"I've done this all wrong—"

"Don't back down now. You're thirty and your own master in a lot of things, including this. I don't recall asking my father's permission when I got married, either. But I didn't spring it on him cold!"

"Look!" Horace felt red-faced and juvenile. "Let me explain. I've not even met her yet, don't even know her name. Her real name, that is. That's why I need time off. I've got a lot to do."

"Taking a lot for granted, too. How d'you know she's going to give you a second look?"

"I refuse to think about that. I intend to meet her, get to know her, and then—then—"

"All right," the old man gruffed in his throat. "That'll do. No need to tell me any more. Here"—he grabbed the memo, scribbled on it—"that's the simple bit. Made provision for your office work?"

"My secretary can handle anything routine. I've instructed her to pass anything unusual along to Forbes, or even to you."

"All right, go ahead and make a fool of yourself. Come back when you're ready to invite me to the wedding. There's a lot more I could say, and you know it, but well leave it there."

Horace went thankfully. He knew only too well there was a lot more that might have been said. For all its democratic appearance, McCool Financing was very much the property and possession of one man, old Alexander, and he, Horace, was the only son and heir. He knew the business inside and out, had brought to it a flair for being able to pick those lines of new endeavor that would benefit most from an injection of capital, and was in many ways indispensable by now. But, for the first time in his life, his eye and mind were full of a certain lithe and lively shape, with snapping rhythm and fluid grace, flame-red curls, blazing blue eyes and a voice that brought cold shivers to a nervous system hitherto under complete self-control. How to explain all that to his father? He was glad to escape without having to.

Left alone in the conference room the old man scowled into space. "Damn young fool," he muttered. "That's no way to do it." His wrist-phone bleated at him and he answered it snappishly.

"Forbes here," it said briskly. "Those up-to-date figures on the new hovercraft development—"

"Forget them. Listen. Who is Mr. Horace's personal secretary right now?"

After a ten-second pause the voice stated, "A Miss Home."

"I want her full dossier in my office at once, and I'll see her as soon as Mr. Horace has left the building.

Fifteen minutes later he looked up from the dossier as she entered his office and waited. The stare did not reassure him. She was butter-blonde beautiful, twenty-four, and even her silver-gray hip-length smock and matching skintights— her formal office wear—could do little to diminish her outrageous curves. And, from her dossier, she was the only daughter of a Midwest sanitary engineering millionaire. He prepared to do battle with her.

"Sit down," he invited. "I've been looking you up. You've come up in the business fast. Ability. Good record. A work-

"Thank you, sir."

"I'm curious. With your background and looks, why work at all?"

"That's easy." Her smile went away. "My mother didn't want me to do anything at all. My father didn't think I knew how. Nobody would believe I was any good for anything except to be looked at, and someday get married to some suitable man. So I decided to show them!"

"Why not in your father's business?"

"That wouldn't have proved anything, would it?"

"I see." The old man concealed his wince at this personal shot. He revised his first estimate swiftly. This girl was not the object of his son's amours, though she might well have been. And she had backbone, some initiative. He nodded to himself.

"My son has warned you that he will be far away from business for some time, I take it? Very well, I have a commission for you. I'll be frank. I've reason to believe some woman has got her hooks into Horace. I want you to find out who, and then everything you can about her."

"But that is hardly my business, sir. A spy?"

"You're a McCooi employee, Miss Home. Your first loyalty is to the firm. You must see that this can be very important. The wrong kind of woman could ruin him, and do the business a great deal of harm."

"I suppose so—"

"That's settled, then. You'll be replaced. You'll have authority to command all our resources. Keep me informed."

She went away slightly confused, but with one conviction, one she had decided not to pass on. She felt sure she knew

who the woman was, and that knowledge, she felt equally certain, could be used to her own advantage. Back in her office she settled down to think out just how, to make plans, to check back, mentally, to a moment three weeks ago, .in her official lunch hour.

Like so many more, she had her own portable Magic Box. The Trippers' latest tape had come in the mail that morning, direct from the publishers. So, in the security of her lunch hour, she had settled down to listen to it. And, of course, Horace McCool had come in unexpectedly and caught her at it. "Caught" was the operative word, because once you were tuned in to Magic Box you were out of this world altogether. The first she knew was when she lifted off the darkened goggles with a sigh of satisfaction and saw him standing there watching her.

"I'm surprised at you, Miss Home." he said, with just the hint of emphasis on the "you," and a tone full of condescension.

"It is my lunch hour," she told him, rather tartly.

"I was not suggesting that you were wasting the firm's time, Miss Home, only your own. On that rubbish."

"Rubbish?" Her indignation overcame her official discretion. There were other jobs to be had. "Rubbish? Have you ever heard a trip-tape?"

"Certainly not. I prefer to listen to real music properly played over quality equipment!"

"I seel" She knew she was too far gone now to back down, so let him have it completely. "In fact, then, you don't know what you are talking about, do you, Mr. McCool?" And she started replacing the equipment in its box, prepared for instant dismissal. But he had hesitated.

"One moment, Miss Home. I like to think myself a reasonable person. Convince me that I am wrong and I will admit it."

She dwelt on that moment now. She had helped him into the gear, the mask-goggles that were blackened outside and inner-lined with three-dimensional full-color holograph screens, with the ear-hooks that carried solid-state micro-sized loudspeakers to feed the sounds right into your head by bone-conduction. Then the ear-plugs to shut of the outside world. And then plug in the current, drop in the cartridge, and he was off, wrapped in sound, movement, light and color. A psychedelic, out-of-this-world trip, but minus the dubious chemistry. And it had been a three-minute shock for him. She knew by the way his hands had clamped on to his chair. 8

Then, when it was over, she had helped him off with the goggles and waited a sympathetic moment before putting him to the question. After all, she thought, all he had ever heard previously was old-fashioned multi-track stuff from loudspeakers arranged about a room. This was different.

"Well?" she demanded, after he had done gasping and blinking. "You still think it's rubbish?"

"It's impressive." His voice sounded rusty, as if¹ from disuse. "All that depth of sound. And the effects are almost hypnotic. But," and he struggled for recovery of stature, "hardly original, after all. What's the title? 'Some Far Star.' I see. Rather freely based on the first movement of Hoist's "Planet Suite.' Very ambitious for a bunch of youngsters. I don't wonder you were impressed, Miss Home."

"Oh well." She started again to pack the gear away in the box lid. "We all have our own standards, I suppose."

"I have admitted to being impressed," he murmured. "What more do you want? Tell me, Miss Home, are they all like that? Those tapes?"

"More or less. That was The Trippers, of course, and they are the utter most. The other groups—The Smash, The Golden Boys, the Mad Moonsters, lots of others—they aren't in the same class."

"And that girl? Is she part of that group?"

Something about his voice had alerted her ear. She had learned to be sensitive to nuances like that.

"Yum-Yum? She always sings and dances with The Trippers."

"What's her real name?"

"No one knows." At his snort of disbelief she retorted sharply, "That's the truth. The Trippers are Jim, Jem, and Johnny, and she is just Yum-Yum, and that's all. That's the way they like it."

"But someone must know their real identities, surely?"

"No, they don't," she assured him. "Look, they have only once ever been interviewed on TV, over a year ago, and it was Johnny who said then, for all of them, "We're just performers. If the kids like what we do in public, that's fine. But what we do in private stays private. That's the way we want it.' And that's the way it is."

"But surely," he argued, "these people thrive on publicity?"

"Professionally, yes. But I have a private life, Mr. McCool. So do you. Why shouldn't they?" She was tempted to refer him to the Beatles of ancient fame, and what publicity had done to their private' lives, but there was a glint in his eye that kept her quiet and curious.

"I'm intrigued," he admitted. "I wish to know more. After all, McCool Financing is communication, and this is a form of communication, too. So, you will procure for me some equipment like this, and a supply of recordings. Particularly of this group and that girl."

That nuance again. That girl. Miss Home nodded to herself. So far, so good. The old man, of course, would be horrified if and when he found out. His only son falling for a go-go girl! But that was his problem. Miss Home had one of her own. Although twenty-four and hardly a teeny-bopper any longer, nevertheless she had never outgrown her first and soul-consuming infatuation for Jim. Right from the very first moment, long before the hot group had stormed their way to the top of the charts, she had been utterly lost to Jim. As she had told McCool, she knew only that brief monosyllable to identify him, but she also knew every trick of his tall, lean, restless style, his red-blond curly hair, gorgeous green eyes, his deft daring with guitar strings—and she choked up all over again every time she met his devilish grin. Five years of devotion in hopelessness.

But now the slow bum of hope. Millions of other girls were just as crazy about The Trippers as she was. But they didn't have Horace McCool on their side. And she knew McCool well enough. Stiff-stilted and aloof he might be, but he was a go-getter when he got his sights on something. And if he was setting his sights on Yum-Yum, then there was hope, hope that she, camping on Horace's trail, with the full resources of McCool Financing baoking her, might get within touching, speaking, personal contact distance of her precious Jim. The thought was enough to make her head swim, but she thrust the emotions sternly aside and settled herself to make plans.

The atmosphere in the little boutique was just a shade more frantic than usual this morning, salesgirls scurrying eagerly to advise the clientele on color and texture, smiling their nicest smiles, and praying that the presence in the back room would find everything just so. This was Boutique Elegante, the original mother-store from which a whole thriving chain had fissioned off, each carrying with it the Midas touch of Miss Eleanor Grant, owner and founder. She was in the back room now, closeted with the store manageress.

Perched on a stool, wrapped in a black fur cape, with black close-hugging hat, darkened glasses, and dark veil, she looked like some frail bird, yet managed without moving to radiate room-filling tension. All her attention was on the 10 book opened in her lap as she scanned the neat rows of figures. When she closed the book, put it aside and slipped down from the stool, one realized all over again just how tall she was, and not at all frail.

"The accounts are fine, Alice," she said, very quietly. "You're doing fine here. Ever get ambitions about a place of your own?"

"I've thought about it, of course. But it would be a gamble, and I haven't the capital to invest in the best machines. Then there's the real estate problem. And—loyalty, too, Miss Grant. After all, you've taught me all I know."

"With a reason, nothing to do with loyalty. It's a poor business that can't stand a bit of competition. Believe me, you're free any time to set up on your own, and no hard feelings. But there's maybe a better way. Like this." She clicked open her bag and produced a folded sheet. "This is a list of promising areas, surveyed and worked out by my lawyers, indicated by research as the best places for a new store. Take it, look it over, and when you see an area you fancy, go and take a look at it in person."

"You mean you're opening a new store?"

"No. You are opening it for me. This way. First you select your spot, make up your mind about it. Then you take on a new girl here to keep up the strength. Pick a good one, using your own experience. Start training up Yvonne to take over from you when the time comes. Right? Then, when you are all set, contact the lawyers mentioned here. Drew and Meredith. They'll handle the finances for you. You'll be supplied with the site, the establishment, stock and new machines, the very latest up-to-date tapes. You'll have to hire and train your own staff. Do not try to lure away staff from my other stores, please. Apart from that, you'll be in complete charge."

"But—" Alice struggled for breath. "I'll never be able to pay off the debt to you I"

"You will. You'll have my machines, materials and designs. You'll be on the same salary you're getting now, which will come out of profits, the balance going to repay the debt. On previous form you should be clear in about six months, unless I am very much mistaken in you. From then on you take fifty percent of everything the store makes, after expenses."

"Fifty percent?"

"Right. Even split. Partnership. There'll be a formal contract for that, when the time comes. All my other boutiques

work the same way. Use your head and in a couple of years or so you'll be rich."

Miss Grant chuckled, and just for a moment Alice had the uncanny feeling that here was a girl, rather than the enigmatic middle-aged owner of the most thriving fashion business in the country. Then the quiet, slightly acid voice came again and the illusion vanished.

"Think it over. Let the lawyers know when you've decided."

"I don't know how to thank you, Miss Grant."

"No need. Just make it a success, make lots of money for both of us. Goodbye now." And Miss Grant stalked off through the store and went out to hail a cab.

At about that same moment, in another part of the city, Mr. James Nelson rose to address an informal gathering in the inner office of Magic Box Incorporated. On the table sat a current model Magic Box portable, outwardly indistinguishable from any on sale anywhere. Ranged around the table were various employees from all sections of the business. On Nelson's right sat Herbert Wilby, in charge of sales; on his left were Peter Jacks and Sam Crossley, responsible for production. The rest were from assembly, showroom, packing and other places.

"We agree then," Nelson said, "that the new circuitry is a distinct improvement, is better on the red values, imposes no additional battery load, and no extra problems on replacement and maintenance?"

There were nods and murmurs all around the table, except from Wilby. Ignoring him for the moment, Nelson went on: "All right, we incorporate the modification into all models as soon as Mr. Jacks and Mr. Crossley can set it up. Thank you for your trouble. What, Herbert?"

"Look!" Wilby pleaded. "Can't we just run a little two-line puff on it, let the customers know they are getting something extra?"

"No, Herbert." Nelson was quiet but firm. "I've told you before, we are selling all we can make right now. No point in building up a bigger demand than we already have."

"But we can increase production. Expand!"

"No, Herbert." Nelson sat, almost slumping. "You don't seem to get it, even after all this time. You're stuck in this notion that we have to grow all the time. It's a myth, a dangerous myth, this spending more money to make more money to have more money to spend making more money. You just forget it. We will go on making our quota per month, and selling them, and improving them, and keeping the 12 price as it is—or I will get somebody else to take charge of sales, all right?"

Wilby went away glumly. Crossley grinned and followed him. Jacks lingered, also grinning. "He can't help it, Mr. Nelson. It's just the way his mind works."

"What's on your mind, Peter?"

"New stuff coming up. Block-circuit designs. And that acoustic oscillator technique looks like it might be something."

"And I'm going off on my vacation; I know. So what? You know the form just as well as I do, Peter. And you're in charge."

"All right." Jacks shrugged uncomfortably. "I guess I shouldn't have asked. Hey!" He started suddenly and stuck a hand into his inside pocket. "I almost forgot this. Radiogram from the Lunar assignment. Everything complete and in GO order as per instructions."

Nelson snatched for the memo, to scan it intently, and in that moment Jacks had the strange sensation that his boss was choking back a shout of childish glee. He grinned in embarrassed sympathy. "That's a good one to have over," he commented. "We get some wild ones for our special section but that beats all. Now all we have to do is collect."

"Hmm?" Nelson looked up from his reading. "Collect?"

"Sure. Anybody who is crazy enough to acquire an old abandoned star-shot ship in the first place must be a bit bent-headed. But wanting it all fixed up as if it were actually going out to wherever—I only hope he has the loot to back his notes, that's all."

"It'll be paid." Nelson folded the memo and tucked it away. "I'll see to that part of it. You just see to it that the boys get the bonus as arranged when they get back from Lunar Base. And don't worry if my vacation runs a bit longer than usual this rime. This calls for a celebration."

Jacks went out slowly, warmed by the confidence in his ability, but intrigued all over again by the peculiar personality of his boss. Peter Jacks had been in electronics all his thirty years of working life, and was man enough to admit to anybody that James Nelson was one very smart man. A genius, with an intuitive grasp of techniques and principles and a way of seeing new twists and making them look obvious afterward. But an oddball.

Five years ago, no one had heard of him. Now here he was, manager-owner of Magic Box Incorporated, outselling all the competition in sight, constantly refining and improving his products, branching out on all sides into every possible

field of electronic gadgetry, gilding everything, yet treating all his working staff as equals and partners. And, with all that, so self-effacing and mild that still no one had heard of him, apart from a select few high in the same field. A queer one, but a good guy to work for, beyond all doubt.

In yet another part of the city, three men sat in a dim-lit luxurious salon, two listening while the third played his most recent composition on a piano. The man at the piano, Benny Green, delivered everything he had to the savage beat and dancing trills, knowing that he had something good, and determined to sell it. Over the piano top he could see Farrel Tillet, the man he was trying to sell to, the head buyer for Howard Music Incorporated. It was said that if you couldn't get it from HMI, either on tape, wire, disc or in print, it wasn't music. It was also said that if you could sell to HMI you were in. Benny played as never before. Tillet seemed to be half asleep. The third man sat away to the far left, in a corner, and said nothing.

As the last crashing chords shivered into silence Benny let himself relax by stages, keeping his eye on Tillet. After several seconds he ventured, "Of course, Mr. Tillet, you don't get the full effect on an ordinary piano. That's just the frame, you might say. With a rhythm backing, some brass even, and then the action—"

"That's all taken into account." Tillet stirred and sat up. "It seems to me I've heard it, or something like it, before."

"Oh no!" Benny was aghast and emphatic. "That's original, Mr. Tillet."

"I'm sure you think so, but that's no guarantee. One of my functions, Mr. Green, is to remember anything and everything I've heard. Play me the basic theme again, please!"

"A moment, Tillet." The third man stirred now and came forward. He was tall, lean, catlike in movement and with a set smile and oddly bright eyes. He went to stand by the keyboard, leaned over, whistled soundlessly a moment, then nodded. "It's almost Mozart. This, Tillet?" and he whistled a string of notes not quite what Green had played. Tillet snapped his fingers.

"Of course. Almost note for note. What do you think, sir?"

"I think we can try this. Excuse me, Mr Green." The sheet of music came back to the stand and Benny stared at it.

"Upside down?"

"Right. Try playing it that way, just to see." Benny hesitated, but both men seemed serious. He peered, 14 studied the new shape, fingered a key or two, then played. After a bar or two he opened his eyes wide, settled into the rhythm, sketched in a left-hand variation to match and began to enjoy himself. At the conclusion he stared up at the third man and shook his head. "That's quite a trick. What made you think of it? That's a whole new piece!"

"Oldest trick in the business. Mozart himself did it, also Beethoven, Bach, many of the old-time composers. I think we have something there now, eh, Tillet?"

"Oh yes, undoubtedly. This could be one for The Golden Boys."

"Just as you say, Tillet. Carry on with it." "But," Benny put in, hesitantly, "how about The Trippers?"

"Afraid not." Tillet shook his head. "They very seldom touch outside numbers. They write their own. The Golden Boys are well up in the charts, Green. They will carry this very well for you."

"All right." Benny shrugged, then beamed. "What am I saying? This is great, Mr. Tillet. I've sold! But"—he shifted his gaze to the stranger—"you practically wrote this for me."

"That's all right. You'll work on it a lot yet." The stranger shot his arm out, glanced at his wrist, nodded to Tillet. "Well, that's it. You have the recording session all fixed for Wednesday, for The Trippers?"

"Yes, it's all set up. I have booked the Irving Dancers this time, and we have some new Colortron sequences to try out. You won't be here?"

"No, sorry. I shall be away for some time. You'll be able to carry on, Tillet. You know what to do."

"Who was that?" Benny demanded, as the tall stranger disappeared through a far door. "Some highbrow composer or something?"

"That," Tillet said gravely, "was Mr. Howard himself. He sometimes comes in on a listening session. I don't think he's a composer, but he certainly knows music. You're very fortunate even to have seen him. He doesn't show very often."

"The boss himself!"

"Yes. And, you know, he loathes this kind of stuff. So do I, come to that. But, as he himself says, if it sells . . . Now then, when can you be free to work out a session with The Golden Boys?"

If there was some doubt as to whether the manager-owner of HMI was a composer, there was no possible shadow

of doubt whatever about John York. In the eyes of the avante-garde, the lunatic fringe, the far-out followers of everything "new" and "significant" in the arts, John York was famous as the everything-composer. It follows as the night the day that to the remaining ninety-nine point nine percent of the general public he was utterly unknown. Neither aspect bothered him just now. At the keyboard of his limitlessly versatile electronic organ, his whole attention was on the flickering images on the curved screen in front and away to his left, on the wall. By his elbow was a button that would stop the spinning video-tape if necessary. All the rest of him, fingers, feet, eyes and mind, worked in gestalt.

The studio, a vast low-ceilinged barn of a room, was deserted. Foam-paneled walls absorbed the oceanic sounds that flooded the room, miming the effect of a close-packed audience in a theater. The air reverberated to a cornucopia of sound, but none of it escaped to trouble the outside world. In this enclave, this bam that comprised the entire ground floor of an outwardly dingy and neglected old building, York was in a world of his own, helping to create a world of novelty.

In the small, tastefully furnished outer office sat Miss Threep, receptionist and guardian of the creator's privacy. A helmet suspended from the ceiling enveloped her head, rendered her the in-the-round pictures York was working from, brought her the magic sounds he was creating to fit. For this privilege alone she would have freely devoted her working life. The fact that she was paid, also a handsome salary, merely to keep the world out, added bliss to her status, made her the happiest woman alive, and ensured her utter devotion to the muse.

The screen shimmered with movement and color, galloping symbols, hot conflict and fervent harmony all interlaced in a pictorial version of the story of Mankind. In discussion, several months ago, Corby Lasher, ballet-master and choreographer extraordinaire, had complained of the need for a "big" theme, a master-work. Something timeless, as fundamental as the eternal conflict between good and evil. And York had commented, "With Man in the middle. Just intelligent enough to be a menace, fouling everything up."

It had caught Lasher's imagination. "Profound. Very profound I But could you get that into a melodic line?"

"I can try. I'll work on it."

So York had worked on it, a simple leitmotif with something of strut and swagger, something of the falling-down 16 clown, yet with distant and sinister hints of evil. He added a jerky swaggering sketch-background, and a steady drumbeat undertone, and sent it to Lasher. Now he was watching the completed visual that the choreographer had built up around that slender thread. He had done well. The symbol-lism was stark enough to strike the slowest intellect, yet loaded with subtle touches. The conflicting armies, for instance, were teams of skilled dancers, the men in skintight gold with trailing plumes and manes—the steeds; and the riders were women, nudes in spray-on skin tint, white for the super-ego, black for the id, and crazy rainbow tints for Man the stupid. They wore high boots and helmets bravely, they managed their prancing steeds, they marched and counter-marched, and fought, brute force guided by delicacy and emotion.

The white army showed steady discipline, relentless drive, dedication to the onward-and-upward aims of logic and intelligence. The army of the dark id was sinister, cunning, curving and distracting, breaking up and hampering the march of progress by employing the as-yet unfathomed powers of the unconscious and the void. And running between, underfoot to dislocate and confuse, to make nonsense of everything and strut in clownish ape-like conceit, was Man the problem-child. Leering, stopping to hog the limelight, falling over his own feet, pouncing gleefully on the wrong side and hastening his own undoing, then arguing belligerently with his own leaders. Cruel, stupid, brutish—yet occasionally brilliant and inspired, almost inadvertently. It was all there in the exquisite movements of the dancers and the swirling colors. Lasher had done well. His camera team had done wonders. It would be even better on holograph-round, and with the full score that York was now pulling out of his instrument.

The keys yielded trumpet-blasts and the clash of steel, the growl of hard-pressed man and beast, the shrill scream of agony and death over the steadily driving tramp of onward progress, but here and there through it all the shivering approach to the very edge of discord, the sniggering neigh of moronic glee as Man the cosmic clown inserted his monkey-like finger and pushed the wrong button. The final fade-in scene showed a solitary rainbow figure standing flat-footed and apparendy unaware of the onrushing armies to either side. From somewhere it had acquired a tinsel crown. Now it took off the bauble and stared at it admiringly, using its other hand to scratch its belly. Darkening, the screen showed the black and white forces charging in.

York hit the cut-off button with his elbow, swept a hand to clear his keyboard, leaned back and mopped at his brow with a tissue. Lasher had set him a devil of a standard to match, but that was fine, was a challenge, a chance to really stretch himself.

"How many people will ever see it?" he asked the silence around him. "And of them, how many will understand? And who cares, anyway?" A small green light winked at him for attention, and he grinned. Here was one who did. He touched the accept button.

"You heard, Threep?"

"Oh yes I" Her reply shook with emotion. "It was marvelous, the best thing you've ever done."

"And the last, for a while anyway. I daren't do anything more to it—I'll only spoil it—so I'm leaving it just as is. And I'm taking a rest for a while, a few weeks. One can't keep on, you know."

"Quite right, Mr. York. You just leave everything to me."

"I know I can do that safely, Threep. I can trust you."

"Shall I send the master-tape to Mr. Lasher?"

"Certainly not. Let him worry. Keep it until he asks about it and then tell him I am working like a slave on the final touches; wait a day or two, and then send it."

"I will. I'm sure nobody realizes just how hard you work, Mr. York. You deserve a rest."

"Thank you, my faithful. That's it, then. I'll see you again, some time. Goodbye now."

He broke the link and let his shoulders sag for a moment. Then he put a slim hand to his sleek fair hair, grinned a grin that was ten years younger than his apparent age, and peeled off the wig, the pale eyebrows, the fine wisp of affected beard, and shook his head to free a thick mop of jet black hair. Those trimmings, and his loose amber smock, went into a drawer, and with them went the eccentric, the notorious John York. In slacks and a white sweatshirt he went away from his instrument across the echoing silence of the studio to a far corner, to open a door and step into a tiny elevator. Seconds later he was stepping out into another room, every bit as big and barn-like as the one he had left far below. But this one was cluttered with every imaginable kind of popular musical instrument; from the center of the ceiling dangled the orb of a Colortron, spinning slowly now and bathing the room with swirling colors; over in one corner an auto-drum shivered the air with a heady combination of tango and cha-cha, rendered by bass drum, snare drum, cymbal and tom-tom. Over, under and through the beat came 18 the rush and tremble of plucked strings. Two intent people squatted on the glossy floor opposite each other, each intent on his guitar-like instrument. They seemed to toss the burgeoning melody to and fro between them, each adding and modifying a note or a phrase, improving, polishing, creating.

York went on past them with no more than a casual gesture of his hand, to the percussion set which filled one corner alongside the auto-drum. He sat, took up sticks, wriggled a time or two to get comfortable, cocked his head to listen, to get the timing; then, simultaneously, he trod on the switch to cut out the machine and caught the effect with his sticks.

To the left of the group a distant door slid open and a slim figure came through and straight on into the room, shedding black wrap and hat, veil, glasses, skirt and blouse, so that by the time she reached the center, under the Color-tron globe, she had on only an all-over sheer black body-stocking. Snapping her fingers, shaking her vivid ginger mop of curls, she took two to get the beat, then launched herself into a twisting, stamping, writhing interpretation of the music. The Trippers were in session, complete with Yum-Yum.

As the big cymbal's shattering vibrations quivered away into silence, ending the number, Yum-Yum held her arm-upthrust pose for a single breath, then seemed to melt, and dwindle, and folded to the floor in a squatting heap. To Johnny she said, breathlessly, "That was great. New, isn't it? Any words?"

"Don't look at me." The drummer racked his sticks and spun once on his stool slowly. "These two were working it out as I came in. Better ask them which one stole it from old Wolfgang Amadeus."

Jem the golden-haired raised a confessional palm and said in a shrill piping voice, "I cannot lie. It was I." In his normal tones he added, "It was Mozart, too. No matter how you

cut it, you can't disguise the maestro. But I didn't steal it. That was Benny Green." "Bit advanced, for him?"

"No. Pure accident, Yummy. He thought it was original."

"Nice music anyway," Jim commented, tickling his strings and listening to the delicate sprays of harmony. "For us?"

"I gave it to The Golden Boys. They can do with a new number." Jem laid his instrument aside, slid forward. Jim did the same. Johnny came to join them, and, by unspoken intent, all four were squatting in a circle on the floor facing each other. Yum-Yum flexed her shoulders, then slumped.

"Roll on vacation. This double life is aging me fast. Three more shows, isn't it?" This to Jem, who was the businesslike one of the group, for all his irrepressible clowning.

"Right!" he told her, dropping his voice deep. "Tonight; Wednesday, with a recording session in the afternoon; and Friday. Then it's up, up and away to where yonder moon gleams silver in the sky of blue."

Jim objected instantly. "You can't have a silvery moon and a blue sky at the same time. Not that it matters. We'll be going a lot further than the moon, this time."

As he spoke there came an instant of crackling tension; then Johnny looked at him, pale face serious, brown eyes glowing. "You mean, it's all set, at last?"

"Right. Everything is GO. I had the word just as I was coming here. We are going to make our first deadline."

"Ugh!" Jem grunted. "That heap good news. Chief Hot-Wire in Pants. Big feather in capl"

"Wow!" Yum-Yum let out all her breath in a heartfelt shout. "We made it! We made it, at last!"

"What d'you mean, we made it?" Jim challenged her. "I'm the one who made it work and don't you forget it."

"Oh you!" she scorned. "Just wait till something goes wrong with the drains or something, we'll remind you!"

"Drains?" he yelled, and without warning brought his hand around in level palm-chop at her middle. She saw it coming barely in time to hurl herself away, but not fast enough to avoid the blow entirely. The thud brought a yell. She rolled over, came up cat-like and launched herself at him. Jim sprang away to one side and pounced on her as she skidded by. The pair of them went rolling over and over on the floor like two sparring puppies.

"We're all cleared to leave?" Johnny queried of Jem. "No last minute snags in the financial side?"

"Shouldn't be any trouble. Drew and Meredith will han-20 die it. I'll check with old Buzz though, just to make sure. Won't take a minute."

He rose and went away to a far comer of the studio, carefully stepping over the struggling Jim and Yum-Yum as he moved. There, on a visor-phone that was not listed in any directory, and which the telephone companies themselves knew nothing about, he managed to get through to his older brother, financial advisor to the firm of Drew and Meredith. Alastair Howard knew very little about the brother who was fifteen years his junior, and almost nothing about anything else, but he did know money. In some not-understood fashion he had a gift for knowing what it was doing and what it was going to do next. Drew and Meredith paid him a large salary to keep them advised, and he was worth ten times that in terms of their solid reputation for integrity.

Left alone for a moment, Johnny sat quite still, his lean ascetic face calm, his memory turning inward and back ten years. In a room something like this, equally big but falling into decay, the last abandoned fabric of a disused grain-silo out on the edge of the small town where they lived, four children gathered, three boys and a girl. The year was nineteen seventy-one, and they were eleven years old, all four. Already their differences had culled them from the main crop of village children, had brought them together as odd ones, not like the rest. It had been hardest of all for Nell, he mused, to realize that she was different from ordinary. Yet it was she who had put the difference into words, not long after the four had begun to find satisfaction in their grouping.

"We're different," she had said. "Either we're bright, or they're stupid." And her they had included, instantly, all the rest of the world. So they had learned to appreciate each other, to value each other, to guard and treasure, jealously, this strange association where they could speak and be understood, where they could match powers, spark ideas, argue ferociously, and try to understand the strange substandard world into which fate had dropped them. They had learned a lot of hard things fast. That grown-ups would not understand, not even affectionate parents—was one. That to let anyone else in on the charmed circle was to invite destruction—was another. And that there was no hope whatever of changing the way things were—was the hardest of the lot. Johnny himself had laid that one down.

"You can't make people more intelligent—even if you knew how—if they just don't want to be I"

Those had been marvelous, magical, wonderful days/weeks

and months. But now he thought of that one crucial day when it had all come to a head. Again it had been Nell, with her characteristic courage, saying the thing straight out.

"We've gotta do something, gotta have a goal, an aim of some kind."

"Something we can do," Jem cautioned. "It has to be possible."

"Yes." Johnny had grabbed at it, Johnny the dreamer, the planner of worlds. "Something possible, but only just. Something so far out that we will have to go like crazy to make it."

"Something," Jim agreed, "that will be fun, even if we fail."

So they agreed that far, but then had come the frustrating silence, the puzzled search for a worthwhile objective. And then Nell, again.

"I knowl" she said. "We'll go to the stars!"

He could remember, even now, the first stunned shock, the almost instant urge to object, to mock—and then the slow-spreading glow of excitement, the fervor. Because it was possible—just. That was in nineteen seventy-one. There was the tiny moonbase. There was a space-drive, a nightmare contraption that gobbled power and strained technology to snapping point, but a drive, nevertheless, such that you could ride to the moon, or Mars, or even the Jovian satellites, if you could wait out the travel time. And there had been talk of a star-drive, and a starship, and there was a base on the moon, in a crater wall, that had been intended to launch the first ship to the stars.

But research was fantastically expensive, and the space-drive incredibly balky and maddening. The moon was barren, the payoff after all the hooraw of getting there had been virtually nil, and the problems qf sinful Man here on Earth kept right on growing more and more urgent. So, although it was never said outright, everyone knew that Man had quietly let drop all his bright and shining notions about leaping into the Void and was instead engrossed in just staying alive on his own planet. The four of them knew all that, and scorned it, deplored the abandonment of a vision—and saw, now, that here was a goal well worthy of them.

Ten years, and now, if Jim was right, they had made it. Johnny looked ujj as Jem came back and sank into a squat by his side, made a circle with his finger and thumb.

"Nothing to it. The usual vacation arrangements, only extended a bit. Buzz will take care of everything. He's a great guy, old Buzz. Doesn't even ask questions." 22

"Wouldn't believe it if you told him the answers," Johnny said. "He would say we were crazy."

"True, true!" Jem nodded his head sadly. "Poor crazy mixed-up kids, that's us. Hey!" He raised his voice to a sudden bellow at the couple who were now locked in a straining grip on the floor. "Don't you harm him now, you hear? We need him to make the gadgets work!"

"You must be joking!" Yum-Yum panted, firmly grasping the foot she had captured and twisting it. Under her, Jim, squirming, seemed helpless. "For once, my lad I've got you. Confess defeat, loudly, or I'll tear your foot off and beat you to death with it!"

Jim slumped, then with an impossibly serpentine wriggle seemed to revolve around his own ankle, out from under, and away into a rolling crouch that brought him back into attack position. She had leaped into a matching crouch almost as fast. For a crackling moment they held it; then both relaxed into a snort of amusement and came to squat once more in the circle.

"This is no time to celebrate," Johnny declared, always serious. "There's still work to do. We have an hour for rehearsals"—he shot a glance at his wrist—"then a couple of hours' recharge. Two new numbers to run over for the recording session Wednesday. All set?"

And with that they shifted into working rhythm, into a hard-driving, painstaking, note-by-note polishing of their repertoire that would have exhausted any one of their contemporary rival groups in the first ten minutes. In this, as in anything else they turned to, was the quality of total and ruthlessly impersonal dedication to a stated objective—in this case to catching and spinning a teenage audience into momentary exhilaration by the combined application of scientific techniques and hard-won experience. They had worked like this so long and so regularly that it came as second nature to them now and the working hour slipped away very fast. The final number, a new one called "What Is Tomorrow?" required a very careful and precise shift of emphasis on repetition of the terminal phrase. It took Yum-Yum three repeats to get it just right.

"Tomorrow—" full forte and then a two-beat dramatic silence—

"is just one more day!"

"is—just—one—more— day!"

With a jangling saw-edged string counterpoint and John-

ny blasting out sonorous chords on the electronic organ to add a funereal overtone, it hung the emotions on the ragged edge of disaster and panic for just a breath, then rescued everything with a switch into ridicule, a kind of musical black comedy that The Trippers had made one of their trademarks.

"I think that's it!" Johnny decided thankfully, killing his keyboards. "We'll hear that last ten minutes play back while we unwind." Again with one accord they came to squat, yoga-style, as the studio echoed to their own works. All four were in a glowing sweat, and this would happen all over again tonight as they performed for their adulatory followers. Johnny felt a wry twitch of amusement as he recalled, back in that same crucial day of decision, how Jem had declared, almost off hand, "First, we'll get rich."

They had got rich. They had never doubted their ability to do that much. But it had been hard work. Even though they had enjoyed every minute of it, because they were, each one of them, the type to enjoy being stretched to the utmost, even then it had been hard work. All that fool talk about easy money, overnight success, undeserved fame—his lean face curled in a rare grin, and Yum-Yum inched closer, watching him curiously.

Johnny-in-charge, Johnny the senior, the master-plciiner, who was three weeks older than Jem, who was two days older than Jim, who was one day older than Yum-Yum. Johnny the serious.

"I have a question," she said hesitantly. "Don't laugh— I know the answer, sort of, but I can't get it into words. Like, this is the big scene for us now, isn't it? I mean, ten years ago we said—I said—let's go to the stars. And it was great, but we were just kids then, face it. But we're of age now. We know the score better now. Why haven't we changed?"

"We have." Johnny dropped the words into a thoughtful silence. "The picture is something like this: there're these two kids, and all that green grass, woods, and sunshine out there. And they say, 'Some day, when Tm grown up, I won't do anything but play in the sun, all the time.' So they grow. One ends up down here, a wage-slave with rent to pay, wife and kids to keep, repayments to meet, and he gives up the dream because he can't make it. The other is now president of the company, with everything anybody could want—but he gives up the dream too, because to make it he would have to. discard everything he has worked 24 all his life to get, and it's not worth that much to him. Not now."

"And us?" she urged him to go on.

"We've got everything, or what we haven't got we could buy. If we had been able to go when we first thought of it, like that"—and he snapped his fingers sharply—"it wouldn't have meant a thing. Now it does. Now we are willing to give away, to throw away, everything anybody could want, just to get our dream. Because that still means more to us than anything this world has to offer. Ten years ago we could say that easily, because we didn't have anything to lose. Now we have everything to lose, and we can still say it, and this time we really mean it. That's how we've changed."

"Sacrifice," she said very softly, and he nodded.

"That's it. Doesn't mean a thing until you have something to lose. Incidentally, if anybody wants to cry off, now is the time, and no hard feelings. Anybody?"

"You're all right on the deep-think," Jem growled, scrambling to his feet. "But as a comedian you just don't begin. I'll get the grog."

"Futons," Jim muttered and got up too, to go to a tall cupboard and haul out genuine Japanese padded, silk-covered bed-mats, one each. "Ten years I spend ironing the bugs out of that ship and he says does anybody want to cry off?"

Jem came with a tray and tall beakers of fortified plant-milk cool from the refrigerator, set it down in the middle. They had long ago worked out this way of making sure they got properly fed at least once every day, no matter how hectic life got otherwise. "Drink up, daddy-o," he said, handing a beaker to Johnny, "and leave the comical patter to me, huh? Cry off? Better we spent some hours working out our final top-of-the-bill show for Friday. Go out with a bang, hey?"

"Now there's a notion I" Yum-Yum endorsed eagerly, but spared a warm grin for the grave-faced Johnny. "Thanks, though. You had the right words."

Ten minutes later they were all soundly and blissfully asleep.

Reluctantly, McCool swiveled and looked, saw a pale gray mist across the open cubicle-door and through it a blurred pink shape moved and turned, luxuriating in the spray. Raising his sights hastily, he met again her vivid blue stare. The mist cut her off just at her throat, but had been higher, because her red hair, now darkened, clung to her head in wet masses.

"Go ahead and talk," she invited.

"I can't. Not in this ridiculous set of circumstances. Isn't there somewhere private?"

Her expression changed subtly, dropped an invisible barrier between them. "Private time is my time. You want to talk to me, you have to do it this way, like it or not." She leaned partly out, shot a side-glance to a hook and ducked in again. "You're not show-biz, must come strange to you. I'm coming out now. You want to hand me that towel-robe, make it easy for yourself? Or not, I'm coming anyway."

McCool spurred out of paralysis just in time, turned and reached for the robe, and as he swung back he saw that she had killed the shower. Just for that one blinding instant she stood there quite nude—and he was to go over that picture many times in his mind and continually marvel that she was so lean, so boyish and yet so devastatingly fascinating. Then he choked, elevated his gaze, thrust the robe blindly at her and stood back.

"All right, Mr. McCool." She secured the plain white robe around her, took up her bottle and drifted to a chair. "Now will you get to whatever it is that's bothering you?"

"This isn't the place, or the time." He cleared his throat, glanced aside swiftly to be sure the others were still wrangling over their own gossip, then shrugged. "You leave me very little choice. Please take me seriously: I'm asking you to be my wife. Will you marry me?"

The anticlimax was shocking. With no change whatever in expression she sat, crossed one knee over the other, looked at him, uttered one word.

"Why?"

"Why?" He went.shrill with astonishment. "What do you mean, why? Why do men usually propose to women, and get married?"

"I don't know about others, at all. I'm curious about you. Why you? Why me? I don't know you, and you don't know me, or anything about me. Why?"

"Ah, well," he rushed into the breach hastily, "you'll get to know me as we go along, meet my friends, my father. 32

There's no rush. And I know all I need to know about you. I've seen all your tapes."

"That's not me," she denied. "That's just a performance. For money. You still haven't answered my question. Why do you want to marry me?"

"Because—" he groped for an answer to a question he hadn't even asked himself yet. "Because I'm hopelessly in love with you. I know that is a dreadful thing to say in cold blood, like this, but it's true. Ever since the first time I saw you—I just can't think about anything or anyone else sanely. I've never been like this before." He felt the hot color staining his face, knew the urge to turn and run before this dreadful humiliation, but the magic of her presence held him, drove him to say the difficult words. "I don't mean to rush you. I mean—I don't want an answer on the instant; that would be ridiculous. But think about it. Give me the chance to prove myself, get to know me better. You can have my card, and check up on me as much as you want to. At least you'll find that I am a man of my word, not a fanatic juvenile."

She glanced at the card, then ignored it, finished her bottle, put it on the table, then looked at him again, with her head just a fraction tilted to one side.

"You're serious, of course. And infatuated, which is quite a compliment to me. You see, that too is all part of the act. The sexy image is something I turn on, to order." Quite suddenly he felt like a small boy being lectured by a schoolteacher. And he was aware that the room had gone silent, listening. "It's all an act, Mr. McCool, not me at all. Trouble is, how do I convince you of that? How do I tell you, and make it stick, that I have no intention, or need, to marry you or anyone else, not for a long long time yet? Any ideas?"

"But you can't have decided, just like that!"

"I can. I just did. Sorry."

"I refuse to accept this as your final decision. You don't know me."

"And you don't know me, Mr. McCool. You don't even know who I am." She shifted her gaze, shrugged ruefully and said, "Johnny—boys—what do I do now? I can't get near him. He's fixed!"

As McCool edged around Jem put up a finger and asked, "You a practical character, Mr. McCool? Realistic, I mean?"

"I like to think so. I have to be, in finance." McCool was cautious.

"It figures. So let's look at what kind of deal you're trying

to hand our Yummy. For her, what's in it with you that she hasn't got now?"

"Security." McCool gave it right back to him promptly.

"Poop!" Johnny retorted just as swiftly. "We could all retire the scene right now, cut it and blow—and live in plush for the rest of our lives on what we've stashed away."

"Rubbish! With taxes the way they are? And a lot of luxury living to catch up on? I mean, this isn't living, this fakery. You're all going to get older, get married, have children, need housing and all the rest of it. Money melts. I should know. Finance is my business. And investments can fail. On the other hand, you are going to be compelled to retire soon. As your manager was trying to tell you, times and tastes change and you can't go on being teenage idols forever with this fakery."

"But you can offer her security?"

"I certainly can. So long as there is business—and business uses money—McCool Financing will be in business. Can you say as much about this so-called music of yours, this hocus-pocus?"

As Johnny frowned, Jim gathered his long legs under him and sat forward, breaking a long silence. "You keep on about fakery and hocus-pocus, mister. What's the drift? You've vamped the tune, now come to the words."

"I mean"—McCool whirled, went and caught up one of the guitars and brought it back, to hold and shake—"these things. It is, I understand, an old dodge, miming to prearranged tapes. And you're very clever at it, I'll admit, but, can you deny that it is cheating?^'

Johnny put up a quick hand to hold Jim back as he started to splutter. His lip curled in a rare smile. "You're a hard man to fool, McCool. That's quite an accusation you've made there, though. Who d'you suppose records all those tapes for us, now? I mean, whether you like it or not, they're good. Top of the box for the past five years!"

"That's strictly irrelevant. Oh, I dare say you do make them yourselves in the first place, but by dint of several repetitions, plus cutting and splicing and all the other technical aids. Not the seemingly effortless way you pretend to do it, out there on the platform."

"I see. And I suppose Yummy isn't really dancing, out there, either? Just going through the motions, huh?"

"I didn't say that! She's genuine. She's fine. She's the only real person among you!"

"Just a minute!" Jim exploded past Johnny's restraining hand to grab the brandished instrument out of McCool's 34 grasp. "Are you trying to tell me I can't play this thing?"

McCool stiffened, lifted his chin superciliously. "That thing—yes, I am saying just that. You may be a competent performer on a genuine guitar, but if you can produce more than a tinkle from that—that dummy—I will cheerfully eat it. I'm not blind. I've examined it. It is not even equipped to take a power-lead—a fake one. You are careless, gentlemen. Shoddy work."

"You won't eat this one," Jim assured him warmly. "It cost too much. You're a fool, McCool. I'm going to pin your ears back I"

"Jim!" the girl cried warningly. Johnny echoed her, put out his hand to restrain his impetuous colleague, but Jim shook it off.

"That's all right. I know what I'm doing. He's older than us, remember, and a different body-build. You just watch this." His lean fingers touched studs and switches swiftly but delicately and McCool watched him with sudden apprehension. There was still no power-cord, no supply, no amplifier. The thing couldn't work. But then it did. Jim brushed the strings, glared up at McCool, turned a knob, and the room flooded with sound, a deep reverberating chord that seemed to shiver the walls, the floor, the very air. McCool felt the bones of his skull sound in resonance.

Those fingers moved again, plucked a three-string overlay to the still echoing chord, then hit a shrill sharp in jarring contrast. McCool cried out, utterly helpless to stop himself. It felt as if every tooth in his head were squirming out of its socket and every bone in his body afire. The room grew red-dark with haze as blood roared in his ears and the world reeled around him. He staggered, put a hand to feel for solidity, grasped a shoulder and heard Barney Smith's chesty voice through the seesaw booming.

"Come on, Mr. McCool, lemme take you outside. You look like you need air."

He leaned on and followed the shoulder, utterly blind and lost as to direction, clenching his teeth to avoid howling from the jumbo-sized twinges of rheumatism that were racking his joints—and over it all the dreadful thrumming of giant strings shaking* him right down to every innermost cell of his being. It was heaven to feel it cut off with the slamming of the door to the dressing room. He drew a long sobbing breath, squeezed his eyes tight shut, and then writhed all over again as he heard the smothered yell of laughter that came through the shut door.

"Just crazy kids." Barney apologized, and McCool manufactured a smile.

"Quite so. Kids. But not me, Mr. Smith. I have only begun I"

McCool spent a bitter night salving his dignity from the rough handling it had taken, wrapping himself in sounds he could bear, moving from the moody blues of humiliation into the strident brass of Wagner as he began to plan a campaign. The lady had spurned him. Very well, he would show her. He had tradition on his side. He couldn't actually twirl his moustache and say "Aha! Me proud beauty, but I'll bring you to heel yetl" He could, however, perform the modem equivalent, and in order to do that he needed, first, information. All the data he could get.

Much to Miss Home's surprise he was at the office and waiting for her when she arrived.

"Forget any other business you may have on hand, Miss Home," he told her briskly. "I want you to get me a complete rundown on The Trippers, as a group and as individuals, who they are, where they come from, how much they earn, what they do with it, who is backing them—everything!"

"But"—she almost blurted out the fact that she had been trying to do most of that for some days now, with little success—"I don't know how to do that, sir!"

"Good HeavensI Miss Home, we have a large and efficient research section. As you should know, McCool does not put capital into any venture without researching it thoroughly first."

"Oh! You mean that land of thing?"

"Exactly. That's what the section is for. Use it. You have my authority. Make it priority and urgent. If you want me, I'll be in technical. Oh, by the way, they are taking a vacation soon. Find out when, and where, and for how long. Urgently, Miss Home!"

He strode out, leaving her to think thoughts of her own, 36 thoughts that might have surprised him had he been able to read them.

McCool's technical section was large, well-equipped, generalized. The head of the electronics section was slightly baffled by McCool's questions.

"You say it looked just like a guitar, but heavy and solid, and had no external power-source, no amplifier leads?"

Hopkins shook his head slowly, then touched a button on his wrist-link and spoke briefly to a colleague. "Clow, you've handled most of the solid-state sound repro field, what d'you think of this?" and he retailed McCool's problem briefly. Clow, a large and gangling youth with a twitch and restless eyes, sucked his teeth at the description.

"Unclude me," he declared. "Sounds like something the Magic Box boys might have dreamed up, maybe."

"Magic Box I" McCool snapped at the name. "Yes. Perhaps a study of their file might help." "File? We don't have any file on them." . "What?" McCool was shrill. "But we must have! As I understand it, they are among the leaders in solid-state sound-reproduction equipment. We must own part of them!"

"Won't take a minute to check." Hopkins touched another button, spoke briefly and precisely, waited two breaths for the reply, then looked up.

"Clow's right. They're independent of us." McCool thought furiously. "Then," he said, "they come under the heading of competition, and we've investigated their stuff. Haven't we?"

Clow grinned sympathetically. "You should try it sometime, Mr. McCool. Those boxes don't come apart, not without destruct. They make 'em that way. What I mean, they build the circuits and connections and then pot the whole thing solid in some kind of epoxy-resin stuff. You have jack-sockets for video-audio output, and a slot for the battery renewal, but the rest is solid. You can't take it apart without busting it all to hell."

"Then how on earth do they repair them?" "They don't. They have a twelve month guarantee stamped right into the material, date and everything. They replace anything that breaks down inside that date. They don't have to replace many, so I hear."

"But there must be some way of getting at the insides?" "Not that I know of." Clow shook his head. "We can do a black box on them, but all that tells you is what ought to be there. Like I can do a black box on this guitar thing. Been thinking about that." He made gestures with knobble-

jointed fingers. "Like a guitar-shape is, you know, elliptical? So it's cut up a bit, but elliptical anyway. And solid? So treat the whole thing like an endless baffle with a long axis about .eighteen inches, the short axis maybe six, seven. Or maybe it isn't solid at all, but with a skinny pressure-chamber inside, sealed. I would have to pump the specs through a comp to know for sure, but I reckon you'd have a mighty big response range with that configuration. And with the circuits built right into the body—power-pack batteries come pretty small these days—it could be like that."

"Yes." McCool eyed his employee with grudging respect. "That's good enough for me. As for the distressing symptoms on being exposed to the produced sound, I do know a little about that."

"White noise." Clow nodded profoundly. "You can do some queer things with that. Properly balanced you can completely load up all the auditory channels, so a guy becomes insensitive to pain, or goes blind. I've heard how they can turn on a psychedelic freak-out too, pitch it just right."

"Yes." McCool sighed, and felt glitter-eyed all over. "Gentlemen, I think we have just elucidated how The Trippers have managed to remain on top of the charts for so long."

"I didn't know you went for that kind of thing." Clow stared. "Trip-tapes and all that. Beats sugar-sucking, sure, but it's passive. Depersonalized, too. Not for me. I like-well, take a look at this, just came in. How do you like that?" And McCool stared, fascinated, at the inch diameter disc Clow held in his hand.

Miss Home's own campaign was getting well underway. As soon as McCool had mentioned vacation she knew where. That was one item of news about The Trippers that every fan and fanzine knew. They were going to the moon, to one of the luxury villas there. Moonbase, a disastrous military and financial flop, maintained desperately and at great public expense as a prestige item, had eventually succumbed to the need to recoup at least some of the expense. So it had become the last resort, in more ways than one, of those with vast wealth and a craving to be exclusive and alone. The villas themselves were cheap and easy to build if one took advantage of cave-systems and fusion-techniques for sealing the underground spaces. The astronomical costs came in when the appropriate fittings had to be hoisted from Earth, and with the maintenance of life-support machinery. You could cut some of the expense if you were crafty enough, as Miss Eleanor Grant had been, to make a blanket bid for an 38 abandoned research site, and take it over just as it stood.

And that's where they were going. To the moon villa of the multimillionairess Miss Eleanor Grant, of Elegante, it being a well-known fact that she supplied the designs for Yum-Yum's dresses and the kinky gear the boys wore. Miss Home knew that much offhand, and a priority call to Kennedy Moonport was enough to get her the date and time. And that was what McCool wanted. But Miss Home wanted more, and she took it on herself, not without a faint thrill of apprehension, to take that further step. Then she got busy with his other demands.

The recording session at HMI was its usual hectic blend of controlled confusion and intense concentration: microphones everywhere jostling with beady-eyed holograph cameras; shirt-sleeved and cigarette-smoking musicians scowling over last-minute scribbled, almost indecipherable, thematic lines; the three faceted balls of a massive Colortron spinning lazily overhead under constant threat from three low-intensity prism-lasers mounted well back at the apexes of an equilateral triangle. In one reasonably clear space in the middle of the floor, four scantily-clad go-go dancers walked their movements to a plangent guide from Jim. Jem and Johnny were peacefully refreshing themselves from Coke bottles, while Yum-Yum was having controlled hysterics in one corner over her attempts to lip a trombone which one of the musicians had brought with him.

There came an interruption in the shape of Mr. Tillet himself, cat-footing across to the recording manager. Jem broke off his swallowing to watch, to murmur to Johnny.

"This is something. Tillet wouldn't break into a session without a damn good reason." His tension communicated itself to Johnny immediately, and only momentarily later to Jim and then Yum-Yum. Tillet went away as delicately as he had come. The recording manager approached the girl-

"Some people can't wait," he said. "Mr. Tillet gave me this. Seems one of your fans handed it in at the front, wanted it passed along to you right away."

It was a small box, gift-wrapped. The go-go girls clustered, eagerly guessing, as Yum-Yum tore the wrapper and revealed a simulated alligator-hide box.

"Jewelry, I betcha. Strings of diamonds, huh?"

"A ringl A ring, for sure!"

But it wasn't. It was, at first glance, rather disappointing, just a small disc, more like a lapel-button than anvthing,

complete with spring linkpin on the back, the surface a pearly sheen flatness. But as she lifted it out of the box for a better look, the pearly surface shimmered, became a precise miniature picture, in depth and color, of a girl dancing. Herself. And it moved. It gyrated through a full sequence of one of her better-known step routines, a performance of one minute which brought it back to the original picture, only to start all over again.

"Why, that's marvelous!" she exclaimed, staring at it. "Fascinating! Boys, just look, isn't that the cutest?"

Jim held her wrist and peered; Jem looked over his shoulder. Johnny, characteristically, took the box and looked within, drew out a card and made his rare and cold grin.

"Surprise, surprise," he murmured. "The McCool rides again!"

Jim looked up at the murmur, caught Johnny's eye, made a discreet head-movement to draw the three of them slightly apart while the dancing girls crowded around to express appropriate admiration and envy.

"Clever stuff," he muttered, "and new. Not too hard to figure. Superimposed thin-film transparencies triggered by photosynthetic action. Must've cost a packet."

"So?" said Jem. "He can afford it. And he's a trier, we know that."

"He's extremely clever," Johnny mused. "A smart man. I think I know exactly what Yummy is thinking right now. But not you, Jim boy. You don't like it?"

"I don't. This wouldn't be the first time that somebody has tried to pin a bug on one of us."

"Top of the class." Johnny nodded. "I missed that. Any way we can check up on it here?"

Jim shrugged, looked to Jem. "This is your home-ground; you can answer that one better than me. They have tunable radio-receivers in the booth over there, maybe?"

"Sure. We use them when we want to eliminate cables. For singers on the move, that kind of thing."

"Might do it. We can try. Yummy will have to put that thing down somewhere for the next number."

"I'll do it." Johnny moved over to her again, insinuating himself in between the girls. "It's pretty," he said. "It must have cost Mr. McCool a small fortune, having it specially made for you."

"McCool?" She stared in wonder. "Oh, I didn't know that. Do you think I ought to give it back to him?"

"We can talk about it later. For now, maybe you'd better 40

put it somewhere safe; it's probably delicate. Let me have it—I'll stash it with the control-box crew."

Jim -bobbed up on cue to volunteer for the chore. They saw him go into the glass-walled enclosure and talk earnestly to the headphoned men therein, with much nodding and emphasis. Then the gift-box went away in a corner and one of the men approached it carefully with a pencil microphone while he twisted dials on a small console. At one point he winced, nodded, and there was more chat with Jim, and the small package eventually went away into a massive strongbox that was used to store valuable master-tapes.

"What was all that?" Yum-Yum whispered, as the recording manager snapped his fingers and called for attention.

"Later." Johnny put up a palm. "No harm done. Let's work, gang!"

Not until they were once more safely within the confines of their own bam-like studio-home did she come back to it. Showered, stripped down to loose robes, and squatting on the floor sipping at their plant-milk, they were unwinding as usual, before their recharging nap, in readiness for the show that evening.

"So," she said quietly, "will somebody tell me just what's with the McCool jewel? Where is it, anyway?"

"I'll get it." Jim scrambled up and went away to his wardrobe, brought back the alligator-skin box, sat himself, and held it for them all to see.

"Imitation hide. Cheap fake, but nothing cheap, or fake, about the gadget. Does that smell, to you? But now the gadget itself. A series of frames, like the old-time movie films, but this is done on a special thin-film semiconductor only about fifty mols thick, sensitive to light frequencies, with a build-up and discharge cyclic sequence about one minute long; it's fully transparent until the charge builds up to breaking point, then it fires the picture and relapses into the uncharged state again, and starts all over You now stack about a thousand of those frames one on top of the other, with a thread-sized photoelectric cell for a rim, and as soon as you expose the thing to light—bingo! Neat, no? And hand-crafted by an expert. You just can't mass-produce anything like this. Not yet, anyway."

"It was very thoughtful of him," she said firmly. "And sweet, to give me the only thing I could possibly accept, myself. That's rather symbolic, don't you think?"

"That's the way I figured it." Johnny nodded his satisfaction. "He's no fool, McCool. Play die rest of it, Jim."

"Under all that delicacy, using some of the spare juice— and body heat—is a very simple and unmodulated beep-beep. A transmitter, effective up to about half a mile."

"Like wowl" she breathed, eyes blazing. "Why, the crafty old tycoon, he put a finger on me!" She stared at the box with renewed interest.

"So what now?" Johnny asked. "You're the expert in this."

"I think," Jim mused slowly, "that I can gimmick this so that it has hiccups, stutters, goes off for a while and then comes on again, at random. That way, he'll think it's faulty— but he won't suspect us. Okay?"

On their grinning assent he went away to get his "box of tricks" and returned to join them in council, where he delicately painted odd patches of the bottom surface with ni-chrome solution, then painstakingly drilled needle-thin holes here and there and inserted hair-fine wires therein.

"We shouldn't have counted our chickens," she sighed. "This would have to happen, right at the last moment."

"Can't see any harm," Jem objected. "What can he do? In his place I would be combing the financial undergrowth for leads, some way to bring an arm-lock to bear. For him, that's natural. But he can't find anything on us at all."

Johnny caressed his jaw. "You're probably right," he said. "But isn't it just possible that he could stir enough dust between now and Friday night that we might be held pending an investigation? We have nothing to lose, except that deadline date."

"Not that!" Jim was emphatic. "We miss this one, we'll have to wait another eleven months or more. What do we do, Jem?"

"Hmml" Jem the financial wizard took thought. "I just said he can't find anything on us. But he's smart. That very fact will turn on his suspicions. Like Jim said, when you find the door locked, you wonder why."

"I did not say that!"

"Should have, then. Remember that old stunt we cooked up a long time ago, about spreading controlled rumors that we were being masterminded by a Japanese firm, or a Russian combine? We never did get to use them, but old Buzz still has them on file, and where better to start a discreet leak than a corporation law firm?"

"But that won't fool McCool," she objected.

"Not for long, no, but long enough to let us get away. I'll fix it." 42

While he was gone, Yum-Yum frowned unhappily over her drink. "This is the bit I have never liked, the deception. Why can't we be just ourselves? What's wrong with this world?"

Jem had come back in time to catch the tail end of her words. "What's bugged me a long time, Yummy," he put in, "is why we try so hard in the deceiving. Nine-tenths of the stuff we put on tape is missed by the ravers. Why do we bother?"

"Because we're us. Because we are setting our own standards, and only feeling satisfied if we do it right, by us! Because we're different. Not unique, though. There are others. Some under cover, like us. Some latent, don't know they have it, never been pushed. Like McCool.

"McCool?" Jim howled. "You have to be joking!" "I'm not. Look, out of nowhere he walked right in among us, straight through the barriers. He has this notion he wants Yummy, so that's what he goes for. She turns him down. We laugh him off. And what? He's right back in there with a smart trick. Money won't work here, and he has learned that, fast. So he gives Yummy a present, the only present she could possibly fall for, to quote her own words, a moving picture of herself. And it's bugged. That, my children, is thinking!"

"A pity it is all going to be wasted." Jem chuckled. "Just wait until he gets to the office in the morning!"

Miss Home handed him the data-folders reluctantly. "I'm afraid there isn't very much, sir," she murmured, and waited apprehensively.

He scanned the sheet eagerly at first and then with mounting wrath. "This is ridiculous. Trippers first public appearance of record Dallas, June 1976! And their subsequent exhibitions? That's not what I want, Miss Home. Yum-Yum, first recorded platform appearance Springfield, Mass., June 1976! Hmm!" He traveled rapidly down the columns. "First cooperative appearance with The Trippers, overseas tours! Penang! Bah!"

She thought he was the only real live person she had ever heard say "Bah!" just like that. There was something otherworldly about it. But not about his rage. "And they call themselves a research department! It's time a few heads rolled. What about business links, hmm?"

He tweaked back the top sheet and read avidly. " "Declared income of group is twenty-five percent of gross after taxes, is administered by Drew and Meredith on behalf of

group. Disbursement made also by Drew and Meredith. No further information available, but rumors that D & M are intermediaries for banking syndicate of Zurich.' Zurich?" he cried incredulously. "This is fantasticl Foreign capital backing an American trip-tape group?"

"They have an international following, sir," she offered humbly.

"They have smart lawyers," he retorted through his teeth. "Getting anything out of Drew and Meredith is like carrying on a conversation in a Trappist monastery. If it were D & M I'd say this smells like tax-evasion on a grand scale. Let's see what they did with my tip about Magic Box. They get their musical equipment there, I bet. Hmml" He turned another sheet, glared, and almost choked. " 'No direct information on M-B available, but it is believed that this firm is backed by powerful Japanese interests.' Oh, this is insane! Japanese? 'James Nelson, ostensible owner-manager of M-B, is little known elusive figure, frequently absent on unspecified business.' Bah!"

McCool turned another page and read, " Trippers published exclusively by Howard Music Inc., and all royalty payments handled by D & M. We have no financial interests in HMI, so no further hard information available, but it is believed that HMI is cover for a Soviet-owned mass publication concern. Royalty payments on USSR sales are made in rubles, constituting a considerable dollar-exchange in favor of Soviets.' And that's the end of that!" he growled. "We can't go poking our nose into foreign trade agreements without some good reason." He sagged a moment, then: "What about that tip on their vacation?"

"On the next page, sir."

"Oh. Yes." He turned and read, read again. "On the moon? 'Reservations on the Lunar Shuttle as of oh-one-fif-teen hours Saturday morning, Miss Eleanor Grant and guests.' Eleanor Grant?"

"That's the famous boutique, Elegante, sir," Miss Home explained, and he stared at her uncomprehendingly. Boutiques were something outside his frames of reference. "She makes with-it gear for happiness. Mod-clothing. Dresses!" Miss Home groped for words that would click in his mind.

"You mean she runs a fashionable dress store?"

"Not one, sir. Thousands. All over the country, and in Britain, Europe too. She's fabulously wealthy. She's the whole scene as far as it's threadsville. I mean she's the far-end! Everybody wears Elegante for kicks. I've had one this month, so far—" 44

McCool halted her with an unsteady hand. "Let me try, Miss Home. You are saying that this Eleanor Grant owns several stores which retail the very latest styles in modem dress, and that she is extremely wealthy. So far I follow you. But you also infer that you have purchased one such dress this month, so farl Do take that to mean that you buy several, regularly, each month? On your salary? And why so many?"

"Forever morel" Miss Home eyed him in amazement. "Where have you been? Nobody wears a rag more than a week or so. Why, that would be some kind of uniform, a groove! Like this"—she touched the silver-gray skintights and short smock deprecatingly—"is a drag, but it's for bread, so who cares? But when I'm being me, I need something different when I'm different, don't I? Doesn't everybody?"

McCool, who had worn the same sharp suit, or a facsimile thereof, for the past seven years, shuddered inwardly. "And you can afford this?"

"What's to afford? With the Auto-Fab-"

He halted her again. "Auto-Fab?"

"You don't know? There's this machine, see, with a cubicle. Outside is a dial-screen and code numbers. You dial a color combo, and a material, then you pick a style. Then you lock-on and step in, strip down, pull the switch, and the machine does the rest. It weighs, takes a profile all around. Some kind of echo system, I think. Anyway, it's all over—zip—that fast. The bell rings, you dress up again and step out, count to three slowly, and there it is, fresh out of the works. Cost of material synthesis, power, ten percent surcharge for the machine hire—comes out around seven fifty. Mine are usually a bit more because—er—.there's rather a lot of me. You know?" A millionaire business, and McCool Financing didn't even know about it, much less own any of it. Incredible.

"And how does this shrewd Miss Grant come to be tied up with The Trippers, may I ask?"

"Because she dresses them, always. Every show they do, every tape, all the dancers even—dressed by Elegante. It's good business for her."

"I see! And so she invites them to take a vacation in her moon villa. Yes. At last something makes sense." Then he remembered, and scowled. It made sense so far as the three youths were concerned, but what about her?

"What about the girl?"

"Hmm?" Miss Home was momentarily puzzled. "Oh. Well, I would assume she goes with them, wouldn't you?" Latent

puritanism roused itself in his breast and he glared at her.

"I would never assume anything of the kind. Do you realize what you are saying, Miss Home?"

"But why not?" she queried, astonished. "They work together!"

"As far as I have been able to discover, on my own, not a breath of scandalous irregularity has touched that girl's name!"

Again there was a communication break while she digested this further evidence of his cubical outlook. Scandal? None had been hinted at, truly, but only because the fans simply assumed that Yum-Yum lived with the boys. And why not? What was wrong with that? Her mind, spinning through bewilderment, turned up a misplaced datum.

"Incidentally," she said, "there's a bit about her on the
last sheet." {y- - ■

He flipped the pages eagerly and read, " 'There have been numerous rumors as to the identity of the singer professionally named Yum-Yum. Analysis seems to jndicate a general agreement that she is the daughter of some European— possibly British—noble family, possibly illegitimate, more probably in some disgrace or other and compelled to seek anonymity and asylum in the U. S. The rumor has several variants but no hard evidence available.'

"There you are!" he said loudly. "European nobility. Can you imagine a girl like that living with a group of fly-by-night musicians?"

Why not? she wanted to retort, but thought better of it. "It does sort of hint at some kind of disgrace," she pointed out. "And anyway, what does it matter? They are probably just good friends!"

"Hmm. Yes, it's possible. Honi soit qui mal y pense, and all that. You may be right, Miss Home. Even if she does travel to the moon with them, I'm sure it will be in utter innocence."

"Yes, sir."

"In which case I think it would be a prudent gesture if you reserved passage on that shuttle, just in case it becomes necessary for me to pursue her—I mean, them." He said it firmly, but the very thought of boosting off into cis-lunar space sent chills up his spine. She kept a straight face.

"I have already seen to that, sir."

"You have? My word, Miss Home, that was very far-seeing of you."

"I thought it best to cover all the eventualities, sir." She 46

took up her vocoder and the files and departed, carefully omitting to tell him that she had, indeed, booked passage— for two.

McCool stood again in the wings and watched his beloved. It was drawing near to interval time, and the ebullient youngsters were on stage to do a pair of quick numbers before the curtain, as preliminary to the rest of the show. T^.Ight was it, the last throw. He was prepared to dog her steps, to the moon if need be, or anywhere on Earth she chose to go. Meanwhile, he watched.

Right on cue t» the second, all three guitars twanked a crazy chord and she started, at breakneck speed:

"Coconut ice; a dozen blind mice; the man on the flying trapeze.

A hanging man's rope; a hole full of soap, and too

many housemaid's knees. Doubling, troubling, detergent bubbling; the stain of

invisible ink. . . ."

The words rattled and pattered glibly out, words with only tenuous, if any, linking associations, no discernible sense, full of tongue-tangling oppositions, and the very devil to learn on the fly. It was that challenge, and the tendency on the part of the would-be learner to fall about in hysterics while trying to gather it up, that had kept the ridiculous number well. up in the popularity charts for several weeks. It was now beginning to slip, but good for one more hilarious run-through.

McCool refused to laugh. Perhaps it had started out as a bad case of infatuation, but the frustrations put in his way had unlocked an unsuspected vein of determination. This was to be a challenge, was it? He waited, quite oblivious of the crowd of near-naked chorus girls who began to press in on him in the wings, ready for the last number preceding the curtain. He knew why they were there—the contrast. The Trippers were four lean, almost epicene youngsters, swaying and shaking with controlled energy, but not moving

their feet-surrounded by a hand-picked chorus line of generously full and rounded flesh maximally revealed and in gross motion. Contrast. Almost a period-piece of kick and step, bump-and-grind, but the number itself was as incisive as a razor-edge.

Yum-Yum, cradling a mike, spoke liltings into it from deep in her throat. "You hear me sing? So what, it's just noise. Noise with a shape, that is music; noise with tears in it, that's a heartbeat. Like the wind, and the waves, and the storm. Noisel" Controlled fireworks from the boys while she rippled sinuously. Then: "But you take a noise and cut it, chop it, put it into a kind of partem, and you have words! I throw you some word-noises; you throw some back to me. We're talking. Communicating. What'd I say? What'd I say? What's that you say?" More frantic reverberations from the boys and she spun, leveled a finger at Johnny.

"Gimme a word! A good word!"

"Maturity!" he shouted, and the audience gathered itself to roar, "All in pieces, bits and pieces, shattered, scattered, war-and-pieces, nonsense noises, words—words—WORDS!"

It went on, growing louder steadily, the stamp-and-kick chorus line looking weirdly unreal, like a cluster of mechanical dolls, against the full-throated enthusiasm of the teenage mass out there. When it came time to level her finger again, she chose Jim, and he bellowed, "Security!"

Jem in his turn growled out in basso, "Destiny!"

And always there came back the rebel chant, "Words— words-WORDS!"

McCool had not heard this number before. It had not been taped, for obvious reasons. He was horrified. The whole thing was an underhand blow at everything McCool stood for. But he stood fast and watched the girl of his dreams as she gyrated and writhed and interpreted the wildness of the underlying emotional rejection of the accepted ways of society. In sympathy with her efforts, he could feel himself starting to sweat, so he was not surprised, as she came running off at the conclusion, to see that she was glowing in a fine sheen of perspiration. Oblivious to him, she stood and panted while the chorus kick-stamped off into the other wing, then ran back to accept her ovation as the curtain fell. This time she came off more slowly, relaxing. He stepped to intercept her, to touch her arm.

"A moment!" he said crisply, and she stared blankly for a second until it registered. Then she sighed.

"Oh, it's you again."

"I see you're wearing my small gift. Thank you for that." 48

"You were very clever with that Mr. McCool." She put fingers to her breast and unfastened the pin. "I should have returned it to you." She held it out now, on her palm. "To avoid misunderstanding."

"Misunderstanding?" He took it into his fingers momentarily but kept his eyes on her, deliberately steeling himself against the melting power of her nearness. "How could there be any misunderstanding? I offered it as a gift, an appreciation, my wish to bring you pleasure. Nothing more than that. I have more sense than to try to buy you with gifts. And I couldn't give it to anyone else, could I? Please accept it in that spirit. It will only be thrown away otherwise. Wasted."

"Very well." She took it back quickly. "I'll accept that much, but you really should give up, Mr. McCool. You're wasting your rime."

"Perhaps. I am wasting yours, and you need to change and rest. I won't keep you any longer. But I am not giving up, my lady."

The quietly added honorific earned him a dazzling smile, from which he was still tingling as she ran off to the dressing room. He leaned against an upright spar alternately shivering with delight and reviling himself for doing what he had to do. In that state he was off guard. Bamey Smith caught sight of him from a distance, scowled thoughtfully, then went heavily back to the dressing room with the news.

"We just heard," Johnny said. "Yummy had words with him. Old death-grip McCool."

"Look," Barney declared, "I reckon he's found out about your vacation plans. What I mean, that's common knowledge. I reckon he's all set to follow you."

"To the ends of the Earthl" Jem intoned in melodramatic baritone. "Through sleet and snow, fire and water. Mushl Mush!"

"He's just liable to follow you all the way to the moon!"

"So what?" Johnny queried idly. "He can afford the fare, and he can't do anything to us when he gets there. He'll be worse off than he is here. Think. We're the house guests of a very gracious lady, Miss Grant. McCool may be a fool in lots of ways, but one thing he definitely is, a gentleman. Of the old school, McCool!" Yum-Yum flashed a glance at him, just a flicker, but he caught it, and his brown eyes gleamed.

"You could be reading him wrong," she murmured. "Try another cliché. All's fair in love and war?"

"Oh!" Johnny said it very sofdy, hesitated a moment, then

swung on their manager. "Thanks for the tip anyway, Barney. We can try to slip him a bit, give him a run. How about the old taxi-dodge, from the front?"

"Anything to oblige." Barney nodded. "But if he knows you're heading for Lunar he might just make straight for the rocket-port and get in ahead of you."

"Can't hurt to try, and it'll be a bit of fun anyway. Go fix it up, will you? We're on in a couple of minutes."

As the door closed after him Johnny wheeled on her. "What?"

"This." She took off the jewel again, but handed it to Jim. "Look it over, genius. Closely."

Jim frowned, inspected the animated button, turned it over, looked hard, then whistled through his teeth. "This ain't it, lady. He pulled a switch on you."

"That's what I figured. I couldn't see any reason why he should wait just there, and stop me, and spout a lot of woof about giving me pleasure, with no strings. Except that." She retold, briefly, exactly what had been done, and Johnny shook his head.

"I take it back. He probably would gate-crash, if he would do a thing like that. But what's happened to you? What happened to the old Tluence?"

"I don't know," she wailed. "He scares me, for some reason. I've never had any trouble convincing anybody else."

Three keen minds seized on this and subjected it to hard, dispassionate scrutiny. Early on in their odd association they had learned to evaluate their talents, many and various as they were. Jem was the business head, the money-maker; Jim the hardware genius, the one who knew how to make things work; and Johnnny the planner, the architect, the strategist. But it had been harder with Yummy because her talents were diffuse. She could inspire, and coordinate. She could always ask the problem-cracking question. But most of all, as they eventually discovered, she was a convinces She asked people, and they answered. She told them, and they believed. She could get her own way with anyone, individual or mass. But not McCool. Why? Then Johnny got it and said, very softly, "Physician, heal thyself." As she glared at him he gave her a crooked grin. "Face it, Yummy, that's the answer. Look, you sing a sentimental ballad to bring a lump to the throat. Of the audience. But not your own. You can sing, with a lumpy throat?"

"Detachment." Jem nodded his agreement at once. "That's got to be it. Like gambling. If you have to win on the next throw, because your whole future is hanging on it, don't 50 throw. You'll lose. Any hard gambler will tell you the same. McCool has got you emotionally involved, lady."

"Don't be ridiculous!" She flared up defiantly. "I'm not soft on him!"

"Don't need to be," Johnny told her. "You respect him a little, even admire him for being persistent. That's enough to make the difference."

McCool sat out in the dark, in the rear of a cushion-limousine, and waited. His chauffeur had an intent eye on the tracker-screen.

"Working fine now, Mr. McCool," he muttered. "Wha^ d'you want me to do with the other one, find out what went wrong with it?"

"It doesn't matter. Get rid of it later. For now, just keep your eye glued to that marker. You're sure the plane is all ready?"

"All taken care of, and we have enough fuel, here and on the plane, to travel halfway around the world if necessary."

Novak, the reluctant chauffeur ordinarily an electronics engineer, was excusably grim. He had labored over that beeper-button, and even longer and harder over the rush-job duplicate that McCool had demanded. He was still smarting over implications that his gadget had developed a defect, and the cold threat that McCool had handed him: "If I lose track of that young woman through any fault of yours, Novak, you had better start looking for a hole to hide in. And another job!"

He kept a bleak eye on the winking green spot.

On stage Yum-Yum had emptied her mind of all external things, was giving her considerable all to the song, a special. Every once in a while The Trippers slipped in what they called a "think-piece." This one was shrill wail and grumbling portent, laced through with near-discord strings to catch the breath. The words might have meant little to adults or intellectuals, but their sense, carried on sobbing tones, struck right into the inchoate feelings of their audience. To deliver them, Yum-Yum stood quite still, ringed in one yellow-green spodight, and let her throat do all the acrobatics.

"You can't—go home again.

When the circuit has learned your job, what will you do?

When living has happened to you, and you, right

through, what to do? Because you can't—go home—again.

There's possible, probable, likely, unlikely, but no more

false or true, And you can't go home again. It's now—right now—if you're happy, be happy. It's now—right now—if you're awfully sad, so sad. It's all together.

Oh sister, oh brother, oh mother, oh dad.

But you can't—and we can't—most certainly can't—

Not ever—go home—again!"

The angular lilt poured out of the speaker in the cab where Barney sat at the wheel, and he felt a sudden pricking at his eyes as the boys built up a barrage of backing and the girl's voice soared into vibrant anguish over the counterpoint. He fumbled for a handkerchief and dabbed awkwardly.

"Got a platinum one there," he muttered. "And I thought they were on the skids? It's me that's getting old, not them!" And he touched the speaker in unspoken apology.

In a few minutes Bamey tooled away cheerfully, deliberately striking a roundabout course to the airport. Four very ordinary looking youngsters in the back were peacefully relaxed. Handy wigs, a quick brush-over with gray powder, and zip-up plastic clothes, and it had been simplicity itself for them to mingle with the out-crowding audience, wander away, around a comer, and then into the waiting cab.

"They liked that new number," Yum-Yum said. "You never can tell sometimes, just how deep you can go and have them follow."

"Truth without tears," Johnny replied. "You can't go back, only forward. Time's arrow points only one way."

"That bugs me," Jim objected. "Time's arrow? More like an inchworm!"

"Your trouble," Jem put in, "is that you're a genius."

"I can't help that. It's the way I'm made. My genes!"

"There you go again. Normal people get swelled at the head end with conceit, but not you!"

"Not blue jeans, knothead!" Jim retorted hotly, as Yum-Yum sniggered. "Genes as in chromosomes, like little string-beads. Forty-six."

"I would have said you were smaller than that. Thirty-four, maybe?" 52

"I'm deceptive, too. It's the way I walk."

"Yeah, with both feet. We've noticed—"

The cab purred on. Far behind, glaring at the tracker screen and urging Novak to feats of navigation, McCool was on the trail.

The Lunar Shuttle was an ugly looking thing. McCool stared at it through the picture window of the deserted passenger lounge.

In outline it looked like nothing so much as an old-fashioned candlestick, minus the rim-loop where you hooked your finger in for carrying, and the whole immensely magnified. The upright tubular body, blunt-nosed, carried passengers and/or freight, plus the control bubble nose. Like a stumpy candle it stood upright from the center of a monstrous metal-covered doughnut. In there, as far as McCool understood the basic theory, massive weights were caused to move in one direction fast, halted abruptly, then returned slowly, the whole complex somehow achieving an unbalance of inertial surge in one desired direction. It was gross, complicated, ravenous for power, but, in Galileo's famous words, it moved. And it could keep on moving, steadily, in any given direction, in this case straight up. The storage batteries were just completing their charge, while ground-power takeoff assistance was even now running up the weight system to speed. Soon the entire improbable contraption would be trying to billow away from the ground like a captive balloon.

"Any sign on the marker yet?" McCool demanded of Novak, who stood by his side holding the instrument.

"I think—yes, sir, that's her, and strengthening up fast."

"Ah well, I suppose I had better go and see about my seat reservation, just in case." McCool stirred reluctantly, cringing from the very thought of boarding the ungainly thing. Aircraft were bad enough, although he didn't mind his own private charter. There, at least, you had some semblance of being in charge. But that thing!

He nerved himself, wheeled away, and almost cannoned into Miss Home. Backing off he stared at her for a moment unbelievingly.

"I have the tickets, sir," she said brightly. "Hadn't we better get down there ready to go aboard?"

"Miss Home! What on earth are you doing here?"

"Isn't it rather obvious, Mr. McCool? After all, I was the one who thought of reserving seats on this flight, just in case. And I thought, if you really do intend to pursue—er—

your researches on The Trippers—and if they are going to the moon on vacation, as they usually do, then this would be the obvious spot to wait for them. Isn't that what you're doing?"

"Hmm? Ohl Yes. Yes, of course. But what are you doing here?" He swept an eye over her startling trouser-suit and eager face and groped for the right words. "I mean, why aren't you in the office?"

"Ohl That!" She put on a confidence she was far from feeling. "I've arranged a sub to take over for me. I thought that in this extremity you'd need someone handy, to take notes and so on."

"You mean"—he goggled at the folded slips in her hand— "you've arranged to come along? With me? Even to the moon?" Such selfless devotion to duty was too much for him to accept all at once.

"Why not?" she retorted. "After all, I am your personal secretary. And I really do think we ought to be getting down. Look, the flight passengers are already going aboard." The stridently metal tones of a loudspeaker sounded through the lounge, reinforcing her suggestion. McCool wavered, desperately seeking some refuge.

"But we mustn't be precipitate. This may not be necessary. Novak, what does it say?"

Novak held out the marker mutely and McCool peered. There was the bright green spot, blipping steadily away, and lined up with it was the direction-indicator, pointing inflexibly at the shuttle.

From the foot of the ramp the shuttle-ship looked over-poweringly huge. McCool plodded upward on rubbery legs, stood aside as Miss Home presented their authorizations to the stewardess. Something of her blase indifference fell away as she took in the name.

"Right this way, Mr. McCool," she cooed, with the deference proper to a big wheel, "and just sit here, please. You'll want the porthole berth, of course. And a very good seat, right at the top of the column. Hold on now while I do your belt." She fussed over him, making the most of her chance, and her ebullient curves. McCool, already qualmish, couldn't have cared less, but Miss Home, with an eye for style, had a question as she settled into the seat beside her boss.

"Isn't that what they call an anti-radiation suit?" "That's right." The stewardess inflated herself self-con-sciouslv, but a side-glance showed her it was wasted on 54

McCool. "Rather sleek, don't you think? We call 'em skints."

"You can't get anything like that from Elegante." Miss Home strove to contain her envy of the silver-foil film that looked as if it had been sprayed on everywhere except hands and head. "Such a perfect fit I"

"Maybe I shouldn't tell you"—the stewardess leaned confidentially close—"but these are from Elegante. That's right! Special contract, just for us. You see, it's all to do with radiation, and the Van Allen belts and like that. Passengers just get a wisp of it, not enough to hurt, but we have to pass it four times a week, and it could mount up. So they designed this stuff. It carries some kind of magnetic field or something. Anyway, the radiation just bounces right off! And that's why we can't wear anything over it, because that would accumulate radioactivity. Not that we want to—cover it, I mean. I mean, would you?" She finished securing the belts and stood back, posing archly. Miss Home sighed.

"I could never get a skin-suit to fit that good."

"It's the material, dear. I mean, it's electric. You wait till we shoot the belts, you'll see. It scintillates. And it clings, by itself. Now, just hold tight and I'll run you up to your berth. Remember, once we jump out of orbit the craft will switch attitudes, and then you'll be facing forward, so don't be alarmed. Up you go!"

A loudspeaker hummed into life. "Your attention please. This is the captain speaking. We will be lifting off in one minute. You will be aware, at the moment, of a degree of vibration throughout the hull. I must warn you that this will increase until it is quite severe. This is due to the inherent nature of the drive and in no way indicates any fault or defect. The unpleasantness will not be of long duration, but will decrease to slightly less than it is now once we are fully underway. Your patience is requested. Anyone desiring sedatives please inform your stewardess, who will take care of it, and of anything else you may require. As soon as we are out of orbit and into flight-path the signal will be given to release safety-belts, if you so wish. At no time may you leave your seat except in extreme emergency. I repeat, do not leave your seat except in extreme emergency and, if possible, after consultation with a crew member. This precaution must be observed, as we shall be under diminished gravitational force, and it is quite easy to misjudge inertial forces and thus run the risk of injury. I repeat, if you need anything at all please summon the stewardess. You may do

this by pressing the button situated under your right arm rest. Thank you."

Miss Home cast a critical glance at her employer and touched the button. Seconds later the silver-glitter stewardess came sailing up the hoistshaft, clinging negligently by one hand.

"I think Mr. McCool had better have something to calm him. Would you, please, right away?"

"Right you are, dear. Won't be a minute."

She vanished on up through an oval hatch and was back within seconds bearing a paper cup and two golden capsules. The ship was really rattling now, and Miss Home had difficulty grabbing the cup. She nudged McCool briskly, popped the dosage into his mouth as he turned, then said, "Here, sir, drink this. You'll feel better."

Glassy-eyed, McCool drank obediently. The shaking worsened, became a body-aching blur. Then, just when it seemed impossible to withstand it any longer, it began to ease. Miss Home craned over and peered, but the landing-field was already far away below and there was no way to tell where the dark earth ended and the equally dark sky began. The trembling was now no more than a drowsy buzz. The stewardess emerged from her overhead cubicle, sailing down dramatically on the hoist until she was halfway. She halted. The captain spoke again:

"In a moment or two we shall be shooting the radiation belts, ladies and gentlemen. If you will observe your stewardess—not a difficult task—you will be able to see the life-preserving effect of the anti-radiation suit she is wearing, which all crew members must wear. . . ." The voice went on to explain, but Miss Home ignored it, fascinated vastly by the now-visible halo of flickering blue fire that lapped those extravagant curves. It came to her that, with a little pull, by discreet application of the influence she could bring to bear as secretary to Mr. McCool, she might just be able to wangle herself into a stewardess job.

The ship shuddered under the flaring nudge of steering jets, and changed attitude. Now the seats were all facing forward and the hoist channel became a gangway. The stewardess came drifting by, curves subtly modified and emphasized by the almost free-fall conditions, bright eyes alert for the first signs of fall-sickness.

"Is he going to be all right?" she whispered, glancing at the glassy-eyed McCool. Miss Home looked, shrugged, clutched the seat-arms quickly.

"I think so. You must get a lot of VIPs on this run?" 56

"All the time. Scientists and millionaires, we see them all. Got one extra special right now. You know who?"

Miss Home wanted to guess, but the silver-glitter stewardess didn't wait. "Remember I said this skint was an Elegante special? Well, she's with us this trip. The lady herself, four rows back from you."

"Oh!" Miss Home blinked, then said again, with emphasis, "Oh! But I thought—I mean-I heard that The Trippers were catching this flight, to vacation at her moon villa. Aren't they?"

"You don't want to believe everything you hear, dear." The stewardess assumed a delicate sneer. "I've heard that one, but I've never seen those clowns on any of my trips, nor have any of the other girls that I've asked. You believe me, dear, it's just a publicity gag."

"But it can't be! I mean—surely 'she would have denied it?"

"I don't suppose she even knows, dear. Don't quote me, but she's a bit—you know—peculiar? All in black fur. Furl I ask you. But anyway, she's there, large as life, and with three business associates. Queer lot they are, too,¹ if you ask me. But you see some oddballs on this job, I'm telling you. Anyway, I had better float along and give her a bit of attention!"

And she glided away expertly in slow-motion ballet steps, leaving Miss Home the prey to all kinds of anxieties.

McCool didn't emerge from his coma until the hair-raising moment of turnover. They had been coasting the last few hundred miles uphill to the gravi-null point with the drive merely rumbling. The captain gave due warning; seat-belts were checked; then the steering jets cut in to flip the cumbersome ship end for end, and the inertial investment immediately set up an emphatic argument. This shuddering racket was totally unlike the earlier experience in that everything was now weightless. McCool snapped out of his tranquilized calm with starting eyes and a feverish clutch at Miss Home.

"We're just turning over." She tried to soothe him, grabbing him in turn to keep his fuzzy outline reasonably visible. "So that we can back down. To the moon. You know!" He let go, tried to control his shakes, and offered her a choked apology.

"I'm sorry. I've never done this before. I dislike being in large machines of any kind. I suppose"—he struggled with the words, then said them firmly—"I must be grateful to you for coming along, Miss Home. I shudder to think what it would have been like had I been alone."

"That's all right," she said, smiling faintly, "but there's something you need to know. There's been a mistake somewhere. They aren't aboard."

"Who? What are you talking about?"

"The Trippers. And that girl. They're not on the ship!"

"But they must be! I'm certain—" He surged as if to rise, was checked by his seat-belt, and gulped at the sensation. "They must be!"

"Please listen, Mr. McCool," she implored. "I've checked with the stewardess. I mean, she knows all the important people by sight, and she told me. Miss Eleanor Grant is aboard, with three of her business associates, that's for sure, but no Trippers. They must have dodged you, somehow."

"But that's impossible," he cried. Then he caught himself. Miss Grant! "You say Miss Grant is aboard?"

"Yes. The stewardess knows her by sight."

"And"—McCool ground his teeth—"she and that group are thick as thieves, aren't they? Business associates, eh? I see!"

She watched his grim face with apprehension. "What are we going to do, Mr. McCool? We're almost there!"

"Let me think. Miss Home, I am going to have to take you into my confidence a little more than is customary. Somehow, probably as the result of the inquiries we have been making, there seems to have arisen a definite plot to block me from discovering things about that group. I mean, you've seen some of the peculiar stuff we have been turning up. Now"—he took a reckless breath and began to fabricate—"it's my belief that we are on the edge of some gigantic swindle or other, involving The Trippers, and that woman—and her business associates. Business, hah!" He glared at her; then, as he tasted the flavor of his own words, it came to him that it might not be fabrication at all. Perhaps, all unwittingly, he had hit on the truth!

"But what are we going to do?" she repeated, staring past him out of the port at the gray-white lunar landscape 58 now frighteningly near. The captain's tinny warning came before McCool could reply.

"We will touch down in fifteen minutes from now, ladies and gentlemen. Please secure your seat-belts. Please remain seated until the clear is given, at which time the exit-tunnel will be secured. Do not hurry. Do not make any violent movements. You may find the reduced lunar gravity disconcerting at first, but it is quite easy to adjust to, with care. You will find a considerable degree of vibration once more, as we touch down. This is quite in order and there is no cause for alarm. I hope you have had a quick and comfortable journey, and that I may have the pleasure of your company on your return flight. Thank you and out."

"Fifteen minutes 1 What are we going to do?"

"Stop saying thatl Miss Home, I had a trace device planted on—a member of that group. That device came aboard this craft. Therefore it must have been discovered and transferred, and most probably to Miss Grant. Probably they thought that I would hesitate to follow this far, that they would throw me off the scent. But they were mistaken."

"What does that mean?"

"It means, Miss Home, that I intend to follow Miss Grant, if possible, to this villa of hers, and then confront her with the facts. She is obviously involved in some way with this whole plot, this gigantic tax-evasion ring, or whatever it is. Japanese, or Soviet, or something. Anyway," he declared, "she's in on it, and I intend to get it out of her somehow."

"How can you do that? I mean, she might just refusel"

"Publicity, Miss Home. I don't think she would care for that. And I shall need you as a witness to everything that happens. I am very glad you came, Miss Home. Very glad."

The ship started to shudder and shake. What had been horizontal once more became up-and-down. The bleak and jagged landscape grew on either side until it acquired a concavity, was a horizon, then a distance. The vibration grew to a tooth-jarring climax, and then dwindled swiftly away to a murmur.

Miss Home had once tried her luck on a trampoline. Walking in this gravity was a very similar sensation. The solid underfoot seemed to bounce one's steps. Fortunately there was little walking to do, only to the exit-port and then on to the slide-walk of the airtight debarkation tube. That brought them out on to a polished floor and under a great glow-dome where silver-clad people with brassards went gliding about their business, and the travelers were con-

spicuous by the hesitant way in which they tried to copy that effortless dancing glide. McCool read off the luminescent signs in a whisper.

"Bar and Grill. Rest rooms. Lounge. News room. Reception. Ah! That's the one. After me, Miss Home. Let me do the talking, please."

Slithering to an unsteady stop by the counter he hooked one of the attendant girls with an imperious forefinger while fumbling out his glow-card to exhibit to her.

"Mr. McCool," she' said, with just the right amount of respect. "What can I do for you?"

"With my secretary, Miss Home, I am Miss Grant's house guest. Miss Eleanor Grant?"

"Oh yes, sir. But Miss Grant's party just went through—"

"I know. I was held up a few minutes. Would you direct me, please?"

"Certainly." She leaned back to consult a chart over her head, then forward again obligingly. "You take Number Three Tube, over there, see? If this is your first time, be careful how you go down the slope."

"Oh!" He faltered a moment. "We have to walk?"

"I'm afraid—no, wait a bit. Look, if you don't mind riding the baggage trolley, here it comes now. Let me help you." She ducked out from the counter, took his arm and steered him across the glassy floor to where a series of low beetlelike crawlers were debouching from the landing tube, each one laden with assorted luggage. She put her palm on the action-eye of one which bore the mark 3, and it stopped.

"Jump on," she said, "and just sit tight. Well, stand, anyway. It's programmed for Tube Three. Remember, when it stops again, hop off quickly, and you've only a few more yards to go for the passenger platform. All right, now?"

She saw them to the tube-way entrance, then halted, and the trolley crawled on into a brightly lit, glaze-walled tunnel.

"Now what?" Miss Home demanded. "I mean, ^ne'll kick up a fuss as soon as she sees us on the platform, whatever that is."

"She won't see us. Pay attention. I know a little about this system, even if I have never been here before. The tube is just that, a pipeline to carry passenger and freight capsules. Each villa has its own. This one will go to Miss Grant's. But we will be riding in the luggage section."

"What?" She stared at him.

"You heard me. When this thing stops, it will be to deposit this luggage somehow. We will endeavor to go with it. 60

Be on the alert, Miss Home; we won't have time to fiddle around."

The trolley crawled steadily on and down in a slow spiral. McCool, peering ahead, touched her arm suddenly. "This looks like something coming now. Ready?"

She couldn't think of anything to say. Ready for what?

Set into the tunnel wall was a red-glow marker alongside a steely trapdoor. The crawler drew level with it and halted. McCool tensed.

"We must watch what happens, and be—"

He got no further. Without warning the floorboard of the trolley heaved and and canted steeply sideways at the same time as the trapdoor slid aside. Both of them, together with a jumbled mass of bags and boxes, were shot into a dark hole, to slide and tumble, ungracefully but not painfully, down a long slide. McCool, speechless, fetched up with a bump against something hard and unyielding. In the next second something heavy and wriggling descended on top of him, discharging the last of his breath in a gasp. There came the hiss of a broken vacuum, a slither and click, and then sudden sideward movement. Rumbling. Then an equally sudden stop, so that the heavy weight pinning him down shrieked, and he realized it was Miss Home.

"Are you all right?" he whispered, trying to ease out from under. "We seem to be within the baggage section quite safely."

"Forever more!" she wailed, and thrust out, putting her palm flat on his face and snatching it away again quickly. "It's dark in here!"

"Well, naturally!" he snapped. "What did you expect?"

"But I can't see!" she cried, moving again and bringing a knee to bear on his diaphragm. "I can't see what's happening!"

"Keep still and be quiet! I think I can feel them getting in. Yes, I'm sure that's them. Hear that?"

That was another hiss and click of something closing. Seconds later there came again the sensation of sudden sideward acceleration and the subdued rumble of wheels. The pressure of acceleration kept up for several seconds; then, blindingly, two rectangular transparencies blazed into light immediately above him and he saw that he was flat on his back looking up, with Miss Home sprawled angularly across him, her shoulder up against a curved metal wall and her arm, where whe was supporting herself, just clear of his chin. Leaning against her arm was a rectangular suitcase. As she shifted abruptly in the light the suitcase fell, and he twisted

his head aside just in time, so that it impacted on his jaw rather than his nose.

"I'm sorry!" she gasped, and leaned on him to push it away. He bore it patiently, even with a momentaiy and guilty sense of pleasure at the warmth of her shape resting on him. Then, abruptly, he wriggled himself to a crouch, edged clear, and knelt.

"Now then," he said, "we can see what we're doing. Are you all right?"

"I think so," she quavered. "I don't think I've broken anything. But," and her lip trembled as she hesitated, "I'm so scared. What's going to happen to us?"

"Steady now," he said, catching the ragged edge of panic in her voice. "It's quite all right. Everything is going to be all right. There's nothing to be worried about, Miss Home."

His soothing tone, so different from his habitual office-tailored impersonality, had a strange effect on her. Like the touch of a sympathetic hand, it released in a flood all the bottled up fears, worries, disappointments and distresses of the past hours.

"Oh, Mr. McCool!" she wailed, her eyes flooding, thrusting herself blindly forward to clutch and huddle close to him.

"Now, now!" he mumbled, putting one arm around her and patting her shoulder awkwardly with the other hand. "I expect you're hungry, or tired, or something. But there's nothing to cry about, really."

"But what are we going to do?" she insisted. "There's the moon, out there!" she gestured blindly back over her shoulder somewhere. "All cold and lifeless. And we're miles away from the base by now. And Miss Grant will be furious— I mean—we've no right to be here!"

"You let me worry about that," he declared firmly. "Here, dry up and at least look at the scenery while it's there. Come on, now!"

She took his handkerchief, dabbed at her eyes, and looked up at him with some awe. "You're so strong. So determined!"

"I make it a habit to get what I set out to get," he told her, not displeased by the admiration so openly and closely revealed. "And I intend to get to the bottom of this mysterious business. And you're going to help me."

"Yes, sir," she said obediently but without fervor.

"And I think you can stop calling me sir. Can't you?" He became aware of his arm's clasp, and started to remove it, but she stiffened toward him at once in fear, and he re-62 affirmed his hold. "We're in this together, you know. Just you and I. And I don't even know your first name." "It's Lucia."

"Very well. Lucia. And I'm Horace. There now, come and look at the moon, arid be one of the relatively few people who have ever seen it like this."

She let him tug her around until they were both able to look out of the transparent sections on to the lunar landscape hurtling by. The capsule train was up to speed now, sizzling along on its overhead rail and heading at high speed for the great towering crater wall of Tycho's northern side.

What with the subdued sizzling of the train, the swaying, cradle-like motion of the capsule, and McCool's rather monotonous voice, Lucia found it easy to slip into fantasy, to imagine herself here with Jim—and then the alien quality of the moon helped. She sighed, snuggled tight, and McCool's measured delivery faltered for a word or two. It stopped altogether as the train leaped headlong at the rock-wall side of the crater, plunged into a tunnel cut especially to accept it, and everything fell dark. Caught out of her fantasy, she clung to him in terror. He did his best to soothe her and found the exercise not unpleasing. Within brief minutes they were out into the glare again. Now they were aimed directly for the distant scree-wall edge of Nubium, a course that would take them past the jagged right-hand crater edge of Pictatus.

McCool knew this much, but the words lay unspoken on his tongue. Novel thoughts arose in his mind and flowered strangely: I've never done anything like this before. Why not? I'm in love with 'that girt (even in thought he found difficulty framing the ridiculous sounds of her professional name) yet here I am hugging Miss Home—Lucia—and it is a pleasant sensation. He shifted his thoughts hastily away to a different level. But why am I doing this? This impulsive excursion across the face of- the moon, why? I'm intelligent. And the whole point of intelligence, surely, is to plan? Surely? And yet here I am, skulking on the trail of a wealthy lady dress-designer, across the face of the moon, without so much as an overnight bag! And no idea what I am going to do at the other end, either!'

The scurrying train swung past Pictatus and launched itself over the rim-wall of the dry sea. For a moment the whole sweep of the southern reaches of Mare Nubium lay spread out to view. And there, as the track took a slow curve to diminish the drop, lay their destination: six glassite domes

enclosing a central squat tower complete with antenna-girders. The ubiquitous gray-brown dust had drifted to bury the outer edges of the domes, so that from this distance one was reminded forcibly of some multi-lensed insect emerging from the dust. This was the long-deserted starship base. Over to the right of it, and quite close, was the construction and launch facility. It looked as if someone had driven a long, slanting drift into a mountainside and then covered the whole thing with a cupro-nickel cage. It caught Miss Home's attention away from her comfortable reverie.

"Whatever is that?" she whispered, her arm tightening around him.

"Once upon a time," he said softly, "Mankind dreamed of going to the stars. That's the gravestone of that dream." "Whatever for?"

"Exactly. Lord knows, we have enough problems to overcome, right where we are. But that's the way it is, Miss Home. Lucia. We can barely exist here, and I understand conditions are even worse on the Mars Colony project."

"It does seem a pointless waste," she agreed, "and then just to leave it lying here."

"I believe they salvaged the more delicate instrumentation equipment. But the rest, why, it would have cost more than it was worth to employ labor to demolish it. I imagine the Scientific Advancement Bureau was quite relieved to be able to sell the whole thing to Miss Grant. Quite cheaply, I would guess. After all, it was a dead loss otherwise."

"Miss Grant? You mean that's her place?"

"Oh yes." He looked down at her as the villa swung out of their sight and the train began to ^low its rush. "She's a very shrewd businesswoman. But then, we already knew that. We are about to find out just how shrewd. Are you ready for more emergencies, Miss—I mean, Lucia?"

"Whatever you say . . . Horace."

"Good. Now, I don't know too much about this transport system, but it must, obviously, enter some kind of air lock when it stops. They will want to unload this baggage. Somehow we must dodge them and gain entrance to the living space for long enough . . . until they send this thing back. Then it won't matter when we are discovered, because they won't be able to throw us out."

"Suppose they turn violent? I mean—there's just us!" She shivered as she looked up at him. He managed a smile.

"I don't think you need have any fear, my dear. Financial swindlers do not go in for violence. They prefer dealing and compromise, preserving the appearances. In any case, 64 they dare not threaten me. Unlike those others on Gilbert's list, I definitely would be missed."

Before she could wonder, audibly, what on earth he was talking about, sudden deceleration gripped the capsule, propelling its contents forward. For a confused moment the two clung helplessly to each other and cringed from the impact of rolling baggage. Then all was still. He scrambled up to a crouch, which was all the capsule shape would permit, helped her to her knees, and they peered anxiously through a pane. Out there was the garishly lit inside of a curved enclosure that looked like the same glassy walls they had recently left. Something had rumbled shut, shaking the capsule.

"Air locks of some kind," he hissed, and as he spoke the roof of their prison shuddered and slid back into slots. Greatly daring, he extended his neck and head to peer cautiously forward. There, ahead, were oval doors set in the rock. And then a head appeared, and another, as the authorized passengers rose to step out of the train. McCool watched them as long as he dared, then ducked back, peered out the other side, seized Lucia's arm.

"They're coming along here to collect the stuff. Come on, out the other side, quick and quiet!"

She scrambled up and out on to glossy slag, pressing herself to the side of the capsule as he did. They heard voices, cringed back. He looked around and past her, then touched her arm in soundless indication. She followed his gaze, saw one figure going away on this side, to another armored door. He brought his mouth close to her ear.

"One of them has gone on ahead, to start up the various devices. The others are dealing with the baggage. This could be our chance. Come on."

She followed him in stealthy tread, crouched to keep the bulk of the train between them and the three who were hauling out the boxes and bags. The lone figure ahead had shut himself into a cubicle. McCool had watched the lights change to red—and then, after a few seconds—to green. Guessing, he put his thumb on a button and the lights switched once more.

"Coming back down," he whispered. "Be ready to jump in, quick. It looks as if this is the personnel elevator. The other will be for freight and heavy stuff. Here it is. Quickly!"

There was barely room for both of them to squeeze in. He clutched her close, guessed at another button, pushed it, and the sensation of real weight came for a brief while. Then stop, and another button to make the door open.

They staggered out. Holding her arm, he glanced around rapidly, spotted a nook and dragged her to it. Then there was time to take breath, to stare and see where they had so precipitately landed.

VII

They looked out on a large dome-roofed room that might once have been used for technical conferences, or possibly assemblies, or briefings. Now it seemed to an all-purpose lounge, aglow with indirect lighting and strewn liberally with transparent blow-up furniture and throw rugs. And musical instruments. MeCool eyed those with a twinge of apprehension, then expanded his attention to the generalities again. This dome had to be under the central antenna, and all around were curved archways leading off into the lesser domes. Where he and Lucia were now cowering was a small recess in one of the upright supports. Even as he wondered where the lone person ahead of them had gone, there came a click and stir and figures moved out of a door a little way around the arc of the main dome. They busied themselves hauling out boxes and cases, just sliding them randomly into the main room.

"That must be Miss Grant," he whispered, studying the lean, black-clad figure in dark lenses. The other two looked like no one he could place, with their pallid gray faces, sleek black hair and clipped moustaches.

"That takes care of it for the moment," said one of them, dusting his hands. "Clean up and eat is my program just now."

"Too right!" the other declared, and McCool started at the heavy Australian drawl. "Ain't it a relief to know we'll never have to ride that flaming rattle-bucket again?"

"Imagine what it must do to the crew," the dark lady said, in a voice that made McCool start again, "having to bear that twice or three times a week! It must porridge their brains! I'll go set up the auto-chef. What's your fancy?"

McCool started forward, incoherencies struggling on his lips. The nearest man, the one with the Aussie twang, half-66 turned to stare, held it a moment, then swung back to the other man and jerked his arm up in a mock salute.

"Sir!" he snapped, in a completely different voice. "I have to report a stowaway. Two stowaways." The other man stood quite still, just looking. Miss Grant came forward a step, smiled, held out a hand.

"Congratulations, Mr. McCool. Frankly, I never thought you'd make it this far. But who's your companion?"

McCool felt Lucia shivering, felt her hand gripping his like a vise. He couldn't blame her. His own thought-processes were in chaos, his tongue frozen to his palate. Miss Grant came forward more, ignoring him now.

"My dear, you don't look at all well. Come and sit down. If this is your first trip I don't wonder you're a bit scrambled. But you'll be all right in a moment or two. Come on, now, it's all right!"

"Miss Home is my personal secretary." McCool got the words out somehow. "And she takes orders only from me. Miss Home!" His desperate blare had no effect whatever. Lucia weaved unsteadily to a bubble-couch and slumped into it. The silent, serious faced one had gone skating swiftly away across the room, came back now with a glass of golden-tinted liquid to hold out.

"Try this," he suggested mildly. "It'll make you feel better."

"Now see here—!"

"Oh shut up!" Miss Grant wheeled, the dark lenses giving her a sudden authority. "You may have the power of life and death over this young woman in your world, but not here. This is our world, not yours."

"Miss Home is my responsibility. She is my employee. I brought her here." In desperation McCool had to fall back on well-worn phrases.

"Poop!" Miss Grant retorted irreverently. "Responsible? You? For what, invasion of privacy? Espionage? Or attempted kidnapping? She didn't know she was coming here, nor was she asked. And she's of age. You could be in bad trouble, McCool."

Before McCool could absorb this unexpected attack the vocally acrobatic one made a gun of his right fist and aimed it at McCool's middle.

"Talk fast, hombre. We ain't got no use for your kind in this here town. Give us one good reason why we don't toss you and the dame right on the next stage outta town, huh?"

Completely bewildered, McCool drew back, cast a desperate glance at the dark glasses, and blurted, "This is

farcical. You're not Miss Eleanor Grant, at all. You've no more right here than I have!"

Miss Grant chuckled, made an elaborate bow, and with one sweep took off the glasses and dark wig; with another movement away went the black fur, and she stood arrogantly in her skintight black body-stocking, shaking free her fiery curls and grinning at him. . . . Yum-Yum.

"So much for that!" She laughed. "Now what are you going to do about it?" Again McCool had to struggle with words and before he could find good ones Miss Home half-rose, staring. Then she wailed helplessly and sank back into her seat.

"I want to go home! Please, I want to go home!"

"I'm afraid that's not possible," the serious one said, still mild. "The shuttle train is on its way back to base right now. It will take all of an hour to get it back. And anyway, the shuttle-ship won't be leaving for a long time. Fourteen hours, I think."

"Boss-man here can buy her a room in the hotel, can't he? Buy himself one too at the same time. We don't want any master-slave routines here!"

"Can't do that either, Jem," the redhead objected. "This poor girl needs a meal, a rest, and time to adjust. Besides, we send her back with him, he'll be so furious that he'll take it out on her. Job, references, character, the lot. She'll be ruined!"

"How dare you suggest such a thing!" McCool roared, and she shrugged.

"See what I mean? Look, why don't we all unwind, have a fresh-up and eat, and talk this whole thing out sensibly, eh? There's no need for anybody to shout anything at anybody else, and it won't do any good. McCool?"

"You know why I'm here," he blurted, and she sighed.

"Yes. I know. Because you're too thickheaded to be told. Come along, Miss Home, I'll show you the bathroom. Johnny, fix the auto-chef, huh?"

Jem glowered frightfully. "Jest a minute, daughter. What's this man mean to you? Him and his painted-type women from the sinful city, they ain't our kind. Cain't trust him as fer as I can spit!"

"It's all right, Paw!" the grinning girl replied in kind. "I ain't about to take any chances with him but I'm kinda curious to see what he'll do next. Might be a lot of laughs!"

To her own vast astonishment Miss Home found herself giggling, and encountered a glorious smile from the other girl. She giggled again. 68

"That's more like it," her hostess approved. "Did you bring any gear with you, Miss—look, what's your name?"

"Lucia. Please, I don't care for Lucy. And I haven't a thing, never had the chance to. It all happened so suddenly!"

"Impulsive, our McCool. Still, that's all right, I have loads of stuff. Maybe not your size, but we'll manage. Call me Yummy, if you like. The boys do, mostly. . . ."

McCool watched the pair of them drift away and struggled to organize his thoughts into some kind of sense. This whole thing had somehow dissolved in his fingers, into frank unreality. The one she had called Johnny was out of sight.

Jem, of the variable accent, hefted a bag or two and said, "This way, m'lord, to the guest chamber. The royal suite is all ready for you."

"What's the point?" he demanded wildly, trailing unsteadily along. "You know I've nothing with me." It was coming home to him with emphasis that he was trapped, the butt of the warped humor of these lunatics.

"Plenty of rooms." Jem halted, waved an expansive hand. "This one's mine. You help yourself. You find one that's empty, it's yours. Bathroom's down the end there. Take a shower, if nothing else. Freshen you up a bit. Then we'll eat. Keep your strength up, you'll need it!"

That omnious hint lingered as McCool investigated the small well-appointed cubicles and chose one at random. Then he made for the toiletry department. Despite his confusion on almost every other level, his trained eyes were impressed by the standards here. The fittings were ultra-modem, the cold water icy, the hot boiling, the fragrance-injector, ultraviolet nook and supersonic skin-freshner all worked perfectly, which was more than one could say for many hotels. An enterprising hotelier, now, could have made a little gold mine out of a place like this.

That train of thought, however, led him straight back into the morass. Miss Grant, fashion-tycoon. She was masquerading as Miss Grant! And the business associates were, of course, those guitar-plucking boys! The telltale bauble had not betrayed him, after all. So much he could cling to, but the rest was even more inexplicable than ever. Somebody, he thought, as he reknotted his genuine silk tie before tracking down the faint but appetite-provoking smells that were drifting his way, somebody was going to have a lot of explaining to do.

Out of the bathroom he heard a noise, music in the distance. Tracking that, he got back to the main room, to a bewildering amount of controlled confusion. Seated at a

four-manual keyboard the serious faced one was fingering out with immense concentration an involved and interlaced melodic line with one hand and furiously counterpointing with the other. He looked younger, more like the stage appearance, except that he was stripped down to no more than a pair of white shorts. By his side Jem of the flexible voice was similarly unclad, was dexterously and furiously treading out a percussion beat that matched the music, his face a broad grin of intense concentration. McCool stared in silence, in reluctant admiration, because, now that he had placed the piece, this was Bach. But it was Bach played faster and much more exquisitely exact than the composer himself could ever have imagined. It was as delicate as lace, as precise as a watch-movement, and utterly alien to the slam-bam crash-bash noise that The Trippers usually served up.

Why the devil, he mused resentfully, don't they put that kind of thing on tape? That I would go for! He looked away angrily, to see Yum-Yum over in a far bay, standing in front of what he recognized as an automatic cooker panel. She too had changed, was now wearing a loose, almost shapeless garment of creamy silken stuff with flapping half-sleeves and a hem that ended just below her hips. As she jigged and swayed, snapping her fingers in time to the basic beat, he saw that the blouse—or was it a cheong-sam?—was slit up the sides to her waist. As he drifted unsteadily across to her the soul-shaking fascination of her flared up in him stronger than ever. She was long, lean, leggy, and bone-lessly boyish of contour, yet there was something about her that caught his breath and make his heart hammer.

"Hi!" She caught sight of him and beamed. "Coffee in a minute. Oven's all hot now, so dial what you fancy. Right there, look."

"I do know," he retorted, casting his eye down the list of available dishes. "That's quite a selection, though!"

"Nothing but the best for Space Service! Hah, there's mine and Jem's. Johnny's having casserole. Takes longer. And that's Jim's. I'll put that to wait. He'll be back soon." She turned away from the observation window, put fingers in her mouth and created an ear-hurting whistle. "Come and get it!" she called, as the racing music halted in mid-chord.

"Yours will take a minute," she said, as the two musicians came and took away their containers. "What about Lucia? What's her taste?"

"Miss Home? I'm afraid I don't know that." 70

"You mean you've never taken that dishy girl out to dinner?"

"Certainly not! What ever gave you an idea like that?"

"Just looking at her, which is obviously something you've never done. Hah, here she comes now. Time to remedy your omission, believe me."

He turned to stare where she was looking, where Lucia had appeared in an archway. She had discarded her travel-weary suit and was now wearing the exact duplicate of the shapeless blouse-thing her hostess wore. On the dancing redhead it looked shapeless. On Lucia's much more ample curves it clung and amplified subtly. McCool stared, and felt uncomfortable. The composed mask that was her office face was gone. Now she looked soft and helpless, and her butter-blonde hair, no longer orderly sleek, spun out like a frothy gold halo about her head. Clearing his throat awkwardly, he turned again to contemplate the container that was passing through the high-frequency cooking zone.

"Please understand," he mumbled, "that Miss Home is only my personal secretary. There is no relationship otherwise."

Lucia came unsteadily, brushing the creamy stuff with her fingers, wide-eyed in awe. "This is real silk!"

"Right. It wears forever, and thrives on washing. Perfect for relaxing in. Suits you, too. Have it if you like. I have lots more."

"But I couldn't—it must cost crazy!"

"Forget it. You just dial your meal. I want to go talk to the boys. Mr. McCool will help you. One of you bring the coffeepot, huh?"

She slid away. McCool felt burningly uncomfortable, as if this transformed Miss Home were radiating heat at him.

"I'll take that coffee," he muttered, grabbing his meal and the drink carrier and turning away. He had moved only three steps when movement to his right made him halt and turn, to see the third male member of the group make an appearance in another archway. By elimination, this was Jim. McCool watched the new arrival skate his way to the cook-comer, saw Miss Home turn, and stare as if struck.

"Hi I" he hailed cheerfully, circling her to get at the selection-dial. "I don't know you, do I?"

"Oh!" Her voice shook. "Oh my lord! You're Jim!"

"Right first time. Who're you?"

"Oh!" Her agitation was splendidly visible. "I'm Lucia Home." She extended a fluttering hand. "Is it really you? May I touch you?"

Jim frowned, looked around helplessly for guidance, caught sight of McCool's stare, shrugged, and said, "I don't see why not, if that's what you want, Lucia."

The trembling hand moved, touched his shoulder, stroked it and withdrew. Miss Home shut her eyes, drew a deep breath. Her face flushed rosy, then went deathly pale, and she began to collapse.

"One of those, huh?" Jim sounded disgusted as he swooped expertly to catch her. Green eyes flashed at McCool. "Gimme a hand here, can't you?"

McCool put his burdens on the floor hurriedly and stumbled forward to help. Between them they dragged the swooning girl to a balloon couch and laid her out.

"You brought her here." It was an accusation.

"She came with me. My personal secretary."

"So you say. She is also a lunatic fan!" Jim rose, strode back to get his meal. Humiliated and furious, McCool collected his food and settled himself as part of the circle around the low table.

"Nutty fan!" Jim growled. "How did they get here anyway?"

"A good question," Johnny said quietly. "McCool?"

"We concealed ourselves in the baggage section of your train." McCool stated it as flatly as possible. Jem laughed.

"No kidding? What d'you know, a new one! We've seen and tried most of the stunts, them trying to track us, us trying to dodge them—but that's a new one on me."

"I told you"—Johnny's voice was still quiet but with an edge—"that McCool was no fool. Like Yummy said, Mr. McCool, congratulations. But your gallop stops right here, all right? Now, Sunny Jim, what's the good word so far?"

"What d'you mean, so far? It's okay, all GO. What else?"

"You mean you've checked it all out already?" The girl was shrill.

"Sure, why not? Look, that's all part of the design, see. It's broken down into sections, like power-supply, control-module, drive-system, support-system and all that. Each system has an interlock. That's just a Christmas tree array with a green light at the top. If there's anything, anything at all, that is not one hundred percent on line, the green does not go on. That's all standard practice. No green? You start checking down that section until you find the fault. Simple. So there are seven sections, each with its master switch. So what's to take time? Switch one—green. Two—green, three—green, and like that." He made gestures of switching 72 rapidly. "Seven out of seven, so hit the integrator switch and all is well. Nothing to it I"

"So the next thing is, how long have we got?"

"I left her switched on, won't hurt, and will help get that litde bit extra charge in the power-cells." Jim shot a glance at his wrist. "We have a few minutes over eleven hours from now. All right?"

"Right!" Johnny's voice took on a keener edge still. "How do we play this, gang? I suggest we load up everything right away, get that done. Then we can sleep."

"Sleep on the ship, huh?" the girl suggested, and he nodded.

"That's what I meant."

"Sleep all you want," Jim put in. "She's all programmed to take off by herself anyway, whether we're awake or not, at the precise time."

"Clown!" she cried. "You'll set an alarm, you hear? Think we want to be asleep and miss the most exciting moment?"

"Yeah!" Jem broke in with an affected growl. "That's fine, but what about our prisoners here?"

There was a moment of silence in which could be heard the first gasps and stirrings from Miss Home. She sat up, found five pairs of eyes on her, and flushed a boiling red. Yum-Yum raised a hand in greeting.

"Come on, honey, sit by me. We are just about to discuss your future. Come on!" On long and lovely but very unsteady legs Lucia came to join the gathering, settling into the comer of a couch by Jim.

"What's happened? Did I faint, or something?"

Jim rose hastily, went and got her meal-container, broke the seal-lid and set it on the table where she could reach. He poured a carton delicately, the coffee flowing like thick syrup in the low-gravity environment.

"You just have some of this," he urged, "and listen. Careful how you pick up and drink. Go slow. All right? Now, you said—Jem?"

"I didn't. I was just asking. Johnny, you're the planner!"

"Nothing to plan. Mr. McCool, there's a radio-phone link with Tycho, so you can find out when the next shuttle is going back to Earth. It's all yours."

"I have no intention of leaving," McCool said between his teeth, "until I have some satisfactory answers to some questions."

"That's up to you. No reason why you shouldn't stay here, in the villa, as long as you want. There are plenty of supplies for a month or two. Help yourself. Of course,

you might have a little trouble explaining it later, when you get back home. Miss Home might not like that."

"I will ignore that infamous remark, and your blithe assumption that you can write me off. You're not very consistent, are you? One minute you credit me with being something better than a fool, the next you try to treat me like a child. You can't have it both ways. You have spoken of a deadline of some kind, eleven hours from now. Explain that!"

"Let me tell him, huh?" Yum-Yum was all on edge now, her blue eyes blazing with fervor. "Can I, gang?"

McCool stared at her in wonder. "Tell me what?"

"Out there"—she waved a hand—"is a starship. You know that much, don't you? Don't you?"

"Of course! This entire extravagance, this whole establishment—"

"All right. All right!" she interrupted him impatiently. "Ride your hobby horse some other time. Right now we are riding ours. In eleven hours from now that ship will take off. For the stars! For Proximal"

"Oh, rubbish!" he snorted as soon as he could get the words out. "What do you take me for? Why, it's common knowledge that the whole idea was a fiasco, a washout!"

"Will you listen?" she demanded. "You really can be thick, sometimes. Listen! That ship will fly. It's been fixed. We fixed it. Well, Jim did, with our help. You just heard him say it was all in GO condition!"

McCool glared at her, and then at Jim. "Is this some elaborate joke? My dear young man, that ship, even if you knew how to reassemble it the way it was, won't fly. I imagine every schoolchild knows by now that the entire venture was—as I have said—a fiasco! You saw, you experienced on the way here in the Lunar Shuttle, the ultimate in space-drive. After years of experiment and refinement, that is the best that can be done, and a very poor best it is. Even if you could duplicate that—which I doubt—it hasn't a hope of getting to any star!"

"I'll go along with you there," Jim said easily, sipping at his' coffee. "That rattletrap contraption has its work cut out just to get this far. And you're right again, the original design was a flop. But I've improved on it a lot. It's very simple, really. You know anything about inertial-drive calculus at all?"

Despite himself, McCool couldn't keep his voice from climbing into shrill incredibility. "Are you trying to tell me 74 you have succeeded where all our leading technologists and engineers have failed?"

Jim finished off his drink, put the carton down carefully, then leaned back and grinned a broad grin. "No," he said. "I guess not. Nobody can tell you anything you don't want to know, can they? Better give up, Yummy, it is not going to work on him."

"Of course it isn't going to work, as you put it, on me." McCool sat up straighten "You're a clever lot, in your own shallow way. You've achieved some measure of success in a tawdry field, largely by deceiving people. You're all here, even, under false pretenses, carrying out some silly charade on behalf of the faceless people who are backing you. But you are skipping around on the very thin edges of shady finance, that much I know. And that is one subject I happen to be expert on, so you can stop trying to fool me the way you have bamboozled everyone else. What happens eleven hours from now? And why are you trying to get rid of Miss Home and myself?"

"Who's trying to get rid of you?" Johnny demanded mildly. "Yummy tried to tell you. Jim tried. All I can do is repeat it. At the appointed time, that ship out there will take off for Proxima, whether you like it or not."

"So?" McCool challenged him belligerently. "Suppose I humor your fantasy so far. Very well. The ship takes off. Then what? What has that to do with anything concerning you? Or me?"

"You still don't get it, do you?" Johnny let his tensely serious face slip into his rare smile. "We call this villa the Mare's Nest, for reasons that will be obvious to you if you think about it. The Mare Nubium? We call the ship—just for kicks—the Ellis Dee. Get that one? Because it's all set for a trip. To the stars. Out of this world, McCool. Get it yet? Because, oh mighty tycoon, it will take off, and when it does, we will be on it. On our way. Taking a trip! We're outward bound, McCool. You still think you're going to stay with us?"

There was something about his quiet, coldly sardonic delivery that put icy chills along McCool's spine, that compelled belief even though his every instinct rejected the fantastic notion.

"You're insane! All of you! Stark raving mad!"

"Now there," Johnny said, rising lazily, "I wouldn't care to argue. Depends on what you mean by sane, doesn't it? Anyway, have yourself a time. Come on, gang, packing to do I"

"Very well." He bit off the words like bullets. "You will have to join me in hiding. There is no other choice!"

"Where?" she demanded, swaying and clinging to him. He looked about, then indicated the ladders which dangled close by.

"Up there. Downward will be toward the engines, upward will be cabins and so on. If any." He caught the nearest ladder and held it. "Go ahead, I'll follow." It was logical, but a mistake on his part. To cling to the lower rung of the ladder while she clambered up offered him a spectacle he could have well done without. But it had to be done, and when he had followed her up the ladder they found cabins, ten of them, with only four that showed signs of occupancy.

"Those others are spares," he concluded. "This was designed, if I recall, as a ten-man expedition. Very well, we will take one spare cabin each, and remain within—"

She interrupted with an objection. "I am not," she declared, "going to sit all by myself in a cabin and wait!"

"But, my dear girl"—he was grimly patient—"you can see for yourself that there isn't room for two people!"

"I am not going to be left alone!" she repeated, in a tone which made him breathe violently and then submit.

"Very well. It will only be for a few hours anyway. But we must be silent, and in the dark, you understand?"

They managed, after a fashion. The bunk bed, intended for one big man, was not wide enough for two, but it served for Miss Home. And, with him seated on one end, and her head in his lap, they managed.

"Mr. McCool. Horace?" She whispered it in the dark.

"Yes. What?"

"Suppose they really are going to the stars?" "Don't be ridiculous, Lucia."

That ended that. In a moment or two he was astonished to hear her regular breathing and there was no doubt she had gone off to sleep! His mind was too full of impossible questions to permit the same easy escape. So many impossibilities.

A strident weep-weep-weep noise brought him out of dreamland with the agony of a stiff neck and paralyzed thighs. He moved fractionally, winced at the pain, then winced again as quick footsteps came to a halt by the door, which opened a crack to admit light from outside. There came a click, the cabin light flared, and he squinted to see Yum-Yum standing in the doorway, grinning at him.

"Just making a scratch meal. Come and join us?" 78

"You knew we were here all the time?" His voice was rusty.

"Of course. We have built-in telltales for that. You'd have been better off in the villa."

Lucia stirred, lifted her head. "What's the time?" she mumbled.

"An hour before takeoff. Come and eat."

She went away, leaving the unhappy two no choice but to groan and follow. Below, the grinning four were huddled by one table, leaning back into the tilt as if used to it.

"You're a hard man to discourage," Johnny said, handing a platter and carton to each of them. "You still have forty-five minutes to kill."

"She said one hour," McCqoI retorted.

"To the actual lift-off, yes. But the ship seals itself fifteen minutes ahead of that. Access tube retracts, tube-cover slides back, air has to exhaust out, all sorts of things have to happen."

, "And you really expect me to believe this thing will fly?" "The other two did," Jim offered, cheerfully. "Other two? What other two?"

"We flew the second one about a year ago, and the first one a year before that. No problems."

"And no drive, eitherl" McCool snapped, suddenly irritated. "Why try to keep up this farce? This thing was never intended to fly. If it is to move at all—and I doubt even that, and anything else you say—it will be fired. Like a missile. Like a bullet out of a gun barrel. And the jet-controls are merely for guidance. I'm not blind, remember!"

"That's pretty good." Jim nodded his appreciation. "Dead on the nose, too. Down at the butt end there is a ferrite cradle, and all the way up the launch tube are ring-magnets. Solenoids. Tucked away in the basement outside is a stack of storage batteries, fully charged. When the computer finally flips the switch, those magnets turn on in sequence and we go up, up and away! That part will be rugged, believe me. I calculate we will go from rest-zero to eight g*s in about thirty seconds, up three hundred feet of boost. We will achieve escape-velocity plus right there. And then the drive cuts in, and we're on our way. You don't believe me, huh?" There was no need for McCool to say it, his face did it for him. Jim shrugged resignedly. "So it's your funeral, brother. We've had ours."

"What do you mean by that?" McCool demanded. "He meant," Johnny said softly, "that The Trippers, and Yum-Yum, are dead. The announcement will be made on

Earth in just a little under one hour from now, by our lawyers."

"That which never was in the first place, no longer is now, and never will be again!" Jem intoned dramatically. "We have dropped our masks, disinherited all our alter egos, given all we have to the poor—whoops! wrong script. Anyway, we are now just us. The past is dead!"

Lucia surprised everybody by speaking up: "If you're just you now, who were you before?"

The shout of laughter that greeted her innocent remark brought a reluctant smile to McCool's lips, but not for long. The implication was too plain. The four were intending to vanish, and this ship was part of the plan.

"You still don't believe it, huh, McCool?" Jim's grin was derisory now.

"Oh yes, I believe you, up to a point." McCool stared at him grimly. "I'm prepared to accept that you will take off in this thing, be fired off in the way you've described it. There's no atmosphere to hinder, and the gravitational force is small. It will work. You'll achieve orbit. But as for the rest"—he shook his head scornfully—"do you really expect me to swallow the notion that you, you four, alone, are responsible for all this? A light-headed group of teenage jazzers?"

"Not jazz," Johnny contradicted quickly. "Jazz is a totally different musical idiom from that which we employ."

"I am aware of that!" McCool snapped at him irritably. "I have a large and valuable collection of genuine jazz. I used the word in default of anything more appropriate. 'Trippers,' then."

"And we're not teenagers," Jem put in. "Not any more. We're all of age, Dad. Officially adult."

"All right!" McCool's irritation overflowed into a shout. "So am I. Older and considerably more sensible than any of you give me credit for. I would remind you that I live, and work, and deal with and in the real world of facts and figures, not in some multicolored psychedelic dreamland. It may be fun, or kicks, for you to pretend that you are embarking on some wild adventure or other. Out of this world! But I think the cold reality will overtake you soon enough, just as soon as the power-masters who are using you decide that you are no longer of any value. Very soon, to judge by what you have just disclosed—that you are dropping out of the public eye."

He met four wide-eyed and astonished stares and felt 80 reassured that he had divined more than they wanted to reveal.

"You can stop trying to mislead me, trying to get rid of me. I'm not taken in. I stay. The only way you'll remove me is by force."

"That's out," Johnny said softly. "That's just one of the many ways in which we don't dig your world, McCool. We don't interfere with other people, and we don't like other people interfering with us. That's why we've decided to opt out."

"You are not unique in that. You're probably too young or too lazy to study history, or you'd know and compare yourself to the beatniks, and the pot-smokers, the acid-suckers, the flower-people. Opt out of work, yes, but grab all the benefits I"

"No, not us. We do know about the misfits of the past. We studied them for clues. Before you start criticizing them, ask yourself, where could they go that was free? Not like us. We found our place, and we're going."

"So you're determined to stick to that silly story about starfaring?"

"Because it happens to be true."

"I see." McCool pushed away his empty container and leaned back with a contemptuous grin. "Very well, I'll humor you. You've mentioned Proxima. You know just how far away it is, of course? And how long it will take you to get there?"

"We sure know how far it is," Jem declared in an exaggerated drawl, "but we kinda differ on how long a trip it is going to be. It's like the mortician said when they let the casket fall." As McCool stared at him blankly he explained with wide-eyed innocence: "Remains to be seen!"

"And the mortician's name was Phil Graves," Jim said in disgusted tones. "Where do you get your material, from the Smithsonian?"

"I have a collection, on tape," Jem declared proudly, "of the real old-fashioned radio shows. Some jazz tool" He returned eagerly to McCool. "We could compare sometime, maybe? Most of mine is Country and Folk but I do have some Armstrong and Monk!"

"He doesn't have his stuff along, clown! Now will you tune out a moment? What this slip-witted character is trying to say, McCool, is that he doesn't have the brains, or the math, to be able to follow my proof that Einstein slipped a cog or two in his theoretical approach to space-time dynamics. If you take the equations in which the cosmic constant, c, the speed of light in a vacuum, comes out as a lim-

to the stars! They had kept on saying so. All McCool's loathing for being dominated by machinery surged into panic-sized life. Then the bullhorn, loud and shocking, make him jump with its three-fold roar.

Five minutes to go, and he stood in an agony of indecision, not knowing which way to jump. The exit hatch, over there! At the far end he could see the air lock. Shut. He reached it, prodded at controls, battered on it in futility, and a taped voice shattered him by saying, laconically, "One minute to launch-time and counting."

He fled unsteadily back to the main chamber, slipped on the floor, fell, and slid into an aching heap amid the clustered plastic-bubble furnishings. He got up, breathing hard and fighting irrational terror, and that tinny voice told him, "Ten seconds."

His stomach churned, heaved, sent sour-tasting vomit up to the back of his throat. "No!" he croaked. "Stop it! Stop it!"

The voice didn't—couldn't—hear him. "Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Zero."

The floor struck McCool through his feet, made his legs buckle. It thumped again, and again, the pulses coming faster and faster. An enormous weight grew in him, bearing down, crushing him to the floor. He buckled, saw a plastic couch nearby, fell into it awkwardly, and the weight grew giant-size, squashing him, squeezing out his breath. Lift-pulses came faster. He felt himself sinking into the yielding plastic, his joints twisting, deforming agonizingly under the pressure. A mighty fist gripped his chest, wouldn't let him breathe. His own pulse hammered in his ears, blackened his vision. The air-filled plastic creaked and billowed up to engulf him.

The crushing weight grew to nightmare dimensions, became unbearable. He felt a sudden, shattering jar, the bone-crushing impact of the hard floor, a flaring blaze of lights in his head, and then merciful darkness swallowed him.

Faintly, distantly, he knew that someone was trying to pull him back from this comfortable dark into that agonizing other place of light and pain. He whimpered, wanting to be left alone. Voices came, foggily at first, then louder and plainer.

"We don't even know how bad he's hurt, damn itl" "Can't leave him here."

"He's burst the couch. Bound to have broken bones." "Let me see him!" An authoritative feminine voice, this one. "I have training in medical first aid."

Hands came out of the haze to touch and pull, and hurt. He protested, and that authoritative voice told him, "Just keep still until I find out what the damage is. I won't hurt you any more than I can help. Have we anything I can give him as an injection to kill the pain?"

"Medical box, Johnny?" Another feminine voice, strangely shaken.

The hands again, palpating and investigating. Then the bite of a needle and the grateful diminishing of the pain waves.

The controlling voice again, very firmly: "We can't leave him here. We will have to rig up a cradle of some kind, to get him to a cabin."

And then everything went a long way away and was quiet.

He was in a box. And there were aches, a whole array of them pressing in on him from all sides. McCool opened his eyes carefully, warily, and saw a dim glow, and a roof close above his face. A wall to the right; to the left, nothing.

He turned his head that way and stared a long moment until the sight and his memories coalesced into sense. A cabin. Spaceship cabin! Panic came unbidden and he tried to stir, to sit up, and something sent out a quiet ping! He slumped back, sweating. Within three breaths the door opened and Lucia came in hurriedly, wide-eyed and anxious, straight over to him.

"Don't move!" she ordered, putting a palm on his chest. "Do you understand what I'm saying? Blink your eyes if you do!"

"I can talk!" he protested, his voice sounding like gravel-scrapings and hurting his throat. "What—"

"Oh please!" She stooped low and attentive. "Please keep still and do nothing sudden. Talk, if you must, but don't move until I tell you." She touched her wrist—he saw a metal band there, with an instrument—and said into it, "Jem? He's awake and conscious. Would you bring that soup now?"

"Right away. Good news, hey?"

As McCool stared at Lucia, still stooping over him, the door opened again and Jem sidled into the narrow space bearing a vaporous carton.

"Hi, invalid!" he greeted, handing her the carton. "Back with us again, huh? Swallow some of this, you'll feel better."

He went away again promptly. Lucia settled on the bunk-side with the carton and a spoon. She had folded back a

long slim lever that had been lying across his chest. He rolled his eyes at it. "What's that?"

"An alarm-system that Jim rigged up, to give warning when you moved. It's switched off now." "Just how long have I been—away?"

"Openl" she ordered, and came at him with the spoon. He swallowed, and it was hot, almost too hot, but delicious.

Three more times he submitted, then turned his face away, to a creaking neck, and said, "That's enough, until you answer some questions. How long?"

"A little over three weeks."

"What?"

"Keep still!** She frowned at him. "So far as I can tell you have three broken ribs and a broken arm, but there may be internal injuries that I can't discover. You've been unconscious and in some kind of delirium all this time. Johnny guessed it might be catatonia, or fugue, or something, but we don't know. I'm the only one with practical training—"

"You?"

"Yes. Just a little premed nursing training."

"Ohl And was it part of that training that you attend your patients in the nude?"

Spots of red glowed in her cheeks but she met his stare steadily. "You are not in any position to criticize, Mr. McCool. You were never invited. You were told to leave, and given every chance. You refused to obey orders. You inflicted yourself on us. You've been a liability and a worry for three weeks and more. I think a little gratitude would be more the indicated attitude, don't you?"

He submitted again to being fed until it was all gone and she put the carton aside. Then she reached and touched his chin and cheek.

"You'll need another shave soon."

"Shave?"

"Yes. It's depilatory cream, actually. The waste-converter system is designed to handle that, whereas it wouldn't be able to deal with the ordinary clippings from a razor, because that would be like dust, you see, and would foul up the air-enriching plant."

"You seem to know a lot about it. The ship, I mean."

"I've had time to learn. And it's necessary. I mean, we're all in it together, aren't we? If you ever do move again, you'll have to learn too. I mean, just one silly mistake and we could all be dead I"

"If you ever move again"! The dreadful phrase crowded 88 at the back of his mind, pushing at his control. "You really don't know how—handicapped I am?" He swallowed, then added, "Or if I'm handicapped at all?"

"I know about the broken bones. I've set those. But the unconsciousness, the complete coma—I don't know about that. I think the best thing you can do is just rest." She rose from the bunk and went to the door, then turned. "I'll ask Jim to bring you a talker like this so that you can be in touch, now that you can talk. As for the nudity"—she made a sketchy gesture of dismissal, and he saw that she was, in fact, wearing a skimpy pair of shorts, but nothing else—"it's all part of the support-system. You see, we can't afford the water-loss involved in laundry-work. Whereas these"—and she sketched that gesture again—"are disposable paper, machine-made to order. You see?"

She went, closing the door gently, leaving him to see, painfully, what she had not said in so many words, but had implied so plainly that he had to face it. This was a world, albeit a small one, and it was a closed system. He had to leam to fit in, to take it as it was. Humility. Fit in. Adapt.

He tried to sit up, discovered aches that made him sweat, but kept on. There was rigid yet transparent casing-stuff of some kind on his chest, all over the left side. His left forearm was clad in the same stuff. But his right arm moved. He could bend at the waist. He could sit up. Queasy-stomached, dizzy, unhappy, but sitting up. A faint bee-buzz of vibration tickled his feet from the floor. He heard the windy purr of ventilation. Then footsteps, and the door, and Jim coming briskly in, to halt and stare.

"Hey! Take it easy, Dad; what are you trying to do to yourself?"

"I'm all right!"

"Like fun, you are. Hold it!" Jim reached a long arm, pulled and swung the wardrobe door, with its mirror. "Here, you take a look and say that again!"

McCool looked, and had difficulty in recognizing himself. Dark eyes, red-shot and rimmed with brown stains, stared back at him. Gaunt cheeks, lank black hair spiky from the pillow, dull gray skin, a scarecrow grin.

"I look a sight, don't I?"

"What d'you expect, three weeks out like a light, force-feeding, raving in delirium? Hadn't been for Lucia, you'd have died. She's hovered over you like a mother hen most of the time. Here!" Jim came closer, held out a bracelet with a tiny watch-like device built into it. "Gimme your hand."

McCool watched him clasp the band on his right wrist.

There didn't seem to be any controls to it, just a flat metal grille.

"How do I operate it?"

"You don't. Just talk into it, when you want to."

McCool pulled his arm back, let it fall into his lap. He felt weary, but frantically curious. Long-delayed realizations came bursting into his mind like glittering bubbles. "Talk to me for a moment?"

"Sure. What's on your mind?"

"I owe you an apology. For being crude. Trying to attack you."

"Forget it. I'm touchy about the control-section." Jim settled by his side on the bunk. "You see, we designed it for us, not for stup—I mean, ordinary people. Hell, you know what I mean. Machinery, any machinery, has to be designed so that a fool can't go wrong with it. You look at an auto, sometime. What they call safety factors are nothing more than protection for the stupid driver, or from other stupid drivers. I mean, now look at, say, a racing car. Or at some of the old-time models. You had to be a real driver just to take them on the road."

"I know about vintage cars. I have a collection of models. But it never struck me before. You're quite right, of course, a modem car is designed to be within the grasp of anyone reasonably intelligent." McCool scowled at the new slant.

"Yeah, well, like I said, this one is built for us. We've been planning this one since we were eleven, all of us. So there are no labels on anything, no protective devices, no safeguards like in a standard job. It's built, mind—it won't fall apart. But you could poke your finger in the wrong place and blow everything, see what I mean?"

"I'm still not quite with you." McCool struggled to bring the hugeness of the whole thing into his grasp. "You're saying we are actually on our way, just as you planned?"

"Let me not fool you." Jim grunted in deprecation. "The whole thing almost blew inside the first ten minutes. You see, we were sweating on how to get you into this cabin, up that ladder, without doing any more damage. You know? And the computer course-correction circuits cut in. If I'd been on the job I would have gentled them down a bit, but as it was the steering jets cut loose hard, and we went into oscillation. That's one of the snags with my drive system, it resists direction changes."

'Tour drive system?" The old part of McCool shivered in shock at the facile words, while the new, humble part was simply curious. 90

"Nothing to it, once you see how it's done. You see, basic to the whole drive theory is the fact that you can unbalance inertia. This is obvious. People have been doing it for centuries without realizing it. The time-of-onset factor is what does it. Imagine a man sitting on a raft. He leans well back, slowly. Then he swings himself forward with increasing speed, and stops himself suddenly. The accumulated inertia is dispersed through him and the raft, and it moves, just a little. He does it again, and it moves more. If he could go back slow, come forward fast, stop—fast enough and keep it up, he could work up a decent speed. You ever see the prototype model of the current drive system?"

"Saw it in college, yes." MeCool remembered it well enough: a system of weights caused to follow a track that looked as if someone had taken a circle and pulled out a section of it into a peak. Three-quarters of the run of the weights exerted steady centrifugal force outward from the common center and the inertial forces were balanced. But as each weight sailed into the brief straight, and then whipped abruptly around the sharp turn, the inertial thrust was unbalanced, and the wheeled model trundled steadily in the direction indicated by the peak. It had struck him at the time as a hard way to get lateral movement, when it was so easy to connect the motor to the wheels. But the next stage was to somehow get that inertial imbalance pointing upward, and there the theory had been too deep for him.

"What they missed," said Jim, as if it was elementary, "is that there doesn't have to be gross movement at all. Solids can transmit inertial impulse effects without actually moving. What I mean, they do move, but only in the sense of a wave of compression-expansion. I'll show you. I still have the original test model I made, years ago. Back in a minute."

He went out briskly, leaving MeCool to sit and try to sort out his chaotic thoughts. Where was the barrier he had been so conscious of before? This youngster was friendly, almost eager to talk. And lucid. Even if what he was saying was nonsense, it sounded rational enough, sounded as if he knew exactly what he was talking about. And here he was back again, opening the wardrobe to swing out a small tabletop.

"This will scare you." Jim chuckled. "It did me, anyway, when I first tried it out. Just for the record, incidentally, we have one g right now. Continuous acceleration. Right? Now, this silly-looking thing is all there is to it. This part is an ordinary solenoid, small but powerful, built on an aluminum former. That is just to keep it light. And this bit is a solid

slug of soft iron and lead, sintered to make a rigid mass. Right?"

McCool picked it up, a heavy thing about three inches long, with wires trailing from the solenoid end, and the whole looking like an overgrown bullet from some massive gun. He put it down again on the table, and Jim carefully stood it upright.

. "Now," he said, "if I pass a jolt through the coil I instantly get a magnetic field—at least, for all practical purposes it's instant—which tries to heave the slug into the solenoid core. But it can't, because the whole thing is rigidly connected. And that magnetic field, at the same time, is trying to drag the solenoid over the slug. See what I mean: it's an instant pull inward, between the two components. And futile because both are rigidly locked so they can't move. But—and this is the whole trick—there is a mass difference between the two of about ten to one, so the solenoid part tries to jump downward, and the slug tries to jump upward, both simultaneously—and it takes the slug ten times as long to respond. Mass difference, you see? The slug is still surging long after the solenoid has quit. So you get a residual surge upward. If I stood this on a. balance, and gave it a jolt, you'd see the weight-reading drop just for a second. All right so far? So, then, the next trick is to feed a series of impulses into that couple so that the slug is kept surging upward. Timing is important here. It took me weeks. You just watch now."

He moved a switch on the box that was at the other end of the wires, and McCool heard a shrill humming. The note climbed, became uncomfortably shrill as Jim eased around a vernier—and the innocent-looking little thing began to tremble, to rattle the tabletop. And then it climbed, impossibly and ridiculously, into the air until there were six inches of nothing between it and the table's surface. McCool extended a hand cautiously and made passes underneath. Jim chuckled.

"Natural reaction. Don't blame you. Did the same thing myself. You know, the nicest thing about it is that you don't need a lot of power, once you get the impulse-surges going. You have it all invested in the mass, you see? We picked up a lot from the ground-assist, just before we took off, and our requirement right now is small."

"But it's fantastic! So shockingly simple!"

"Yeah. That's the bad part. Always gives me a nasty taste in the mind when I find something that has been staring us in the face for so long and nobody saw it. Like gravity it-92 self. Or Newton's laws of motion. Steam-pressure. Telepathy. Things like that." He rose suddenly, gathering in his little exhibit in one hand, shoving the table out of the way with the other. "I'd better blow now. You take it easy. Remember, any time you want to talk to anybody, just call by name and then go ahead."

"Wait. One thing-"

"What?" Jim halted at the door and then grinned. "Oh! You mean Yummy's proper name? You ask for Nell. All right?"

Then he was gone, the door clicking shut after him, Mc-Cool sitting there in a daze of wonder. It was hard to realize, now, that all this had followed from his irrational infatuation for—what was that name?— Nell? It didn't suit her. Looking back, this time, was like trying to remember someone long ago dead. It was all unreal now. Or this, here and now, was the unreal and that, the real, was gone out of reach.

Heading for the stars! It still didn't make sense. Four guitar-playing popular entertainers, one personal secretary, one junior finance tycoon, one impossible ship—he pulled his thoughts away from that down-spinning spiral and back to more immediate matters, raised the wrist-band device to his mouth, cleared his throat.

"Nell? If you hear me, could you come and talk to me a moment? If you please?"

"Shall I bring you some more soup?" Her reply was prompt, clear as a silver bell, and with a truly lifelike sound, as if she stood there before him in person.

"You're very kind. I'd like that."

"I'll be right there. Are you decent?"

He detected the tinge of humor in her question, and smiled, but at his past deficiencies. "Does it matter?"

"My, you are improved. I'll be there in a minute."

Like Lucia, she wore only the minuscule paper shorts. Unlike Lucia, she still looked boyish, amazingly capable, utterly unsensual. She grinned cheerfully as she came and sat, filled the spoon. Like Jim, there was no longer any sense of barriers, but a cool and candid friendship, as of equals. He allowed her to spoon-feed him for a while, then protested.

"I think I could do that myself."

"I reckon you could, too, but I waited until you wanted to try it for yourself. Here, I'll hold the carton, you try the spoon."

"You're extremely understanding."

"You didn't always think that, did you? You know why?"

"I suppose"—he took it out and looked at it as if it were
data about someone else—"it was because I didn't want to.
No, that's not quite it. I didn't want to admit that your
understanding was correct." •

"And why not?"

"Because"—he chewed that one over a bit—"because it would mean that you could understand me, whereas I couldn't understand you. I still can't. Why can't I?"

"You know the answer to that, too, if you look hard enough. But it's not urgent. Leave it awhile. It's by no means easy for us to understand ordinaiy people, so it follows that it can't be easy for you to understand us, either. Don't worry about it."

"Us!" he echoed, working carefully with the spoon. "I've just been talking with Jim. I realize now that he is brilliant, some kind of intuitive genius. Are you saying that you all are, all four of you?"

"Something like that, yes."

"What are you?" he asked, suppressing the chill that crept along his spine, and not daring to turn and look at her. "Are you . . . aliens?"

She collected the spoon, dropped it in the carton and sat with it clasped in her hands. "You know, we used to worry about that, too, when we were kids. We checked it back. Jim, Johnny and me, we're only children. Nothing remarkable about our ancestry that we could find. Nothing queer about our parents either. I mean, they didn't work with anything nuclear, or mutagenic, nothing to account for us. Jem, now, is slightly different. His folks were well-off and he has a brother, much older than he is, who is a positive genius at money. Thick as molasses in winter at anything else, but a natural with finance. And he's sweet, too. Never asks any awkward questions. He helped us a lot when we first started making money. But, getting back to the main problem, no, I don't think we are alien. I think—and we all agree that this is the most likely explanation—we are just brighter than normal. What made us different was chance, the chance that brought four of us all together at once."

"I don't understand that."

"Well, there must be—in fact there are, and everyone knows it—hundreds of thousands of brighter than average children born every day. But even with enlightened parents, and in a progressive society, they get held back to some extent simply because of the age barrier. Adults, even with the best intentions, can come only so far toward understanding 94 a child. Any child. And society insists that the child be made to fit society, to some degree. Where we were lucky was that we had, to start with, parents who didn't know, and didn't care much, so they didn't interfere at all. And second, because we found each other very early, and knew each other. And stretched each other to the limit. Because, you see, we are four different people, and we drive each other all the time. Like, for instance, Jim is a whiz with anything that works, with material energies and constructs. You know that. Jem, now, has the family gift for handling finance, for business, for organizing things to pay off. Buzz—that's his brother—is limited to just one aspect, but Jem does it all, can switch from one viewpoint to another and see all sides of a deal, not just one."

McCool shook himself gently, trying to shake loose the growing sense of unreality. There was something intrinsically compelling about her quiet statements, and yet his residual common sense kept insisting that this was just talk, just fancy, the stuff of dreams.

"Of us all," she went on, "I think Johnny is the really complete brain. I can't describe it properly. Call him a visionary, the sort who can see the whole thing in the round, all the details and everything. Scope. Sweep. Grasp! Words like that. And philosophy too. And"—she gave a little deprecating chuckle—"I have to try to keep up with those three, all the time. We all try to keep up with each other. That's what I mean by being stretched, all the time. It's a hard life!"

"But you must surely have been noticed? At school, for instance?"

"No fear!" She laughed again. "We're drop-outs, all of us. We wanted no part of that system, thank you." She stood suddenly, turned to face him and grinned challengingly. "That shakes you, doesn't it? In your world a good education is the sine qua non, or one of them. The passport to all the goodies. And the neuroses. Rational education in a non-rational world?"

McCool stared at her, without infatuation, with a clearer gaze She was not beautiful. Her brows were too high, her eyes too wide, her chin elfinly pointed. And the rest of her, her lean lines, the small and firm breasts, the flat stomach—a word bloomed in his mind and he fastened on it. Immature.

"That's right," she said. "I'm twenty-one. We all are. In years. But we're far from being adult, yet. That's just one more reason why we had no place in your world." She laughed again, breaking the moment of chill. "That's enough

for you, for the moment. You need rest, time to get well. I hope you'll be well enough to join us for our test moment." "Test?" he queried dully.

"About two days from now we'll know whether young Jim's theories about space-time are right or not. We're looking forward to that."

She had turned away to the door before he could call out for her to wait, to answer the question that burned his tongue.

"You—you're telepathic, aren't you?"

"Of course. So are you."

"I am not!" he cried, and she laughed again.

"Of course you are!"

"I am not. What makes you say that?"

"What makes you think you're not? Everybody is, only they don't know it, don't know how to use it. Think hard. Where do you imagine all the ideas that enter your mind come from? Think about it."

And she was gone, the door clicking shut after her. He struggled to hoist his legs back on to -the bunk and stretched out. And tried to think.

Of himself, McCool couldn't have said whether it was two days, two minutes, or two weeks. His sense of unreality came and went like the ebb and flow aftermath of influenza, and his lucid moments kept presenting him with additional data to confirm the queemess of everything. Evidences of telepathy? Let him feel hungry, or thirsty, and someone came almost immediately. And he couldn't be sure whether that person had just happened to be in his mind, or had just happened to be on the way and he had thought about it afterward. He was mixed up, and shakingly unwilling to admit that anyone could know what was in his private thoughts.

Then, from time to time, there came music, faintly through the intervening airspace. He could imagine the trio down there in the main lounge having themselves a session. He 96 recognized some of the numbers as being from their tape-track repertoire. But there was someone down there who could blow a sax exactly like the late Coleman Hawkins, and someone else who had the true spirit and feel of the immortal Satchmo himself on trumpet. And others. It seemed he had only to think of a favorite from his personal collection, and there it was, being played. Even to the girl vocalists. Could that be Yum-Yum, or Nell, as she now was? From all the tapes he had so assiduously collected of her he could recall none with that simple lyrical quality. And, to dampen his fear of telepathy, she did not come, whether he hoped for her or not.

But he made himself exercise steadily. That was the one solid aspect out of the whole confusion. That was how he was able to say, when Jim came again to tell him the moment was at hand: "I'd like to see it, if you'll let me."

"Not a lot to see, and it will have to be from the control room. You feel you can make it?"

"I can." McCool swung himself from the bunk and stood, just to prove his point. "I need something to wear, but I'm capable otherwise."

Jim shrugged. "That's easy to fix, but you recall what I said about controls, huh? Not to touch anything at all. Especially now. Okay?"

McCool signified his agreement, and, clad in a fresh-made pair of paper shorts, he followed Jim, carefully, out and along the narrow passage to the up ladder, and then, still carefully, up into the heart of the ship. Brain, he corrected himself. Or nerve-center? And then that train of thought went glimmering as he stepped out onto a level floor and saw what was to be seen. Bubble-chairs had been imported from below, and the rest were there, seated and waiting, all facing a large and glowing screen. Around, out on the fringe, were stars in numbers beyond all imagining, so many that the vastness of space seemed crowded. And colored. Somehow McCool had not expected that. Vivid colors, all hues, but no plain white ones. A mental leap got him to the point of realizing he was looking out of the peripheral windows of the control bubble nose—and not just staring into uncharted void.

He tightened his grip on Jim's arm and asked, "Why are they all colored? No plain white stars?"

"Huh? Oh, that's because we're rapidly approaching the velocity of light itself. Spectrum shift. That panorama shows stars at right angles to our line of flight, so the effect is not

97 so severe, but it's there. They're darkening into the red end. Sit here."

McCool sat, his eyesight adapted now to the blacked-out room. Nell was on his right, Lucia on the left, and two dark profiles were Jem and Johnny. Jim had moved to stand by the glowing screen, a dark shadow with a voice.

"One more replay," he said, "just to get us all in the clear. This screen is giving us our stern view. This we are going away from. As you see, the stellar bodies we can see are all in the dark red. Incidentally, luminosity is not a significant factor, as this image is the result of photo-multiplication systems. What I mean is, if there are light rays at all reaching our camera, no matter how feeble, we'll see them. Don't need to tell you the color indicates we are receding from these sources at something close to light speed. That's obvious. But, and this is where it gets tough, there are no proved methods of measuring our speed in this kind of situation, only theoretical ones. So we have to use a secondary data-source. Like this—" There was a faint click; then the silence gave way to a thick and turgid growling, booming, grunting that took McCool several seconds to identify as music played abysmally slowly.

"You guessed it." Jim spoke over the ear-aching din. "That is a radio broadcast from Earth. I lined it up especially. It's an FM music station, and almost out at the limit of detection for us. But I am taping this as you hear it. Later, by speeding it up, I hope to identify the time at which it was originally broadcast, and by that means calculate just where we are now. More immediately though, by my calculations we should break the light barrier in about ten minutes."

"Ten minutes?" McCool's voice was shrill. "Isn't that a little precise? I mean, you expect to achieve one hundred and eighty-six thousand, two hundred miles per second—at some precise instant?"

"Well," Jim drawled, "it becomes a little difficult to be dead accurate when the computer itself is moving almost as fast as the electronic impulses inside it. And I'm not sure just what will happen to our power and lighting system, which is why we are blacked out, and why the power source to the drive is located in front of it. So I'd say give or take a minute or two. But about ten minutes anyway." He had hardly done speaking when the awful mockery of music died away in a basement growl.

"Below audible range," Johnny commented mildly. "Nice work, Jim boy. You're on the nose so far." 98

"What will happen next?" Lucia asked, and McCool was astonished to hear there was no terror in her voice at all. How can she be afraid of something she just doesn't understand? he explained to himself, and grasped the fat arms of his bubble-chair, the sweat breaking out on him as those clustered star-images grew redder and redder like the dying embers of a fire. And then, silently and abruptly, they were gone. It was not failure; the occasional flicks of random interference proved that the screen was still alive. They just were not there any more.

Out of a long silence Jim said, "That's it. Looks like we made it, folks!"

"Nice work, son!" Jem boomed. "Looks like that's a million bucks I owe you. You'll take a check?"

Out of the chuckle that followed came Johnny's voice, still mild: "Let's have the forward screen on, Jim, see what it looks like."

"Yeah. This should be something nobody has ever seen before. I've been trying to calculate just what it should show when we see light shifted up beyond the ultraviolet. Any guesses? No? Okay, here she goes!"

Again a click, and then McCool stiffened in his seat and cried out, as did all the others, to see the screen ablaze with a myriad circular rainbows, each with a black-hearted center and glowing outward from bottomless velvet violet through the spectrum to die away in blackest red.

They quieted, to hear Jim mutter, "Separation. That figures. The shorter wavelengths travel faster. That's been suspected a long time but nobody was ever able to test it experimentally. That effect should contract as we increase speed. I'm going to try the lights now. Wait for it!"

He passed darkly in front of the screen and moved a switch, and the control room flooded with light, a strange shimmering rainbow light that made everything look like some psychedelic dream. Oddly, the same line of thought seemed to strike Johnny's mind.

"There's a thing," he said, gazing around wide-eyed. "Illusions, delusions and hallucinations to the contrary, this is what the mind-bending drugs do. Get it, Nell? Acid and pot and all the rest of them, they alter the individual's time-sense, and he sees rainbows. With our music, we do it a different way, but it's still the same effect. And now, we're all physically out of step with time ... so rainbows again!"

"Check first," she cautioned. "Lucia, tell us what you see."

"The lights are all funny. Colored, but not like any

colored lights I ever saw. I mean, it's like the air itself was colored, don't you see it like that?"

Nell swiveled to McCool without answering. "You?"

"I can't add anything to that. She's right, it's not like colored lamps. What's it all mean?"

"At a guess," Jim said, and frowned, "and that's all it is, right now, I'd say it's a heterodyne effect, like when you play two notes close together you get a walking beat, a quarrel. We are just beyond light speed, but close enough to it to make an argument. Later, when we move fast enough, the effect will go; we'll have shifted one whole frequency away. That's just a guess. We'll see how it works out. For now, though, the show is over, folks, and I have work to do. Please walk, do not run, to the nearest exit."

"Just a minute!" McCool found his voice, and a lot of his old suspicious habits, as the rest made for the ladder. "I see a lot of this equipment has Magic Box registration plates. This panel. That—whatever it is—over there. The screen console. And that!"

"Computer." Jim patted the object affectionately, and Mc-Cool's suspicions flared even higher.

"That's a computer?"

"I know what you're thinking." Jim grinned sympathetically. "Where are all the flickering lights and jerking spools, huh? And why do you have all that chrome trim and stuff on a car, anyway? Isn't it because that's what the layman wants? A computer is an idiot-brain that can add up, and tell the difference between, and remember—and do it fast. Do you wave your arms about, and jump up and down, and shout, when you're thinking?"

^But-but-"

"I know. You have a computer in your office maybe, or somewhere in the building. And it flickers and chatters and puts on a show. And that's all it is, a show. Who needs rows of lamps flashing on and off? I designed a lot of it myself. About Magic Box, sure, most of the equipment here is Magic Box."

"You mean, they backed this . . . ship and venture?"

"AH the way. Redesigned it, built in all the fancy bits, outfitted almost all of it. And why not?" Jim's grin grew so broad it threatened to split his cheeks. "No harm, now, in your knowing. Allow me to introduce myself. I am James Nelson, owner, founder, director of Magic Box. I'm it, all of it."

"You? But you're—a trip-tape entertainer!" "As well. Play pretty good guitar, too. Designed and 100 built those instruments you said were fakes, remember? Now get out of here; I told you, I have work to do. Nell?"

"I'll bring you a cup of coffee right away, boy. Come on, McCool, you heard him."

McCool took one last look at the peripheral stars, now faint spectrum streaks, dimmed by the control room lights, and then allowed himself to be led down the ladder, along, and then down another, back to the main lounge for the first time since takeoff. He found a seat. Nell scurried away to the cook-nook and started in on coffee. It all looked different somehow, and it took him a moment or two to realize why, that the floor was now level. Johnny drifted across to a multi-keyboard, sat down, touched a stop or two and started in to play Mozart's G Major Sonata liltingly fast but with impeccable crispness. Jem ambled close, made a wrist-tilting inquiry and went away, to come back with two steaming cartons.

"Shifted into a new frequency," he said, handing one over. "Must be difficult for you. We've been doing it for years. Comes natural to us."

McCool took, and sipped, and swallowed. Mentally he tried to do the same thing with concepts that were just too huge to grasp, let alone swallow. When he put them in flat words, the words lost all meaning. Here he was, on a spaceship, an impossible ship. He had broken ribs and a broken arm, and possibly other things wrong with him. The ship, according to all the indications, was somewhere in space, traveling at faster than light speed in the general direction of Proxima Centauri. And for companions he had Miss Lucia Home, once upon a time no more than a very attractive personal private secretary—office furniture, in fact—and four unreal, enigmatic, freakish young prodigies, either totally alien or ravingly insane, he couldn't be sure which. And yet, to damn him utterly, they all looked and acted perfectly casual and ordinary. This Jem person, for instance, apart from a juvenile tendency to extravangant vocal comedy, looked very much like any other young man of his age. Like one of those trick pictures, everything looked ordinary until you got close, and then it twisted away into weirdness. He tried to think of an innocent, harmless question.

"Why did Jim chase us out of there just now? What's this work he has to do? I thought everything was programmed."

"Up to a point, sure, everything's worked out. We did most of the figuring years ago. There was one snag we

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couldn't get around, no matter how we worked at it." Jem smiled to himself reminiscently. "It was the old one about fuel-mass ratios. You see, if you lift off and achieve a set speed, and then drift, that's fine. You'll get somewhere eventually. But you have free-fall conditions to allow for, and they're not nice over a long time. And it's going to be a long time, for a trip like this. Around ten yearsl And that adds up to more trouble with supplies, too. We can recycle water. We do. And run an air-plant and algae-protein hydroponics system. We do that, too. But it's clumsy. So we wanted to maintain, as we are doing now, a constant acceleration. And that cost fuel. And we just couldn't figure our way around that. Until Nell thought of it. She's the one with the inspiration, all the time. She was the one who first thought of this trip anyway. She's our driver, the one who sets the sights for us to aim at, and we have to go like hell to keep up."

McCool thought back, hearing the echo of her saying exactly the same about the others. Four geniuses interacting, multiplying, driving each other to full stretch.

"What was her idea?"

"Very simple, once we heard it. You know, when they started the star-project base, they built several prototypes, for test? We acquired all those. They weren't any good to anybody. In fact Nell got the base for cheap simply because she suggested the Government owed her that much for taking a white elephant off their hands. 'Think of the cost of converting it!' she told them, and they fell for it. They were assuming, of course, that it was to be made over into a luxury villa. In fact we didn't convert a thing. We don't need much in the way of luxuries, never have. Anyway, we acquired the prototype test-hulls. We fixed one up to be identical to this in mass and profile, but with a simpler version of the drive, and all the rest of the hull-space full of fuel. Heliox, that's what we use. And we launched it, at the exact time and in the precise trajectory, to run ahead of us. That was around eighteen months ago. Nine months later we did it again with one more. See what I mean?"

"No. I don't." McCool shook his head dimly.

"But it's simple. What we have are two spare fuel tanks, planted on the route ahead of us. And that's what Jim has to figure out, just where the second one is, and then catch up on it, and refuel!"

"You mean . . . ?" McCool stared at him in chill horror. "We have to locate and close up on an object no bigger than 102 this ship, somewhere between us and where we're going, that was launched nine months ago?"

"Right! It's going to be tricky, what with having to allow for faster than light speed and what that will do the bleeper we installed in it."

"And if we fail?"

"Then too bad—we're all dead. But we figured that chance anyway. More coffee?"

"No. No, thank you." McCool put down his half, empty carton with a shaking hand and took another look at this pale, green-eyed young man who spoke so lightly of assumed death.

"You're all taking it for granted that you're going to die anyway, aren't you?"

"We certainly hadn't bothered about coming back," Jem said, and it was the answer to what McCool had thought, rather than what he had said.

"We figured it would be something just to get there, to make the round trip. With our wayside fuel tanks we will have enough to slow down on arrival. And stop, maybe go into orbit. That's all."

"But. . . don't you want to return?"

"What for?" The lazy green eyes turned on McCool. "We went right through and on past that world, McCool. Your world. We didn't dig it much. So we left."

"That's running away!"

"It is? We've left that world a better place, by what we did. The rest of it is a damn sight worse, but we made our little bit a lot better. We have left one, two, three going concerns that will keep a lot of people happy and well-off— and we never did anybody any harm. Can you say that much?"

The retort, so lightly expressed, struck into McCool like a knife. He felt lost and alone, and jumped convulsively as a weight plumped into the seat beside him and a long arm went around his neck.

"Cheer up, McCool!" He knew it was Nell as soon as she spoke. Her face, once a desirable dream, now a scary reality, was close to him and smiling encouragingly. "What can I do to brighten you?" she asked. "You are radiating gloom like heat off a stove. Let me help, huh?"

"Can you?"

"I can try. I don't like anybody unhappy close by. You name it, a song, dance, or just talk. Or maybe you're just hungry, huh?"

"I doubt there would be much point. Jem has just made

children. And we have to face it. We have three weeks, almost, by which time we will be drifting into the star system of Centaurus with just enough fuel left to juggle us into some kind of orbit, and keep us alive for a day or two. And then ... it will be all over for us."

"Not necessarily!" she corrected eamesdy. "Anything can happen. We might find a planet where we can land. Or something!"

"No planet." He shook his head. "That is almost a certainty. Wrong land of system."

"Very well then," she said steadily, "we have three weeks. We should be grateful. Had it not been for them, we wouldn't have had anything at all."

And that, McCool realized with a shock, was quite true. He would have gone on regarding this delightful creature as nothing more than office furniture, and she would eventually have gone elsewhere. Possibly. He became aware that there was a lot about her that he didn't know. He had three weeks to find out. Time to get to know the others better, too. And they were much more willing to accept him, now that the ice of understanding was broken.

Jem was up and about in very short order, apparently none the worse for his frightening experience, but awkward in his attempts to express gratitude to Lucia for her attentions. To satisfy himself on the point, McCool deliberately confronted Johnny one quiet time while the composer-prodigy was touching out a hushed thread of melody at his console.

"I'm surprised," he said, "that you made such little provision for accident, sickness, injury, things like that."

"We never even thought about it. That med kit we have came with the ship's remaining stores, else we wouldn't have had that. Only stupid people get sick, or hurt themselves, or have accidents."

"Surely that's not tenable?"

"Of course it is. You can't be bright if you're unhealthy. And if you're healthy you don't get sick. If you're bright you don't have accidents, either."

"But Jem did."

"Or, if you do, you don't look for sympathy, because it's your own fault. That's why Jem didn't shout for help." "But it wasn't Jem's fault!"

"No." Johnny frowned over his keyboard. "That's true. But it was our fault for relying on somebody else's checkout. Water over the dam, now. Why discuss it?" 122

"History," McCool said sententiously, "gives us the chance to avoid making the same mistake twice."

"It's been done. Jim and I have checked out the remaining suits, and we have two that will work. That's a good point, about history, only humanity has yet to learn it. We've learned it."

"Have you ever seriously wondered whether you're human or not?"

"Depends on definitions." Johnny took the question without a blink. "We've talked about it, yes. On a biological level, I suppose we are. Mentally, or spiritually, if you prefer that word better, I don't know. We don't think human, in several ways. I don't mean just degree, either, but in kind."

"You mean you have different values?"

"Right!" Johnny struck a sonorous chord and then turned away from the keys, his dark eyes glowing with inner fire. "Humans have values we don't have, that we don't like, and can't understand. Like, for instance, the ability to maintain a set of delusions. Like a man in your line of business will kid himself into believing he is doing what he does for the common good, for the benefit of society, or because it's 'good' in some other way. Whereas he is all the time only working for himself, his own gain."

McCool was stung. "Is that a crime?"

"No. Nothing wrong with it at all. Why shouldn't he promote his own welfare? But why does he have to justify this to himself? Almost everybody does. We don't. We are self-centered, we are working for us, we don't give a damn for anybody else—and we know it."

"What are some of the other things?"

"Cruelty!" Johnny bit the word out acidly. "AH the way from simple pecking-order up to mass pogroms and massacres. I'm bigger, better, stronger than you. I will therefore bully and torture and enslave you, or wipe you Out altogether if you don't agree with me. And I expect nothing less in return if you happen to be stronger than I am. You said history, just now. Take a look at it, all the way from the Bible on up. It's the same old pattern. Wipe out the opposition, one way or the other. Crush and defeat, enslave, cripple or destroy anything that dares to stand in the way, or even dares to be different. You want to argue that?"

"No. I'm afraid I can't. It's not new-, though. This problem has troubled thinking people for centuries, Johnny. What humanity needs are solutions, some workable answers."

"You'll never get 'em as long as you keep up that trick

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of self-delusion and hypocrisy. You can't change people until they want to be changed. You know, we first started digging into this when we were planning our musical campaign. All those protest songs, and the oddball movements that keep on coming up—they all have the same gaping hole in the fabric. All they can say is "You're all wrong. We believe we're right.' Same old thing: opinions in opposition."

"Don't you ever have clashing opinions?"

"Not like that. We have differences of opinion, sure, but we agree to differ. When it comes to something to do we argue about what, but only until we find something worth going for. Then it's how, and we dig into the facts and methods and find the best. And then we do it. For us, that works. I can tell you, I have just told you, how we do it. But I can't tell you how to make people work like that. That's why we're here."

"But that's running away. Escapisml"

"Of course it is. What's wrong with that? We can't change your world. If we could, you wouldn't like it. So, when you're out of step with everything, when you don't fit anywhere, the only thing left is out. Isn't it?"

And he went back to his playing.

Later, when he worked up courage, McCool approached Nell in a moment of confidence. "I wanted to tell you," he said hesitantly, "that the infatuation no longer exists. You may have gathered that. It never mattered to you one way or the other. But I wanted to tell you, anyway."

"Noblesse oblige!" she said, and grinned, not unkindly. "Thanks for saying it, but I did know. We all know. We've known for some time. One thing we're grateful for, that you haven't gone mushy over each other."

"I don't know what you mean!" he declared, although he did, quite well, and it had caused him secret misgivings. With a pitifully brief future dribbling steadily away, it seemed they would want to cram as much happiness as possible into the last fervent minutes. And yet they hadn't, neither of them. He had sensed in Lucia what he knew was in himself, a quiet yet complete understanding and fulfillment that required no extravagant demonstrations, or extremes of behavior at all. Not the way he would have imagined spending the last few hours of his life with the woman he loved.

"It worries you," Nell said acutely. "And it shouldn't. I've already told you the answer, only you wouldn't believe it."

"That nonsense about being telepathic? Perhaps it's true for you four, but I'm not aware of being in any way supernormal." 124

"Nothing supernormal about it, silly. Did you ever hear your own voice on a playback?" "Yes, often. Why?" "Did you recognize it, first time?"

"No. I remember that." He smiled wryly at the memory. "What's that got to do with it?"

"Try this. If you heard that voice saying something you had not, yourself, said, you'd have no way of identifying it as you, right?"

"I suppose so."

"Fair enough. Now twist it around. If you heard, inside your own head, a voice saying something—it's not a voice of course, but however you choose to think of it, so long as it is inside you assume it's you. Unless you've got some positive way of identifying it as somebody else."

"All right," he agreed. "But I have never had that sensation. Of someone else speaking inside my own head."

"If you did, your built-in defenses would immediately make you think you had "heard a voice' out there somewhere."

"So I would hear disembodied voices, which is the first sign of insanity!" He grew a trifle impatient.

"I wonder how many people have been tucked away on that score," she murmured. "Remember, if you were so wrapped up in your own thought-pattern that there was no room for anything else, you wouldn't hear a thing." She made an elaborate gesture of pinching her lips together with finger and thumb. "But if you were paying attention to someone else, it would sound like this."

"Good God!" He was up off his seat and backing away before he knew it. "I heard you. And I've heard—like that— before!"

"Of course you have!" She looked at him with a wicked grin, but with no lip movement that he could see. "Coherent speech, like this, is a bit hard to do, until you have practice. It's such a habit To say things aloud that we all do it most of the time. But if you shut up, and I shut up, and you think toward me, I can feel what you're thinking. And you can feel what I'm thinking. And why not?"

"But—but why—why haven't I been aware of this before?"

"Self-delusion? That's not all, though. You've had help. You had better get Jim in a corner, to explain just how that bracelet works. Go on!"

Jim was in his favorite roost, lounging in his pilot-seat, listening to the sophisticated hum and chatter of his instruments, and watching the stars. Under half g retardation the

"Controller Sinclayer, this is John York, speaking for the ship Ellis Dee, of Earth. We are trying to reduce forward speed so as to come to rest just beyond the red spot region. We hope to achieve this but it is possible we may fail as we are almost at the end of our fuel supply. Do you understand?"

"Greetings/welcome, John York." The block-square face turned now to look directly into the transmitting camera. "We do not understand your method/mechansim for drive/ propulsion. We observe with instruments that you are reducing speed. Is this endangering your fuel reserves?"

"Yes. We are using up the last of our power rapidly. We think you may have detected; previously, an object similar in size and shape to this ship. If so, that was our reserve fuel supply, sent on ahead."

"We have the object you describe, and thank you for the explanation. Do not further deplete your resources. Proceed as now. We will grasp/capture your ship safely, and take charge/control of it at the correct/appropriate time. Query, why do we not receive vision/pictures from you? Query, do you receive vision/pictures from me?"

"We can see you very well. Your picture system is almost similar to ours, but we do not have transmission systems for vision. We are shutting off our drive mechanism now. . . . Do that, Jim! If they have whatever to grapple us, or take charge, we'd better not play about with them."

They went weightless again, abruptly. The red curtain, like a sheet of ruby flame, came ever closer, resolved into a restless shimmering of momentary vortices interlacing with each other. They watched it, breathlessly. All at once, like the blink of an eye and with no more physical sensation, it vanished and they found themselves looking down a vast blue-violet tube that narrowed at the far end like a colossal cone. Then they all cried out as they saw the rapidly growing ship beyond. It was vast, aglow with points and bands of light, of a shape as if some Titan had arranged a dozen immense discs of graded sizes on either side of the central belted structure.

"I hope their grab system works I" Jim muttered, and it was a prayer they could all echo, as the great bulk grew and spread, and then they saw a dark orifice yawning, and the summer-lightning flicker of slim beams from either side, reaching out to* seize and hold their ship. They felt the nudge and surge of power; the feeling of being swept up in some enormous suction-cleaner was unavoidable as the orifice swelled off the screen's edges.

"You are safe, and welcome." Sinclayer's words came flat-

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]y via the translator, but there was no mistaking the smile on his face. "We will attach/secure a conveyance/pathway to your hatch soon. You will join us, soon."

"Hool Boys!" Johnny let out a long and thankful breath. "This is where it could get gummy, brothers and sisters, but at least we're here. And they have our fuel can. Wonder what they made of it? Sounded like they were a bit baffled by it."

"Better question is," Jem put in, "what are they going to make of us? I mean, what's this contest we have just qualified for?"

"Only one thing to do," Nell declared confidently. "The one thing we are good at. Right?"

They left the control room at a gallop, leaving McCool and Lucia to follow more slowly. From long and close association, McCool was able to assemble, piecemeal and with effort, most of the peripheral observations those razor-sharp minds had grasped and accepted almost without thinking. They were within perfectly comfortable, slightly less than normal Earth-value gravity, for one thing. That argued a whole constellation of accompanying data. Then, Sinclayer was obviously and visibly humanoid, and with human-style emotion-reactions. That supplied several other reassuring pieces of data. Oxygen breathing, for one, similar food requirements, all sorts of things, quick grasp of the concept of fuel reserves, even while admitting non-understanding of their ship's mechanism. Lucia broke in on his thoughts with a wail.

"Horace, they're all dressing up to make an impression, and I haven't anything to wear!"

He suppressed the temptation to declare that she couldn't do better than the way she was, and before he could formulate an appropriate answer, Nell's brisk voice came through.

"Not to worry, darling. You come along and see what I've got. Don't forget, you know, you are talking to Eleanor Grant, now!" After a pause for self-satisfied amusement she added, "McCool? You'll find your duds all neatly brushed and pressed in the locker under your bunk. One of the boys could let you have a snazzy shirt, if you like, but nothing else of theirs will fit you."

"Thank you," he said courteously, "but no. Plain white will be quite good enough. It always has been."

As they gathered in the main lounge space in something less than half an hour later, McCool confirmed his guess as to what Nell had meant by the "thing we are good at." The boys were in their close-hugging green velvet pants, calf-134 boots with high heels, monkey-jackets and frilly shirts, and each with a guitar. Sight of those took McCool back what felt like several lifetimes, with a shock at how much he had changed in the interim. Then he saw how much they had changed. Once more they were the slick, self-satisfied public idols. Nell had put on the guise of Yum-Yum again, along with the highlight spray on her fire-red curls, and her dress, which he mentally classed as animated moire patterns stretching from neck to ankle. Then Lucia came, and he forgot the rest, for she had changed too.

How had he ever been so blind as to regard this de-liciously curved and radiantly lovely woman as part of the office background? She had done something to her hair that made it gleam with a deep sheen that was almost liquid, almost a mass of pale yellow metal brushing her shoulders. From Nell's wardrobe she had selected a simple tunic, so simple as to be severe, in deep blue with wriggling arabesques in silver thread all over it. It hugged from neck to waist, then luxuriated in folds to mid-thigh. He had no words to tell her, and didn't need them. The pleasure on her face was enough to show she had seen the admiration he felt.

"I'll check the air lock," Jim offered, as they all felt a gentle and distant percussion. Seconds later he was calling them to come. McCool and Lucia took the rear of the train of excited figures. They stepped out of their air lock, wide-eyed, into a glowing tube, to stare nervously at the man who awaited them.

"Smell that air!" Nell whispered, irrepressibly. "You and your lousy air-conditioning unit, Jim boy!" Truly the air did have a perfumed sparkle, but they were too awed by their alien guests to take much notice of anything else. This was not Sinclayer. This man had similar blocky features but with a distinct epicanthic fold to his eyes and wispy jet black hair, where the other man had been pale blond. But he was huge. McCool, himself just a shade under six feet, had to look up. This man was all of seven feet tall and built in herculean proportions. He stood by a strange object, something like a silver rod basket half covering a massive and glossy black ball. But his eyes licked them over and were compelling. He wore a broad waist-sash in vivid scarlet, from which were suspended pouches of some kind.

About his right forearm was a similar scarlet band, and he had a headband, but with only one winking light.set in its center.

He moved now, placed the flat palm of his left hand on

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his chest and spoke, with an intonation that made it sound like some formal greeting, quite brief. Dark eyes scanned them critically. As his speech closed he dipped a hand into one pouch and brought out a handful of objects, stepped close to McCool, and then offered one between finger and thumb. It lay easily in McCool's palm, and it took him no more than five seconds to realize what it must be. That bit would go in the ear, and that part would attach to the lobe to hold it surely? He raised it, and the huge stranger inclined his head approvingly as he brought it to his ear and managed to settle it in place. In very quick order they all had one.

McCool heard Jim muttering under his breath. "You want to bet this is some kind of micro-miniature translator job?"

"No betl" was Nell's hissed retort. "What I'm wondering is, do they all undress like him?" And McCool was thus made aware of what he had completely overlooked so far, that the big man was quite naked, apart from his sash and armband, and soft transparent foot-coverings.

"I am Noriarkar. I greet you. I wish to address the master of this ship, Ellis Dee." The big man's eyes went expectantly to McCool, who shook his head, momentarily staggered by the way the words had seemed to come from Noriarkar directly, in normally accented Earth English.

"I am John York." Johnny stepped a little apart and ahead. "We're not very strong on having leaders or commanders, but for what it's worth, I'm in charge of the outfit. I am happy to meet you, Noriarkar." He made a gesture to the rest, and went on. "This is Eleanor Grant. Jeremy Howard. James Nelson. We four are the crew of the ship. This is Lucia Home, and Horace McCool, who are guests along with us."

"Only four crew? And you are a guest?" Noriarkar's faintly puzzled gaze came back to McCool, who nodded this time.

"Came along for the ride," he said, unable to think of anything better to say.

"Remarkable I And your ship, it is amazing. We have studied it from remote and it is truly remarkable. But I fail my duty, which is to make you welcome. I have to ask one formal question, that you permit officials to inspect and examine your ship to be sure that you qualify."

"You won't fiddle with anything, will you?" Jim demanded, and the big man smiled easily.

"But of course not. That is understood. We will regard it 136 as precious, you may be sure. Utmost care will be taken. You agree?"

"Can't do anything else," Johnny muttered aside to Jim. "What's the difference? We agree," he told Noriarkar.

"Good. Now, if you will follow me, I will take you to those who are eagerly waiting to entertain you." He turned away and they saw what the ball-and-frame device was for. The basket-work frame had a flat top, a thick disc of black stuff. Noriarkar put his hand on it, and the ball rolled to meet him, whereupon he got one foot to a step-projection, hoisted, and sat himself on the disc, obviously a cushioned seat, setting his other foot on a step at the opposite side.

"Whoa!" Jim called out. "That's cool. How's it work?"

"The carrier? Within the globe is a shaped force-field which is in equilibrium only when the seat is directly above, or opposed to, the point of contact with the floor. It acts at all times to restore this equilibrium if it is disturbed. So, if I incline my weight forward—you see?" They saw him roll away along the tube, halt, spin around, and roll back to halt before them again. "One steers with the feet, with gentle pressure, for turning. It is an easy skill to leam. Come."

He spun again and set away at a steady roll. They trailed after him. McCool heard Jim whispering, almost squeaking in his excitement, and his own thoughts were in turmoil. He was no genius in technology, but even he could appreciate, for instance, a fluently perfect translator that would fit in the ear, and a shaped force-field generator so matter-of-fact that it was used as personal transport. We must be like ignorant savages, to them, he thought, and yet they seem genuinely glad to see us!

They came to a massive portal, standing open. Beyond there was much light and color, whispering music and semi-transparent curtains which gave intriguing glimpses of a vast room beyond them. Again McCool hung back to let the others go first, but now Lucia hung back with him.

"They scare me," she whispered. "Not the size, but they're so beautiful, don't you think?"

McCool hadn't thought in quite those terms, but he did now as he saw the reception committee waiting for them. Noriarkar wheeled a little aside to join a group, about seven or eight, all male, all wearing matching red sashes and armbands, and he assumed, instantly, that these were the inspectors. Then he had to forget them in view of the others, a standing, beaming, glittering group of men and women. Not huge at all, this time, but reasonably human-

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sized and reassuring—but they were beautiful, even the men. He watched in sudden green envy as a beaming Apollo of a man clad in a golden jerkin detached himself from the cluster and made for Lucia.

"I am Moderick," he said, holding out both hands, "and you are Lucia Home." He ran the whole thing together, but his identification was good. "It has fallen to my good fortune to be your entertainer and companion. Will you come with me?"

Lucia gripped tight at McCool's hand, cringed back, but Moderick was quietly determined. "There is no need to be anxious. It will be my pleasure to amuse you. Pillmilla will perform the same service for your mate."

And McCool felt his arm touched, his attention drawn, by a woman who had approached alongside Moderick. He saw, also, that the young four were being similarly separated out, that a brawny alien, in a swirling green robe, had hooked Nell on his arm and was marching her off through the curtain.

"We wish to do you honor," the woman said, in a throaty murmur that set thrills tickling along his spine. "It is an honor for me to entertain one of the champions." Bewildered, McCool threw a helpless glance to Lucia and she managed a tremulous smile in return.

"I can't believe they mean us any harm, dear," he told her. "In any case, what can we do?"

"You have a relationship with her." Pillmilla made it a statement, rather than a question, as McCool watched Lucia being led away.

"Is it so obvious?" he said, remembering his manners and bringing his attention around to his fair companion.

"And understandable. She is very lovely. You are fortunate. Will you come this way, now?" She led off up to and through the gauzy veil, and McCool, following, felt a momentary tingling and was on through before he realized that this, again, must be some kind of force-field. Then the greater sound of strange music caught him, and the unmistakable surf-roar of many people gathered in amiable association. His first impression was of a great domed ballroom, of twinkling overhead lights, a glossy floor, and a great concourse of people, color, and movement; then his companion, touching his arm again, brought him to one side, where there were arrays of the ball-and-frame things. He protested his ignorance, and she laughed.

"You have only to try, Horace McCool. The carrier is designed to be cooperative. Try!" 138

He put a hand on the seat edge as he had seen Noriarkar do, and the thing edged toward him fractionally, toward the weight of his hand. He found the step, put his foot on it, and somehow the thing seemed to dip and turn under him and he was seated, with his other foot going naturally to the other step. For a giddy moment he had terror of falling off, as there was no other support, but then the ball moved restlessly and rapidly under him in response to his teetering, and he realized he couldn't fall off, even if he tried. In a flash she had mounted up beside him, extended her hand to take his fingers, and called gayly, "Follow. You see how it is easy?"

They settled almost automatically in to a mode of travel with him just slightly trailing her. Like skating on ice, which he had done, one had only to lean and bear down with body weight, and the spinning ball swooped and obeyed smoothly. She led him speedily past gathered knots of chattering folk in rainbow hues, too fast for him to grasp more than fragmentary details of their appearances, but letting him see at least that they were all attractive, and most of them wavingly aware of who he was. That brought back something she had said about champions. Champions?

They swooped to a halt close to yet another curtain of gauzy energy, and he had to discover the trick of getting down. Then she led him again, through that moment of tingle and, at last, into quiet silence. Privacy. It seemed to be a room, quite large, with scattered things that looked like divans and oddly shaped chairs, and an undoubted table.

"We are alone here for a while," she said, gesturing around to make him free of it, "until the clear verdict. Please tell me all about yourself."

"Just a moment." He gathered his wits desperately. "There are so many questions I want to ask that I hardly know where to begin. This whole thing—everything—is completely strange to me."

"You would like something to drink, perhaps? Names will not help here, but if you could describe the contents I can order a synthesis." She moved to stand by the table and, for the first time, he got a really good look at her. She was tall, almost as tall as he, and now that he was paying attention, sorting out the details of what he had taken as a gestalt up to now, she was very odd indeed. Her hair was a silver cloud about her head and ears. A slim black headband pressed it into a wave on either side, its one winking light set in the center of her high forehead. Her eyes and lips