had once been a less watery world and that its present state was due to the planning of the Stellar discoverers.

It was, he explained with an enigmatic glint and a turned away face, something of a volcanic world at one time with terrible eruptions and geysers shaking its surface continually. The Stellar Federation had changed that. They had flooded the planet with water, extinguished the agony of the soil, and made it into the paradise it was.

Perhaps they ha&been planning it for a vacation world, yet somehow it never became one.

I gazed over the silent blue ocean and wondered at the purity of the air and the warmth of the sky. Wide, shallow ocean—it should have been filled with the pleasure craft of a hundred planets. Yet nought but a single red-sailed caravel bobbed along the water.

Salur, too,- stared silently and again I wondered at the curious sad look that always seemed to linger in the eyes of his race. There was something that was buried deep in this people's past.

I remembered that he had described Aquella as only partially colonial—then he must mean that his people were actually natives here and not immigrants from some other world. At that, I remembered I had seen no pink humanoids elsewhere. Black and brown and red, yes. The vivid blue-skinned people of Algol, and the gold of Sango, and ns^pjyn shining black. But of pink folk, I knew no possible parent world. They must have always been here and it was racial memory of their terrified past, a past of volcano and lava and quake, that lingered in their minds and saddened them.

I suggested to Salur a voyage to some other island and be lazily nodded.

We took a wide and tossing shell-like boat, hoisted the striped sail and drifted slowly away across the azure waters. The island fell behind us and then sank beneath the horizon. We were alone on the empty blue sea.

I gazed down into the depths, but saw nothing. I spoke idly of the curious lack of fishes—a feature that would be remedied only by the passing of more centuries. On this world, which could not have been remade more than a few centuries ago, I know there would be gaps.

Salur stared down into the depths and said nothing. I felt the strange sadness envelop him—sadness and something else. Something that sent a slight chill down my back and then was lost

Night found us on the water and we lay on our backs and stared into the blue sky watching the myriad stars twinkle. By and by I felt that I must be growing sleepy, for it seemed that the sky grew mistier and the stars faded out into grayness. Then the boat rocked sharply and I sat up.

Salur was sitting up also, gazing out at the sea.

"A rain!" I exclaimed, "and I thought it never rained!"

Salur stared long before he answered.

"Aquella is not yet perfect. But this is not exactly a rain." His voice was low and tense.

I looked about the empty sea again and now I saw that waves were beating across it and curious trembles were agitating its surface. A quake, I thought suddenly, a quake. A final struggle of a perhaps not entirely drowned volcano.

The sky was dark and black, not a star shone through. A storm, too, accompanying the quake.

Rapidly it was getting dangerous. I gazed around. Salur sat in the end of the boat staring raptly out into the dark, turbulent sea.

I recovered myself. The ship could not sink, I knew the material it was made of. It could not be battered nor overturned nor sunk. Beneath its simple exterior, the science of the stars kept it firm.

I strapped myself down to the deck and made ready to enjoy the last fury of the not completely tamed planet Perhaps this was the answer to the lack of visitors. It was not safe. Perhaps I had missed some stellar beacon before I landed.

Salur seemed to guess my thoughts; for A brief instant he tore his gaze away from the wjjd~ darkness and said: "This has not happened in five generations."

A chill struck me again. Why was his voice so tense, so pitched? Why did it seem to be harsher than before? Why were bis eyes so strangely aglow?

I was close then, I knew, to the secret that these people held in their hearts. I was close then to the knowledge that set them apart.

Sometimes, in these later years, I wish I had got no closer. Sometimes, I wish the storm had abated.

Rapidly it grew even darker than before. Then came a sudden flash of lightning, and another, after that the thunder, roaring and: violent. The ship pitched and tossed as furious waves lashed us and broke over our deck.

There was a rumbling beneath the waters. I felt the grinding vibration. In the boat, Salur, heedless of danger, stood up and faced into the wind. His hair streaming behind him, his eyes glaring. The waters writhed in agony and the thunder roared as the lightning flashed its momentary glimpses of the mad scene.

Then came another terrible jarring. Quake after quake was torturing the ocean floor.

Then Salur gave a great shout and I stared as he pointed. The ocean was broken and in the flare of a lightning bolt I saw a thrust of wet gray rock suddenly pierce the surface like a submarine breaking water. Then all about I saw other surfaces break, and in the terrible roaring noise a great section of land rose for a moment above the sea.   ** *

I saw a greJrfcwet plain, streaming with rills of black water, streaked with white and green weeds and sea growth. There were great hummocks and boulders covered with slime.

And I saw, against the black storm sky, piercing towers of metal twisted and broken. I saw, lit by the crackle of lightning, great piles of armor plates and hideous webbed metal chains that dangled from spiky wheels. The great black snout of a gun was outlined against the sky—dripping weeds hanging from its end.

All that, I glimpsed in the instant before the land plunged back into the sea. I saw Salur standing in the end of the boat, waving his hands and screaming at the top of his lungs. And I heard the things he screamed. Things that should not be heard by civilized ears.

And I knew then what Aquella was and why it had few visitors.

In the morning, when the storm was but a terrible memory and the sun shone upon a tranquil blue sea, we sailed silently back to the island.

I made my way through the streets of the little town. I knew the pink folk knew that I knew. I saw the light that glimmered in the back of their eyes and I understood the perverted sadness that prevented them from enjoying their beautiful world.

I knew why I had seen no pink-skinned folk on all the worlds of the starry horde.

When I entered my space-yacht to leave this planet forever, I asked Salur a question: "Aquella was not always the name of this world?"

He looked at me and nodded. "Before it was flooded, Aquella was not the name of this world."

I hesitated to confirm my knowledge. But I must. I placed my hand on the door of my ship's lock and said: "The original name of this world, before it was cleansed, was—"

Salur stared at me. "Earth," he finished slowly. I closed the door.

Marion Zimmer Bradley is one of the few female writers to become highly popular in the science fiction field. Why it should be that so few women write science fiction is hard to understand after reading one of her stories.

She has appeared in all the major science fiction magazines and several of her novels have been published in pocket book form.

The following story, the longest by far in this collection, though one of the swiftest paced short novels the editor has had the pleasure of reading, projects far into the future, when Man is ready to reach out if or the stars. With all-out space travel almost around the corner, an event which will surely be experienced by our children, it is not hard to accept the idea of interstellar travel. After all space ships were laughed at only a few years ago! Who knows what will follow?

But Mrs. Bradley is not so much concerned with the event of interstellar travel as much as what effect it might have on people, and more than that, what will happen when the grandchildren return to Earth? What kind of world will the Spacemen discover? The answers to these and many more important questions will be found in...

THECLBMB9NG WAVE

byMarion Zimmer Bradley

BRIAN KEARNS knew to the second, by his sliip-time chronometer and by the faint, almost imperceptible humming of a monitor screen, when the limit of gravity tolerance was reached. Giving himself a round ten seconds for safety margin—Brian was a practical and methodical young man, and had spent twelve years training for this work and four and a half years doing it—he unfastened the straps on his skyhook, the free-swinging, nest-like lounge cradle where he had been lying with ears and eyes fastened on the complex controls. He inched patiently, fly-like, down the wall, braced himself to a handhold, and threw a certain switch to the farthest position leftward.

The barely perceptible humming stopped.

Brian Keams had just put himself out of a job.

He picked up the stylus chained to the logbook, held a floating page down with his right hand, and wrote swiftly and expertly with his left:

"1676th day of voyage; have just thrown switch which cut the interstellar drives. Our calculations were correct and there appear to have been no visible shock effects as the IS units went out of function. We are now standing fourteen hundred miles off Mars. Relinquished control of ship at—" he glanced at the chronometer again, and wrote "—0814 hours. Position . . ." He added a series of complicated numerals, scribbled his initials beneath the

entry, then picked up the hook of the intercabin communicator and waggled it.

A dim rasping voice said from thg othef«end of the starship, almost half a mile away, ^That you, Kearns?"

"Right, Caldwell."                               j

"We're standing by with atomics back here, Brian. Were

the figures right?"                               1

"All calculations, appear to have been correct," Brian answered stiffly. "The drives have been cut according to the schedule previously worked out."

"Yippee!" the voice shouted from the loudspeaker, and Brian frowned and coughed reprovingly. The faraway voice appeared to be stifling an expletive, but inquired correctly: "Standing by for orders, Captain Kearns?"

"All right, Captain Caldwell," Brian said; "she's your ship, as of—" he stopped, glanced at the chronometer again, and after a few>$eeohds said "now!"

He put down the hook, and looked around the main control room, in which he had spent the best part of the Homeward'^ long voyage. The tremendous interstellar drives were silent now, their dim hum stilled, and the metal surfaces faced him with a blank, metallic unresponsiveness. Brian had a curious feeling of anticlimax while he recapped the stylus, slid a moving panel over the logbook, and clung there to the handhold, wondering with the back part of his mind if he had left anything undone, while knowing, with the sureness of long habit, that he had not.

It is impossible to shrug one's shoulders in free fall; the motion sends you flying across the cabin, and Brian was too well-trained to make waste motions of that sort. But his eyebro\i|^yfted. a little, and a sort of elated grin spread across his face; for a minute, unobserved, he looked almost as young as he was. Then, re-schooling his expression to the gravity he always wore in the presence of his crew, he inched back across the wall, methodically unstrapped his rubber sandals from their place in the skyhook, worked his feet into them with the skill of long practice, and, pulling himself swiftly across the remaining section of wall, wriggled the forward part of his body through the sphincter lock which led to the forward part of the great starship.

There he paused, his middle clasped firmly by the expanding diaphragm, looking down the narrow, cylindrical corridor. He could feel, now, the faint vibration all around him, as far away in the nose of the Homeward the atomic rockets began firing. He allowed himself to grin again, this time with the secret contempt of a hyper-drive technician for rockets, however necessary, and slowly hauled the rest of his long, narrow body through the sphincter; then, pushing his feet hard against the diaphragm which had snapped tight behind him, he arrowed down, in a straight line, his body rocketing weightless down the corridor. He braked himself with strong hands at the far end, then paused; there was a musical mewing behind him, and the ship's cat, Einstein—actually a Centaurian mammal more nearly resembling a dwarf kangaroo—somersaulted dizzily through the air toward him

"Brian—catch him!" a girl's voice called, and Brian turned, hooking one rubber sandal through a strap, and made a wide sweeping grab for the creature. He caught it by one spindly leg; it squalled and thrashed to get away, and the girl called anxiously "Hang on, I'm coming." She propelled herself down the corridor, and hurriedly snatched the little animal, who immediately quieted and snuggled under her chin.

"He went crazy when the rockets started," she murmured apologetically. "It must be the vibration or something."

Brian grinned down at the girl, who was small and slight, her curly fair hair standing wierdly around her head and her prim brief overall floating out in odd billows. They had all lived at free fall conditions for so long that he barely noticed this, but he did see the disquiet in her brown eyes—Elinor Wade was a food culturist, and knew rather less about the drives than the Centaurian cat.

"It's all right, Ellie; maybe Einstein's a hyperdrive technician. I just cut the IS units and turned the ship over to CaldwelL

She whispered, "Then we're almost there! Oh, Brian!" and her eyes were a double star, first magnitude. He nodded. "It's Caldwell's command now, ser.I don't know what he'll do," Brian added, "but you'd better keep your ears lapped over for instructions.^ We'll have to strap in, in a few minutes, for deceleration, if he's going to brake in at Mars."

"Brian, I'm scared. . . ." Ellie whispered, and let the Centaurian cat float free, fumbling around for his hand. "It would be—hideously ironical, if this old ship travelled to Centaurus and back, and then cracked up in atmosphere—"

"Relax," Brian advised her genially. "He may decide to go on to Earth, anyway—Caldwell knows his business, Ellie. Ancf I know the Homeward."

"You certainly do;" The girl attempted a smile, which

somehow missed its purpose. "You're in love with this

old wreck!"                  >'

Brian grinned disarmingly. "I won't deny it," he answered, "But it's just a kind of substitute passion till I can get you down to earth!"

The girl blushed and turned her face away from him. The twelve- members of the Homewards crew were all young, and the confined quarters aboard generated strong attachments; but men and women were carefully segregated aboard ship, for an excellent and practical reason which had nothing to do with morality. The trip from Centaurus, even at hyperspeeds, took the best part of five years. And no one has yet discovered any method for delivering a baby in free fall.

Brian unhooked his rubber shoe. "Going into the lounge?"

"No. . . ." ¡áj^Jhung. back. "I've got to feed Einstein, after—Paula's still in the Food Culture unit, and there's no public address system in there—I'd better go and tell her we may have to strap in. Go on ahead, and I'll tell Paula—"

"I'll come with you. I'm hungry and I want to snatch a bite before we go out, anyhow—"

"No!" The sharpness of her voice amazed him. "Go on out in the lounge, I'll bring you something."

He stared at her. "What—"

"Go on. Paula's—Paula's—" Ellie fumbled and finished "—she's dressing in there."

"What the devil—" Brian, suddenly suspicious, shoved hard against the handhold, and barreled across the corridor to the open lock of the Food Culture unit. Ellie gave a wordless cry of warning as Brian fell through the doorway, and in the aftermath of that cry, beneath Brian's intrusive stare, two fused figures jerked convulsively and thrust apart. Paula Sandoval flung her arms over her face and grabbed at a floating garment, while Tom Mellen jackknifed upright and glared belligerently at Brian.

"Get the hell out of here!" he roared, simultaneous with Brian's needle-voiced, "What's going on in here?"

There was blue vitriol in Paula Sandoval's taut voice. "I think you can see what goes on, Captain!" and her black eyes snapped fire at him.

"Brian—" Ellie implored, her hand on his wrist with a gentle, repressive force. He threw it off with a violence that flung her halfway across the cabin.

He said, with icy command, "You'd better get up front, Paula. Caldwell will need bis figures checked. As for you, Mellen, regulations—"

"Regulations go jump in a hot jet, and you too!" Tom Mellen stormed. He was a loose-limbed young fellow, well over six feet tall and looking longer. "What the hell do you think you're doing anyway, pushing your weight around?"

"Look," Brian said tersely, and jerked around to the girls, "Paula, get up front—that's an orderl Tom, this part of the ship is off limits for men except at regular meal periods. This is the fifth time—"

"The sixth to be exact, Captain's Log-book, and four times you didn't catch me. So what? What the hell are you, a blasted—"

"We'll leave my personal habits out of the matter, Mister Mellen. Sandovall" he flung at Paula. "I gave you an order!"

Ellie had her arms around Paula, who was sobbing harshly, but the small dark girl pulled away from Ellie, her eyes ablaze. "Give him another one for me, Tom,"

THE CLIMBING WAVE

she said bitterly, and scooted out of the cabin. Brian

added, more quietly, "You go too, Ellie. I'll settle this

with Mellen right now."                                          **«

But Ellie did not move. "Brian^'she said quietly, "this is a pretty stupid time to be enforcing that regulation."

"As long as the Homeward, is in space," Brian said tightly, "that particular regulation—and all others based on principles of necessity—will be enforced."

"You listen here—" Mellen began furiously, then abruptly, his face suffusing with violent color, he flung himself upward at Brian, before Kearns realized what was coming. "The atomics are on," he grated. "Which means Caldwell's captain! And for three years I've been waiting for this—"

Brian dodged in a queer, jerky gesture, and Mellen hurtled over his head', thrown on by the momentum of his own blow. "Brian! Tom!" Ellie begged, diving toward them and thrusting her rubber-sandaled feet between the men, but Mellen shoved her aside.

"I'm warning you, Ellie, get out of the way—" he panted. Brian started "Look here—" then, as Mellen plunged at him again, put put both hands and shoved hard.

Momentum met momentum. Brian and Mellen spun apart with such violence that heads cracked at opposite ends of the Food Culture unit, and Brian, half-stunned, dragged himself groggily upright.

Mellen's laughter, wry and ironical, filled the cabin. "Okay, damn it," he said bitterly. "I suppose there's no use having it out here and now. But just wait till I

get you down to^arth—"

Brian rabbe^LJiis head and blinked dizzily, but his voice  was precise, giving no hint of the shooting stars that were chasing themselves before bis eyes. "By that time," he answered coldly, "there will no longer be occasion for fighting, since my command will have terminated."

Mellen tightened his mouth, and Ellie interceded anxiously: "Tom, Brian is perfectly right, theoretically—don't stir up hard feelings now, when we're almost home—" "Yeah, that's right... ." Tom Mellen suddenly grinned,

177

and bis face was good-natured. "Hey, Brian, how about it? No hard feelings, huh?"

Brian turned away. He said frigidly, "Why should there be hard feelings? It's my duty to enforce regulations until the Homeward is down."

"God damn—" Mellen muttered under his breath at Brian's rigid back, and even Ellie looked troubled. Then Mellen made a useless movement and started toward the front of the ship.

"Come on. I expect Caldwell will be wanting us," he said tightly, and propelled himself in quick, wrathful jerks toward the forward lounge.

n

The technique of braking into atmosphere had been perfected a hundred years before the old Starward rose from Earth to aim at Centaurus. However, it was new to the Homeward's crew, and the tediousness of the process set nerves to jittering. Only Brian, strapped into one of the skyhooks in the lounge, was really calm, and Ellie, in the cradle next to his, absorbed a little of bis calm confidence; Brian Kearns had been trained aboard the Homeward for twelve years before the trip began.

It had taken four generations for the stranded crew of the original ship, the Starward, to repair the hyperdrives smashed in landing, and to wrest from the soil of Q Centauri fourth planet—Terra Two, they called it-enough cerberum to take a pilot crew back to earth with news of their success. A hundred and thirty years, subjective time. Taking account of the time-lags engendered by their hyperspeeds, it was entirely possible that four or five hundred years had elapsed, objectively, on the planet their ancestors had left. Ellie, looking across at Brian's calm face, at his mouth that persisted in grinning with some personal, individual elation when he thought himself unwatched, wondered if he felt no regrets at all. Ellie struggled with a moment of blinding homesickness, remembering their last view of the little dark planet spinning around the red star. They had left a growing colony of 400 souls, a world to which they could never return, for, after five years of subjective time in hyperspeeds, it was entirely possible that everyone they had known on Terra Two had already lived out a full lifetime.

But Brian's thoughts were moving forward, not backward, and he could not keep them to himself.

"I suppose by now they've discovered a better method for braking into atmosphere," he mused. "If anybody's watching us, down there, we probably look like living fossils—and I suppose we are. In their world, we'll be so obsolete that we'll feel like stone-age man!"

"Oh, I don't know," Ellie protested. "People don't change—"

"But civilizations do," Brian insisted. "There was less than a hundred years between the first rocket to Luna and the launching of the Starward. That's how fast a scientific civilization can move."

"But how can you be sure they've moved along those lines?" Ellie wanted'to know.

"Have you ever heard of time-binding?" he asked derisively.' "When each generation accumulates the knowledge of the one before it, progress is a perfectly cumulative, straightforward thing. When the Starward left—"

"Brian—" she began, but he rushed on: "I grant you that man progressed at random for thousands of years, but when he acquired the scientific method, it was less than a hundred years from jet plane to rocketship. A race which had interstellar travel could progress in only one direction. If we wanted to take the time, we could sit down with an electronic calculator and add it all up, and predict exactly what we'd find down there."

"It seems," Ellie said slowly, "That you're leaving out the human element. The crew of the Starward were all scientists, hand-picked for compatibility, and the Terra Two colony is probably the nearest thing to a homogeneous society that ever existed. You can't make that kind of predictions for a normally populated planet."

"The human element—"

"Will you two quit it?" shouted Langdon Forbes angrily from his skyhook. "I'm trying not to get spacesick, but Kearns sounding off about progress is about all I can take! Does he have to pick a time when we're strapped in, and can't get away?"

Brian grumbled something unintelligible and lapsed into morose silence. Ellie reached dragging fingers, newly clumsy, toward him, but he pushed the hand away.

A dismal wailing came from beneath Eliie's skyhook; Einstein was getting reacquainted with gravity, and didn't like it. Ellie scooped up the miserable little animal and held it cuddled tight against her straps. It was silent in the lounge; the steady, low vibration of the atomic drives was a sound already so deeply embedded in their consciousness that they did not think of it as sound at all. There was still no feeling of motion, but there was an unpleasant, dragging sensation as the enormous starship made its wide braking circles, first grazing the atmosphere for a second or two, as it swung elliptically, like a crazy comet; then entering atmosphere for a few seconds, then a full minute, then a few minutes—coming "down" in slow, careful spirals.

"I hope they've found some way to put artificial gravity in spaceships," Judy Keretsky moaned, halHaughing, from the skyhook where she swung, upside down, from what was now the ceiling of the lounge. Her long, curly hair fell down over her head in a thick curtain; she alone of starship's crew did not keep her hair clipped functionally short. She batted futilely at the waving curls as she walled, "Oh, my poor head, I'm getting di-i-izzy up here!"

"You're getting dizzy! What about this poor catl" Ellie jibed.

"Say, whose idea was it to bring that animal along, anyhow?" someone demanded.

"Very valuable contribution to science," Judy burlesqued. "Why didn't you bring a pair of them, Ellie!"

"Brian wouldn't let her," Marcia van Schreeven jeered, with an undertone of bitterness.

Ellie patted Einstein's darkish fur defensively, reminding Marcia in her peaceful voice: "Einstein is one of the third gender. When conditions are right, he'll reproduce in the first and second."

"Lucky animal," Brian said half-seriously, and Ellie glanced at him with unusual shyness as she murmured, "Well, Einstein will be unique on Earth, anyhow!"

"You'll see things much weirder than Einstein," Brian said offhandedly. "We've only been-bn one planet, and by now, Earth has probably colonized all the nearer stars. The people of Earth will be cosmopolitan in the largest sense—"

"Speaking of Earth," Langdon forcibly headed him off before he could hold forth again, "where on the planet are we going to set this thing down?"

"We won't know that till we contact the surface," Judy said irritably, batting her hair back. "We have the map the Firsts gave us, but it's unthinkable that the old spaceport at Denver would still be in use, and if it is, it would probably be so,changed that we wouldn't know how to land—and too crowded for an IS ship this size."

"You've been listening to Brian," Langdon grinned. "According to him,- ifs a wonder we haven't already bumped into the local rocket for the second galaxy!"

Brian ignored the confusion of technical terms and answered seriously "That's why I suggested landing on Mars. There are enough desert areas, on Mars where we could have landed without any danger of damaging urbanized sections. I doubt if the population there is quite so centralized—"

"Well, why didn't we?" Marcia queried sharply, and Langdon, frowning, twisted his head to her. "We tried to radio them from space," he answered, "but they evidently didn't pick up our signals. So Caldwell and Mellen decided to bring us in to Earth instead of wasting time braking in at Mars and maybe having to pick up again. We haven't enough fuel for more than one landing and pick-up."

"We could certainly have refueled at Mars—" Brian began, but was interrupted by an apologetic cough from the loudspeaker in the centre of the lounge.

"Hey, Kearns," it said in a puzzled rasp. "Brian Kcarns, come on up forward, will you? Kearns, please come up to the front control room, if you can."

Brian scowled, and started painfully unbuckling the straps on his skyhook. "Now what does Mellen want—" he wondered aloud.

"What's the matter?" Judy squeaked, "Are we in trouble?"

"Oh, hush!" Ellie commanded. "If we are, we'll be told!" She watched, with vague disquiet, as Brian crawled over the side of his skyhook and abruptly tumbled two feet, not very hard, to the floor. "Weight's on the axis now," he announced wryly to no one in particular. "Good thing 1 wasn't up where Judy is, or I'd have broken my neck! Somebody will have to lift her down—"

Judy squeaked again, but Ellie snapped at her: "Just stay where you are until we find out what's going on!" and watched, disturbed, as Brian crawled clumsily on hands and knees across the wall which lay along the central axis of the starship and therefore "down." He pushed at the refractory sphincter lock—it worked perfectly only in free fall—and forced his head and shoulders through into the forward control room.

Tom Mellen, his short hair brisding upright around his head, twisted around as Brian wriggled his shoulders through. "We've tried to raise them by FM, AM and wavicle," he said, scowling, "but they don't answer. Not a sign of a signal. What do you think of that, Brian?"

Brian looked deliberately around the cabin. Paula Sandoval, strapped in before the navigation instruments, hunched her bare, tanned shoulders and refused to meet his eyes; Caldwell, the gray-haired veteran who had repaired the atomic rockets, grinned truculently. Mellen's face was puzzled and defensive.

"I said it off Mars," Brian told them, "and I say it again; we're just wasting time trying to raise them with any communication devices aboard. By now, they're probably using something so far beyond radio or wavicles that they can't pick us up. Their equipment would be too fine for our clumsy primitive devices to—"

"Clumsy primitive—" Caldwell broke off, visibly summoning patience, and Mellen interrupted fiercely. "Look, Keams, there are just so many ways of transmitting electric impulses."

"The first spacemen said that all fuels had to be chemical or atomic, didn't they?" Brian snapped. "And we came on cerberum. The world didn't end when the Star-ward left! You've got to realize thatvwe've»i)een stranded in what amounts to a time-warp for five hundred years or so, and we're hopelessly obsolete!'}

"Maybe so . . ." Mellen said slowly, and waggled the switch again. Brian irritably flipped it shut.

"Why keep fussing with it, Tom? If they'd picked up our signals, they'd have answered by now. Have you seen any rockets entering or leaving?"

"Nothing larger than twelve centimeters since we entered the orbit," Mellen told him.

Brian frowned. "Where are we, Paula?"

The girl gave him a venomous look, but she glanced at her instruments and replied, "Orbiting at forty miles, velocity five pointtSBCfh.p.s."

Kearns glanced at Caldwell. "You're the captain."

"In a limited sense;* Caldwell said slowly, and returned his steady gaze. "That's why I wanted you up here. There are two things we can do. We can go down under the cloud layer and maybe risk getting shot at—to find a place to set down, or else go on a permanent orbit, and send somebody down in the pickup."

"The pickup," Brian decided immediately. "Can you imagine trying to land a ship this size without instructions from outside? For all we know, there may be laws about landing spaceships. The pickup can set down in a few square yards. Whoever goes down can locate a spaceport big enough to handle the Homeward and see about getting the necessary permissions."

"You're overlooking one thing." Mellen forced the words out. "Suppose they haven't any spaceports!"

"They'd ha^tamto have spaceports, Tom," Caldwell protested, "even for interplanetary ships." And Brian added, "It's impossible that we'd have been the only interstellar ship—"

"That isn't what I mean," Mellen protested. "Surely one of the planets, Mars or Earth, would have picked up our signals. Someone must use radio for something, even if it's purely local. That is, if there's anyone down there at alll"

Brian snorted laughter. "You mean some kind of end-of-the-world disaster?" he asked, elaborately sarcastic, but Mellen took him seriously. "Something like that."

"There's one way we can find out," Caldwell interrupted, "Do you want to take the pickup down, Brian? We won't be using the IS drives again—there's nothing more you can do aboard."

"I'll go," Brian said shortly, but he could barely conceal his eagerness, and even forgot his animosity toward Mellen for a minute. "Shall I take Tom to handle the radio?"

Caldwell frowned, and answered half practically and half tactfully, "I'll need Tom, and Paula too, to bring the ship down when we're ready. Langdon can handle the radio in the pickup. And take a couple of others too; Mellen may or may not be right, but I don't think any crew members ought to go down alone until we know exactly what we'll find down there."

Caldwell's seriousness made little impression on Brian, but he realized that he would need someone to pilot the pickup in any case; his own training had fitted him only to handle the complex interstellar drives. And Langdon should, they decided, keep the radio at his fingertips, to report instantly to the Homeward in case of any unforeseen events.

So it was Ellinor Wade who took the controls of the small jet-driven stratoplane which had been designed for ship-to-surface shuttling, and used during the final stages of repair on the Homeward. She let the small plane sink through the thick clouds, and asked, "Where do we want to set down?"

Langdon bent over the carefully copied map. "Judy's scribbled all over this thing," he complained. "But try North America, midwest. That's where the first rocket ranges were built, and we all speak English, after a fashion."

"Unless the language has changed too much," Brian murmured. Ellie frowned as she brought the swift little jet down, arcing across an unfamiliar land-mass; Brian and Langdon squeezed their hands to their eyes as the clouds thinned, for the sudden blaze of yellow light was like a stab in the eyeballs. Lighting aboard ship, of

course, was keyed to the familiar crimson noon of Terra

Two, under which the crew had lived all tbeir lives. Ellie

squinted over the instrument panel', using an unladylike

word under her breath.       %

The ship dived over rolling hills, and Brian let out his breath slowly as the serried ^regular skyline of massive buildings cleaved the horizon, and said in an edgy voice, "I was beginning to wonder if Mellen had been right about those atomic deserts!"

Ellie warned, "From what the Firsts have told us, I don't care to get tangled up in a city airport! Let's find an open space and set down there." She headed northward from the city, and asked, "Have either of you seen anything that looks like transportation? Planes, rockets, anything oh the gfourid?"

"Nothing at all with the naked eye," Langdon frowned, "and nothing moving that beeps the radar. And I've been watching pretty close."

"Funny . . ." Ellie murmured.

From "this height everything was clear, and as they swerved groundward, details became sharply incised in miniature: wide plowed fields, scattered, toy-like houses, clusters of small buildings. There seemed to be animals in the fields. Langdon smiled. "Just like home," he said happily, meaning Terra Two. "Regular rural community, except that everything looks green!"

"That's this ridiculous yellow fight!" Ellie said, absently, and Brian scoffed, "Just like home! Better get set for a shock, Langdon!"

"It might be you that gets the shock," Langdon answered unexpectedly, and peered over Ellie's shoulder at the controls. $ibe grdund's leve} here, Ellie."

The pickup bumped ground and rolled gently; Lang-don's fingers moved delicately on the radio panel, and he made a brief report in staccato speech while Brian unsealed the door. Strange smells wafted into the cabin, and the three crowded together in the entrance, eyes squinted against the stabbing light, strangely reluctant, at the last, to set foot on the unfamiliar soil.

"It's cold. . . ." Ellie shivered in her thin garment.

Langdon looked down, dismayed. "You've set down in somebody's grainfield!" he reproached. Food was still conserved carefully on Terra Two, more from habit than from serious privation; Man's conquest of the new planet was uncertain, and the colony took no chances. The three felt a twinging guilt as they looked down at the blackened spears of grain, and Ellie clutched at Brian's arm. "Someone's coming—" she faltered.

Across the evenly plowed ridges, between rows of ripening wheat, a boy of thirteen walked, steadily and unhurried. He was not very tall, but looked sturdy; his face was deeply tanned under square-cut dark hair, and he was wearing a loose shirt and breeches tucked into low boots, all the same rich deep-brown color. Even Brian was silent as the boy advanced to the very foot of the pickup plane, paused and looked up at it, then glanced up indifferently at the three in the doorway, and began to move around to the tail, toward the smoking jets.

Brian quickly dropped Ellie's hand and scrambled to the ground. "Hey there!" he called, forgetting the prepared speech on his hps. "Better not go around there, it's dangerous—hot!"

The boy desisted at once, turning to gaze at him, and after a moment he said in slurred but perfectly understandable English, "I saw the streak, and hoped that a meteor had fallen." He laughed, turned and began to walk away from them.

Brian looked blankly up at Ellie and Langdon. The man jumped down and gave Ellie a hand as she called after the boy "Please—wait a minute—"

He looked around, politely, and before his indifferent courtesy Brian felt the words melting from his hps. It was Langdon who finally said, in an empty voice, "Where can we—We have a message for the—the Government. Where can we get—transportation—to the City?"

"The City?" The boy stared. "What for? Where did you come from? The—the City?"

Brian quietly assumed command of the situation again. "We are from the first Centaurian expedition, the Starward" he said. "We, or rather our ship, left this planet hundreds of years ago."

"Oh?" The boy smiled in a friendly way, "Well, I suppose you are glad to be back. Over" that hill," he pointed, "you will find a road which goes toward the City." He turned again, this time with a definite air of finality, and started to walk away.

The three travelers stared at one another in blank indignation. Brian finally took a step forward and shouted: "Hey, come back here!"

With an irritated jerk of his head, the boy turned. "Now what do you want?" he demanded.

Ellie said conciliatingly, "This is only the pickup of our ship. We have to—to find someone who can tell us where to bring the spaceship down. As you can see," she gestured toward the,, ruined wheat, "our jets have destroyed a part of the crop here. Our spaceship is much larger, and we don't want-to do any more damage. Perhaps your father—"

The boy's face, puzzled at first, had cleared while she was talking. "My father is not in our village now," he informed them, "but if you will come with me, I will take you to my'grandfather."

"If you could tell us where the nearest spaceport is—" Brian suggested.

The boy frowned. "Spaceport?" he repeated. "Well, maybe my grandfather can help you."

He turned again, and led the way across the field. Langdon and Ellie followed at once; Brian hung back, looking uneasily at the pickup. The boy glanced over bis shoulder. "You need not be anxious about your plane," he, called, laugjimg. "It's too large to be stolen!"

Brian stiffened; the boy's attitude was just derisive enough to put him on the defensive. Then, realizing the futility of anger, he broke into a run to catch up with the others. When he came near them, the boy was saying, a little sulkily, "I thought that I would be fortunate enough to find a fallen meteor! I have never seen a meteorite." Then, making a tardy attempt to remember his manners, he added politely, "Of course, I have never seen a spaceship either—" but it was evident that a spaceship was a very poor substitute.

Elbe's thinly shod feet stumbled on the uneven ground, and all three were glad when they came out on a smoothed road which wound between low flowering trees. There seemed to be no vehicles of any kind for the road was just wide enough to permit the four to walk abreast The boy's walk was rapid, and he kept moving, almost unconsciously, ahead of them, then looking back and deliberately slowing his steps. Once when he had forged ahead, Langdon murmured, "Evidently vehicular traffic has been completely diverted from rural neighborhoods!" and Brian whispered, "This is incredible! Either the boy's half-witted, or else even the children here are so blasS that the first star-expedition doesn't mean anything to them!"

"I wouldn't be too sure," Ellie said slowly. "There's something that we don't understand. Let's not try to figure things out ahead, Brian. Let's just take them as they come."

m

Muscles virtually unused for nearly five years were aching by the time the narrow road wound into a village of low clustered houses, built of what seemed to be grayish field stone. A profuse display of flowers bloomed in elaborate geometrical patterns around nearly every doorstep, and little groups of children, dressed in smocks of dark yellow or pale reddish-gray, were chasing one another haphazardly on the lawns, shouting something rhythmic and untuneful. Most of the houses had low trel-lised porches, and women in short fight dresses sat in little groups on the porches. The street was not paved, and the women did not appear busy; their low-pitched conversation was a musical hum, and all down the street the three strangers could hear a sound of singing. A man's voice, singing in a low, monotonous rise and fall of notes. It was toward this sound of singing that the boy led them, up the steps of a porch which was not trellised but roofed, and through an open door.

They stepped into a wide, light room. Two walls seemed to open in slatted shutters, giving a view of an evenly patterned garden; on another wall was a large fireplace, where embers flickered quietly, and there was a gleaming kettle of some light, brilliant metal swung on a crane over the embers. It reminded Brian of a picture in one of his oldest history books, and he blinked at the anachronism. The other furniture in the room was unfamiliar, low cushioned seats built against the walls, and a few closed doors on the fourth wall. From an inner room, the singing filled the house: a baritone voice, rich and resonant, rising and falling in slow, unfamiliar harmonic patterns.

The boy called: "Grandpa!"

The singer finished one of the odd phrases; then the song ceased, and. the three strangers heard slow, deliberate steps behind the closed door. It swung back, and a tall old man came-out into the main room.

He looked like the boy. His hair was clipped short, but grew down along his cheeks, although his chin was shaven clean; he wore a shirt and breeches of the same rich brown, and his feet were thrust into slippers of stiched leather. He looked strong and vigorous; his hands, tanned and knotty, were extremely well-kept, though somewhat stained, and he stood very erect, surveying them with great composure, while his deep-set dark eyes studied them from their clipped and tended hair to their rubber-sandaled feet. The composure gradually gave way to a quizzical smile, and he came forward a few steps. His voice was a singer's voice, full and very strong.

"Be welcome, friends. You are home. Destry, who are our guests?" 3*»~  -"

The boy said calmly, "They came down in a spaceship, grandpa, or rather, part of one. That streak wasn't a meteor at all. They said they wanted to go to the City. So I brought them along to you instead."

The man's face did not change by a fraction. Brian had been looking for surprise, or some more tangible emotion, but the man only surveyed them equably.

"Please be seated," he invited graciously. "I am Hard Frobisher, friends, and this is my grandson Destry."

The three sank on one of the cushioned seats, feeling a litde like children in their first learning-period before the Firsts. Only Brian had presence of mind enough to murmur their names.

"Brian Kearns—Ellinor Wade—Langdon Forbes—"

The old man repeated the names, bowing courteously to Ellie, at which the girl could barely conceal her amazement. He inquired, smiling, "Can I be of assistance to you?"

Brian stood up. "The boy didn't tell you, sir, but we're from the first Centaurus expedition—the Starward."

"Oh?" A faint flicker of interest crossed Hard Frobish-er's face. "That was a good long time ago, I am told. Did the Barbarians have some means, then, of prolonging life beyond its appointed limits?"

Brian's patience had already gone a long way beyond its appointed limits, and now, abruptly, it deserted him.

"Look, sir. We're from the first expedition into interstellar space. The first. None of us left Earth on the Starward. We weren't born. Our hyperspeeds, if you know what they are—which I'm beginning to doubt— threw us into a time-lag. There's no need to call us Barbarians, either. The ship's drives were smashed when they landed, and we've been four generations, four generations, getting it in operable condition tQ come back to Earth. None of us has ever been on Earth before. We're strangers here, understand? We have to ask our way around. We asked a civil question. Now if we could kindly have a civil answer—"

Hard Frobisher raised a placating hand. "I am sorry," he said calmly. "I didn't understand. Just what do you want me to do about it?"

Brian made a visible attempt to keep bis temper. "Well, first, we want to get in touch with the authorities. Then I want to find a place where we can bring our spaceship down—"

Frobisher was frowning, and Brian fell silent. "Frankly," the old man said, "I don't know whom you'd contact about a thing like that. There is plenty of open

land to the south, nearer the city, where you might land your ship—"

"Now look—" Brian started, but Langdon touched his arm. So Brian only asked, "If you eould tell us how to get in touch with the Government . . . ?"

"Well," the old man said neutrally, "there are three governors in our village, but they only regulate the school hours, and make.rules about locking houses. I wouldn't want to bother them about something foolish like this. I don't think they'd have much to say about your ... oh yes, spaceship."

That silenced Brian and Langdon completely. Ellie, feeling as if they were being tangled into a giant spider-web, asked desperately, "Could we go to some other, perhaps some larger place?"

Frobisher looked at her, frankly puzzled.

"It's half a day's walk to Carney," he said, "and when you got there, they*w6uid tell you the same thing. You are perfectly welcome to put your spaceship down on our barrens, if you want to."

Brian stiffened belligerently. "Now let's get this straight. There's a city over there. There must be someone there in authority!"

"Oh, the City!" Frobisher's voice held dismissal, "Nobody's lived in any of the cities for years! Why would you want to go there?"

Langdon said, baffled, "Look, Mr. Frobisher. We've come all the way from Centaurus, to bring Earth the news about our expedition. We'd expected to be surprised at what we found—after all, it has been a long time since the Starward left. But are we supposed to understand from this run-afound you're giving us that there's nobody to listen^ftat the' first of the interstellar expeditions doesn't mean anything to anyone?"

"Should it?" asked Frobisher, and his face was even more baffled than Brian's. "I can understand your personal predicament somewhat—after all, you've come a long way, but why? Didn't you like it where you were? There is only one reason why people move from one place to another—and it seems to me that you have overdone it."

The room was silent. Hard Frobisher stood up, looking indecisively at his guests, and Brian half expected him to repeat Destry's move and walk away, uninterested; but he merely went to the fireplace and peered into the kettle.

"Food is prepared," he remarked. "Can I invite you to join us? Good food is ill-seasoned by dissension, and there is no wisdom in an empty belly."

Brian and Langdon just sat and looked dumbly at Frobisher. It was Elbe who said firmly, "Thank you, Mr. Frobisher," and dug an elbow into Brian's ribs, whispering savagely, "Behave yourself!"

The boy Destry came and helped his grandfather bring food from the fireplace and from an inner room; he conducted the strangers to seats around a sort of table. The food was unfamiliar and not altogether pleasant to the strangers, accustomed to the elaborate synthetics of the ship; Brian, altogether out of humor, made almost no effort to conceal his distaste, and Langdon ate listlessly; Hard and Destry ate with the unfeigned appetite of men who spend much time in the open air, and neither spoke much during the meal except to urge food upon their guests. Ellie, finding the curious liquids and semisolids fascinating, if strange, tasted them with an interested professional curiosity, wondering how they were prepared.

It was not very long before Hard Frobisher nodded to Destry, and the boy rose and began taking dishes from the table. Frobisher pushed back his chair and turned to Brian. "We can now discuss your problem, if you wish," he said pleasantly. "Full stomachs make wise decisions." He glanced at Ellie, smiling. "I regret that there is no woman in my house to entertain you while we talk, young lady," he said regretfully, and Ellie dropped her eyes. On the Homeward—as on Terra Two—men and women were equals and neither deferred to the other. Hard's polite deference was new, and his bland assumption that she could have no part in their talk was a somewhat distasteful surprise. Langdon clenched his fists, while Brian seemed about to explode. Ellie summed up the situation at a glance, and swiftly intervened by rising and glancing shyly at Destry. "Can I help you?" she offered diffidently, the boy grinned.

"Sure, come ahead," he told her. "You cafry the dishes and I'll bring the kettle."

Frobisher settled back, taking a leather pouch from his pocket and meticulously stuffing a pipe of carved amber which swiftly revised Langdon's ideas of the present level of civilization. Smoking was a habit on Terra Two as well; only the smell of the tobacco was unfamiliar. Both young men stifled coughs and refused his offer of the sack, taking out their own grayish cigarettes and inhaling the sweetish-sour smoke avidly to shut out the rank stench of the pipe. Somewhere, behind closed doors, they heard a splashing of water and the uncertain falsetto of the boy's voice, mingled with Elbe's merry soprano laughter. Brian scowled and leaned forward, his arms on his knees.

"See here, Mr. Frobisher," he said truculendy. "I know you are trying to be hospitable, but if you don't mind, let's talk business. We have to bring the ship down, and" after that—?' He stopped and stared at the floor, wondering suddenly if he were on some kind of reservation for half-wits. No: the room was tastefully, if simply, furnished; everything was plain, but nothing crude. The wood of the furniture was beautifully stained and polished, and the hand-woven rug on the floor matched the thick draperies at the slatted windows. The house showed comfort, even a moderated luxury, and Frobisher's accents were those of a cultured man. Nor was he merely an eccentric, judging from what Brian had briefly seen of the other houses and the glimpsed people. Destry badnt seemed surprised at the plane— he'd "known wh#Sk-»was/ and yet it hadn't impressed him. No, it wasn't savagery. But it was radically different from what he had expected, and the change bewildered him. He looked up at one of the many pictures which hung about the room, and there, for the first time, sensed a note of eccentricity; they were mostly sketches of birds, very precisely drawn, but the colors were combined in a fashion which only a madman could endure. . . . Then Brian realized that it was this bright, unfamiliar light which made the colors bizarre to him, and simultaneously he became conscious that his eyes were stinging and watering, and that he had a violent headache. He rested his forehead on his clenched hands, closing his eyes.

"It isn't that you aren't welcome here," Frobisher said thoughtfully, pulling at his pipe. "We realize that there is only one reason why you would leave your home planet, and that would, of course, be because you were unhappy there. And so we understand—"

"Of all the stupid, unjustified assumptions—" Brian began furiously, then checked himself. What was happening to his caution? He and Langdon were effectively cut off from the rest of the crew; they couldn't afford to get into trouble. He rubbed his aching eyes.

"Sorry, Mr. Frobisher," he said tiredly. "I didn't mean to be offensive."

"No offense taken," Frobisher assured him. "And certainly none was intended by me. Am I mistaken—"

"We came here for one reason," Langdon informed him. "To advance man's knowledge of the world outside the solar system. In other words, to finish what the Firsts started."

"And, judging by appearances—" Brian's voice was bitter "—we've wasted our time!"

"Yes, I'm afraid you have." Something new in Fro-bisher's voice made both young men look up. "Whether you realize it or not, I am quite aware of your problems, Mr. Kearns. I have read a good deal about the Bar—excuse me, about the past." He tapped his pipe meditatively on a projecting comer of the fireplace. "I suppose it would be impossible for you to return to Centaurus in your lifetimes?"

Brian bit his Up. "In our lifetimes—no, not impossible," he answered, "but in the lifetimes of anyone we had known, assuming that we could get back. Our fuel reserves are not great—" He looked questioning^ at Frobisher.

"Then I don't quite know what to do with you," the old man said, and there was a genuine personal concern in his voice. And that friendly concern was the last thing needed to bring Brian to critical mass. Ignoring the warning pressure of Langdon's hand on his knee, he stood up.

"Look, Frobisher," he said tensely^ "jusf'who in hell gave you the authority to make thi6 decision, anyhow?"

Frobisher's face did not change* by a fraction. "Why, you landed in our field and my grandson brought you here."

"So you're just taking responsibility for the whole matter? Do you rule Earth?"

The man's mouth dropped open. "Do I rule . . . Ha, ha, ha!" Frobisher leaned back in his chair, holding his sides and rocking suddenly with uncontrollable laughter. "Do 1 rule . . ." He collapsed into chuckles again, his mirth literally shaking the floor, arid the large expansive laughter was so infectious' tiiaj-Langdon finally glanced up with a faint, puzzled grin, arid even the worst of Brian's fury began to drain away a^ little. "I'm sorry," Frobisher said weakly at last, and there were tears in his eyes. "But that—that is the funniest thing I've heard since spring sowing! Dq. 1 ... ha, ha, ha, ha! Wait until I tell my son —I'm sorry, Mr. Kearns, I can't help it. Do I rule Earth!" he chuckled, again, "Heavens forbid! I have enough trouble ruling my grandson!" He laughed again, irrepress-ibly. Brian couldn't see what was so funny and said so.

With an effort, Frobisher controlled his laughter and his eyes sobered—but not much—as he looked at Brian. "You did come to me," he pointed out, "and that makes it my responsibility. I'm not a man to evade responsibility or refuse you hospitality, but frankly, I wish you had found somebody else!" A tiny snort of laughter escaped him again, "I can ^ee, you'll make trouble here! But if you don't listen to m^ ^ipu'lLpnly have to find somebody else, and I'm afraid tnti Whoever you found would tell you just about the same thing!" He smiled, and the anxious friendliness in his face took the edge from Brian's anger, although annoyed puzzlement remained.

Frobisher added quietly, "There is no reason that Norten village shouldn't have this problem, as well as any other." He stood up. "I expect the remainder of your ship's crew will be anxious about you. Do I assume correctly that you have a communication device?" At Langdon's exasperated nod, Frobisher twitched a loose coat I from a peg. "Then why not report to them? We can talk further on the way—you don't mind if I come, do you?" "No, not at all," Brian said weakly. "Not at all."

IV

Mindful of Caldwell's words about not getting separated, Brian insisted that Ellie should accompany them back to the pickup. Destry, apparently uninterested, at first refused his grandfather's invitation to join them, then changed his mind. He ran to fetch a warm jacket, but, surprisingly, instead of donning it, he laid it about Elbe's shoulders. "She's cold," he explained briefly to his grandfather, and without waiting for thanks, strode ahead of them, along the road.

The sun was dropping westward, and the light was almost unbearable; Brian's eyes were squinted tight, and Langdon's forehead furrowed in deep-plowed lines; Ellie held one hand across her forehead, and Brian put his arm around her.

"Headache, darling?" he asked tenderly.

She grimaced. "Will we get used to this light, do you think, or are we going to have to put up with this all along?"

Langdon said wryly, "I suppose the Firsts felt like this under Theta Centauri!"

Ellie smiled faintly. "No one spread out a welcome for them."

Frobisher walked ahead of them, with long, swinging steps, and Brian said in a savage undertone, "I still think this whole thing is an elaborate bluff of some sort. Or else we're on a primitive reservation. The whole world can't be like thisl"

"Oh, don't be silly," Ellie said wearily, rubbing her aching eyes. "How could anyone have known that we'd choose to land here?"

Some of the women on the porches called familiarly to Frobisher, and he waved gaily to them in return, but no one paid any attention to the strangers, except for one plump woman, her hair in curly sausages all over her head, who waddled from her steps and toward the road. "I see you have guests, Hard," she called. cheerfully. "If your house is too full, mine is empty!" >

Frobisher faced around, smiling. "Your hospitality may be required," he said. "There are others, and they have come a long way."

The woman looked at Ellie with a sharp female glance, noting her fair cropped hair, the smooth spun-synthetic coverall beneath the boy's jacket, the molded sandals and bare legs. Then she put out a fat warm hand. "Are you planning to settle in our village, my dear?" she asked.

"They haven't decided," Frobisher answered noncom-mittally, but Elbe said with a shy, impulsive friendliness, "I do hope so!" and.squeezed the offered hand.

"Well, I hope so toolbar. It isn't often we have young neighbors," the plump woman replied. "You and your husband" (Ellie blushed *atvthe forthright archaism) "be sure and call on us, now, if you need anything before you get settled.'*-She smiled and waddled back to her doorway.

Langdon said, low-voiced^ "It's like being on Terra Two, except that everything—everything—"

Brian said, "There must have been some inconceivable disaster! Culturally, they're a thousand years behind the world when the Starward left. Why, even Terra Two is more civilized than they seem to be! Cooking with fire— and these little villages—and the cities empty—"

"Oh, I don't know," Ellie murmured surprisingly. "How do you measure culture? Isn't it possible that they've progressed in ways we don't know anything about? The difference might be in viewpoint."

Brian shook his hetfd stubbornly.

"It's fegression,5*fte-protested, but Ellie had no time to answer, for they had come within sight of the pickup, and Frobisher dropped back to walk with them.

"There is your plane," he said. "Do you intend to communicate from here, or will you rejoin your spaceship?"

Brian and Langdon looked at one another. "We haven't thought about it," Langdon said at last, "but—Brian— without a spaceship or at least a radio beaming device, how are they going to land?"

Brian frowned. "I don't know much about rockets," he said at last; "the hyperdrives are my job. How much landing room do they need?"

Langdon said, troubled, "Paula and Caldwell, between them, could land the Homeward in great-grandfather Kearns's biochemistry lab, if they had to, without breaking a test tube. But they'd have to have a fix. If they land blind, they're apt to set down right on the village." He paused, and clarified, "That is, if they just aim at our general direction from what we transmit here."

"In that case," Brian suggested, "we'd better take up the pickup and rejoin the ship—and hunt up a good big desert to land blind."

"Rejoining the ship would be quite a problem in this light," Ellie said, troubled. "It's going to be dark in less than an hour, I'd say—and I have a feeling that we're going to find ourselves completely night-blind."

Frobisher had considerately withdrawn while they were talking, and Brian snapped, "What's the matter with your brain, Ellie? You can go around to sunward, and match velocities with the Homeward there!"

"But then we might not find this place again," Langdon said surprisingly, and Ellie added, "If we go hurtling all around the planet, who knows if we'd find this again?"

"For the love of—who cares!"

"I do," said Langdon firmly. "According to Frobisher, conditions are pretty much the same everywhere, and— I kind of like that old guy, Brian. I like it here. I'd like to land here. Maybe settle down here."

Brian stared. "Are you crazy?"

Langdon said, "Not at all. If we want to look around after the Homeward is down, fine—we have the pickup, we can do all the exploring we want to. We've plenty of fuel for the pickup. We're down, let's stay down."

Brian's face lost a litde of its self-confidence; it was the first time that any of the crew had ever questioned his judgment, although many had resented his methods. He shrugged in a sudden futile misery. "I'm outvoted! And anyhow I resigned command when the atomics went on! Settle it with Caldwell by radio!" He lurched away from them and around toward the other side of the pickup. He heard the staccato bark of the radio inside, but paid no

attention until he suddenly became conscious of Elbe,

close beside him.  +     -

She raised her face, with an affectionate smile. Brian, even distracted by a thousand irritated thoughts, found time to wonder at the new mystery/of her fair hair in the golden sun: the red was dimmed dut, here, and the short curls seemed a pure, delicate silver; she was very white and fragile in this new light, and Brian reached impulsively to pull her close. She responded eagerly, her arms going around him and her face lifted with a simplicity that he had not quite expected.

"Journey's end," she said gently. "We've waited a long time for this, Brian. «ven if that electronic calculator was off-beam about what- we'^ find down here. Kiss me, you idiot."

The strength in his anrjis,. was astonishing, and she gave a little cry. "Hey, I'm not-used to weighing so much, take it easy—" she protested, laughing and the laughter trailed away as he^bent his head dpwn to hers. She was conscious of the sun in her eyes, of the physical fatigue from unaccustomed exercise, and the dragging feel of too much gravity—Terra Two was a small, light world. There was a crushing urgency in Brian's arms, and he strained her desperately close for a frantic minute, then abrupdy pushed her away, his voice roughened.

"Where did Frobisher go? Damn it, Ellie, I need a clear head right now! The way it looks, we'll have the rest of our lives for that kind of thing!"

Hurt, but sensing the plea for help that begged her from behind the facade of his. taut control, Ellie swallowed the pain of jthe personaTrejection, and forced herself to think beyond the inuneoflR^mftment. "He -and Destry went to see how much of the grain had been ruined—"

"Hell, we can pay for the grain. There they come now—" Brian kicked out at a stalk of wheat, a curiously futile movement, and said in an odd, quenched voice, looking at his foot, "It's going to take months for us to get back in shape, after so long in free fall. We're coordinated all wrong for such much gravity. Notice the way Frobisher walks? Like he owned the world—" Resentment and envy mingled in his voice, and he stopped, then finished in a surprised tone, "—or as much of it as he wants!"

He said abruptly as the grandfather and grandson joined them, "Mr. Frobisher, we'll be glad to pay for what wheat we ruined."

"I would not have mentioned it," Frobisher said, and for the first time there was something like respect in his voice, "but it shows a good spirit that you have mentioned it. I have abundance, and you will have much to do after your crew lands. But if you insist upon payment, you can contribute task-work next season, after you are settled."

Brian was puzzled, but decided not to press the point. Langdon rejoined them, and he asked, "What did Caldwell say?"

"He'll try it, if we'll fix up some kind of radio beam," Langdon responded. "Where do you want us to land, Mr. Frobisher?"

Hard Frobisher began to draw a sketch-map with a long stick in the dirt. "Over that rise—"

"We'll move the pickup over there," Ellie decided, then abruptly proffered the invitation, "Ride over there with us?"

Hard Frobisher looked speculatively at the plane, then toward the horizon. "Oh, it isn't a long walk," he said, but Destry said eagerly, "I believe I'd like it, grandpa."

The old man smiled deprecatingly. "The young are enthusiastic, Miss Wade," he said, almost in apology, "but —very well."

Brian logged another point of bewilderment. Could any educated humans be so trusting? Even on Terra Two, a well-united colony, there was a certain individual wariness, and strangers—how did Frobisher and Destry know they wouldn't be kidnaped?

It was an incredible relief to get back inside the pickup and switch on the familiar crimson light. Destry expressed mild surprise at the lighting, but Frobisher asked no questions and did not seem impressed when the pickup rose straight upward and circled before relanding at the edge of the large barren tract where they were to bring the Homeward down. At only one point in the whole maneuver did Frobisher show the slightest surprise, and that was when Ellie took the controls; he glanced at Brian, then at Langdon, and then, in frank amazement, at the small slim girl at the controls; but he/made, no comment.

They landed, and Langdon touched the radio. Brian took it from his hand. "Hello? Hellqjhe Homeward? Kearns talking. That you, Tom?"

Tom Mellen's husky voice, very far away, asked thinly, "Was I right about no spaceports?"

"You were." Brian did not elaborate.

"We've got the direction of your beam. But Paula says if we follow it in, we'll land straight on the pickup. And if we don't, how are we going to hit the spot you've picked out for us?" Tom sounded puzzled. "In the last few seconds of braking, thjs hulk isn't very easy to steer."

"Hell!" Brian swbfe^'Hold on a minute!" He explained the situation briefly to Langdon. "I told you so!"

Langdon said grimly£<*There's only one way to handle it. Take the fuel out of the pickup—impact would blow it up—move it out where we want them to land, and let them land on it. The pickup's expendable. The crew isn't. They'd land hard, but the crew will be in skyhooks, and Caldwell in a crash cockpit. Nobody'll be hurt."

"We're going to need the pickup later," Brian argued stubbornly.

"Well, have you a better idea?" Langdon asked. "If they follow the beam in part way, and try to swerve in the last few seconds, they're apt to miscalculate by a degree or two, and burn up the village."

"I still think we ought to hunt up a good-sized desert," Brian insisted.     ^

Destry interruntedLJuddenly, in a tone of disgust, "Say, when you want akingrisher to dive, "you throw a hunk of bread where you want him to dive—you don't stand and hold it! If your ratio—what is it—beam comes from that," he gestured at the transmitter, "why not just rip that thing out of the plane, fix it to send out a steady signal, and take it out where you want your spaceship to land? It won't hurt the spaceship to land on anything that small, will it?"

Brian stared at the boy in amazement for a minute, and Langdon's mouth dropped open.

"Destry," Ellie said after a brief silence, "you have the makings of a scientist."

"Look," the boy said uncomfortably. "The idea may not be much good, but why insult me?"

"It is good," Langdon interrupted. "I don't know why I didn't think of it myself, except that I'm half-witted in this light! Brian, that's it. Ellie, while I send word to Mellen—before I rip this out—get under the seat and find the radio kit; I may have to resolder a few wires. Looks like we'll be in the dark by the time we finish, too; better get out the small lamps. Come on, get busy—" He nipped the switch open. "Homeward? Forbes speaking. Tom? Listen, in about twenty minutes we'll have a fix set up—"

Brian and Ellie were struggling to lift the heavy seat; the unaccustomed gravity made it almost impossible to budge. Destry caught one end and heaved it up easily, and Ellie and Brian bent over the equipment stored there. The girl murmured in Brian's ear, "There goes your theory about regression! That kid knew what he was talking about."

Brian snorted. "And used an analogy from natural history! It was obvious enough, knowing the purpose of the radio. If either Langdon or I had been dunking, we'd have hit on it."

Ellie did not answer; there seemed no use in making Brian angry again. She went and stood watching Langdon working swiftly and expertly to dismantle and readjust the radio set to emit a self-contained, steady signal. He had to switch on the lights in the pickup before he finished, and before the impromptu homing device was completed, the sun had gone down. As they stood in the doorway of the pickup, Langdon scowled.

"I can't see my hand before my eyes!" he protested, and took one of the small red handlamps Elbe handed him. He looked at it disgustedly. "I can set the signal up with this, yes—but I don't know the lay of the land!" He gestured to the vast empty tract of barren land, and added, "I'll get lost there, or set it up on a side hill!"

Destry volunteered: "I know this place like my own hand—I'll come along and find a flat space."

"Need any help?" Brian offered, but Langlfon shook his head. "No thanks. No sense in both' of us getting tangled up in this murk." He picked up the homing device and, with Destry, moved away across.the field which, to Brian and Ellie, was inky-dark, although in actuality it was bathed in clear moonlight. They stood in the door of the pickup, straining their eyes for the reddish, bobbing glimmer of Langdon's light, and Ellie shuddered in the rough warmth of Destry's coat. Brian's arm stole round her in the darkness.

She said tremulously "What would have happened if we'd gone in atMars!"

Frobisher^ behindVthem, drew a harsh breath. "You're certainly lucky you' didn't!" he said thankfully. "You couldn't have lived there three days, unless you stayed with your ship—I asSurne the ship is self-contained?"

"Oh,, yes," Brian told him. "But—Mars was a sizable colony when the Starwazd left!"

Frobisher shrugged. "Everybody came in from Mars before the spacers stopped running. There's no water there at all, now."

Brian murmured, ". . . and by now you should have had all the planets colonized, and reached most of the nearer stars!"

The older man's voice lost its pleasant inflection. "You say some very surprising things, Mr. Kearns," he said dryly. "You don't say that we could have colonized the planets—which, of course, is true—but that we should have. Do you mind telling me why? The planets are not exactly suited fg^irman habitation, except this one—and I would hate to nave'to live on any other."

Brian asked almost savagely "You mean there is no space travel?"

"Why, no," Frobisher said slowly. "No one cares to go to the planets."

"But ... the planets had already been reached, conquered, when the Starward left!"

Frobisher shrugged. "The Barbarians did a great many things which we regard as stupid," he said. "But why should it be called conquest, to encourage men to go out to worlds for which they are not biologically adapted? I have read much about the Barbarians, their insatiable egotism, their idle, childish curiosity, their continual escapism and refusal to face their problems, but—forgive me for saying this, no personal offense is intended—I had never believed it until today!"

Elbe took Brian's arm before he could answer. "Look there, Langdon's signaling—they must have the transmitter set up," she said, and moved her lamp in a wide circle. Before long, Langdon and Destry emerged from the bath of inky darkness, and sank down on the ground, in the little flood of reddish light from the pickup's windows. "That did it," Langdon said. "Now we sit and wait while Paula pinpoints the beam, and Caldwell will put her down right where we want."

"I hope somebody remembers to look after Einstein," Ellie worried. "I'd hate to have him break his neck in the last few seconds of the trip!"

"Judy will take care of him," Langdon reassured, and they waited in the red-cast darkness. Brian was mustering all the arguments he had heard from the Firsts about the necessity that had backed developing space travel.

"What about overpopulation? What about diminishing food supplies and natural resources?"

Frobisher's laugh was loud in the darkness. "Certainly not even the Barbarians expected to find natural food supplies on Mars or Venus!" he chuckled. "Interstellar travel might have solved it, but at prohibitive cost. Still, once man decided to stop squandering natural resources on vast theoretical projects, and throwing them irrecoverably out into space, that problem was easily solved."

"But what forced the decision?" Brian asked almost timidly.

"I wouldn't know," Frobisher said thoughtfully, "but when a decision is really necessary, as a rule, some one makes it. Probably the overpopulation reached such extremes—the solar system as a whole, of course, since Earth had to feed Mars and Venus too—that for one or two whole generations, every able-bodied man and woman had to put all his efforts into food-making instead of theoretical astronomy or whatever they called it. And by the time they had that problem solved, people were thinking of science in terms of human benefits,!and probably realized that their resources could^be handled more efficiently here on Earth. That—I mean thinking in terms of cost and human benefits—did* away with war, too. It doesn't take long for attitudes to grow up. Then, too, during the overpopulated generations, the population was almost entirely neurotic. The scientists of that day simply made it possible, I imagine, for women to avoid having the children they didn't want anyway, so that no one had children except the healthy-minded women whose primary interest was in children. The neurotic death-wish in the others effectively reduced the population in only two or three generations;.. You might say that the neurotics committed race suicitJe. Is that your ship, or another of Destry's meteors?"

They scrambled down, stumbling in the darkness, as the incredible rocket-roar sounded, and, on a collapsing telescope-of fife, the Momeward screamed down to its resting-place. Brian, standing between Destry and Ellie, wondered—but was too weary and too overexcited to ask —if Destry still regretted his failure to find a meteor.

V

Explanations, introductions and much rapid-fire conversation made the landing a babble of noise. "Hey, we're here!"

"Who thought up that homing device?" "Hey, I'm bJindJ No light on this planet? Couldn't we have landed t<S*»award?" "What, in China?" "Damned gravity, I can't walk!"

"Ellie!"(More imperatively than the other voices.) "Come here and get this devil-ridden cat of yours!"

Ellie dashed to Judy, who was carrying the squirming Einstein as she stumbled, clumsy-footed, down the ladder. "Here, take this animal!" she said crossly. "He's pulling my hair out by the roots!" She shoved the thick curls back over her shoulder, and fretted, "Hair's a worse nuisance in gravity than out of it!"

Ellie gently unwound her pet's suckers from Judy's ringlets, and the animal clung to her shoulder, squirming in crazy anticipation, struggling to get to the ground. She climbed the ladder painfully, wondering if she would ever adjust to the heavy gravity again, and, shoving into the lounge, ripped a strip of cloth from her skyhook to make a leash for the little animal. It was docile, but the prospect of running freely might tempt it to wildness.

As she came down again, she heard Frobisher's rich voice. "I offer the hospitality of our village and my home, for as long as you wish."

Stumbling on the final rung, Ellie almost fell against Mel-len and Paula, standing silently in each other's arms at its foot. Their faces glowed dimly in the reddish shimmer from the open door of the ship, and a pang of envy stabbed through Ellie. They had only one emotion about the landing. They didn't care what they found—they were here, and together. She turned swiftly, not wanting to violate their moment, but Tom looked up at her and smiled with a joyfulness that made his gaunt good-natured face almost handsome. Paula reached out and hugged Ellie, cat and all. "It's all over!" she whispered jubilantly. "We're here!" But her dark eyes were a little sad, too, as she added, "I only wish there was some way we could let—our mothers and fathers—know that we came safely."

"They would be sure of that," Ellie comforted softly.

Tom Mellen scowled. "What's Kearns sounding off about now? Shush, girls—"

Brian was protesting, "Look, we can't all go. Some of us ought to stay aboard the Homeward. I suggest that we sleep aboard, and visit the village in the morning—"

"You stay if you like," Caldwell said mutinously. "I've seen enough of the Homeward for a lifetime!"

Then open rebellion burst out. Little Judy set off the reaction by proclaiming violently, "If I ever go aboard the Homeward again, they'll have to carry me and tie me!" and Mellen shouted, "The trip's over and we're private citizens again, Kearns, so stop pulling your rank on us!" In the storm of voices, the Centaurian cat went wild and clawed its way from Ellie's shoulder, tumbling with a queer, staggering gait across the rough dark grass. Elbe screamed, "Catch him, catch himl" and Paula made a grab for the creature, but missed^ to trip and fall in the darkness. She lay there, laughing hysterically, watching the cat as it dived into the ring of lights. It stumbled and weaved on its spindly legs, thrusting pouch and tail weirdly to balance against the unfamiliar gravity; it sniffed the grass, with a musical caterwauling, then rolled over and over in the dark grass of the barrens, like a crazy asteroid tumbling in a wildly erratic orbit.

Brian didn't have a chance after that. The Homeward's crew, barely more than adolescents, and semi-hysterical anyway with release from strain and the euphoria of journey's end, laymen the grass and rolled and stretched like children, paying less, than no attention to Brian's harangue. By the time*Eliie had managed to recapture the staggering Einstein, and the laughter-drunk youngsters had calmed a little, Brian had only one desire; to restore some semblance of dignity to" himself and his crew. Livid and all but speechless, he tersely requested Caldwell, the calmest of the group, to accept Frobisher's hospitality on behalf of all, and watched, leaning somberly against the ladder, as they trooped away, guided by Destry with a lantern, still laughing wildly at nothing, and hanging on to each other's hands in the darkness to keep from falling."

Hard Frobisher walked steadily toward him, and on an impulse Brian asked him, "Would you like to come aboard?"

Hard answered unexpectedly, "Yes, I believe I'd be interested to see^the inside of your ship," and followed Brian up the raftler, "navigating the rungs with more ease than Brian himself, and into the lounge.

He looked curiously at the skyhooks and the complicated recreation devices, inspected the cabins without much comment, gave an interested hum in the Food Culture department. Finally Brian led him upward, into the enormous cabin where he himself had spent most of the voyage, handling the incredibly complex IS drives.

And here, before the tremendous machinery, Frobisher seemed at last impressed. He broke his silence with a wondering, "And you—you know all about this—this gim-crackery?"

Since the IS drives weighed upwards of a hundred tons, Brian laughed tolerantly at this understatement. "Yes, I'm a drive technician. I spent some time training."

"It must take a lifetime to learn all this!"

Brian condescended, "No, only about twelve years."

"Twelve years!" Frobisher repeated. "Twelve years, and how many—four?—on the way here, wasted on a room full of machines!" And now Brian uncomfortably recognized the emotion in his voice. It was pity. "You poor boy," Frobisher said, and repeated "Poor boy! To waste sixteen years on these metal levers and things! No wonder you are—" He broke off, perhaps aware of the tightness of Brian's clenched jaw.

Brian said in a low and deadly voice, "Oh, don't stop there! No wonder I am—what"

"Neurotic," Frobisher said quietly. "Of eourse you must give youself some reason why you have not wasted your life." And sadly he shook his head. "Fortunately you are still young—"

"This ship," Brian said stiffly, "is the greatest accomplishment of the human race! If I live to be twice your age, I shall never—" Abruptly he rose and flicked a switch. The great dome cleared, and the immense magnifiers brought down the newly blossoming stars so that the man and boy stood under a vast, blazing galaxy of fire. "Damn it," Brian said huskily and his voice caught. "Man, we brought this little ship across nine light-years of nothing, nothing, nothing! We stepped on worlds where no human being had ever been before! You can't make out that that's nothing! It's the biggest thing humanity ever did—and I had the privilege to be part of it—" He was stammering, and, aware of it, he stopped.

Frobisher looked sad and embarrassed. "Poor lad, and what for? What did you, personally, get from it? What good did it do—not you alone—any single human being?"

Brian shouted suddenly," "You senile, half-witted old imbecile, I don't suppose you ever heard of abstract knowledge!"

"It isn't wholly unknown to me," Frobisher said coldly, but added, again with the same anxious friendliness, "Well my boy, I suppose you believe as you've been taught—but can you show me one single human, now or in the past, who was benefited by the trip of *the Starward, except in his personal vanity? I think, if you carefully examined the matter, you'd find that the building, launching and cost of the Starward defrauded quite a large number of people."

Brian said almost desperately, "Individuals don't matter. Knowledge—any knowledge—is for the good of the race as a whole—to lift humanity out of the mud of the sea bottom—toward the stars—"

"I can't breathe such thin air," Frobisher said lightly. "The mud is much more comfortable."

"And where wouldvyou be," Brian almost shouted, "if your remote ancestor, had never crawled down a tree trunk because he was.,,comfortable where he was?"

"Why," Frobisher returned, looking up at the stars that were billiant in the dome, "I should be very happily scratching, myself and swinging by my tail. Do you think the great apes have any ambition to be human? Unfortunately,. I've come too far to be happy in a treetop or a cave. But it seems to me that it's important, for any individual human, to find the absolute minimum with which he can recover that state of effortless happiness he lost when he left the treetops. Do you know what this ship reminds me of?"

"No!" Brian snapped.

"A brontosaurus." Frobisher did not elaborate, and in surly silence Brian snapped a switch. The stars went out. "Come on," he muttered, "let's get out of here."

Brian slept that night. At daybreak he stole into the room where the six women of the crew were sleeping, and quietly woke them; one by one, wrapping themselves sleepily in blankets, they tiptoed into the men's bedroom, where the crew gathered close, listening to Brian's soft, savage whispers.

"Kids, we've got to do something—anything to get away from this madhouse!"

"Go easy, Brian," Mellen interrupted. "That's strong language, and I don't like it. These people aren't crazy, from what we saw and heard last night. They think we're a little off course, though."

Caldwell muttered, "They're probably right. They used to say that being too long in space drove men crazy."

Brian said bitterly, "You all seem insane!"

"I don't blame them," Ellie said unexpectedly. "What is the good of going shooting all over the galaxy? It was fine, back in the days when it made people happy, but these people are happy without it."

"Brian's right, of course," said Don Isaacs, a quiet boy who had never grown too friendly with any of the crew except Marcia, and who never had much to say. "But there's this. Let's be practical. We're here. We can't go back to Terra Two. And we can't start reforming them. So let's just make the best of it."

Mellen said shortly, "Good for you, Don. And one more thing: if Kearns keeps shooting off his big mouth, we're apt to land in the local equivalent of the lock-up, for disturbing the peace or something. The peace seems to be valued pretty highly around here."

"But what are we going to do?" Brian wanted to know. "We can't just live here, can we?"

"And why not?" Paula's voice was defiant, and Judy murmured, "There aren't as many gadgets and things as there are on Terra Two, but it's certainly a better place then the Ship!"

Mellen pulled Paula's small shadowy form upright beside him. "I don't know why you came on the trip, Brian," he said. "But I came for one reason: because the Firsts trained me for it, and because if I'd begged off, somebody else would have had to. This isn't home, but it's as close to it as we're apt to find. I like it. Paula and I are going to settle down, and build a house or something."

Langdon added, "It's no secret that Judy and I and Don and Marcia,—" he paused, "and Brian and Ellie too —have been waiting a lot longer than we wanted to wait. There are a couple of hundred people in this village. Nice people, too, I'll bet. I like that old fellow. He reminds me of great-grandpa Wade. Anyhow, that's almost as many as they have on Terra Two. And I'll bet they don't all spend their time knocking themselves out, synthesizing food and exploring and cataloguing the whole planet^either!"

"They certainly don't!" Ellie slid/' her a'rm through Brian's. "They are, now, where Terra Two is, without the struggle. They've conquered the planet. They can quit trying."

But Mellen murmured derisively, "Kearns is heartbroken! He wanted to find mechanical computers telling everybody when to spit, and robots doing all the housework!"

"Yes____ " Brian said thickly. "I guess I did_______ "

He turned his back on them and slammed out.

Ellie thrust her way through the others and ran out into the new day. She plunged her way through the gradually thinning darknesk'after.his retreating shadow, and found him, huddled at the^foot of the pickup. She knelt close to him and put her warm.hands over his cold ones.

"Brian—oh, my deafest—"

"Elliej, Ellie!" He flung his arms around her, hiding his head against her thin dr^ss. The girl held him tight, without speaking. How young he was, she thought, how very young. He'd started training for this work before he could read. Twelve years, training for the biggest job in the world he knew. And now it all collapsed under him.

Brian said bitterly, "It's the waste, Ellie. Why—we might as well have stayed on Terra Two!"

"That's exactly what Frobisher said," Ellie told him gently. She glanced at the reddening clouds in the east, and such a wave of homesickness wrenched at her that she nearly sobbed.

"Ellie—why?" he insisted. "Why? What makes a culture just stop, gcjjflead, stagnant? They were right on the borders of conqwSmg' the whole universe! What made them stop?" The agonized earnestness of the question made Ellie's voice very tender.

"Maybe they didn't stop, Brian. May they just progressed in another direction. Space travel was right for the culture we knew—or maybe it wasn't. Remember what the Firsts told us, about the Russo-Venusian War, and the Mars Raids? These people—maybe they've achieved what all cultures were looking for, and never found."

"Utopia!" Brian sneered, and pushed her away.

"No," said Ellie very low, and put her arms about him again. "Arcadia."

"You're just the same, anyway. . . . Ellie, whatever happens, don't you leave me too—" he begged.

"I won't," she promised. "Never. Look, Brian, the sun's coming up. We should go back."

"Yeah, big day ahead," he said, and his mouth was too young to twist into such bitter lines. Then it relaxed, and he smiled and pulled her close to him.

"Not just yet. . ."

VI

Paula and Ellie stood on a knoll, near the abandoned Homeward, and watched the skeletal houses going up almost visibly beneath them. "The entire village has turned out!" Paula marveled. "Our house will be finished before night!"

"I'm glad there was land near the village for us," Ellie murmured. "Don't you feel as if you'd always lived here? And in only four months!"

The dark girl's face was sad. "Ellie, can't you do anything to keep Brian from—from sounding off at Tom? One day Tom will up and paste him one, and then you know what will nappen to us!"

Ellie sighed". "And I'd hate to have either of us turned out of the village! It isn't all Brian's fault, Paula—" But then she paused, smiled sadly, and finished "I'm afraid he usually starts it, though. I'll do what I can, of course—"

"Brian is crazy!" Paula said emphatically. "Ellie—is it really true, that you and Brian will go on living in the Homeward!" She glanced distastefully at the black mass of the starship, and went on, "Why do you stand for it?"

"I'd live with Brian in a worn-out hydroponics tank, Paula. You would too, if it were Tom," Ellie said wearily. "And Brian's right, some one should keep the ship from being dismantled. Any of you had the same choice."

Paula murmured "I like our house better, especially now—" and she put her head close to Ellie and whispered. Ellie hugged her delightedly, then asked, "Are you feeling all right, Paula?"

The girl hesitated before answering: "I/tell myself it's all my imagination," she said at/last. "This planet belonged to our ancestors, our race* my body should adapt to it easily. But after being borni and growing up on Terra Two where I weighed half what I do here, and then so long in free fall—I know it's hard for all of us, this gravity, but since the baby . . . My body is one damned enormous ache, night and day!"

"You poor thing—" Ellie put an arm around her friend. "And I think I have troubles because my eyes still hurt in this light!"

Judy, heavy-footed, puffed up the slope. She had wound her heavy hair into a^coil on her neck, and would have been pretty, in hef^Iight synthetic ship's overall, had her eyes been less painfu|jy ..screwed up against the brilliant sunlight. "Lazy things, she called gaily. "The men are hungry!"

"In a minute," Ellie^ answered, but did not move. She still found it more convenient to prepare food in the culture units of the Homeward, but disliked doing so now. However, oh occasions such as today, when the villagers had turned out en masse, making a holiday of building the five new houses, it would make it easy to feed almost three hundred.

Langdon and Brian came up the hill, Hard Frobisher striding easily beside them. Langdon squinted at the woman and finally pretended to identify Judy. "You women are getting spoiled," he teased. "On Terra Two, you'd be working along with the men, Judy!"

Judy tossed jigr head. "I enjoy being spoiled," she said pertly, "and I"fWl&ve enough to do, learning what women do here!"

There was a derisive twist in Brian Kearns's smile. "I came off lucky," he commented sourly. "Ellie at least had training for this kind of life. What about you, Paula, are you sorry not to be playing nurse to your electronic calculator?"

Paula gave an eloquent shrug. "The women of the Star-ward chose to be scientists and were chosen because they were scientists! I learned navigation because my grandmother learned to fix a cyclotron before she had her babies on Terra Two! I'm shedding no tears."

"Well, suppese you two come and have a lesson in food culture," Ellie admonished, and the three women turned toward the ship. At the foot of the ladder, however, Ellie paused. "Paula, dear, you shouldn't climb these steps now. Go on back, we'll manage by ourselves," she offered gently, and Paula gratefully turned back to rejoin the men.

Meanwhile, Frobisher sat looking down at the rising houses. "Soon you will be part of our village," he commented. "I think you have all done well."

Brian nodded curtly in acknowledgment. He had not been prepared to find the village operating as a self-contained colony, very much like the one at Terra Two— the crew of the Homeward had expected to re-enter the complex financial structure of the world the Starward had left. But the system seemed simplicity itself. Every man owned as much land as he, alone, was able to work, and owned whatever else he made with his own hands. A man gave his work wherever it was needed, and in return was entitled to take what he needed; food from those who grew it, clothes from those who made them, and so forth. Whatever he needed beyond the necessities of life must be earned by industry, good management and private arrangements. Brian found the system easy and congenial, even enjoying the job he did—a carpenter in Norten had. given him work, and Brian, whose training had familiarized him with tools and machinery, had found no trouble in adapting his specialized skills to carpentry and building. There was always building going on somewhere in the village, it seemed. Brian made a good living.

And yet, for all its simplicity, the system seemed remarkably inefficient. Brian said, looking down at the sprawled houses, "I would think it would be easier if you had some kind of central distribution system."

"It's been tried, often," the old man-answered patiently. "Every few years, a group of villages will consolidate, to exchange services, or set up communication systems for private individuals, or distribute foods that can't be grown locally, or luxury goods of one kind or another. But that means devising a means of exchange, and keeping account of credits, and so forth. As a rule, the disadvantages are so much greater than the advantages-that 1he consolidation breaks down again within a yeaf or two."

"But there's no law against it?",<Brian asked.

"Oh, no!" Frobisher sounded shocked. "What would be the sense of that? The purpose of the whole system is to leave each man as free as possible! Most places are just about like Morten—the maximum of comfort, and the minimum of trouble."

Brian murmured, "I should think, then, that you'd want all kinds of labor-saving devices. You cook with fire— isn't it easier to have food culture units, such as we have on the Ship?"

Frobishej:. ga^e- the matter grave attention. "Well, a wood fire imparts^ 'fine flavor to food," he remarked. "Most people prefer ij. And a cook must take pride in what she cooks, or wtfy cook at all? And, although food culture units may be easier, if one is lazy, for those who use theta, no, one wants to take the time to manufacture them. One man can build a fireplace in a day, with a neighbor to help, and cook with it for the rest of his life. For a food culture unit, a man would have to spend years in learning to build it, and dozens of skilled and unskilled workers take months to build it; and, in order to make them cheaply enough for one man to buy, millions of them must be made, which means hundreds and thousands of people crowded together, just making them, having no time to grow or cook their own food, or live their own lives. The cost is too high. It's more trouble than it's worth." ^

Langdon askjj^jjlm.suddenly, "Just what is the population now?"

Frobisher frowned. "You people certainly are full of questions! Who knows? Collectively, people are nothing but statistics, which are no good to anyone. People are individuals. A few years ago, a philosopher in Carney— that's where Destry was born—worked out what he called the critical factor in population: the point where a village becomes too large to be efficient as a self-contained unit, and starts to break down. It's a nice problem, if you're interested in abstract mathematics—which I'm not."

"But I am," Paula said behind them, lowering herself carefully to the grass beside the men. "It sounds interesting."

Frobisher looked at her with fatherly friendliness. "You and Tom can come with me, next time I go to Carney," he invited. "I'll introduce you to Tuck—but all I know is, if a village gets too large, it's more trouble than convenience, and about half the population will go away and start a new one, or move to a smaller place."

"It doesn't sound very workable," Brian said with sour skepticism.

"It works," Frobisher answered equably. "That's the final test of any theory—hullo, here's Tom. We're not lying down on the job, Tom—just waiting for the women to bring dinner."

Mellen thrust a penciled scrap of paper into Lang-don's hands. "Is Judy around? I can't read this—her writing is half Russian and half Arabic!"

"She's in the ship with Kearns's wife," Frobisher answered, not noticing how Paula winced at the word which, on Terra Two, had acquired an ignominious connotation of servitude and sexual inferiority. The three men from the Homeward tried to ignore the vulgarity, and Langdon gave a self-conscious laugh. "I think I can translate for you."

"What have you got there?" Brian asked, interested against his will—Judy had been an electrician aboard the Homeward, responsible for all lighting circuits, and her work was capable and excellent. He squinted toward the paper. Langdon scowled. "I can't see a thing in this cussed sunlight! What's it supposed to be, Tom?"

"Wiring diagram. There are red bulbs in the Homeward, and Judy's going to put lighting in our house—and yours, too. Didn't she tell you?"

"I thought you'd both gone allout on the primitive life," Brian muttered. Langdon snorted mockingly, and Mellen clenched his fists, then relaxed, with an easy grin.

"It's a free country," he said. Then suddenly he added, "Brian, it's none of my business, but are you and Ellie really going to stick to this damn foolishness? You'll be

lonely up here. We could start on a house for you to-

morrow."               f

"Somebody's got to keep the sriip from being dismantled," Brian said stiffly. "And th'ftt reminds me, if Judy's going to do any wiring, she'd/better use spare parts. No more trying to dismantle the "drive units!"

Langdon laughed softly, but Mellen's face darkened in annoyance. He said shortly, "You aren't captain any more. The Homeward isn't your personal property, Brian."

"I'm aware of that," Brian rasped. "Neither does it belong to the crew collectively. It's being held in trust. And since nobody else has any sense of responsibility, I'm acting as caretaker."

Frobisher locked jyp as if he were about to speak, but Paula forestaUed^^fiffi, asking gently, "What for? We've no fuel, we'll never takejjfLagain."

The nightmare settled down on Brian again. He was fighting—but fighting an intangible, unresisting opponent! If they had. been malicious, it would have been easier. They weren't malicious, they were only stupid—unable to understand just why the Homeward must be safeguarded as their only link with civilized life. A year or two, he thought grimly, and they'll realize just what I'm doing, and why. Just now, this primitivism is hew, novel. But they are basically intelligent, sooner or later they will get tired of this. They can't live from day to day, like the villagers—but how do the villagers live this way? Fro-bisher's a cultured man. Destry's a bright boy. How can they stand it, living like nice clean animals?

"What deep imponderable are you mediating?" Ellie mocked his serious expression with a gay grimace, and thrust a bask^^urtd* his hands, loaded with hot food. "Langdon, Paula, Mr. Frobisher—all hands needed to carry food. Here, Destry, you take a basket too," she commanded, handing one to the boy. "Bring this down to the village, now. Dinner is ready .And hurry up before it all gets cold."

Brian absent-mindedly picked up a biscuit-like cake of protein and munched at it as they descended the hill, his mind still halfway circling the continual problem. Ellie offered her basket, in turn, to Destry and Frobisher, and the old man politely took a cake, but Destry shook his head. "Thanks, I don't care for synthetics, Ellie."

"Destry!" His grandfather said with unnecessary sharpness, while Ellie murmured, "I didn't know you'd ever tasted them."

Destry stumbled over a rock in the path and used a couple of unfamiliar expletives; by the time he had picked himself up, retrieved the luckily unhurt basket, and apologized unnecessarily for the words he had used—he might have saved the trouble, for Ellie had never heard them and did not know whether they were sacred or profane— Ellie had forgotten her question for another.

"Have you ever been out of Nörten, Destry?"

"Once or twice. I went to Carney with my father, when he went to teach a man there how to weave a rug. He weaves beautiful rugs—much better ones than ours."

"I see," Ellie murmured.

"He wanted me to come with him this time, but one place is pretty much like another, and I had my gardens to look after, so I stayed with grandpa. Besides, I had to—" Destry abruptly stopped. They were nearing the site of the new houses, and he called loudly "Dinner!" and watched the villagers swarm off their scaffolds and beams. He took one of the baskets and scooted away to hand it around.

The food from the Homeward's culture units was distributed, and the villagers ate it with polite thanks, but without much enthusiasm; only the children seemed to enjoy the elaborate synthetics, and even the Homeward's crew seemed to have lost their taste for it. Brian, sitting on a half-finished wooden step and munching absent-mindedly, abruptly made a face and flung the cake into the grass. Ellie cooked better, he decided, without the food machines. She liked the primitive cooking, and he had to admit she did it well. Still he felt disquieted. The food culture units synthesized their food out of a raw carbon, water, and almost infinitesimal amounts of raw chemicals; the whole process of growing food seemed, to Brian, wasteful and inefficient. It took so much time. Of course, he reflected, it was pleasant, outdoor work, and the people who did it seemed to enjoy it. It wasn't so confining as standing over the machines^ and you didn't grow so deathly bored, month after month, with nothing to do except push a lever now and then, and between the lever-pushings, scan films and play endlessly complicated mental games. Brian had been expert at a certain three-dimensional board game which had to be played with the aid of an electronic computation device; now he felt a curiously disloyal thought that his proficiency had been born of boredom. When you enjoyed your work, he thought, you didn't have to invent things to do in your spare time.

But I enjoyed my work, he told himself in confusion, I enjoyed working on the IS units. Didn't I?  '^,.^v

Furiously scattering the remaining synthetics on his disposable plate, he crumpled up the bit of plastic and flung it angrily away, grabbing up his tools—the new hammer, plane, and level which the village smith had made in exchange for roofing a chicken-house and repairing his cellar steps—and shouted to Caldwell.

"Come .on, let's get back at work, I want to get this floor laid by sundown!" He walked catlike across the empty beams, squatted where he had left off, and began sliding boards into place and nailing them with fierce, angrily precise blows.

vn

He was still tersely angry and short-worded when, a few weeks later,, he walked down through the village, a bqx in his hahBs.* The houses were completed now, even to the steps, arSibUgh still scantily furnished—Brian was still working, after each day's work, helping Caldwell build furniture.

He turned in at one still-raw, trampled muddy lawn, where brief spikes of summer grass were just beginning to peep through the wet earth, and knocked roughly.

Paula, a loose hand-woven smock wrapped about her body—she was beginning to grow clumsy and heavy now —opened the door, and her squinted, drawn face relaxed suddenly in a quick impulsive smile which made Brian feel ashamed and almost defensive.

"Brian—yes, Ellie's here, but—" She paused, hesitant, then invited shyly, "Won't you come in for a few minutes? We don't see much of you."

"I came down to see Tom—" Brian said uneasily, and followed Paula into the large reddish-lighted room. Before the fireplace he saw, to his intense dismay, that not only Ellie was there with Tom Mellen, but Langdon and Judy, Marcia and Don Isaacs, Destry, and—Hard Frobisher. Frobisher! It seemed that Hard Frobisher was continually underfoot, as if the crew of the Homeward needed his continual surveillance, assistance, advice! Brian frowned in annoyance; Frobisher acted like a self-appointed guardian to the newcomers. Yet it was impossible not to like the old fellow, even when he inquired genially, "And what have you in that big, interesting box, Mr. Kearns?"

"Just more of our top-heavy science," Brian said rudely, and, undoing the box, took from it several pairs of red-lensed glasses in bent-plastic frames. He handed one pair to Mellen and donned one himself. "Turn out these lights, and see if these help any in the sun, will you?"

Tom looked at the glasses, puzzled, for a moment, then hooked the frames behind his ears and switched out the red lights, stepping to the west door and looking into the setting sun. Then he turned, grinning.

"They work, all right! What did you do, Brian? Just red glass wouldn't work—remember, we tried it?"

Brian shrugged. "There's a polarized layer inside. I couldn't find selenium, so 1 used an oxide of gold for the red color. It's a thin quartz filter ... oh, never mind. I'd have had them before, but it took a damned long time to grind them."

Langdon took a pair from the box. "That's right," he said slowly. "I remember, Miguel Kearns made lenses for some of the old Starward instruments, when they broke, and when we were duplicating instruments for the trip. Did you help him?"

"Some," Brian returned. He met Frobisher's eyes, and said truculently, "So you have no use for science. Well, as you pointed out yourself, it's a free country, and my crew have been going around with sore eyes—and I don't like it!"

Paula's strained face relaxed as. she slipped the filter glasses over her eyes, and she smiled. "This is wonderful, Brian," she said, and Elbe's face 'glowed with pride. Langdon mocked in a friendly voice, "The old fellow's human after all!" and flung a companionable arm around Brian's shoulders. "When are you and Ellie going to come down off your lofty peak and live with the rest of the pack?"

Brian stiffened, but the tone of approbation warmed him, and he came back, half-unwilling, to the fireplace, and listened to Frobisher, who said, laughing faintly, "It isn't science itself we don't like. It's the use of science as an end in itself, rather than a means. I mentioned a bron-tosaurus. I assume vpu know what that is?"

"We had them*afiye, on Terra Two—or something like them. They're big, but not dangerous—they're too dumb." Brian told him.     * *

"Exactly," Frobisher said. "But they're not much good to themselves, are they?" He smiled; then his face sobered. "The brontosaurus, with his titanic body-mass, had outgrown the logical use of a development which had, originally, been good and useful. Science," he proceeded, "was developed to make life easier for man. The individual man. The light body-armor of the Barbarian soldier was developed of more formidable weapons, and finally the armor had to be so cumbersome that the armored man must be lifted on his horse with a derrick. And if he fell down—well, there he was. It helped along the army, as a unit—but it certainly made life a mess, for the individual. And science gave so much time and thought to units —the Nation^'the Race, Humanity-as-a-Whole—that it laid terrific bmffehs on' humanity as individuals. To benefit the monster of Humanity-as-a-Whole, they even fought wars—which killed off humanity, individually, at a fearful rate. Eventually—well, the knight fell down inside his armor, and couldn't get up again. I think the collapse started even before the Starward left. The brontosaurus died along with his protective nuisances, but nature was a little kinder to men—individually. Humanity-as-a-Whole died out pretty thoroughly, even as a concept. The individuals who were left knew enough not to start the whole dreary process all over again. Science took its rightful place with the other arts and crafts—instead of using it to serve a hypothetical whole, we use each art, or science, to enrich the personal, private life of each individual." He gestured around the room. "The sawmill and pottery. Tom's red lighting in here. And—your red-lensed glasses, Brian. I think the time has come when I can tell you why—"

But Brian had already risen, and flung away from him.

"I didn't come down here to be lectured!" he shouted at Frobisher, and strode to the door. "There are the glasses, Tom. You hand them out. Tell everybody not to break them; they take forever to grind."

The door slammed behind him.

Now that he had defied Frobisher, he felt a little better, but as the days came and went, he felt tormented by the uselessness of his life. He spent more and more time in vicious, expert hammering and sawing—in solitude, now—at furniture, finding a sort of satisfaction in substituting physical activity for insoluble mental problems; Ellie never dared to broach the subject of moving away from the Homeward again, until one night when Brian was sitting hunched over in the former lounge, listlessly watching Einstein clamber around the axis beams. The Cen-taurian cat's suckers were not strong enough to support his weight, in this gravity; he had developed a queer shambling gait on his hind feet, amusing to watch, but clumsy and painful, and Ellie picked up her pet and patted him as she passed through the lounge.

"Poor Einstein doesn't know what to make of this," she observed. "Gravity, in here where there ought to be no gravity at all. He'd be happier in a regular house."

"I suppose so," Brian said sourly. "I suppose you would too. But look, Ellie; the crew would dismantle the ship inside a year or two."

"Well, why not let them?" Ellie asked, matter-of-factly.

Brian shrugged, helplessly. "I suppose, sooner or later 222

—but still, some day Terra Two will go out into space again, too—they haven't reverted to savagery!"

Ellie only smiled. "It won't happen in*fcur lifetime."

"You're worse than the othersr" Brian shouted in sudden furious anger. She only murmured uncritically, "Come in and have dinner."

Brian morosely rose and followed her. He had to edge by a machine, suddenly stumbled over Einstein, and exploded violently, "It's too damn cramped in here!"

Ellie did not answer, and Brian finally said, "I suppose —it won't happen in our lifetime, no."

"What are you going to do then, pass this great secret on to your sons?" Ellie inquired, and Brian started to answer before apprehending the dry irony in her voice. It had taken him twelve years to learn even the basics of interstellar operation. '

He applied himself grimly to his food; but his mood softened as he ate," and he finally looked up and said, "Frobisher can like it or not, but I'll make a scientist out of Destry yet. The kid's always underfoot. Ever since you taught me to fly the pickup—I took him up one day, and let him take the controls for a few minutes; they aren't very complicated." He spoke with a sort of satisfaction; it was a point of self-respect in his continual struggle to maintain himself in Frobisher's presence. "The boy's nuts on airplanes. He must have read a lot in old books."

Ellie asked suddenly, "I wonder what Destry's father is like?"

Brian scoffed, "He makes rugs!"

Ellie looked unconvinced. "Maybe he makes the rugs the way Frobisher paints those birds he has all over the house. Loofesifeat, Ifound in Frobisher's bookcase. Destry loaned it to me when I asked him." She handed him a book, nicely handbound in red cloth. Brian opened it curiously, skipping over the name—John D. Frobisher— penned neatly on the cover. He had seen few books in Norten village, and those were mostly blank-books filled with recipes, musical notations, or diaries—diary-keeping was a favorite pastime among young people here. But this was printed, and filled with elaborate, exquisitely reproduced diagrams which reminded Brian of Judy's scrawls when she was working out a wiring diagram. He tried to read a page or two, but, although the language was only loosely technical, Brian's education had been so rigidly specialized that the vocabulary was beyond him. He shut it up, and asked, "Did you show this to Judy?"

"Yes. It's a text, she says, on radio and radar, and not an elementary one either."

"Funny . . ." Brian mused.

"Here's something funnier," Ellie said. "Have you seen Caldwell lately? Or Marcia and Don Isaacs?"

"Come to think of it, I haven't. I never saw much of Don, though—"

"They went away, that night you and Frobisher had a fight. Marcia told me they were going so that Don could work in another village. That's what they always say— like Destry's father. People seem to come and go, here, all the time! Almost every day, somebody picks up a clean shirt and a pair of stockings, and walks off down the road. And nobody sees him again for three or four months—then he walks in again, as casually as I do when I go down to Paula's and back!"

"And the standard of living . . ." Brian mused "comfortable enough—but primitive—"

Ellie laughed. "Oh, Brian! We were happy enough on Terra Two, without quite so much. The ship is super-mechanized. We're spoiled—we've developed a lot of artificial wants—"

"Frobisher converting you, too?" he asked glumly.

Her laugh was gay. "Maybe."

Brian was silent, staring at the book. He felt trapped. It was an insidious poison, the temptation to relax, rest, dream and die in this—Ellie had called it Arcadia, but a fragment of poetry from an old book in the ship's library teased his brain; not Arcadia, he thought drearily, but the isle of the lotus eaters, who tasted the poison flower and forgot all that they had been before. . . .

The words of the ancient poet sang insidiously in his brain. He rose and fetched the book from behind a panel in the lounge, and sat with it on his knees, the words of defeat staring him in the face.

Hateful is the dark-blue sky,

Vaulted o'er the dark-blue sea;

Death is the end of life; ah,- why'**

Should life all labor be?

Let us alone; Time drivetn onward fast . , .

How could a man who had mastered space live like this, in animal content, year after year? He wondered if among the lotus eaters there had been anyone who had refused the poison—and finally eaten it from starvation, or because he could not endure the loneliness of being the only sane man among a crew abandoned to their dreams?

Let us alone ... . what pleasure can we have

To war with evil? Is there any peace

In ever climbing up the climbing wave?

Give us long re'st or death, dark death or dreamful

6<1S&* • • •

Brian scowled and let the book fall to the floor. There was nothing easy about life in Norten! In the last few days, weeks, months, he had worked harder than ever in his life. His hands, once sensitive and smooth; alert to the quiver of a lever, were hard and calloused and brown. And yet there was something satisfying about it. He no longer found himself inventing elaborate leisure-time pursuits, no longer felt impelled by continual anxiety about his crew, lest some minor infringement of a rule should lead to catastrophe. And Ellie—he had Ellie, and that, if nothing else, was something to hold him here.

And yet—*after he had crossed space—his body thrived, but^lte-brairr was starving. Or was it, he asked himself. He'd gotten almost as much satisfaction—the guilty thought came—out of seeing hi* crew's eyes get well again, with the special glasses he'd made, as he had had in piloting the Homeward safely through a dangerous cloud of radio-active gas. Maybe—again the guili —maybe more.

The glasses. But they couldn't go around wearing red goggles for the rest of their lives. There ought to be some way of gradually altering the filters, maybe at monthly intervals, so that they became gradually accustomed to the light. He pulled a stylus toward him, vainly rummaged for a loose sheet of paper, then irritably climbed into his old control room, search, and at last slid open the moving panel over the log book. His hands hesitated at the vandalism, then he shrugged and swore —the voyage was finished, the log book closed out! He ripped a blank sheet from the back, sat down then and there on the edge of the skyhook, and began to sketch out, roughly, a plan for glasses with changeable filters.

The yellow dawn was a glare in the sky when he finally came down; Ellie was sleeping in the cabin, her curly hair scattered over her face, and he quietly tiptoed past her and down the ladder. The air was cold and clear, and he stretched and yawned, suddenly realizing that he was very sleepy.

Against the brightening sky, a man's form was silhouetted as he gradually came over the knoll, and Tom Mellen called to him, "Is that you, Brian?" and came toward him with swinging strides. He had long ago discarded the shorts and sandals of the ship in favor of boots and long dyed breeches, and he wore one of his uniform shirts tucked into them. The ship's synthetics were not long-wearing or practical, although they were simply produced, but a few of the younger women in Norten had liked the thin pretty stuff, and exchanged lengths of it for the sturdier and more practical handmade variety.

As he came near, Brian asked him, "Where are you going so early?"

"I'm going to work awhile in another town," Tom told him casually. "I've a letter to a friend of Frobisher's. I came up to ask a favor. I don't suppose Elbe's up yet? Well, don't bother her, but—" He paused, then added, "I meant for Paula to come along with me. But she's not very well, and she doesn't want to be with strangers. She'd particularly miss Ellie. But I hate to have her alone—"

Brian said abruptly, "Tom, we're going to move down into the village. I've—" He glanced around at the Homeward and all his pent-up resentment suddenly spilled over and he shouted, "I'm tired of caretaking the damned old —brontosaurus! I'm through!"

Tom whistled. "What's gotten info' you? I thought you were dedicated to maintaining a niée snug little island of culture." Then at Brian's expression, the sarcasm left his voice, and he said eagerly, "Brian, if you mean that, why don't you and Ellie move down with Paula while I'm gone? I'll be back before the baby comes, and we can get started on a house for you two."

Brian stood thinking it over for a minute, and finally nodded. "All right. I'm sure Elbe will want to; she worries about Paula."

Tom stood looking at the ground. "Well, I'll shove along and tell Paula tQTexpect you, and then I'll get on my way." He paused,' then said, low-voiced, "Brian—I thought, on the ship, you. were just throwing your rank, about—well, about the'girls. But now—" He stopped again, and said finally, embarrassed, "You know the baby was—started—before we landed?"

"I guessed that," Brian said coldly.

"I thought it was all right because we'd be landing within a month or two. But now—and the change in gravity, I'm afraid—if Paula and I had had the sense to wait—Judy's pregnant, you know, and she's not having any trouble at all, while Paula—" He stopped, and finally got out, "I guess I owe you an apology, Brian."

"You might better apologize to Paula," Brian said, but he had appreciated the spirit in which Tom spoke. So Tom finally realized that Brian had a good reason for what he'd done!

Tom added quietly, "I owe an apology for something else, 'too, Brianf'llV my fault they've been leaving you out of things around here. I had the idea you were still trying to rehabilitate the natives."

"Don't bother apologizing," Brian said frigidly. So Tom had missed the point after all! "I'm not particularly interested in 'things around here,' and sooner or later I expect the natives will need rehabilitating, as you put it. When that day comes, I'll be here."

Mellen's mouth hardened. "I guess Frobisher's right about you!" he said tightly. "So long, then." He put out his hand, rather unwillingly, and Brian shook it, without enthusiasm. He watched as Tom descended the hill, wondering where he was going and why. Was it just part of \ the local irresponsibility? Tom was irresponsible anyhow —the way he'd behaved toward Paula was shameful. And who, here, was going to look after her? The local witch-doctor? He scowled, and went in to tell Ellie about their impending move.

VIII

Paula was almost pathetically grateful for Ellie's company, and even Einstein settled down near the new fireplace as cozily as any of the ordinary Norten cats with^ whom he had a continual feud. Brian located a site' for the house he intended to build and, aided by Destry, began a rough workshop of fieldstone. In return for the boy's help, Brian took him, nightly, into the dome of the Homeward and taught him the names and positions of the fixed stars. The boy was filling a blank-book with astronomical data; Brian offered to present him with one of the astronomy texts duplicated in the ship, but Destry politely refused the gift. "I like to make my own. That way I'm sure of what's in it," he explained.

Brian himself was painstakingly perfecting his lens-grinding equipment. The workshop had gradually become his refuge, and, now that he knew he was working on something which was worth doing, he slowly began to come out of the closed shell he had originally thrown about himself, forbidding intimacy with the life of the village. He relaxed from the painstaking lens-grinding by beginning something he had not done since his early teens: glass-blowing. He made a set of fancy bottles for Ellie, and when Judy admired them, made one for her as well. Both Ellie and Judy had many friends in the village, and within a few weeks Brian found that so many men and women were asking him to make them that he could switch his full-time work from carpentry to glass-making. There was a potter in the village, who made extremely fine crockery, but at present the local glass-maker was

—again the omnipresent phrase—"working in another vil-

lage." Brian found the work congenial, and felt that he

had approval.                                                    ,       ***

However, privately, anxiety piled on anxiety. He actually saw very little of Paula, for there was still a certain stiffness between them; however, he felt disturbed at her obvious weakness. Ellie, too, was expecting a child by now, although aa yet she had told no one but him, and Paula's condition filled him with panic for Ellie.

There had not been a medical man on the Homeward: none of them had ever been ill. Marcia had nominally been responsible for their health, but even Marcia wasn't here now. And judging from what litde talk Brian had heard here in Norten, it was simply a matter of any woman's, helping out when asked. Ellie had vigorously defended 'the' system when Brian attacked it, protesting that having children was a natural function, and that the medical arid surgical atmosphere with which the Terra Two colony surrounded it was enough to make any woman neurotic. Brian was unconvinced; that might be true when" everything was normal, but Paula definitely needed care. He wondered how Ellie could be so unconcerned; Paula was her closest friend.

But even Brian was not prepared for the suddenness with which mere anxiety turned to disaster. At noon that day Paula -was her usual self: pale and pathetically heavy of step, but gay and bright-eyed. In the evening she was quieter than usual, and went to bed early. And some time during the night Brian was roused by Ellie's hand on his shoulder and her scared voice: "Brian—wake up!"

Brian drew himself upright, instantly alert, seeing Ellie's tensely drawn face^and hearing the near-hysteria in her voice. "'It's Paula**4'»ve never seen anything like it—she was all right this evening—oh, Brian, please come!"

Brian pulled a robe about his shoulders, thinking, what could have happened so suddenly? He heard the low, incessant moans even before he stepped into the inner room and stopped, aghast at Paula's face. It was altogether drained of color; even the lips were white and sunken, but a curious dark line marred their edges. She had always been excessively thin, but now her hands seemed suddenly shrunken into claws, and when Brian touched one, it was fire-hot. Brian cast his mind rapidly over where little he had been taught about the relationship of gravity and pregnancy—just enough to know that in free fall, a dangerous condition could develop suddenly. He wished he had known more, but they had taught him just enough that he was thoroughly convinced of the wisdom of enforcing strict celibacy in spaceship personnel. His brain, strictly specialized for one limited aspect of science, retained only a few fragments of knowledge. They fluttered and teased at the edge of his mind: imperfect placental junction without the cohesive effect of gravity, hormone malfunction under the added strain of pregnancy, extensive damage to internal tissues—all this was at free fall conditions. But what about Paula, who was adapted to the light gravity of Terra Two, whose child had actually been conceived in free fall, and who was being brutally punished by the dragging gravity of Earth? Something in the delicate balance of cohesions had evidently kicked loose. Brian looked down at the unconscious girl and spoke violently.

"Damn Mellen for an insubordinate idiot!"

"Where's Tom?" Paula whispered rackingly. "I want Tom!" The feverish bony fingers clutched at Brian's, and she begged "I want Tom!" Her eyes opened, but she was looking past Brian into space. Brian felt the old cold anger knotting inside him. He bent over and promised quietly, "I'll get him."

Elbe whispered, "But—I don't know where he's gone, Brian. Paula might be—"

Brian straightened savagely. "I'll find him if I have to take my fists to Frobisher! Thank God we still have the pickup! And I'll find out where Don and Marcia were sent; yes, sent! All along I've had the feeling—"

"Brian—" Ellie caught at his hand, but he pushed her away. "Frobisher's going to listen to me for once! He can damn science all he wants to. But if Paula dies on our hands because nobody on this dark-ages planet knows what to do for her, then by the living God I'm going to personally raise such hell in this god-forsaken little Utopia of theirs that Frobisher and his pals will snap out of their daydream and start living like human beings again!" Without another word he strode out^f the room, dressed hastily and went out of the house, his long-repressed anger boiling up and stiffening his back as he hurried toward the village. He^ went up Frobisher's steps and across his porch at asingle bound, thrust the door open without knocking, arid stormed inside.

"Frobisher!" he bellowed unceremoniously.

In the darkness there was a surprised noise, then steps, a door flung open and a light shining in Brian's eyes— and Hard Frobisher, half-dressed, came swiftly into the main room. Another opening door showed the half-naked Destry, surprised and angry. Frobisher's face, dim in the firelight, was surprised, too, but there was no anger, and he asked calhily,;"Is something wrong?"

And as always, MS calm brought Brian's anger to the exploding point. "You'|e right there's something wrong," he raged, and advanced on Frobisher so violently that the old man retreated a step or two. "I've got a girl on my hands who looks as Jf she were going to die," Brian roared, "Arid I want to know where on this devil-ridden planet you packed Tom off to, and where Marcia's gone! And then I want to know if there's a decent medical man anywhere in this damned backward dark-ages Utopia of yours!"

Frobisher's face swiftly lost its calm.

"Tom's wife?"

"And there's no need to talk smut!" Brian shouted, "Paula!"

"Paula Sandoval, then, if you like it better. What's the trouble?"

"I doubt if Vbu'd understand," Brian snapped, but Frobisher said sTe*fefiiy","I suppose it's the gravity sickness. Tom mentioned it before he left. It's easy to get hold of him. Destry—" He turned to the boy in the doorway. "Quick, go down and get the Center on the wire. Tell them to fly Mellen back here, inside an hour if they can. And—where's your father, Destry? This sounds like something for him."

Destry had disappeared inside his room while his grandfather was talking; almost instantly he came out again, stuffing his shirt into trousers. "He was in the Marilla Center last week, too," Destry said quickly, "but he's in Slayton now. And there's no regular transit plane there. Hey, Mr. Kearns—" He turned quickly to Brian. "You can fly the Homeward's plane now, can't you? Or shall we get Langdon? They'll fly Tom in from the Marilla Center, but we'll have to fly over and pick up my father."

"What the—what the hell—!" Brian started, but Destry was already hurrying down a flight of stairs. Hard Frobisher put a compulsive hand on Brian's shoulder and shoved him after the boy. Brian stumbled on the steps and blinked in the raw light of an electric arc-bulb. On a rough wood workbench, with Destry's notebooks and a few ordinary boy-type oddments, the stupefied Brian recognized what was unmistakably a radio transmitter. And not a simple one. Destry was already adjusting earphones and making a careful calibration of an instrument which looked handmade but incredibly delicate. He moved a key and said in a hurriea voice, "Marilla Center, please, second-class priority, personal. Hello —Betty? You've got a man in the Center working on radio? Mellen? That's the man. This is Destry Frobisher talking from Norten. Fly him over here—as fast as you can make it. His wife's ill—yes, I know, but it's a special case. Thanks—" A long pause. "Thanks again, but we'll manage. Look, Betty, I have to get Slayton. Clear the stations, will you?" Another pause, and he said, "My father. Why? Oh—thanks, Betty, thanks a lot. Tell them we'll bring a plane over there for him." He closed the key and ripped off the headphone, standing up, and Brian exploded again.

"Just what's going on?" he demanded. "What kind of a bluff have you people been putting up on us?"

"No bluff," Frobisher said calmly. "I've told you, all along, that we use science, in its proper place. I've tried to tell you, two or three times, but you always shouted at me and shut me up before I could explain. Tom Mellen has been working in one of the Centers for a month. Didn't you wonder why he wasn't worried about leaving Paula, in her state of health? He's known that if any serious complication developed, he'd be sent for right away." He turned and started toward the stairs. "Don't you realize this is the first time you've^ever shown the slightest personal concern for anyone or* anything?' Before this, you've been concerned jXfith scientific accomplishments for their own sake. Now* look, you can stand here staring like a brainless fool/or you can come with me to the Center to fetch my sori—Destry's father—who is one of the most skillful medical men in this section." As Brian stood stonestill, unable to move before the onslaught of ideas, Frobisher urgently took his arm. "Snap out of it!" he commanded harshly. "I can fly a plane, but I would hate to have to manage that jet of yours! And I'll have to come with you, because you don't know the way! Destry, you stay close to the radio, just in case," he added.        :-v

Brian, too dazedF%&"speak, stumbled with him across the dark fields toward tjie pickup, but by the time they reached it, his reactions %ere in operable condition; he climbed in at the controls, advised Frobisher to fasten a safety strap, put the pickup in the air, and listened intelligently to Frobisher's" instructions for reaching the place he called- Slayton Center. Then he turned his head.

"Look," he said grimly, "I'm a little stunned. Just what has been going on?"

Frobisher looked equally puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"All this—"

"Oh, this!" Frobisher dismissed it with a shrug. "You

had fire extinguishers on your spaceship, I remember.

Did you keep them but on your dinner tables, or did you

leave them out of* sight until they were needed in a

hurry?"                   4m**.\    *-

"I mean—you let me go on thinking that people here didn't know much about science—"

"Listen, Kearns," Frobisher said abruptly, "you've been jumping to conclusions all along. Now don't jump to another one, that we've been bluffing, and concealing our civilization from you. We live the way we like to live."

"But radio—planes—you have all those things, and yet—"

Frobisher said, with barely concealed disgust, "You have the Barbarian viewpoint, I see. Radio, for instance. We use it for emergency needs. The Barbarians used to listen to keep from doing things—I know, they even had radio with pictures, and used to sit and listen and look at other people doing things instead of doing them themselves. Of course, they had rather primitive lives—"

"Primitive!" Brian interrupted. "You have airplanes, and yet people walk—"

Frobisher said irritably, "Why not? Where is there to go in such a hurry—as long as we have fast transport for those few times when it is really necessary?"

"But even when the Starward left, each man had bis own private 'copter—"

"Private baby carriage!" Frobisher snorted. "When I go anywhere, I go on my feet like a man! Stupid, primitive Barbarians, living huddled in cities like big mechanical caves, never seeing the world they lived in, hidden away behind glass and steel and seeing their world on television screens and through airplane windows! And to make all those things they had to live huddled in their caves and do dirty smelly jobs with metal nuts and bolts, and never see what they were doing, never have any pride or skill—they hved like dirty animals! And what for? Mass men for mass production—to produce things they didn't need, to have money to buy other things they didn't need! Top-heavy brontosaurs! Who wants to live that way, or do that kind of work7 There are a few craftsmen who build airplanes, or design them, because that's what they would rather do, and they'd be unhappy if they couldn't. They're artisans. And we can always use a few planes. But there aren't many, so we keep the planes for necessary work. And most people Uke doing simpler things, things with personal satisfaction. We don't force them to mass-produce airplanes simply because it's possible!" He checked his vehemence with an almost apologetic cough. "I didn't mean to get angry—that's the Slayton Center down there. You can land inside that rectangle of lights."

Brian set the pickup down easily—it seemed to be rolling over a velvety carpet—and they got down and walked, in silence, across the darkly luxuriant grass, toward a low frame building of dark wood. Inside, by the warm glow of a fireplace, a man sat p.t a large table, lighted by an expertly rigged system of ;miniature spotlights, looking down at what appeared to be a large relief map. A headphone was on his ears; he glanced up as they came through the door, but motioned them into silence, listening intently, and after a moment groped blindly into a box fixed on the side of the desk and came out with a large black pin which he stabbed accurately into the relief map. "Tornado reported between Carney and Manila. All right, then, ring off and send Robinson up to put a bomb in the center of it before it hits the farms out that way." He replaced the headphone, and inquired courteously. MWhat .can I do for you gentlemen?"

"Hello, Halleck," Hard Frobisher said, and, advancing to the desk, shook hands with the man, "This is Brian Kearns—came in from space."

"Oh, are they still coming in, down your way? The last One we had here was in my grandfather's time," the man Halleck observed casually. "No, come to think of it, down there in Marilla they have a man called Mellen, been working the weather station. Do you know him, Mr. Kearns? I'm glad to meet you."

Brian murmured something noncommittal, and looked around, dazed. Halleck added, "I suppose you came to pick up Dr. Frobisher? He's on his way over. Won't you sit down?"

"Thanks." Frobisher sank down in a comfortable armchair, motioned Brian into another. The man at the desk hung up his headset and came to stand by Frobisher's

When do you come up

"Not for a month or so. You'll be off by then?"

"I should say so! I've a couple of good cows calving, and I want to be home."

"Those blacks?" Frobisher asked. "Drive a few through Norten some day, and we'll see if we can't make a deal. I could use a good bull, and there are some new families with children, could use a milk cow."

Brian didn't try to follow the conversation after that;

it seemed to be mostly about cows and the luck a mutual friend was having in breeding chickens which laid black-shelled eggs. Frobisher finally took pity on his blank face. "He's never been at a Center, before, Halleck," he told the stranger, who grinned. "Pretty dull, aren't they, Mr. Kearns? I'm always glad to come up here when it's time, but I'm always glad to get back to the farm."

Brian said, "I'm a little stunned at all this—" and added, "I'd understood your—your civilization wasn't scientific—"

"It isn't," Frobisher said sternly. "It definitely is not. We use science; it doesn't use us. Science, Mr. Keams, is no longer the plaything of powerful warmongers, nor is it enslaved to an artificial standard of living, keyed to an unhealthy, neurotic population who want to be continually amused, rocked in a cradle of overstimulation! It is not a plaything for pressure groups, so-called educators, fanatics, adolescents, egocentric exhibitionists, or lazy women! Men are no longer under pressure to buy the products of commercialized science to create employment and keep the cities running. Anyone who's interested, and who has talents and skills which go beyond day-to-day living, which is more than half of the population, spends a few months every year doing the things which need doing, not just in science. Halleck here knows more about weather conditions than anyone else in the South Plains. About four months out of the year, he sits over there, or works out in a weather plane, fighting tornados before they get started, working on reforestation, handling drought conditions. The rest of the year, he lives like anybody else. Everybody lives an easy, balanced life. Man's a small animal, and has to have a small horizon. There's a definite limit to his horizon, which is why a village breaks down and starts having internal trouble when it gets too big. But groups of people, as a whole, have to have some idea of the world over the horizon, if they're going to avoid the development of false ideas, superstitions and fears of strangers. So every man leads a secure, balanced life in the small horizon of his village, where he is responsible for himself, and responsible to every person he knows—and also, if he is capable, he lives a larger life beyond the village, working for others—but still and always for individuals, not for ideals." Brian opened his mouth to- speak,*but Frobisher quietly forestalled him. "And before he can work in the Centers, he has to prove himself as a responsible individual in the villages. There's a place waiting for you, Brian. How would you like to teach a course in the mechanics of interstellar space?"

"What?" Brian spluttered. "You mean—space travel?"

Frobisher laughed heartily. He glanced at his watch and said inconsequentially, "My son will probably be here in a few minutes—but still, I've time to explain—"

He turned to Brian again. "For two or three months a year," he reminded him. "There is always a use for knowledge, whether-Ave can use it immediately or not. Our present way^of life won't endure forever. At best it's an interim devjc%a probationary period, a sort of resting stage while rhán returns to sanity before he starts climbing again. Some day, man will probably take to space again; even the, stars, but this time, we hope he'll do it with a sense of perspective, counting the cost and weighing it against individual advantages." He paused, and added quietly, "I think he will."

After a long silence, he added, "I'm a historian. Back in the First Renaissance, man was starting to outgrow his atavistic notion about survival of the strong and powerful instead of the best. Then, unluckily for Europe, and also unluckily for the Redmen, the so-called New World was discovered. It's always easier to escape across a frontier, and drive your misfits out instead of learning to live with your problems. When that frontier was finally conquered, njan had. a second chance to learn to live with himseliaria with what he'd done. Instead, after wars and all kinds of trouble, he escaped again, this time to the planets. But he couldn't escape from himself —and eventually that frontier was filled up to the saturation point, too. So he escaped again, this time by launching the Starward—but that time he went just one step too far. And then the crash came. Every man had the choice: die in his armor, or take it off." He grinned. "I thought for a while, Brian, that you were a brontosaur."

Brian mopped his forehead. "I feel pretty extinct," he murmured.

"Well, you can try teaching interstellar mechanics for awhile. The rest of the time—"

"Say—" Brian interrupted anxiously. "I don't have to start right away, do I? I'm fixing up a new set of lenses for the crew—"

Frobisher laughed, heartily and kindly, and put a hand on his shoulder. "Take your own time, my boy. The stars won't be bridged again for centuries. It's a lot more important to get your crew's eyes in good condition again." He rose abruptly. "Good—here is John, and I suppose by now, Mellen's on his way to Paula."

Brian quickly got to his feet as a tall dark-haired man in a white jacket came into the room. Even in the dim light the resemblance to Frobisher was obvious; he looked like an older, maturer Destry. Frobisher introduced the men, and Dr. John Frobisher gave Brian's hand a quick, hand shake.

"Glad to meet you, Keams. Tom Mellen spoke about you, last time I was in Marilla. Shall we be on our way?" As they turned outward, and crossed the lighted airfield, he and his father spoke in low tones, and for once Brian had nothing to say. Even his thoughts were not working as he put the pickup in the air. The reversal had been too fast. Then, abruptly, a memory hit him and he turned his head around to ask sharply, "Listen here, if you can receive radio signals, how is it that no one answered the Homeward's call from space!"

Frobisher looked a trifle embarrassed. He said gently, at last, "We use a special, tight-beam transmission. Your signals are the old wide-band ones, and they came in as bursts of static."

For some reason Brian felt incredibly relieved, and his relief exploded in laughter.

"I told Tom our radio devices would be obsolete" . . . he choked.

"Yes," Frobisher said quietly. "Obsolete, only in a way you hadn't planned for. The whole crew of the Homeward was obsolete—and you've been on probation all along. But you've come out of that now, I think. Wait a bit—don't go on to Nörten just yet. Turn north—just a mile or two. There's something I want you to see." Brian protested, "Paula—"

John Frobisher leaned forward/"Mellen's wife—" and this time Brian did not bridle at the vulgarism, "—will be all right, Kearns. We don't get the gravity sickness very often, now, but any danger in it was knocked out even before the spacers quit running. The girl's probably uncomfortable, and it looks terrible, but it isn't dangerous. We'll have her fixed up within an hour."

And somehow Brian's anxiety slid away. The words didn't mean much to him, but his training had taught him one thing, at least; he recognized competence when he met it, and it was in every inflection of John Fro-bisher's voice.'Acquiescently he swung the ship to the northeast. The rismg sun broke in a wave of brightness over the horizon, revealing the far-away line of ruined buildings that looked down drearily over a too-flat strip of disjnal, barren land where nothing grew, a straight level plain of gray concrete. For miles it seemed to stretch away; Brian, flying low, could see the grass that pushed its way upward through the cmmbluig concrete, the dreary gap-windowed buildings softened a little by ivy. And then he saw them: eight tall regular shapes, straight and still gleaming a little. . . .

"There are only two laws in our culture," Frobisher

said quietly. "One is that no man shall enslave another.

And the second—" he paused, looking straight at Brian,

"—is that no man shall enslave himself. Which is why we

have never destroyed these ships. This was the old space-

port, Brian. Does it look very majestic? Would you care

tojand?"                           .

Brian lookea7 fhiiiking: this was what he had expected to see first. And yet, somehow, this was what seemed greatest to him: that man, having created this monster, should have the common sense to abandon its dreary domination—and the courage to leave it there. Men destroy only what they fear.

"Come on," Brian said steadily. "Quit riding me. Let's

get back home-------- and I do mean home. There's a sick

girl waiting for you, doctor. And even if it isn't dangerous,

they're going to be worrying until you tell them it isn't." Abruptly he gunned the jets and turned the ship southeast toward Norten Village, into the rising sun. He was not aware that he had passed the final test. He was thinking about Paula, and about Ellie, waiting and worrying. He knew in the back of his mind that he'd come back here some day, look around a little, maybe even mourn a little; you couldn't put away the biggest part of your life. But he wouldn't come right away. He had work to do.

The pickup of the Homeward flew away, into the morning. Yet behind them the mighty symbols remained, cold and masterful, a promise and a threat: eight great star-ships, covered from nose to tail with green-growing moss and red rust.

Willy Ley is well-known to anybody who has read much about rocketry. Since the 1920's he has been interested, actively, in rockets and space travel, and was an early member of the German Rocket Society, out of which Hitler got his major rocket scientists during World War II. But it was during the rise of Hitler that Mr. Ley decided that it might be better to leave his homeland and seek his fortune elsewhere.

In the years that followed, Mr. Ley has made himself nationally and internationally famous with his books on rocketry. He has done a series of small books for children, telling them of the secrets of rockets and space ships, of interplanetary travel. For years he has been doing a column for GALAXY MAGAZINE titled FOR YOUR INFORMATION. His book, THE CONQUEST OF SPACE was loosely adapted and made into the movie with the same name, produced by George Pal. He has been technical advisor for many movies and appeared in Walt Disney's MAN IN SPACE.

Like many of the authors here included, Mr. Ley has been a Guest of Honor at a science fiction convention, which reveals both his and the field's closeness.

The following is the only article to be presented in this volume. Because of his sober and intelligent outlook about the future, coupled with his extensive knowledge in matters of science and where science "might lead us, Mr. Ley is a natural choice to turn to for an,honest and logical look into ...

YOUR LffiFE INW1977"

by Willie Ley

Back in 1952 I took part in a television show which was given over to predicting the future. The producer wanted to look a quarter of a century ahead so that the target date was 1977. The show was to be unrehearsed, but I had been requested to bring some "visual material" along, so I came armed with photographs of the then newest rockets, with illustrations from books on space travel and, last but not least, half a dozen covers of science fiction magazines.

When I arrived at the studio I found that the producer's assistant had provided some more "visuals," consisting of more pictures, a toyshop "ray gun" and a few small open cardboard boxes of which he was especially proud. They were carefully labelled STEAK, CHICKEN, VEGETABLES and BOURBON and each box contained a handful of pills. I don't know what they really were, capsules against cold or something like that. He was greatly hurt when I called his exhibit nonsense and offered him the alternative of throwing his cardboard boxes into the wastepaper basket then and there, or have me make fun of his idea on the air.

Remember that the year was 1952. Many people had just realized that science existed in everyday life—and they thought that this was a very recent development— though they knew literally nothing about physics, chemistry, astronomy or biology. If they happened to know

why the engine of a motor car ran they probably considered themselves engineers. The foresjghtedness of these prophets added up to about the following picture: By 1977 all diseases will have been wiped out. Surgery will repair all injuries resulting* from accidents, provided only that the patient reached the hospital alive or just recently dead. Cities will be air-conditioned, not by the old-fashioned method of air-conditioning every building separately, but by placing a plastic dome—in some predictions it was a force field—over the whole city. Even in the country much of the weather will be under control.

Excursions to the moon, to Mars and to Venus, the prophets went on, will be commonplace by 1977. Don't worry about clo^um^vthe strictly utilitarian coveralls for both sexes will neither, wrinkle nor get dirty. And in cold weather, outside the dop^s °f ^e cities the coveralls will be heated electrically; and automatically. Don't worry about provisions either when you board your antipodal rocket;'you'll be able Jo carry a three-months supply of food pills in a small bag. . . .

If it sounds to you as if I am more than a little skeptical about these predictions you are judging my attitude correctly. The point is that new inventions, for example, are not always foreseeable. When the physics professor Dr. Konrad Röntgen stumbled across the X-rays he found something that had not been expected. Once the discovery had been made it was comparatively easy to predict what could be done with it. Or, to use a more recent example: the transistor came as a complete surprise to everybody engaged in electronics. A few physicists had fought .about doing things with so-called senu^conducto"rf~but even they were surprised by the result.

In addition to unforeseeable inventions, the life of the predictor is rendered difficult by the fact that even predictable innovations have to overcome two obstacles and it is very difficult to judge whether these obstacles will be overcome. Obstacle numero One is Tradition in the widest possible meaning of the word. Whether an innovation will be accepted in spite of an existing (and opposing) tradition is about as difficult to predict as the outcome of Russian roulette.

The second, and usually much more serious obstacle, is the capital invested in something that exists. In Great Britain they are driving on the left side of the street not just because it is traditional. Surveys aiming at conforming to the driving habits of most other and much bigger countries have been made, they ended up as a sheaf of typed paper nobody read because just converting the London buses to right side driving would cost a fortune. And most Europeans who have paid a visit to New York City come home and tell how easy it is to get around in Manhattan. If you are at Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street and are supposed to go to Eighth Avenue and 88th Street there is no doubt which direction you have to take. One can even judge the approximate distance with a little practice. But the Europeans are not going to tear down their cities for a grid plan; too much capital invested and too expensive to do. Even the massive bombings of the Second World War improved the city layouts in minor respects only. The above ground structures had been destroyed, but there was still the matter of existing sewers, underground cables and sometimes subways.

Of course I am the last man to say that there will be no changes in the future, I am merely trying to distinguish between likely and unlikely changes. The likely changes are either complete innovations which do not interfere (or not much) with existing capital investments, or they are changes in an area where changes are the rule. As an example of an innovation that did not interfere much with existing investments television might be quoted. It caught on like wildfire, but it did not replace radio, it did not replace the movies (even though Hollywood was shaken up for a while) and it has actually increased the sales of books. As an example of changes in a field where changes are the rule we have the fashion industry.

Fashions do change and sometimes they go in cycles. At the time that broadcast was made, American ladies sported dresses that were the equivalent of the crinolines of the Civil War period, improved by better fabrics, greatly reduced in weight and adapted for more physical activity. Except for cold areas—remembef that a Christmas outfit cannot be the same in'Miami and in Montreal —this adapted imitation of Civil War dress pointed a general trend: lighter fabrics, fewer layers of them and design for mobility. But just what the fashion will be in a given year farther in the future than five years away cannot be predicted, if only for the reason that the emphasis on different parts of the female anatomy is also subject to fashion. Considering a well-padded (what I mean is "fat") woman as beautiful is probably a thing of the past, especially since it is generally realized that fat is not a sign of good health. But in the course of time Cinderella's foot has been replaced by Jane Mansfield's breasts and fashion may well go back again,— after all a woman has .only a restricted number of parts. Which part fashiorf will feature I don't know, but I have no doubt that whatever fashion will do, it will be feminine. >

How about those enormously efficient wrinkle-proof and dirt-proof sexless coveralls? Sure they can be made and they will be made because they will be appropriate for some jobs. I expect them to be made in many bright colors for the purpose of identifying the wearer from a distance. But to think that they, even when brightly colored, could be accepted by the ladies as all-day apparel would be more than merely naive. At this point I am struck by the afterthought that they might come in as a fashion for a year or two, but if they do there will still be a difference between the on-the-job type and the fashion type. -s

During my%roadeast, an early printed version of this article reminds me, I made a prediction for 1977 which came true in 1964. I predicted then that the ladies might extend a color scheme into their own hair. "Fifty years ago," I said, any hair dye job was frowned upon, and most of them deserved it because they were so bad. Twenty-five years ago dyed hair was silently tolerated. Today nobody even asks. Twenty-five years from now, by means of dyes which can be sprayed on one day and simply washed out the next, milady may decide to spray her tresses to match the pale purple of her new evening slippers for a single night on the town."

Well, the fact is that these dyes exist now and that a woman can change her hair color for a special occasion. As far as I can tell it isn't done very often but that may be due to the fact that in the meantime wigs have come back into fashion, to be worn frankly as wigs and not to cover an unfortunate situation from which dermatologists have several terms quietly.

I continued then saying: as for the males who strive more for comfort than for radical changes in style, they may still wear long trousers all year round, but for summer the jacket may have been replaced completely by a dressy shirt." This isn't the case yet, but I am tempted to think that we won't have to wait for 1977 to see this prediction come true.

What about food? How will we eat in 1977? Will meals be different, dining habits changed, revolutionary diets in use? Well, if there is something that certainly will not be in use it is the food pill. Not because of tradition, not for reasons of expense but for very simple natural reasons that cannot be circumvented. A reasonably active man needs around 2Vi pounds of proteins (mainly meat) and carbohydrates (starches and sugar) per twenty-four hour period. If you tried to compress that you'd simply make it indigestible; it wouldn't be food anymore. But you can, if you insist, make pills out of it without compression. With a reasonable pill size this would make about 1000 pills per day you'd have to take; only slightly more tedious than counting newspapers or railroad cars ten hours a day!

One can, for use on expeditions and for similar purposes, make food concentrates, simply by selecting food items not containing anything inedible (like the bone in a steak) and one can even select items that produce very little residue. In fact for the last three years food chemists have been very busy along these lines, producing menus for orbital flight lasting up to two weeks (Project Gemini) and for the lunar expedition of Project Apollo. I have been handed samples of such "space food" and can testify that the lobster soup the Gemini astronauts will get is simply superb, even j£ it looks like shredded pink cardboard before^.water is" added. Something that might be called "spa£e bread" since it serves the purpose of bread is an elegafit concotion from the nutritional point of view but it has a sweetish taste I don't like. It isn't sweet enough to be called sweet, but its taste resembles neither cake nor bread. It comes in one-inch cubes wrapped in something that looks like cellophane. You don't need to unwrap it, the wrapper is edible, too.

But these are special applications which might find terrestrial use as hurry-up meals, say, during long trips. The normal leisurely meal will just be far better than it was in the past; "Better" does not mean "bigger" by any means; that thovJjfht is a hangover from by now long past times when overeating, was an ostentatious display of wealth. By better miate I mean two things: (1) meals which have the desirable balance of proteins, fats and carbohydrates (note..that the desirable balance is not the same for all climates) and (2) meals which offer a great choice, free of geographical and season restrictions. The introduction of airfreight has done wonders here, I can have a Maine lobster in Colorado Springs and a fresh mango in New York City. Both were impossible demands as recently as 1935. No, the meals of 1977 will not be pared down to a few concentrates, the menus will be even more varied than today,—but I absolutely refuse to make predictions about prices.

The director of a large corporation said recently that industry has now reached the point where they have stopped doubting*the.technical feasibility of a new idea. In other worWfhey^feel that anything anybody can think of can be built. Therefore, the speaker continued, they examine new ideas from two points of view only, namely whether it is practical and whether it will bring in a profit.

A device much talked about in the past, the "personal communicator" (Dick Tracy's wrist radio to those who don't write or read engineering reports) breaks down on point two. Of course it can be built but its general introduction would probably lead to general unhappiness. There just aren't enough wavelengths to accommodate personal communications for fifteen million people. The crowding is bad enough as it is. Scientists who fired rockets for upper atmosphere research from Fort Churchill in Canada told me that one day they had trouble with their own radio communications because they kept receiving messages from and for a fleet of radio cabs in a city in South Carolina. This, of course, was a freak event, but I recall the anaoyance of a cab driver in Washington D.C. who received the instructions of a laundry truck dispatcher and could not get his own messages through. Personal communicators will be fine in Antarctica and may have a place in Arizona or Alaska, but won't do any good between Boston and Washington D.C. on the East Coast, between San Francisco and San Diego on the West Coast or around the great lakes in the middle of the continent.

However, it is possible that a "personal alarm" device may be introduced, if the criminal element is still with us in 1977. That would be a small device, sending out an alarm radio signal on a wavelength reserved for this purpose. If a woman is attacked, or a man held up, squeezing a switch will inform all cruising police cars for two miles around.

Now we come to a problem which hasn't been touched yet, namely: how will we get around? Will we be driving a car of some type (possibly turbine powered) or a helicopter or what? A question like this has no general answer because the basic problem is not one of technology or of personal prosperity, it is the circumstances surrounding the would-be traveller. First one has to know: where do you live and where do you want to go?

Let's start at the point where all discussions of transportation must start today—the traffic jam. Traffic troubles are not caused by vehicles that move, but by those that stand still.

The problem is that every vehicle, at one time, has to come to rest and that takes care of the oft-repeated demand for a simple and preferably inexpensive helicopter that needs no more skill to operate than an automobile. To begin with the demand is unreasonable, a vehicle that can and does move in^thfee dimensions will need more operating skill than $ne moving in two dimensions only. But even a perfect helicopter would finally have to be parked and?; no matter how it is designed it will probably require a larger parking area than an automobile. And I don't believe that it will be more enjoyable cruising around looking for roof space than it is to cruise around looking for curb space. When cruising around in an automobile you at least don't have to worry about tangling rotor blades with another driver on the look out for parking space.

When it comes to city traffic I feel that the only real solution lies in^irntnating, by law, private transportation inside the cityT'This is what I mean: supposing you drew a line some distance outside the congested area. Beyond this line yoifcan travel in any manner you like, but vehicles must be left outside this line. From the line on inward you have tq proceed by public transportation, subways, buses and taxicabs: vehicles that keep moving all the time. In New York City, something quite similar to this idea has come about by force of circumstances: New Jersey commuters, if they use their cars, usually park them at the New Jersey end of the George Washington Bridge, take a bus across the bridge and proceed by subway or taxicab to their destination.

In the center of a new city that has been designed with this problem in mind, or in an existing city that can be adapted, there might be no wheeled vehicles at all. There the moving roadway is likely to take over, looking^, exactly like£aa escalator except that it moves along the same lever** Most "likely these roadways will have strips moving at different speeds. The outer strip would move at 8 feet per second which is a shade faster than 5 miles per hour. The next strip would move at the rate of 8 feet per second relative to the first strip and there might be a third which is another 8 feet per second faster. That third strip would move at a speed of 15 miles per hour relative to the stationary pavement and that is about as fast as you can get around in a city by car, even without traffic jams. Of course these moving roadways do not need to be at the surface; they probably will be underground so that rain will not inconvenience passenger and snow will not clog the mechanism. And they can be used, in off hours, for the delivery of merchandize as easily as for passenger transportation.

In short, the most important means for the movement of people and large quantities of merchandize in a future city is apt to remain the subway, but not the subway consisting of separate cars and separate trains. Close range commuting, say up to fifteen miles, will be mainly by trains of some sort, trains that run underground where there are no crossings and no traffic lights and where the probability of accidents is close to zero.

Trips to intermediate length, say above 50 and below 250 miles, are the most difficult phase to foresee. This is the range where the airplane is not practical because it needs airports that necessarily must be some distance from the center of a city. One possibility here is a really large two-rotor helicopter capable of carrying up to 100 passengers. Although its ground speed may not be faster than two miles a minute it will be able to beat even eight mile a minute airplanes because it can land and take off from terminals that can be much closer to the business center than normal airports. Helicopters would also be less hampered by bad weather, but such "heli-buses" would not solve the problem completely.

For such medium range trips something known but little used may come to the fore. Its prototype has been in action since 1900 between the two cities of Elberfeld and Barmen in West Germany. The two cities have grown together in the meantime and now bear the name of Wuppertal but the prototype is still in action. It is a true monorail with cars that do not run on a single rail like the monorails at various Fairs. The Wuppertal cars hang from a single rail that has a width of less than three inches. The rail is supported by girders that look like inverted Vs. Originally this suspension monorail was conceived by an engineer from Cologne because transportation for passengers was needed in an area where there was literally no room left on the ground. Even the river connecting the two cities was congested by heavy barge traffic. But there was room above the river, the Wupper, to give it its name. By placing the invated V's on the river banks an avenue of transportation was created which did not take space away from anything else.

The Wuppertal monorail is not fast because the stations are closely spaced and all of them are needed. And since it cannot, be fast the cars are propelled by electric motors that drive the wheels in the "bogies," the two-wheel housing which is the only part of the cars that is above the rail.

A monorail for longer distances would look and work differently. Of course the cars would be streamlined, in fact they would be bullet shaped. And the wheels in the bogies would.just.be supporting wheels that spin freely: propulsion would be by propeller. Over thirty years ago a Scottish engineer built just such a monorail in Glasgow. He was right, but?Mead of his time by too large a margin and his test structure was finally broken up for scrap. In his scheme propulsion was by propeller but the braking was up to the wheels in the bogies and critics pointed out (correctly) that this would be dangerous at high speeds, the wheel brakes would not act fast enough. The invention of the reversible propeller.

The advantage of a suspended monorail train with propeller drive is not just speed, though the speed may go up to 250 miles per hour on sufficiently long runs. There are many other advantages too. The supports of such a monorail do not take up much space on the ground and there can be a highway, a river or an ordinary railroad track for freight trains below them. More important, the cost of such a structure is far less than that ^fe^^Tailroad track where grading is needed, where hills have to be cut through and depressions have to be filled in. The monorail track overcomes all these difficulties by simply adjusting the length of the supporting girders. Moreover rain cannot form puddles on the single three-inch wide rail, snow cannot accumulate and even in the densest fog no other vehicle can possibly get in the way.

Travel beyond distances of 500 miles will stay air travel, even two fine airports 500 miles apart and the most expensive passenger jets add up to less investment that a 500-mile monorail.

Will the jets of 1977 be supersonic?

Sticking out my neck by less than six inches my answer is: only over the ocean. The trouble with a supersonic jet is that the "sonic boom" travels with it. Many people still bebeve that the sonic boom is a momentary phenomenon that takes place at the moment the plane "breaks through the sound barrier." The term itself is wrong, passing the speed of sound is done by military aircraft all over the planet many times every day and the pilot has to look at his instruments to find out whether he is travelling faster than sound or not. But when he does travel faster than sound the so-called Mach cone comes into being, it is an invisible cone trailing the aircraft and that trailing cone contains all the sound the aircraft makes. The pilot is unaware of it, but the people on the ground cannot help but be aware of it. Since all the sound produced is contained in the Mach cone that sound is exceptionally loud and powerful enough to break not only windows but flimsy walls. The formation of the Mach cone cannot be avoided and it will trail a supersonic airliner all the way from New York to Los Angeles. It will annoy everybody between these two points, though New Yorkers and Angelenos will not hear it, for the aircraft takes off much more slowly than the speed of sound and it is also slow when it comes in for a landing.

Supersonic transports probably will be restricted to ocean flights where the trailing Mach cone could be a very minor nuisance.

I said a short while ago that the formation of the Mach cone behind supersonic vehicles cannot be avoided. That sentence should be amended to read if the vehicle stays inside the atmosphere. But one does not have to stay inside the atmosphere, a passenger-carrying rocket would fly half an orbit, or a quarter orbit around the earth, outside the atmosphere where Mach cones do not exist. A passenger-carrying rocket would be a winged rocket with swept back or delta wings but it would still take off nearly vertically. Of course the take-off is noisy but the rocket port could be 30 jmiles from the center of a city, with a nice monorail connection. By the time a large rocket reached the speed where the Mach cone would form it is usually in atmospheric layers that are so attentuated that Mach cones don't happen anymore. And the Mach cone forming at re-entry is so high up that it probably would not reach the ground. Moreover it would be of short duration. For all these reasons, passenger-carrying rockets are a distinct possibility a decade or more in the future. There is hardly any doubt about technical feasibility and their practicability also seems more or less assured. Whether the passenger-carrying rocket can pass the third hurdle between design arid; introduction, namely whether it can show a profit, is 'something that cannot be foreseen now.

Will there be pasjsenger space travel in 1977?

The answer is a qualified yes, since by that time space travel will still be restricted to astronauts and qualified passengers, that is scientists and technicians with a reason for going through space. Astronomers and physicists en route to the base on the moon yes, sightseers no. (Or not yet.) The same applies to trips to orbiting manned space stations.

Well, that is what can be foreseen for 1977. That the world will be "better" from the point of view of material advances seems obvious. Whether it will also be a better world for people to live in peace and prosperity is something we cannot predict,—only hope!

"Fredric Brlftm- needs little introduction to either the science fiction reader or the mystery reader. His THE SCREAMING MIMI, a best selling mystery novel, appeared in movie form a few years back, several of his stories have appeared on television, and almost everything he has written has been printed throughout the world.

His fame as a writer of short-shorts (between 300-1000 words), has almost out-famed his reputation as a novelist, and has spread through the science fiction, mystery and men's magazine fields like an atomic fire.

Now we "know" that all the stories in this collection are "impossible." And here is Fredric Brown's story which demonstrates that they really are . . .

PREPOSTEROUS

by Fredrie Brown

Mr. WeatheMax buttered his toast carefully. His voice was firm. "My dear," he said, "I want it definitely understood that there shall be no more such trashy reading around this apartment."

"Yes, Jason. I did, not know—"

"Of course you didn't. But it is your responsibility to know what our son reads."

"I shall watch more closely, Jason. I did not see the magazine when he brought it in. I did not know it was here."

"Nor would I have known had I not, after I came in last night, accidentally happened to displace one of the pillows on the sofa. The periodical was hidden under it, and of course I glanced through it."

The points of Mr. Weatherwax's mustache quivered with indignation. "Such utterly ridiculous concepts, such impossibly wild ideas. Astounding Stories, indeed!"

He took^*Srp of his coffee to calm himself.

"Such inane and utterly preposterous tripe," he said. "Travel to other galaxies by means of space warps, whatever they are. Time machines, teleportation and telekinesis. Balderdash, sheer balderdash."

"My dear Jason," said his wife, this time with just the faintest touch of asperity, "I assure you I shall watch Gerald's reading closely hereafter. I fully agree with you."

"Thank you, my dear," Mr. Weatherwax said, more

kindly. "The minds of the young should not be poisoned by such wild imaginings."

He glanced at his watch and rose hastily, kissed his wife and left.

Outside the apartment door he stepped into the anti-gravity shaft and floated gently down two hundred-odd floors to street level where he was lucky enough to catch an atomcab immediately; "Moonport," he snapped to the robot driver, and then sat back and closed his eyes to catch the telepathecast. He'd hoped to catch a bulletin on the Fourth Martian War but it was only another routine report from Immortahty Center, so he quirtled.

Other books for your reading pleasure are:

Club Tycoon Sends Man To Moon by Felix Mendelsohn, Jr.

This time the author brings you a book so funny and so serious that you might die laughing.

CLUB TYCOON—$1 million entry fee! A tieless billionaire, a "ticker-tapeworm," a senator with a built-in stump, the world's greatest lecher and a homicidal steward ... These are the men who beat the United States and the Soviet Union in the race to the moon. A wonderfully gay spoof of the mighty... with a fascinating space age story-line.

Also recommended I*:                                                 ,     *

Planets for Sale

by k. E. Van Vogt

014

Other books recommended tor your reading enjoyment are:

THE BENCH IS WARPED by Alvin Gershenson..................................... 95$

SECRETS OF HANDICAPPING oy Bob Hebert...................................... 95$

IT PAYS TO STEAL by Maury Wills........................................................ 75$

KENNEDY AND BIG BUSINESS by Aiv.n Gershenson............................ 95$

CHICAGO, CITY OF SIN by John J. NLPhaul.......................................... 75$

THE STORY OF SYNANON by Daniel Casriel, M.D................................. 75$

THE DOTMAKERS by Frank Beaman................................................... 60$

WHODUNIT? HOLLYWOOD STYLE by Charles Nuetzel.......................... 75$

OVER MY DEAD BODY by Ftanklin Maytair.......................................... 50$

THE MARK OF PAK SAN Rl by William Stroup....................................... 50$

SOMEONE YOU MAY KNOW by William Konraad................................. 75$

TELEPHONE A-GO-GO, HOLLYWOOD WEST by Woodrow Olivetti. .75$

PLANETS FOR SALE by A. E. Van Vogt................................................. 50$

CLUB TYCOON SENDS MAN TO MOON by Felix Mendelsohn, Jr. .. 75$

BARNEY CROME by Felix Mendelsohn, Jr.......................................... 75$

KING TARICK by Sadik Adlai............................................................... 75$

These books may be purchased at your local bookstore or newsdealer. If they are not available, copies may be purchased by writing to:

Book Company of America 9171 Wilshire Blvd. Beverly Hills, California

Here is a series of Science Fiction stories by some of the top masters of the field, all taking a sober, close look at our world of today and asking what will happen "if this goes on?"

There is the machine which predicts all crime, and then suddenly predicts its own murder.

There are the humanity killers who would take over the world.

There is the world of no television and radio, a world where man finds himself thrown into a madhouse.

There is the intersteller flight which returns after many generations to find a world which has refected science in favor of art.

There is YOUR LIFE IN 1977, a close, realistic look into the near future, by Willy Ley.

IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS FOR YOU, IF YOU HAVE EVER ASKED, "WHERE IS THE WORLD GOING?" THIS BOOK HOLDS SOME OF THE ANSWERS, SOME OF THE POSSIBLE RESULTS OF MODERN DAY TRENDS WHICH COULD LEAD US TO UTOPIA OR HELL.