The Wheels of If
And Other Science-Fiction
(1949)*
L. Sprague de Camp

Contents 

	Foreword 
	The Wheels of If 
	The Best-Laid Scheme 
	The Warrior Race
	Hyperpelosity
	The Merman
	The Contraband Cow 
	The Gnarly Man

Foreword

	PEOPLE sometimes accuse me of writing satire. This, if not exactly a vile canard, is at least an inaccurate statement, because in the strict sense satire Ls ridiculing established conditions, conventions, or institutions by exaggeration or burlesque in the hope of changing them. In other words, it has social significance, which is just the thing I studiously avoid in my stories. These yarns are meant purely to amuse and entertain, and neither to instruct, nor to incite, nor to improve. If you get instructed, incited, or improved as a result of reading them, don't blame me, for such was not my intention. Don't think for instance, that The Contraband Cow contains my opinions on the subject of world government; I have such opinions, but I don't necessarily incorporate them into my stories.

	These tales all appeared cither in Astounding Science-Fiction or in Unknown during the years 1938-1942. They can all be called fantasies in the broad sense; that is, " 'tain't so" stories. In a strict sense they are science-fiction stories: that is, stories based upon scientific or pseudoscientific assumptions, as opposed to fantasies in the strict sense: stories based upon mythological or supernatural assumptions.

	However, let's not get ourselves involved in the dusty science of taxonomy at this point. Let's rather read the stories, and I hope you like them.

L. Sprague de Camp.
Landsdowne, Penn. 
20 October 1948

THE WHEELS OF IF

	King Oswiu of Northumbria squirmed in his chair. In the first place these synods bored him. In the second, his mathematics comprised the ability to add and subtract numbers under twenty on his fingers. Hence all this argument among the learned clerics, assembled in Whitby in the year of Our Lord 664, about the date of Easter and the phases of the moon and cycles of 84 and 532 years, went over the King's head completely.

	What did the exact date of Easter matter, anyhow? If they wanted to, why couldn't the Latins celebrate their Easter when they wanted, and the Ionans celebrate theirs? The Ionans had been doing all right, as far as Oswiu could see. And then this Wilfrid of York had to bring in his swarms of Latin priests, objecting to this and that as schismatic, heretical, etc. They were abetted by Oswiu's queen, Eanfled, which put poor Oswiu in an awkward position. He not only wanted peace in the family, but also hoped to attain to Heaven some day.

	Moreover, he liked the Abbot Colman, leader of the Ionans. And he certainly didn't want any far-off Bishop of Rome sticking his nose into his affairs. On the other hand ...

	King Oswiu came to with a jerk. Father Wilfrid was speaking to him directly: "... the arguments of my learned friend—" he indicated the Abbot Colman of Lindisfarne "—are very ingenious, I admit. But that is not the fundamental question. The real decision is, shall we accept the authority of His Holiness of Rome, like good Christians, or—"

	"Wait a minute, wait a minute," interrupted Oswiu, "Why must we accept Gregory's authority to be good Christians? I'm a good Christian, and I don't let any foreign—"

	"The question, my lord, is whether one can be a good Christian and a rebel against—"

	"I am too a good Christian!" bristled Oswiu.

	Wilfrid of York smiled. "Perhaps you remember the statement of our Savior to- Peter, the first Bishop of Rome? 'Thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my Church; and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in Heaven.' You see?"

	Oswiu thought. That put a different light on the matter. If this fellow Peter actually had the keys of Heaven ...

	He turned to the Abbot Colman and asked: "Is that a correct quotation?"

	"Just a minute, just a minute. You'll get me all confused again if you start arguing. Now, can you quote a text showing that equivalent powers were granted to Saint Columba?"

	The grave Irishman's face registered sudden dismay. He frowned in concentration so intense that one could almost hear the wheels.

	"Well?" said Oswiu. "Speak up!"

	Colman sighed. "No, my lord, I cannot. But I can show that it is the Latins, not we, who are departing from—"

	"That's enough, Colman!" Oswiu's single-track mind, once made up, had no intention of being disturbed again. "I have decided that from, this day forth the Kingdom of Northumbria shall follow the Latin practice concerning Easter. And that we shall declare our allegiance to the Roman Bishop Gregory, lest, when I come to the gates of Heaven, there would be none to open them for me—he being my adversary who has the keys. The synod is adjourned."

	King Oswiu went out, avoiding the reproachful look that the Abbot sent after him. It was a dirty trick on Colman, who was a very decent chap. But after all, it wouldn't do to antagonize the heavenly doorman. And maybe now Eanfled would stop nagging him ...

-

	Allister Park rubbed his eyes and sat up in bed, as he usually did. He noticed nothing wrong until he looked at the sleeve of his pajamas.

	He could not recall ever having had a pair of pajamas of that singularly repulsive green. He couldn't recall having changed to clean pajamas the night before. In short, he couldn't account for these pajamas at all.

	Oh, well, probably, Eunice or Mary had given them to him, and he'd put them on without thinking. He yawned, brushing his mouth with the back of his hand.

	He jerked his hand away. Then he cautiously felt his upper lip.

	He got out of bed and made for the nearest mirror. There was no doubt about it. He had a mustache. He had not had a mustache when he went to bed the night before.

-

	'Abd-ar-Rahman, Governor of Cordoba for the Khalifah Hisham ibn 'Abd-al-Malik, Lord of Damascus, Protector of the Faithful, etc., etc., paced, his tent like a caged leopard with claustrophobia. He hated inactivity, and to him the last six days of tentative skirmishing had been just that.

	He glowered over his pepper-and-salt beard at his chiefs, sitting cross-legged in an ellipse on the rugs. "Well?" he barked.

	Yezid spoke up. "But a little longer, Commander-in-Chief, and the Franks will melt away. The infidels have little cavalry, save Gothic and Aquitanian refugees. Without cavalry, they cannot keep themselves fed. Our horse can range the country, supplying us and cutting off help from our enemies. There is no God but God."

	Ya'qub snorted. "How long do you think our men will abide this fearful Frankish climate? The winter is almost upon us. I say strike now, while their spirits are still up. This rabble of Frankish farmers on foot will show some rare running. Have the armies of the Faithful come this far by sitting in front of their enemies and making grimaces at them?"

	Yezid delivered an impressive snort of his own. "Just the advice one would expect from a dog of a Ma'ddite. This Karel, who commands the infidels, is no fool—-"

	"Who's a dog?" yelped Ya'qub, jumping up. "Pig of a Yemenite—"

	'Abd-ar-Rahman yelled at them until they subsided. One major idea of this foray into Francia was to bury the animosity between members of the two parties. Yezid's starting a quarrel on political grounds put the Governor in an embarrassing position, as he was a Yemenite himself. He was still undecided. An intelligent man, he could-see the sense to Yezid's Fabian advice. Emotionally, however, he burned to get to grips with the army of Charles, Mayor of Austrasia. And Yezid should be punished for his insulting remark.

	"I have decided," said 'Abd-ar-Rahman, "that, while there is much to be said, on both sides, Ya'qub's advice is the sounder. Nothing hurts an army's spirit like waiting. Besides, God has planned the outcome of the battle anyway. So why should we fear? If He decides that we shall win, we shall win.

	"Therefore tomorrow, Saturday, we shall strike the Franks with all our force. God is God, and Mohammed is His prophet ..."

	But the next night 'Abd-ar-Rahman lay dead by the banks of the River Vienne, near Tours, with his handsome face waxy in the starlight and blood in his pepper-and-salt beard. The Austrasian line had held. Yezid, who had been right, was dead likewise, and so was Ya'qub, who had been wrong. And the surviving Arabs were fleeing back to Narbonne and Barcelona.

-

	Allister Park opened the door of his apartment and grabbed up his Times. Sure enough, the date was Monday April eleventh, just as it ought to have been. The year was right, too. That ruled out the possibility of amnesia.

	He went back to the mirror. He was still a slightly stout man in his middle thirties, with pale-blue eyes and thinning sandy hair. But he wasn't the same man. The nose was different. So were the eyebrows. The scar under the chin was gone ...

	He gave up his self-inspection and got out his clothes. At that juncture he got another shock. The clothes weren't his. Or rather, they were clothes for a man of his size, and of the quality that a self-indulgent bachelor with an income of $12,000 a year would buy. Park didn't object to the clothes. It was just that they weren't his clothes.

	Park gave up speculation about his sanity for the nonce; he had to get dressed. Breakfast? He was sick of the more cardboard-like cereals. To hell with it; he'd make himself some French toast. If it put another inch on his middle, he'd sweat it off Sunday at the New York Athletic Club.

	The mail was thrust under his door. He finished knotting his necktie and picked it up. The letters were all addressed to a Mr. Arthur Vogel.

	Then Allister Park, really awake, did look around. The apartment was built on the same plan of his own, but it wasn't the same. The furniture was different. Lots of little things were different, such as a nick in the wall that shouldn't be there.

	Park sat down and smoked a cigarette while he thought. There was no evidence of kidnapping, which, considering his business, was not too unlikely a possibility. He'd gone to bed Sunday night sober, alone, and reasonably early. Why should he wake up in another man's apartment? He forgot for the moment that he had also awakened with another man's face. Before he had time to remember it, the sight of the clock jostled him into action. No time for French toast—it would have to be semi-edible cardboard after all.

	But the real shock awaited him when he looked for his briefcase. There was none. Neither was there any sign of the sheaf of notes he had so carefully drawn up on the conduct of the forthcoming Antonini case. That was more than important. On his convicting the Antonini gang depended his nomination for District Attorney for the County of New York next fall. The present D. A. was due to get the bipartisan nomination to the Court of General Sessions at the same time.

	He was planning, with thoroughly dishonorable motives, to invite Martha up for dinner. But he didn't want to have dinner with her until he'd cleared this matter, up. The only trouble with calling her up was that the address-book didn't have her name in it—or indeed the name of anybody Park had ever heard of. Neither was he listed in the 'phone book.

	He dialled CAnal 6-5700. Somebody said: "Department of Hospitals."

	"Huh? Isn't this CAnal 6-5700?"

	"Yes, this is the Department of Hospitals."

	"Well what's the District Attorney's office then? Hell, I ought to know my own office 'phone."

	"The District Attorney's office is WOrth 2-2200."

	Park groggily called WOrth 2-2200. "Mr. Park's office, please."

	"What office did you ask for, please?"

	"The office of Assistant District Attorney Park!" Park's voice took on the metallic rasp. "Racket Bureau to you, sister."

	"I'm sorry, we have no such person."

	"Listen, young lady, have you got a Deputy Assistant D. A. named Frenczko? John Frenczko? You spell it with a z."

	Silence. "No, I'm sorry, we have no such person." 

	Allister Park hung up.

-

	The old building at 137 Center was still there. The Racket Bureau was still there. But they had never heard of Allister Park. They already had an Assistant D. A. of their own, a man named Hutchison, with whom they seemed quite well satisfied. There was no sign of Park's two deputies, Frenczko and Burt.

	As a last hope, Park went over to the Criminal Courts Building.. If he wasn't utterly mad, the case of People v. Cassidy, extortion, ought to come up as soon after ten as it would take Judge Segal to read his calendar. Frenczko and Burt would be in there, after Cassidy's hide.

	But there was no Judge Segal, no Frenczko, no Burt, no Cassidy ...

-

	"Very interesting, Mr. Park," soothed the psychiatrist. "Very interesting indeed. The most hopeful feature is that you quite realize your difficulty, and come to me now—"

	"What I want to know," interrupted Park, "is: was I sane up to yesterday, and crazy since then, or was I crazy up to then and sane now?"

	"It seems hard to believe that one could suffer from a coherent set of illusions for thirty-six years," replied the psychiatrist. "Yet your present account of your perceptions seems rational enough. Perhaps your memory of what you saw and experienced today is at fault."

	"But I want to get straightened out! My whole political future depends on it! At least—" he stopped. Was there such an Antonini gang? Was there a nomination awaiting an Allister Park if they were convicted?

	"I know," said the psychiatrist gently. "But this case isn't like any I ever heard of. You go ahead and wire Denver for Allister Park's birth-certificate. We'll see if there is such a person. Then come back tomorrow ..."

-

	Park awoke, looked around, and groaned. The room had changed again. But he choked off his groan. He was occupying a twin bed. In its mate lay a fair-to-middling handsome woman of about his own age.

	His groan had roused her. She asked: "How are you feeling, Wally?"

	"I'm feeling fine," he mumbled. The significance of his position was soaking in. He had some trouble suppressing another groan. About marriage, he was an adherent of the why-buy-a-cow philosophy, as he had had occasion to make clear to many women by way of fair warning.

	"I hope you are," said the woman anxiously. "You acted so queer yesterday. Do you remember your appointment with Dr. Kerr?"

	"I certainly do," said Park. Kerr was not the name of the psychiatrist with whom he had made the appointment.

	The woman prepared to dress. Park gulped a little. For years he'd managed to get along without being mixed up with other men's wives, ever since ...

	And he wished he knew her name. A well-mannered man, under those circumstances, wouldn't refer to the woman as "Hey, you."

	"What are we having for breakfast, sweetie-pie?" he asked with a sickly grin. She told him, adding: "You never called me that before, dear." When she started toward him with an expectant smile, he jumped out of bed and dressed with frantic haste.

	He ate silently. When the woman inquired why, he pointed to his mouth and mumbled: "Canker sore. It hurts to talk."

	He fled as soon as he decently could, without learning his "wife's" name. His wallet told him his name was Wallace Heineman, but little else about himself. If he wanted to badly enough, he could not doubt find out whom he worked for, who his friends were, which if any bank he had money in, etc. But if these daily changes were going to continue, it hardly seemed worth while. The first thing was to get back to that psychiatrist.

	Although the numbers of the streets were different, the general layout was the same. Half an hour's walking brought him to the block where the psychiatrist's office had been. The building had been on the southeast corner of Fifty-seventh and Eighth. Park could have sworn the building that now occupied that site was different.

	However, he went up anyway. He had made a careful note of the office number. His notebook had been missing that morning, like all the rest of his (or rather Arthur Vogel's) things. Still, he remembered the number.

	The number turned out to be that of a suite of offices occupied by Williamson, Ostendorff, Cohen, Burke, and Williamson, Attorneys. No, they had never heard of Park's brain-man. Yes, Williamson, Ostendorff, Cohen, Burke, and Williamson had occupied those offices for years.

	Park came out into the street and stood a long time, thinking, A phenomenon that he had hitherto noticed only vaguely now puzzled him: the extraordinary number of Union Jacks in sight.

	He asked the traffic cop about it. The cop looked at him. "King's buithday," he said.

	"What king?"

	"Why, our king of course. David the Fuist." The cop touched his finger to the peak of his cap.

-

	Park settled himself on a park bench with a newspaper. The paper was full of things like references to the recent Anglo-Russian war, the launching of the Queen Victoria, His Majesty's visit to a soap factory ("where he displayed a keen interest in the technical problems involved in ..."), the victory of Massachusetts over Quebec in the Inter-Colonial football matches (Massachusetts a colony? And football in April?), the trial of one Diedrichs for murdering a man with a cross-cut saw ....

	All this was very interesting, especially the Diedrichs case. But Allister Park was more concerned with the whereabouts and probable fate of the Antonini gang. He also thought with gentle melancholy of Mary and Eunice and Dorothy and Martha and Joan and ... But that was less important than the beautiful case he had dug up against such a slimy set of public enemies. Even Park, despite the cynical view of humanity that public prosecutors get, had felt a righteous glow when he tallied up the evidence and knew he had them.

	And the nomination was not to be sneezed at either. It just happened that he was available when it was a Protestant's turn at that nomination. If he missed out, he'd have to wait while a Catholic and a Jew took theirs. Since you had to be one or the other to get nominated at all, Park had become perforce a church member and regular if slightly hypocritical goer.

	His plan was, after a few terms as D. A., to follow the incumbent D. A. onto the bench. You would never have guessed it, but inside Allister Park lingered enough of the idealism that as a young lawyer he had brought from Colorado to give the bench an attractiveness not entirely comprised of salary and social position.

	He looked in his pockets. There was enough there for one good bender.

	Of the rest of the day, he never could remember much afterwards. He did remember giving a pound note to an old woman selling shoe-laces, leading a group of drunks in a song about one Columbo who knew the world was round-o (unexpurgated), and trying to take a fireman's hose away from him on the ground that the city was having a water shortage.

-

	He awoke in another strange room, with a trace of a hangover. A quick look-around assured him that he was alone.

	It was time, he thought, that he worked out a system for the investigation of his identity on each successive morning. He learned that his name was Wadsworth Noe. The pants of all the suits in his closet were baggy knee-pants, plus-fours.

	Something was going ping, ping, ping, like one of those tactful alarm clocks. Park located the source of the noise in a goose-necked gadget on the table, which he finally identified as a telephone. As the transmitter and receiver were built into a single unit on the end of a goose-neck, there was nothing to lift off the hook. He pressed a button in the base. A voice spoke: "Waddy?"

	"Oh—yeah. Who's this?"

	"This is your little bunnykins."

	Park swore under his breath. The voice sounded female and young, and had a light indefinable accent. He stalled: "How are you this morning?"

	"Oh, I'm fine. How's my little butter-ball?"

	Park winced. Wadsworth Noe had a figure even more portly than Allister Park's. Park, with effort, infused syrup into his voice: "Oh, I'm fine too, sweetie-pie. Only I'm lonesome as all hell."

	"Oh, isn't that too bad! Oo poor little thing! Shall I come up and cook dinner for my precious?"

	"I'd love it." A plan was forming in Park's mind. Hitherto all these changes had taken place while he was asleep. If he could get somebody to sit around and watch him while he stayed up ...

	The date was made. Park found he'd have to market.

	On the street, aside from the fact that all the men wore plus-fours and wide-brimmed hats, the first thing that struck him was the sight of two dark men in uniform. They walked in step down the middle of the sidewalk. Their walk implied that they expected people to get out of their way. People got. As the soldiers passed him, Park caught a sentence in a foreign language, sounding like Spanish.

	At the market everyone spoke with that accent Park had heard over the 'phone. They fell silent when another pair of soldiers entered. These loudly demanded certain articles of food. A clerk scurried around and got the order. The soldiers took the things and departed without paying.

	Park thought of going to a library to learn about the world he was in. But if he were going to shift again, it would hardly be worth while. He bought a New York Record, noticing that the stand also carried a lot of papers in French and Spanish.

	Back in his apartment he read of His Majesty Napoleon V, apparently emperor of New York City and God knew what else!

-

	His little bunnykins turned out to be a smallish dark girl, not bad-looking, who kissed him soundly. She said: "Where have you been the last few days, Waddy? I haven't heard from you for simply ages'. I was beginning to think you'd forgotten me. Oo hasn't forgotten, has oo?"

	"Me forget? Why, sweetie-pie, I couldn't any more forget you than I could forget my own name." (And what the hell's that? he asked himself. Wordsworth— no. Wadsworth Noe. Thank God.) "Give us another kiss."

	... She looked at him. "What makes you talk so funny, Waddy?"

	"Canker sore,"" said Allister Park.

	"O-o-o, you poor angel. Let me see it."

	"It's all right. How about that famous dinner?"

-

	At least Wadsworth Noe kept a good cellar. After dinner Park applied himself cautiously to this. It gave an excuse for just sitting. Park asked the girl about herself. She chattered on happily for some hours.

	Then her conversation began to run dry. There were long silences.

	She looked at him quizzically. "Are you worrying about something, Waddy? Somehow you seem like a different man."

	"No," he lied. "I'm not worrying." She looked at the clock. "I suppose I ought to go," she said hesitantly.

	Park sat up. "Oh, please don't!"

	She relaxed and smiled. "I didn't think you'd let me. Just wait." She disappeared into the bedroom and presently emerged in a filmy nightgown.

	Allister Park was not surprised. But he was concerned. Attractive as the girl was, the thought of solving his predicament was more so. Besides, he was already sleepy from the liquors he had drunk.

	"How about making some coffee, sweetie-pie?" he asked.

	She acquiesced. The making and drinking of the coffee took another hour. It was close to midnight. To keep the ball rolling, Park told some stories. Then the conversation died down again. The girl yawned. She seemed puzzled and a bit resentful.

	She asked: "Are you going to sit up all night?"

	That was just what Park intended to do. But while he cast about for a plausible reason to give, he stalled: "Ever tell you about that man Wugson I met last week? Funniest chap you ever saw. He has a big bunch of hairs growing out the end of his nose ..."

	He went on in detail about the oddities of the imaginary Mr. Wugson. The girl had an expression of what-did-I-do-to-deserve-this. She yawned again.

	Click! Allister Park rubbed his eyes and sat up. He was on a hard knobby thing that might, by gross misuse of the language, be called a mattress. His eyes fo-cussed on a row of iron bars.

	He was in jail.

-

	Allister Park's day in jail proved neither interesting nor informative. He was marched out for meals and for an hour of exercise. Nobody spoke to him except a guard who asked: "Hey there, chief, who ja think you are today, huh? Julius Caesar?"

	Park grinned. "Nope. I'm God, this time."

	This was getting to be a bore. If one could do this flitting about from existence to existence voluntarily, it might be fun. As it was, one didn't stay put long enough to adjust to any of these worlds of—illusion?

	The next day he was a shabby fellow sleeping on a park bench. The city was still New York—no it wasn't; it was a different city built on the site of New York.

	He had money for nothing more than a bottle of milk and a loaf of bread. These he bought and consumed slowly, while reading somebody's discarded newspaper. Reading was difficult because of the queer spelling. And the people had an accent that required the closest attention to understand.

	He spent a couple of hours in an art museum. The guards looked at him as if he were something missed by the cleaners. When it closed he went back to his park bench and waited. Night came.

	A car—at least, a four-wheeled power vehicle—drew up and a couple of cops got out. Park guessed they were cops because of their rhinestone epaulets. One asked: "Are you John Gilby?" He pronounced it: "Air yew Zhawn Gilbii?"

	But Allister Park caught his drift. "Damned if I know, brother. Am I?"

	The cops looked at each other. "He's him, all right," said one. To Park: "Come along."

	Park learned, little by little, that he was not wanted for anything more serious than disappearance. He kept his own counsel until they arrived at the stationhouse.

	Inside was a fat woman. She jumped up and pointed at him, crying raucously: "That's him! That's the dirty deserter, running off and leaving his poor wife to starve! The back of me hand to you, you dirty—"

	"Please, Mrs. Gilby!" said the desk sergeant.

	The woman was not to be silenced. "Heaven curse the day I met you! Sergeant darlin', what can I do to put the dirty loafer in jail where he belongs?"

	"Well," said the sergeant uncomfortably, "you can charge him with desertion, of course. But don't you think you'd better go home and talk it over? We don't want to—"

	"Hey!" cried Park. They looked at him. "I'll take jail, if you don't mind—"

	Click! Once again he was in bed. It was a real bed this time. He looked around. The place had the unmistakable air of a sanitarium or hospital.

	Oh, well. Park rolled over and went to sleep.

	The next day he was still in the same place. He began to have hopes. Then he remembered that, as the transitions happened at midnight, he had no reason for assuming that the next one would not happen the following midnight.

	He spent a very boring day. A physician came in, asked him how he was, and was gone almost before Park could say "Fine." People brought him his meals. If he'd been sure he was going to linger, he'd have made vigorous efforts to orient himself and to get out. But as it was, there didn't seem any point.

	The next morning he was still in bed. But when he tried to rub his eyes and sit up, he found that his wrists and ankles were firmly tied to the four posts. This wasn't the same bed, nor the same room; it looked like a room in somebody's private house.

	And at the foot of the bed sat the somebody; a small gray-haired man with piercing black eyes that gleamed over a sharp nose.

	For a few seconds Allister Park and the man looked at each other. Then the man's expression underwent a sudden and alarming change, as if internal pain had gripped him. He stared at his own clothes as if he had never seen them before. He screamed, jumped up, and dashed out of the room. Park heard his feet clattering down stairs, and the slam of a front door; then nothing.

-

	Allister Park tried pulling at his bonds, but the harder he pulled, the tighter they gripped. So he tried not pulling, which brought no results either.

	He listened. There was a faint hiss and purr of traffic outside. He must be still in a city, though, it seemed, a fairly quiet one.

	A stair creaked. Park held his breath. Somebody was coming up, and without unnecessary noise. More than one man, Park thought, listening to the creaks.

	Somebody stumbled. From far below a voice called up a question that Park couldn't catch. There were several quick steps and the smack of a fist.

	The door of Park's room was ajar. Through the crack appeared a vertical strip of face, including an eye. The eye looked at Park and Park looked at the eye.

	The door jerked open and three men pounced into the room. They wore floppy trousers and loose blouses that might have come out of a Russian ballet. They had large, flat, pentagonal faces, red-brown skins and straight black hair. They peered behind the door and under the bed.

	"What the hell?" asked Allister Park.

	The largest of the three men looked at him. "You're not hurt, Hallow?"

	"No. But I'm damn sick of being tied up."

	The large man's face showed a flicker of surprise. The large man cut Park's lashings. Park sat up, rubbing his wrists, and learned that he was wearing a suit of coarse woolen underwear.

	"Where's the rascally Noggle?" asked the large brown man. Although he rolled his r's like a Scot, he did not look like a Scot. Park thought he might be an Asiatic or an American Indian.

	"You mean the little gray-haired bird?"

	"Sure. You know, the scoundrel." He pronounced the "k" in "know."

	"Suppose I do. When I woke up he was in that chair. He looked at me and beat it out of here as if all the bats of Hell were after him."

	"Maybe he's gone daft. But the weighty thing is to get you out." One of the men got a suit out of the closet, resembling the three men's clothes, but somber gray.

	Allister Park dressed. The tenseness of the men made him hurry, though he didn't take all this very seriously yet.

	Working his feet into the elastic-sided shoes with the big metal buckles, Park asked: "How long have I been here?"

	"You dropped from the ken of a man a week ago today," replied the large man with a keen look.

	A week ago today he had been Allister Park, assistant district attorney. The next day he hadn't been. It was probably not a mere coincidence.

	He started to take a look at his new self in the mirror. Before he could no more than glimpse a week's growth of beard, two of the men were gently pulling his arms toward the door. There was something deferential about their urgency. Park went along. He asked: "What do I do now?"

	"That takes a bit of thinking on," said the large man. "It might not be safe for you to go home. Shh!" He stole dramatically down the stairs ahead of them. "Of course," he continued, "you could put in a warrant against Joseph Noggle."

	"What good would that do?"

	"Not much, I fear. If Noggle was put up to this by MacSvensson, you can be sure the lazy knicks wouldn't find him."

	Park had more questions, but he didn't want to give himself away any sooner than he had to.

	The house was old, decorated in a curious geometrical style, full of hexagons and spirals. On the ground floor sat another brown man in a rocking-chair. In one hand he held a thing like an automobile grease-gun, with a pistol grip. Across the room sat another man, with a black eye, looking apprehensively at the gun-thing.

	The one in the chair got up, took off his bonnet, and made a bow toward Park. He said: "Haw, Hallow. Were you hurt?"

	"He'll live over it, glory be to Patrick," said the big one, whom the others addressed as "Sachem." This person now glowered at the man with the black eye. "Nay alarums, understand? Or—" he drew die tip of his forefinger in a quick circle on the crown of his head. It dawned on Park that he was outlining the part of the scalp that an Indian might remove as a trophy.

	They went quickly out, glancing up and down the street. It was early morning; few people were visible. Park's four companions surrounded him in a way that suggested that, much as they respected him, he had better not make a break.

	The sidewalk had a wood-block paving. At the curb stood a well-streamlined automobile. The engine seemed to be in the rear. From the size of the closed-in section, Park guessed it to be huge.

	They got in. The instrument board had more knobs and dials than a transport plane. The Sachem started the car noiselessly. Another car blew a resonant whistle, and passed them wagging a huge tail of water-vapor. Park grasped the fact that the cars were steam-powered. Hence the smooth, silent operation; hence also the bulky engine and the complex controls.

	The buildings were large but low; Park saw none over eight or ten stories. The traffic-signals had semaphore arms with "STAI" and "COM" on them.

	"Where are you taking me?" asked Park.

	"Outside the burg bounds, first," said the Sachem. "Then we'll think on the next."

	Park wondered what was up; they were still respectful as all Hell, but there was something ominous about their haste to get outside the "burg bounds," which Park took to be the city limits. He said, experimentally, "I'm half starved."

	A couple of the brown men echoed these sentiments, so the Sachem presently stopped the car at a restaurant. Park looked around it; except for the odd geometric system of decoration, it was much like other restaurants the world over.

	"What's the program?" he asked the Sachem. Park had known some heavy drinkers in his time, but never one who washed his breakfast pancakes down with whiskey, as the large brown man was now doing.

	"That'll be seen," said the Sachem. "What did Noggle try to do to you?"

	"Never did find out."

	"There's been an under talk about the swapping of minds. I wonder if—where are you going?"

	"Be right back," said Park, heading for the men's room. In another minute the Sachem would have cornered him on the question of identity. They watched him go. Once in the men's room, he climbed onto a sink, opened a window, and squirmed out into the adjacent alley. He put several blocks between himself and his convoyers before he slowed down.

	His pockets failed to tell him whose body he had. His only mark of identification was a large gold ring with a Celtic cross. He had a few coins in one pocket, wherewith he bought a newspaper.

-

	Careful searching disclosed the following item:

-

BISJAP STIL MISING

At a laet aur jestradi nee toocan had ben faund of yi mising Bisjap Ib Scoglund of yi Niu Belfast Bisjapric of yi Celtic Cristjan Tjortj, hwuuz vanisjing a wiik agoo haz sterd yi borg. Cincts sai yai aar leeving nee steen ontornd in yaeir straif tu faind yi hwarabouts of yi mising preetjr, hwuuz losti swink on bihaaf of yi Screlingz haz bimikst him in a fiirs yingli scofai ...

-

	It looked to Park as though some German or Norwegian had tried to spell English—or what passed for English in this city—phonetically according to the rules of his own language, with a little Middle English or Anglo-Saxon thrown in. He made a tentative translation:

-

BISHOP STILL MISSING

At a late hour yesterday no token (sign?) had been found of the missing Bishop Ib Scoglund of the New Belfast Bishopric of the Celtic Christian Church, whose vanishing a week ago has stirred the burg (city?). Cnicts (police?) say they are leaying no stone unturned in their strife (effort?) to find the whereabouts of the missing preacher ...

-

	It sounded like him, all right. What a hell of a name, Ib Scoglund! The next step was to find where he lived. If they had telephones, they ought to have telephone directories ...

	Half an hour later Park approached the bishop's house. If he were going to change again at midnight, the thing to do would be to find some quiet place, relax, and await the change. However, he felt that the events of the week made a pattern, of which he thought he could see the beginnings of an outline. If his guesses were right, he had arrived at his destination.

	The air was moderately warm and a bit sticky, as New York City air might well be in April. A woman passed him, leading a floppy-eared dog. She was stout and fiftyish. Although Park did not think that a skirt that cleared her knees by six inches became her, that was what was being worn.

	As he turned the corner onto what ought to be his block, he sighted a knot of people in front of a house. Two men in funny steeple-crowned hats sat in an open car. They were dressed alike, and Park guessed they were policemen.

	Park pulled his bonnet—a thing like a Breton peasant's hat—over one side of his face. He walked past on the opposite side of the street, looking unconcerned. The people were watching No. 64, his number.

	There was an alley on one side of the house. Park walked to the next corner, crossed, and started back toward No. 64. He had almost reached the entrance to the alley when one of the men spotted him. With a cry of "There's the bishop himself!" the men on the sidewalk— there were four—ran toward him. The men in the funny hats got out of their vehicle and followed.

	Park squared his shoulders. He had faced down ward-heelers who invaded his apartment to tell him to lay off certain people, or else. However, far from being hostile, these shouted: "Wher-r-re ya been, Halloy?"

	"Were you kidnapped?"

	"Ja lose your recall?"

	"How about a wording?" All produced pads and pencils.

	Park felt at home. He asked: "Who's it for?"

	One of the men said: "I'm from the Sooth."

	"The what?"

	"The New Belfast Sooth. We've been upholding you on the Skrelling question."

	Park looked serious. "I've been investigating conditions."

	The men looked puzzled. Park added: "You know, looking into things."

	"Oh," said the man from the Sooth. "Peering the kilters, eh?"

	The men in the funny hats arrived. One of the pair asked: "Any wrongdoings, Bishop? Want to mark in a slur?"

	Park, fumbling through the mazes of this dialect, figured that he meant "file a complaint." He said: "No, I'm all right. Thanks anyway."

	"But," cried the hat, "are you sure you don't want to mark in a slur? We'll take you to the lair if you do."

	"No, thank you," said Park. The hats sidled up to him, one on either side. In the friendliest manner they took his arms and gently urged him toward the car, saying: "Sure you want to mark in a slur. We was sent special to get you so you could. If somebody kidnapped you, you must, or it's helping wrong-doing, you know. It's just a little way to the lair—"

	Park had been doing some quick thinking. They had an ulterior reason for wanting to get him to the "lair" (presumably a police-station); but manhandling a bishop, especially in the presence of reporters, just wasn't done. He wrenched loose and jumped into the doorway of No. 64. He snapped: "I haven't got any slurs, and I'm not going to your lair, get me?"

	"Aw, but Hallow, we wasn't going to hurt you. Only if you have a slur, you have to mark it in. That's the law, see?" The man, his voice a pleading whine, came closer and reached for Park's sleeve. Park cocked a fist, saying: "If you want me for anything, you can get a warrant. Otherwise the Sooth'll have a story about how you tried to kidnap the bishop, and how he knocked the living bejesus out of you!" The reporters made encouraging noises.

	The hats gave up and got back in their car. With some remark about "... he'll sure give us hell," they departed.

	Park pulled the little handle on the door. Something went bong, bong inside. The reporters crowded around, asking questions. Park, trying to look the way a bishop should, held up a hand. "I'm very tired, gentlemen, but I'll have a statement for you in a few days."

	They were still pestering him when the door opened. Inside, a small monkeylike fellow opened his mouth. "Hallow Colman keep us from harm!" he cried.

	"I'm sure he will," said Park gravely, stepping in. "How about some food?"

	"Surely, surely," said Monkey-face. "But—but what on earth has your hallowship been doing? I've been fair sick with worry."

	"Peering the kilters, old boy, peering the kilters." Park followed Monkey-face upstairs, as if he had intended going that way of his own accord. Monkey-face doddered into a bedroom and busied himself with getting out clean clothes.

	Park looked at a mirror. He was—as he had been throughout his metamorphoses—a stocky man with thinning light hair, in his middle thirties. While he was not Allister Park, neither was he very different from him.

	The reddish stubble on his face would have to come off. In the bathroom Park found no razor. He stumbled on a contraption that might be an electric razor. He pushed the switch experimentally, and dropped the thing with a yell. It had bitten a piece out of his thumb. Holding the injured member, Park cut loose with the condemnatory vocabulary that ten years of work among New York City's criminal class had given him.

	Monkey-face stood in the doorway, eyes big. Park stopped his swearing long enough to rasp: "Damn your lousy little soul, don't stand there! Get me a bandage!"

	The little man obeyed. He applied the bandage as though he expected Park to begin the practice of cannibalism on him at any moment.

	"What's the matter?" said Park. "I won't bite you!"

	Monkey-face looked up. "Begging pardon, your hallowship, but I thock you wouldn't allow the swearing of aiths in your presence. And now such frickful aiths I never did hear."

	"Oh," said Park. He remembered the penetrating look the Sachem had given his mild damns and hells. Naturally a bishop would not use such language—at least not where he could be overheard.

	"You'd better finish my shave," he said.

	Monkey-face still looked uneasy. "Begging your forgiveness again, Hallow, but what makes you talk such a queer speech?"

	"Canker sore," growled Park.

	Shaved, he felt better. He bent a kindly look on Monkey-face. "Listen," he said, "your bishop has been consorting with low uncouth persons for the past week. So don't mind it if I fall into their way of speaking. Only don't tell anybody, see? Sorry I jumped on you just now. D'you accept my apology?"

	"Yes—yes, of course, Hallow."

	"All right, then. How about that famous breakfast?"

-

	After breakfast he took his newspaper and the pile of mail into the bishop's well-equipped library. He looked up "Screling" in the "Wordbuk" or dictionary. A "Screling" was defined as one of the aboriginal inhabitants of Vinland.

	"Vinland" stirred a faint chord; something he'd learned in school. The atlas contained a map of North America. A large area in the north and east thereof, bounded on the west and south by an irregular line running roughly from Charleston to Winnipeg, was labeled the Bretwaldate of Vinland. The remaining two-thirds of the continent comprised half a dozen political areas, with such names as Dacoosja, Tjeroogia, Aztecia. Park, referring back to the dictionary, derived these from Dakota, Cherokee, Aztec, etcetera.

	In a couple of hours telephone calls began coming in. Monkey-face, according to his instructions, told one and all that the bishop was resting up and couldn't be disturbed. Park meanwhile located a pack of pipes in the library, and a can of tobacco. He got out several pads of paper and sharpened a dozen pencils.

	Monkey-face announced lunch. Park told him to bring it in. He announced dinner. Park told him to bring it in. He announced bed-time. Park told him to go soak his head. He went, clucking. He had never seen a man work with such a fury of concentration for so long at a stretch, let alone his master. But then, he had never seen Allister Park reviewing the evidence for a big criminal case.

-

	History, according to the encyclopedia, was much the same as Park remembered it down to the Dark Ages. Tracing down the point at which the divergence took place, he located the fact that King Oswiu of Northumbria had decided in favor of the Celtic Christian Church at the Synod of Whitby, 664 A.D. Park had never heard of the Synod or of King Oswiu. But the encyclopedia ascribed to this decision the rapid spread of the Celtic form of Christianity over Great Britain and Scandinavia. Hence it seemed to Park that probably, in the history of the world he had come from, the king had decided the other way.

	The Roman Christian Church had held most of its ground in northern Europe for a century more. But the fate of its influence there had been sealed by the defeat of the Franks by the Arabs at Tours. The Arabs had occupied all southern Gaul before they were finally stopped, and according to the atlas they were still there. The Pope and the Lombard duchies oi ItaYy Yiau -a\ once placed themselves under the protection of the Byzantine emperor Leo the Iconoclast. (A Greek-speaking "Roman" Empire still occupied Anatolia and the Balkans, under a Serbian dynasty.)

	A Danish king of England named Gorm had brought both the British Isles and Scandinavia under his rule, as Knut had done in Park's world. But Gorm's kingdom proved more durable than Knut's; the connection between England and Scandinavia had survived, despite intervals of disunion and civil war, down to the present. North America was discovered by one Ketil Ingolfsson in 989 A.D. Enough Norse, English, and the Irish colonists had migrated thither during the Eleventh Century to found a permanent colony, from which the Bretwaldate of Vinland had grown. Their language, while descended from Anglo-Saxon, naturally contained fewer words of Latin and French origin than Park's English.

	The Indians—"Screlingz" or Skrellings—had not proved a pushover, as the colonist had neither the gunpowder nor the numbers that the whites of Park's history had had. By the time the whites had reached the present boundaries of Vinland, expelling or enslaving the Skrellings as they went, the remaining natives had acquired enough knowledge of ferrous metallurgy and organized warfare to hold their own. Those that remained in Vinland were no longer slaves, but were still a suppressed class suffering legal and economic disabilities. He, BishopIb Scoglund, was a crusader for the removal of these disabilities. ("Hallow" was simply a respectful epithet, meaning about the same as "Reverend.")

	An Italian named Caravello had invented the steam-engine about 1790, and the Industrial Revolution had followed as a matter of course ...

	It was the following morning, when Park, having caught the three hours of sleep that sufficed for him when necessary, was back at the books, that Monkey-face (right name: Eric Dunedin) came timidly in. He coughed deferentially. "The pigeon came with a writing from Thane Callahan."

	Park frowned up from his mountain of printed matter. "Who? Never mind; let's see it." He took the note. It read (spelling conventionalized):

-

Dear Hallow: Why in the name of the Blood Witnesses of Belfast did you run away from us yesterday? The papers say you have gone back home; isn't that risky? Must have a meeting with you forthwith; shall be at Bridget's Beach this noon, waiting. Respectfully, R. C. 

-

	Park asked Dunedin: "Tell me, is Callahan a tall heavy guy who looks like an In—a Skrelling?"

	Dunedin looked at him oddly. By this time Park was getting pretty well used to being looked at oddly. Dunedin said: "But he is a Skrelling, Hallow; the Sachem of all the Skrellings of Vinland."

	"Hm. So he'll meet me at this beach—why the devil can't he come here?"

	"Ooooh, but Hallow, bethink what happened to him the last time the New Belfast knicks caught him!"

	Whatever that was, Park reckoned he owed the Sachem something for the rescue from the clutches of the mysterious Mr. Noggle. The note didn't sound like one from a would-be abductor to his escaped prey. But just in case, Park went out to the modest episcopal automobile (Dunedin called it a "wain") and put a wrench in his pocket. He told Dunedin: "You'll have to drive this thing; my thumb's still sore."

	It took a few minutes to get steam up. As they rolled out of the driveway, a car parked across the street started up too. Park got a glimpse of the men therein. While they were in civilian clothes, as he was, they had a grim plainclothesman look about them.

	After three blocks the other car was still behind them. Park ordered Dunedin to go around the block. The other car followed.

	Park asked: "Can you shake those guys?"

	"I—I don't know, your hallowship. I'm not very good at fast driving."

	"Slide over then. How in hell do you run this thing?"

	"You mean you don't know—"

	"Never mind!" roared Park. "Where's the accelerator or throttle or whatever you call it?"

	"Oh, the strangle. There." Dunedin pointed a frankly terrified finger. "And the brake—"

	The wain jumped ahead with a rush. Park spun it around a couple of corners, getting the feel of the wheel. The mirror showed the other car still following. Park opened the "strangle" and whisked around the next corner. No sooner had he straightened out than he threw the car into another dizzy turn. The tires screeched and Dunedin yelped as they shot into an alleyway. The pursuers whizzed by without seeing them.

	An egg-bald man in shirtsleeves popped out of door in the alley. "Hi," he said, "this ain't no hitching place." He looked at Park's left front fender, clucking. "Looks like you took off some paint."

	Park smiled. "I was just looking for a room, and I saw your sign. How much are you asking?"

	"Forty-five a month."

	Park made a show of writing this down. He asked: "What's the address, please?"

	"One twenty-five Isleif."

	"Thanks. I'll be back, maybe." Park backed out, with a scrape of fender against stone, and asked Dunedin directions. Dunedin, gray of face, gave them. Park looked at him and chuckled. "Nothing to be scared of, old boy. I knew I had a good two inches clearance on both sides."

-

	The Sachem awaited Park in the shade of the bathhouse. He swept off his bonnet with a theatrical flourish. "Haw, Hallow! A fair day for our tryst." Park reflected that on a dull day you could smell Rufus Callahan's breath almost as far as you could see Rufus Callahan. He continued: "The west end's best for talk. I have a local knick watching in case Greenfield sends a prowler. Did they follow you out?"

	Park told him, meanwhile wondering how to handle the interview so as to make it yield the most information. They passed the end of the bath-house, and Allister Park checked his stride. The beach was covered with naked men and women. Not quite naked; each had a gaily colored belt of elastic webbing around his or her middle. Just that. Park resumed his walk at Callahan's amused look.

	Callahan said: "If the head knick, Lewis, weren't a friend of mine, I shouldn't be here. If I ever did get pulled up—well, the judges are all MacSvensson's men, just as Greenfield is." Park remembered that Offa Greenfield was mayor of New Belfast. Callahan continued: "While MacSvensson's away, the pushing eases a little."

	"When's he due back?" asked Park.

	"In a week maybe." Callahan waved an arm toward distant New Belfast. "What a fair burg, and what a wretched wick to rule it! How do you like it?"

	"Why, I live there, don't I?"

	Callahan chuckled. "Wonderful, my dear Hallow, wonderful. In another week nobody'll know you aren't his hallowship at all."

	"Meaning what?"

	"Oh, you needn't look at me with that wooden face. You're nay mair Bishop Scoglund than I am."

	"Yeah?" said Park noncommittally. He lit one of the bishop's pipes.

	"How about a jinn?" asked Callahan.

	Park looked at him, until the Sachem got out a cigarette.

	Park lit it for him, silently conceding one to the opposition. How was he to know that a jinn was a match? He asked: "Suppose I was hit on the head?"

	The big Skrelling grinned broadly. "That mick spoil your recall, in spots, but it wouldn't give you that frickful word-tone you were using when we befreed you. I see you've gotten rid of most of it, by the way. How did you do that in thirty-some hours?"

	Park gave up. The man might be just a slightly drunken Indian with a conspiratorial manner, but he had the goods on Allister. He explained: "I found a bunch of records of some of my sermons, and played them over and over on the machine."

	"My, my, you are a cool one! Joe Noggle mick have done worse when he picked your mind to swap with the bishop's. Who are you, in sooth? Or perhaps I should say who were you?"

	Park puffed placidly. "I'll exchange information, but I won't give it away."

	When Callahan agreed to tell Park all he wanted to know, Park told his story. Callahan looked thoughtful. He said: "I'm nay brain-wizard, but they do say there's a theory that every time the history of the world hinges on some decision, there are two worlds, one that which would happen if the card fell one way, the other that which would follow fro the other."

	"Which is the real one?"

	"That I can't tell you. But they do say Noggle can swap minds with his thocks, and I don't doubt it's swapping between one of these possible worlds and another they mean."

	He went on to tell Park of the bishop's efforts to emancipate the Skrellings, in the teeth of the opposition of the ruling Diamond Party. This party's strength was mainly among the rural squirearchy of the west and south, but it also controlled New Belfast through the local boss, Ivor MacSvensson. If Scoglund's amendment to the Bretwaldate's constitution went through at the next session of the national Thing, as seemed likely if the Ruby Party ousted the Diamonds at the forthcoming election, the squirearchy might revolt. The independent Skrelling nations of the west and south had been threatening intervention on behalf of their abused minority. (That sounded familiar to Park, except that, if he took what he had read and heard at its face value, the minority really had something to kick about this time.) The Diamonds wouldn't mind a war, because in that case the elections, which they expected to lose, would be called off ...

	"You're not listening, Thane Park, or should I say Hallow Scoglund?"

	"Nice little number," said Park, nodding toward a pretty blonde girl on the beach.

	Callahan clucked. "Such a wording from a strict wedless!"

	"What?"

	"You're a pillar of the church, aren't you?"

	"Oh, my Lord!" Park hadn't thought of that angle. The Celtic Christian Church, despite its libertarian tradition, was strict on the one subject of sex.

	"Anyhow," said Callahan, "what shall we do with you? For you're bound to arouse mistrust."

	Park felt the wrench in his pocket. "I want to get back. Got a whole career going to smash in my own world."

	"Unless the fellow who's running your body knows what to do with it."

	"Not much chance." Park could visualize Frenczko or Burt frantically calling his apartment to learn why he didn't appear; the unintelligible answers they would get from the bewildered inhabitant of his body; the cops screaming up in the struggle-buggy to cart the said body off to Belleview; the headline: "PROSECUTOR BREAKS DOWN." So they yanked me here as a bit of dirty politics, eh? I'll get back, but meantime I'll show 'em some real politics!

	Callahan continued: "The only man who could un-swap you is Joseph Noggle, and he's in his own daffy-bin."

	"Huh?"

	"They found him wandering about, clean daft. It's a good deed you didn't put in a slur against him; they'd have stripped you in court in nay time."

	"Maybe that's what they wanted to do."

	"That's an idea! That's why they were so anxious for you to go to the lair. I don't doubt they'll be watching for to pull you up on some little charge; it won't matter whether you're guilty or not. Once they get hold of you, you're headed for Noggle's inn. What a way to get rid of the awkward bishop without pipe or knife!"

-

	When Callahan had departed with another flourish, Park looked for the girl. She had gone too. The day was blistering, and the water inviting. Since you didn't need a bathing-suit to swim in Vinland, why not try it?

	Park returned to the bath-house and rented a locker. He stowed his clothes, and looked at himself in the nearest mirror. The bishop didn't take half enough exercise, he thought, looking at the waistline. He'd soon fix that. No excuse for a man's getting out of shape that way.

	He strolled out, feeling a bit exposed with his white skin among all these bronzed people, but not showing it in his well-disciplined face. A few stared. Maybe it was his whiteness; maybe they thought they recognized the bishop. He plunged in and headed out. He swam like a porpoise, but shortness of breath soon reminded him that the bishop's body wasn't up to Allister Park's standards. He cut loose with a few casual curses, since there was nobody to overhear, and swam back.

	As he dripped out onto the sand, a policemen approached, thundering: "You! You're under stoppage!"

	"What for?"

	"Shameful outputting!"

	"But look at those!" protested Park, waving at the other bathers.

	"That's just it! Come along, now!"

	Park went, forgetting his anger in concern as to the best method of avoiding trouble. If the judges were MacSvensson men, and MacSvensson was out to expose him ... He dressed under the cop's eagle eye, thanking his stars he'd had the foresight to wear non-clerical clothes.

-

	The cop ordered: "Give your name and address to the bookholder."

	"Allister Park, 125 Isleif Street, New Belfast."

	The clerk filled out a blank; the cop added a few lines to it. Park and the cop went and sat down for a while, waiting. Park watched the legal procedure of this little court keenly.

	The clerk called: "Thane Park!" and handed the form up to the judge. The cop went over and whispered to the judge. The judge said: "All women will kindly leave the courtroom!" There were only three; they went out.

	"Allister Park," said the judge, "you are marked with shameful outputting. How do you plead?"

	"I don't understand this, your honor—I mean your aerness," said Park. "I wasn't doing anything the other people on the beach weren't."

	The judge frowned. "Knick Woodson says you afterthockly exposed—uh—" The judge looked embarrassed. "You afterthockly output your—uh—" He lowered his voice. "Your navel," he hissed. The judge blushed.

	"Is that considered indecent?"

	"Don't try to be funny. It's not in good taste. I ask you again, how do you plead?"

	Park hesitated a second. "Do you recognize the plea of non vult?"

	"What's that? Latin? We don't use Latin here."

	"Well then—a plea that I didn't mean any harm, and am throwing myself on the mercy of the court."

	"Oh, you mean a plea of good will. That's not usually used in a freerighter's court, but I don't see why you can't. What's your excuse?"

	"You see, your honor, I've been living out in Dakotia for many years, and I've rather gotten out of civilized habits. But I'll catch on quickly enough. If you want a character reference, my friend Ivor MacSvensson will give me one."

	The Judge's eyebrows went up, like a buzzard hoisting its wings for the take-off. "You ken Thane MacSvensson?"

	"Oh, sure."

	"Hrrrmph. Well. He's out of town. But—uh—if that's so, I'm sure you're a good burger. I hereby sentence you to ten days in jail, sentence withheld until I can check your mooding, and thereafter on your good acting. You are free."

-

	Like a good thane's thane, Eric Dunedin kept his curiosity to himself. This became a really heroic task when he was sent out to buy a bottle of soluble hair-dye, a false mustache, and a pair of phoney spectacles with flat glass panes in them.

	There was no doubt about it; the boss was a changed man since his reappearance. He had raised Dunedin's salary, and except for occasional outbursts of choler treated him very considerately. The weird accent had largely disappeared; but this hard, inscrutable man wasn't the bishop Dunedin had known ...

	Park presented himself in his disguise to the renting agent at 125 Isleif. He said: "Remember me? I was here this morning asking about a room." The man said sure he remembered him; he never forgot a face. Park rented a small two-room apartment, calling himself Allister Park. Later in the evening he took some books, a folder of etchings, and a couple of suitcases full of clothes over. When he returned to the bishop's house he found another car with a couple of large watchful men waiting at the curb. Rather than risk contact with a hostile authority, he went back to his new apartment and read. Around midnight he dropped in at a small hash-house for a cup of coffee. In fifteen minutes he was calling the waitress "sweetie-pie." The etchings worked like a charm.

-

	Dunedin looked out the window and announced: "Two wains and five knicks, Hallow. The twoth wain drew up just now. The men in it look as if they'd eat their own mothers without salt."

	Park thought. He had to get out somehow. He had looked into the subject of search warrants, illegal entry, and so forth, as practiced in the Bretwaldate of Vinland, and was reasonably sure the detectives wouldn't invade his house. The laws of Vinland gave what Park thought was an impractically exaggerated sanctity to a man's home, but he was glad of that as things were. However, if he stepped out, the pack would be all over him with charges of drunken driving, conspiracy to violate the tobacco tax, and anything else they could think of.

	He telephoned the "knicks' branch," or police department, and spoke falsetto: "Are you the knicks? Glory be to Patrick and Bridget! I'm Wife Caroline Chisholm, at 79 Mercia, and we have a crazy man running up and down the halls naked with an ax. Sure he's killed my poor husband already; spattered his brains all over the hall he did, and I'm locked in my room and looking for him to break in any time." Park stamped on the floor, and continued: "Eeek! That's the monster now, trying to break the door down. Oh, hurry, I pray. He's shouting that he's going to chop me in little bits and feed me to his cat! ... Yes, 79 Mercia. Eeeee! Save me!"

	He hung up and went back to the window. In five minutes, as he expected, the gongs of the police wains sounded, and three of the vehicles skidded around the corner and stopped in front of No. 79, down the block. Funny hats tumbled out like oranges from a burst paper bag, and raced up the front steps with guns and ropes enough to handle Gargantua. The five who had been watching the house got out of their cars too and ran down the block.

	Allister Park lit his pipe, and strode briskly out the front door, down the street away from the disturbance, and around the corner.

-

	Park was announced, as Bishop Scoglund, to Dr. Edwy Borup. The head of the Psychophysical Institute was a smallish, bald, snaggle-toothed man, who smiled with an uneasy cordiality.

	Park smiled back. "Wonderful work you've been doing, Dr. Borup." After handing out a few more vague compliments, he got down to business. "I understand that poor Dr. Noggle is now one of your patients?"

	"Umm—uh—yes, Reverend Hallow. He is. Uh—his lusty working seems to have brock on a brainly breakdown."

	Park sighed. "The good Lord will see him through, let us hope. I wonder if I could see him? I had some small kenning of him before his trouble. He once told me he'd like my spiritual guidance, when he got around to it."

	"Well—umm—I'm not sure it would be wise—in his kilter—"

	"Oh, come now, Dr. Borup, surely thocks of hicker things would be good for him ..."

	- The sharp-nosed, gray haired man who had been Joseph Noggle sat morosely in his room, hardly bothering to look up when Park entered.

	"Well, my friend," said Park, "what have they been doing to you?"

	"Nothing," said the man. His voice had a nervous edge. "That's the trouble. Every day I'm a different man in a different sanitarium. Each day they tell me that two days previously I got violent and tried to poke somebody in the nose. I haven't poked nobody in the nose. Why in God's name don't they do something? Sure, I know I'm crazy. I'll cooperate, if they'll do something."

	"There, there," said Park. "The good Lord watches over all of us. By the way, what were you before your trouble started?"

	"I taught singing."

	Park thought several "frickful aiths." If a singing-teacher, or somebody equally incompetent for his kind of work, were in his body now ...

	He lit a pipe and talked soothingly and inconsequentially to the man, who though not in a pleasant mood, was too grateful for a bit of company to discourage him. Finally he got what he was waiting for. A husky male nurse came in to take the patient's temperature and tell Park that his time was up.

	Park hung around, on one excuse or another, until the nurse had finished. Then he followed the nurse out and grasped his arm.

	"What is it, Hallow?" asked the nurse.

	"Are you poor Noggle's regular attendant?"

	"Yes."

	"Got any kinfolk, or people you like specially, in the priesthood?"

	"Yes, there's my Aunt Thyra. She's a nun at the New Lindisfarne Abbey."

	"Like to see her advanced?"

	"Why—I guess so; yes. She's always been pretty good to me."

	"All right. Here's what you do. Can you get out, or send somebody out, to telephone Noggle's condition to me every morning before noon?"

	The nurse guessed he could. "All right," snapped Park. "And it won't do anybody any good if anybody knows you're doing it, understand?" He realized that his public prosecutor manner was creeping back on him. He smiled benignly. "The Lord will bless you, my son."

-

	Park telephoned Dunedin; asked him to learn the name of somebody who dwelt on the top floor of the apartment-house next door, and to collect one ladder, thirty feet of rope, and one brick. He made him call back the name of the top-floor tenant. "But Hallow, what in the name of Patrick do you want a brick for ..."

	Park, chuckling, told him he'd learn. When he got off the folk-wain at Mercia Street, he didn't walk boldly up to his own house. He entered the apartment-house next door and said he was calling on Mrs. Figgis, his clericals constituting adequate credentials. When the elevatorman let him out on the top floor, he simply climbed to the roof and whistled for Monkey-face. He directed Dunedin in the tieing of the end of the rope to the brick, the heaving thereof to the roof of the apartment-house, and the planting of the ladder to bridge the ten-foot gap. After that it was a simple matter for Park to lower himself to his own roof, without being intercepted by the watchdogs in front of his house.

	As soon as he got in, the 'phone rang. A sweetness-and-light voice at the other end said: "This is Cooley, Hallow. Every time I've called your man has said you were out or else that you couldn't be bothered!"

	"That's right," said Park. "I was."

	"Yes? Anyway, we're all giving praises to the Lord that you were spared."

	"That's fine," said Park.

	"It surely is a wonderful case of how. His love watches over us—"

	"What's on your mind, Cooley?" said Park, sternly repressing a snarl of impatience.

	"Oh—uh—what I meant was, will you give your usual sermon next Sunday?"

	Park thought quickly. If he could give a sermon and get away with it, it ought to discourage the people who were trying to prove the bishop loony. "Sure I will. Where are you calling from?"

	"Why—uh—the vestry." Some damned assistant, thought Park. "But, Hallow, won't you come up tonight? I'm getting some of the parishioners together in the chapel for a homish thanksgiving stint—with hymns of—"

	"I'm afraid not," said Park. "Give 'em my love anyway. There goes my doorbell. 'Bye."

	He marched into the library, muttering. Dunedin asked: "What is it, Hallow?"

	"Gotta prepare a goddam sermon," said Park, taking some small pleasure at his thane's thane's expression of horror.

	Fortunately the bishop was an orderly man. There were manuscripts of all his sermons for the past five years, and phonograph records (in the form of magnetized wire) of several. There was also plenty of information about the order of procedure in a Celtic Christian service. Park set about concocting a sermon out of fragments and paragraphs of those the bishop had delivered during the past year, playing the spools of wire over and over to learn the bishop's inflections. He wished he had some way of getting the bishop's gestures, too.

	He was still at it next day when he dimly heard his doorbell. He thought nothing of it, trusting to Dunedin to turn the visitor away, until Monkey-face came in and announced that a pair of knicks awaited without.

	Park jumped up. "Did you let 'em in?"

	"No, Hallow, I thought—"

	"Good boy! I'll take care of 'em."

-

	The larger of the two cops smiled disarmingly. "Can we come in, Hallow, to use your wiretalker?"

	"Nope," said Park. "Sorry."

	The knick frowned. "In that case we gotta come in anyway. Mistrust of unlawful owning of pipe." He put his foot in the door-crack.

	A pipe, Park knew, was a gun. He turned and stamped on the toe of the shoe, hard; then slammed the door shut as the foot was jerked back. There were some seconds of "frickful aiths" wafting through the door, then the pounding of a fist against it.

	"Get a warrant!" Park yelled through the door. The noise subsided. Park called Dunedin and told him to lock the other entrances. Presently the knicks departed. Park's inference, based upon what he had been able to learn of Vinland law, that they would not force an entrance without a warrant, had proved correct. However, they would be back, and there is nothing especially difficult about "finding" an illegal weapon in a man's house, whether he had one before or not.

	So Park packed a suitcase, climbed to the roof of the adjoining apartment,, and went down the elevator. The elevator man looked at him in a marked manner. Once in the street, he made sure nobody was looking, and slapped on his mustache and glasses. He pulled his bonnet well down to hide his undyed hair, and walked over to Allister Park's place. There he telephoned Dunedin, and directed him to call the city editors of all the pro-bishop newspapers and tip them off that an attempt to frame the bishop impended. He told Dunedin to let the reporters in when they came; the more the better. Preferably there should be at least one in every room. Now, he thought, let those flatfeet try to sneak a gun into one of my bureau drawers so they can "find" it and raise a stink.

	He spent the night at the apartment, and the next day, having gotten his sermon in shape, he paid a visit to his church. He found a functionary of some sort in an office, and told him that he, Allister Park, was considering getting married in St. Columbanus', and would the functionary (a Th. Morgan) please show him around? Th. Morgan was pleased to; Dr. Cooley usually did that job, but he was out this afternoon. Park looked sharply through his phoney spectacles, memorizing the geography of the place. He wished now he'd passed up the sermon for one more week, and had instead attended next Sunday's service as Allister Park, so that he could see how the thing was done. But it was too late now. Morgan broke in on his thoughts: "There's Dr. Cooley now, Thane Park; wouldn't you like to meet him?"

	"Ulp," said Park. "Sorry; got to see a man. Thanks a lot." Before the startled cleric could protest, Park was making for the door as fast as he could go without breaking into a run. The plump, rosy young man in pince-nez, whom Park saw out of the corner of his eye, must be Cooley. Park had no intention of submitting his rather thin disguise to his assistant's inspection.

	He telephoned the bishop's home. The other people in the lunch-room were startled by the roar of laughter that came through the glass of his telephone booth as Dunedin described the two unhappy cops trying to plant a gun in his house under the noses of a dozen hostile wise-cracking reporters. Monkey-face added: "I—I took the freedom, your hallowship, of finding out that two of the newsers live right near here. If the knicks try that again, and these newsers are at home, we could wirecall them over."

	"You're learning fast, old boy," said Park. "Guess I can come home now."

-

	It was Saturday when Dunedin answered a call from the Psychophysical Institute. He cocked an eye upward, whence came a series of irregular whams as if trunks were being tossed downstairs. "Yes," he said, "I'll get him." As he wheezed upstairs, the whams gave way to a quick, muffled drumming. If anything were needed to convince him that something drastic had happened to his master's mind, the installation and regular use of a horizontal bar and a punching-bag in a disused room was it.

	Park, in a pair of sweat-soaked shorts, turned his pale eyes. Good old Monkey-face. Park, who treated subordinates with great consideration, never told Dunedin what he thought he looked like.

	"It's the man at the Psychophysical Institute," announced Dunedin.

	The male nurse announced that, for a change, Joseph Noggle was claiming to be Joseph Noggle.

	Park grabbed his bonnet and drove the steamer over, Borup asked: "But, my dear, dear Hallow, why must you—uh—see this one patient? There are plenty mair who could use your ghostly guidance."

	Fool amateur, thought Park. If he doesn't want me to know why he wants to keep Noggle locked up, why doesn't he say he's violent or something? This way he's giving away his whole game. But aloud he gave a few smooth, pious excuses, and got in to see his man.

	The original, authentic Noggle had a quick, nervous manner. It didn't take him more than a minute to catch on to who Park-Scoglund was.

	"Look here," he said. "Look here. I've got to get out. I've got to get at my books and onmarkings. If I don't get out now, while I'm in my own body, I shan't be able to stop this damned merry-go-round for another six days!"

	"You mean, my son, that you occupy your own body every six days? What happens the rest of the time?"

	"The rest of the time I'm going around the wheel, indwelling ane after another of the bodies of the other men on my wheel. And the minds of these other men are following me around likewise. So every ane of the six bodies has each of our six minds in it in turn every six days."

	"I see." Park smiled benignly. "And what's this wheel you talk about?"

	"I call it my wheel of if. Each of the other five men on it are the men I should most likely have been if certain things had been otherwise. For instance, the man in whose body my mind dwelt yesterday was the man I should most likely have been if King Egbert had fallen off his horse in 1781."

	Park didn't stop to inquire about King Egbert or the sad results of his poor equestrianism. He asked softly: "How did your wheel get started in the first place?"

	"It was when I tried to stop yours! Law of keeping of psychic momentum, you know. I got careless, and the momentum of your wheel was overchanged to mine. So I've been going around ever since. Now look here, whatever your name is, I've got to get out of here, or I'll never get stopped. I ordered them to let me out this morning, but all they'd say was that they'd see about it tomorrow. Tomorrow my body'll be occupied by some other wheel-mate, and they'll say I'm crazy again. Borup won't let me go anyway if he can help it; he likes my job. But you've got to use your inflowing as bishop—"

	"Oh," said Park silkily, "I've got to use my influence, eh? Just one more question. Are we all on wheels? And how many of these possible worlds are there?"

	"Yes, we're all on wheels. The usual number of rooms on a wheel is fourteen—that's the number on yours— though It sometimes varies. The number of worlds is infinite, or almost, so that the chances that anybody on my wheel would be living in the same world as anybody on yours is pretty small. But that's not weightful. The weightful thing is to get me out so—"

	"Ah yes, that's the weightful thing, isn't it? But suppose you tell me why you started my wheel in the first place?"

	"It was just a forseeking in the mental control of wheels."

	"You're lying," said Park softly.

	"Oh, I'm lying, am I? Well then, reckon out your own reason."

	"I'm sorry that you take this attitude, my son. How can I help you if you won't put your trust in me and in God?"

	"Oh, come on, don't play-act. You're not the bishop, and you know it."

	"Ah, but I was a churchman in my former being." Park fairly oozed holiness. "That's not odd, is it? Since I was the man the bishop would most likely have been if King Oswiu had chosen for the Romans, and the Arabs had lost the battle of Tours."

	"You'd hold yourself bound by professional confidence?"

	Park looked shocked. "What a thock! Of course I would."

	"All right. I'm something of a sportsman, you know. About a month ago I got badly pinched by the ponies, and I—ah—borrowed a little heading on my pay from the Institute's funds. Of course, I'd have paid it back; it was really quite an honest deed. But I had to make a few little—ah—rightings in the books, because otherwise one who didn't understand the conditions might have drawn the wrong thocks from them.

	"Ivor MacSvensson somehow found out, and threatened to put me in jail if I didn't use my mental powers to start your wheel of if going until it had made a half-turn, and then stop it. With another man's mind in the bishop's body, it ought to be easy to prove the bishop daft; in any event his inflowing would be destroyed. But as you know, it didn't work out quite that way. You seemingly aren't in anybody's custody. So you'll have to do something to get me out."

	Park leaned forward and fixed Noggle with the bishop's fish-pale eyes. He said harshly: "You know, Noggle, I admire you. For a guy who robs his hospital, and then to get out of it goes and starts fourteen men's minds spinning around, ruining their lives and maybe driving some of them crazy or to self-killing, you have more gall than a barn-rat. You sit there and tell me, one of your victims, that I'll have to do something to get you out. Why, damn your lousy little soul, if you ever do get out I'll give you a case of lumps that'll make you think somebody dropped a mountain on you!"

	Noggle paled a bit. "Then—then you weren't a churchman in your own world?"

	"Hell, no! My business was putting lice like you in jail. And I still ock to be able to do that here, with what you so kindly told me just now."

	Noggle swallowed as this sank in. "But—you promised—"

	Park laughed unpleasantly. "Sure I did. I never let a little thing like a promise to a crook keep me awake nights."

	"But you want to get back, don't you? And I'm the only one who can send you back, and you'll have to get me out of here before I can do anything—"

	"There is that," said Park thoughtfully. "But I don't know. Maybe I'll like it here when I get used to it. I can always have the fun of coming around here every sixth day and giving you the horse-laugh."

	"You're—a devil!"

	Park laughed again. "Thanks. You thought you'd get some poor bewildered dimwit in Scoglund's body, didn't you? Well, you'll learn just how wrong you were." He stood up. "I'll let you stay here a while more as Dr. Borup's prize looney. Maybe when you've been taken down a peg we can talk business. Meanwhile, you might form a club with those other five guys on your wheel. You could leave notes around for each other to find. So long, Dr. Svengali!"

	Ten minutes later Park was in Borup's office, with a bland episcopal smile on his face. He asked Borup, appropos of nothing in particular, a lot of questions about the rules involving commitment and release of inmates.

	"Nay," said Edwy Borup firmly. "We could—uh—parole a patient in your care only if he were rick most of the time. Those that are wrong most of the time, like poor Dr. Noggle, have to stay here."

	It was all very definite. But Park had known lots of people who were just as definite until pressure was brought to bear on them from the right quarter.

-

	The nearer the Sunday service came, the colder became Allister Park's feet. Which, for such an aggressive, self-confident man, was peculiar. But when he thought of all the little details, the kneeling and getting up again, the facing this way and that ... He telephoned Cooley at the cathedral. He had, he said, a cold, and would Cooley handle everything but the sermon? "Surely, Hallow, surely. The Lord will see to it that you're fully restored soon, I hope. I'll say a special prayer for you ..."

	It was also time, Park thought, to take Monkey-face into his confidence. He told him all, whereat Dune-din's eyes grew very large. "Now, old boy," said Park briskly, "if you ever want to get your master back into his own body, you'll have to help me out. For instance, here's that damned sermon. I'm going to read it, and you'll correct my pronunciation and gestures."

	Sunday afternoon, Park returned wearily to the bishop's house. The sermon had gone off easily enough; but then he'd had to greet hundreds of people he didn't know, as if they were old friends. And he'd had to parry scores of questions about his absence. He had, he thought, earned a drink.

	"A highball?" asked Dunedin. "What's that?"

	Park explained. Dunedin looked positively shocked.

	"But Thane P—I mean Hallow, isn't it bad for your insides to drink such cold stuff?"

	"Never mind my insides! I'll—hullo, who's that?"

	Dunedin answered the doorbell, and reported that a Th. Figgis wanted to see the bishop. Park said to show him in. There was something familiar about that name. The man himself was tall, angular, and grim-looking. As soon as Dunedin had gone, he leaned forward and hissed dramatically: "I've got you now, Bishop Scoglund! What are you going to do about it?"

	"What am I going to do about what?"

	"My wife!"

	"What about your wife?"

	"You know well enough. You went up to my rooms last Tuesday, while I was away, and came down again Wednesday."

	"Don't be an ass," said Park. "I've never been in your rooms in my life, and I've never met your wife."

	"Oh, yes? Don't try to fool me, you wolf in priest's clothing! I've got witnesses. By God, I'll fix you, you seducer!"

	"Oh, that!" Park grinned, and explained his ladder-and-rope procedure.

	"Think I believe that?" sneered Figgis. "If you weren't a priest I'd challenge you and cut your liver out and eat it. As it is, I can make things so hot for you—"

	"Now, now," interrupted Park, "Be reasonable. I'm sure we can come to an understanding—"

	"Trying to bribe me, huh?"

	"I wouldn't put it just that way."

	"So you think you can buy my honor, do you? Well, what's your offer?"

	Park sighed. "I thought so. Just another goddam blackmailer. Get out, louse!"

	"But aren't you going to—"

	Park jumped up, spun Figgis around, and marched him toward the door. "Out, I said! If you think you can get away with spreading your little scandal around, go to it. You'll learn that you aren't the only one who knows things about other people." Figgis tried to wriggle loose. Park kicked him into submission, and sent him staggering down the front steps with a final shove.

	Dunedin looked awedly at this formidable creature into which his master had been metamorphosed. "Do you really know something to keep him quiet, Hallow?"

	"Nope. But my experience is that most men of his age have something they'd rather not have known. Anyway, you've got to take a strong line with these blackmailers, or they'll raise no end of hell. Of course, my son, we hope the good Lord will show our erring brother the folly of his sinful ways, don't we?" Park winked.

-

	Being a bishop entailed much more than putting on a one-hour performance at the cathedral every Sunday, as Park soon learned. But he transacted as much of his episcopal business as he could at home, and put the rest onto Cooley. He didn't yet feel that his impersonation was good enough to submit to close-range examination by his swarm of subordinates.

	While he was planning his next step, an accident unexpectedly opened the way for him. He had just settled himself in the Isleif Street apartment the evening of Tuesday April 26th, when a young man rang his doorbell. It took about six seconds to diagnose the young man as a fledgling lawyer getting a start on a political career as a precinct worker.

	"No," said Park, "I won't sign your petition to nominate Thane Hammar, because I don't know him. I've just moved here from Dakotia. But I'd like to come around to the clubhouse and meet the boys."

	The young man glowed. "Why don't you? There's a meeting of the precinct workers tomorrow night, and voters are always welcome...

-

	The clubhouse walls were covered with phony Viking shields and weapons. "Who's he?" Park asked his young lawyer through the haze of smoke. "He" was a florid man to whom several were paying obsequious attention.

	"That's Trigvy Darling, Brahtz's parasite." Park caught a note of dislike, and added it to the new card in his mental index file. Brahtz was a Diamond thing-man from a western province, the leader of the squirearchy. In this somewhat naive culture, a gentleman had to demonstrate his financial standing by supporting a flock of idle friends, or deputy gentlemen. The name of the parasite was not merely accurate, but was accepted by these hangers-on without any feeling of derogation.

	Through the haze wove an unpleasantly familiar angular figure. Park's grip on the edge of the table automatically tightened. "Haw, Morrow," said Figgis, and looked at Park. "Haven't I met you somewhere?"

	"Maybe," said Park. "Ever live in Dakotia?"

	Morrow, the young lawyer, introduced Park as Park-Park fervently hoped his disguise was thick enough. Figgis acknowledged the introduction, but continued to shoot uneasy little glances at Park. "I could swear—" he said. Just then the meeting was called. Although it would have driven a lot of people to suicide from boredom, Park enjoyed the interplay of personalities, the quick fencing with parliamentary rules by various factions. These rules differed from those he was used to, being derived from those of the ancient Icelandic Thing instead of the English Parliament. But the idea was the same. The local members wanted to throw a party for the voters of the hide (district). A well-knit minority led by the parasite Darling wanted to save the money for contribution to the national war-chest.

	Park waited until the question was just about to be put to a vote, then snapped his fingers for the chairman's attention. The chairman, an elderly dodderer, recognized him.

	"My friends," said Park, lurching to his feet, "of course I don't know that I really ock to say anything, being just a new incomer from the wilds of Dakotia. But I've always voted Diamond, and so did my father, and his father before him, and so on back as far as there was any Diamond Party. So I think I can claim as solid a party membership as some folks who live in New Belfast three months out of the year, and spend the rest of their time upholding the monetary repute of certain honorable country thanes." Park, with satisfaction, saw Darling jerk his tomato-colored face around, and heard a few snickers. "Though," he continued, "taking the healthy skin you get from country life, I don't know but what I envy such people." (More snickers.) "Now it seems to me that ..."

	Twenty minutes later the party had been voted: Park was the chairman (since he alone seemed really anxious to assume responsibility); and Trigvy Darling, at whose expense Park had acquired a frothy popularity by his jibes, had turned from vermillion to magenta.

	After the meeting, Park found himself in a group of people including the chairman and Figgis. Figgis was saying something about that scoundrel Scoglund, when his eye caught Park's. He grinned his slightly sepulchral grin. "I know now why I thock I'd meet you! You remind me of the bishop!"

	"Know him?"

	"I met him once. Say, Dutt," (this was to the aged chairman) "what date's set for your withdrawal?"

	"Next meeting," quavered the ancient one. "Ah, here is our crown prince, heh, heh!" Darling, his face back to normal tomato-color, advanced. "Do you ken Thane Park?"

	"I ken him well enough," growled Darling with the look of one who has found a cockroach in his ice cream. "It seems to me, Thane Dutt, that part of a chairman's duty is to stop use of personalities on the part of speakers."

	"You can always plead point of personal privilege, heh, heh."

	Darling did something in his throat that was not quite articulate speech. Figgis murmured: "He knows the boys would laugh him down if he tried it."

	"Yeah?" said Darling. "We'll see about that when I'm chairman." He stalked off.

-

	Park wasted no time in exploiting his new job. Knowing that Ivor MacSvensson was due back in New Belfast the next day, he went around—as Allister Park—to the law office used by the boss as a front for his activities. The boss was already in, but the outer office was jammed with favor-seekers. Park, instead of preparing to spend the morning awaiting his turn, bribed the office boy to tell him when and where MacSvensson ate his lunch. Then he went to the nearby public library—movies not having been invented in this world—and took his ease until one o'clock.

	Unfortunately, Ivor MacSvensson failed to show up at the restaurant indicated, though Park stretched one tuna-fish lunch out for half an hour. Park cursed the lying office-boy. Plain bribery he was hardened to, but he really became indignant when the bribee failed to deliver.-So he set about it the hard way. A nearby knick gave him the locations of the five highest-priced restaurants in the neighborhood, and in the third he found his man. He recognized him from the pictures he had studied before starting his search—a big, good-looking fellow with cold blue eyes and prematurely white hair.

	Park marched right up. "Haw, Thane MacSvensson, Bethink you me?"

	MacSvensson looked puzzled for a fraction of a second, but he said smoothly: "Sure, of course I bethink me of you. Your name is—uh—"

	"Allister, Park, chairman of the amusement committee of the Tenth Hide," Park rattled off. "I only met you recently, just before you left."

	"Sure, of course. I'd know you anywhere—let's see, Judge Vidolf of Bridget's Beach wirecalled me this morning; wanted to know if I kenned you. Told him I'd call him back." He gripped Park's hand. "Come on, sit down. Sure, of course, any good party worker is a friend of mine. What's the Tenth Hide doing?"

	Park told of the party. MacSvensson whistled. "Saturday the thirtieth? That's day after tomorrow."

	"I can manage it," said Park. "Maybe you could tell me where I could pick up some sober bartenders."

	"Sure, of course." Under Park's deferential prodding, the boss gave him all the information he needed. MacSvensson finished with the quick, vigorous handshake cultivated by people who have to shake thousands of hands and who don't want to develop a case of greeter's cramp. He urged Park to come around and see him again. "Especially after that fellow Darling gets the chairmanship of your committee."

	Park went, grinning a little to himself. He knew just what sort of impression he had made, and could guess how the boss was reacting to it. He'd be glad to get a vigorous, aggressive worker in the organization; at the same time he'd want to keep a close watch on him to see that his power wasn't undermined.

	Park congratulated himself on having arrived in a world where the political set-up had a recognizable likeness to that of his own. In an absolute monarchy, for instance, he'd have a hell of a time learning the particular brand of intrigue necessary to become a king's favorite. As it was ...

-

	The Bridget's Beach knicks stood glowering at a safe distance from the throng of picknickers. Although they were anti-MacSvensson, the judges were pro, so what could they do about it if the party violated the ordnances regarding use of the beach? Since Park's fellow-committeemen were by now too sodden with beer to do anything at all, Park was dashing around, clad in a pair of tennis-shoes and the absurd particolored belt that constituted the Vinland bathing-suit, running everything himself. Everybody seemed to be having a good time— party workers, the more influential of the voters and their families, everybody but a morose knot of Darling Sc. followers at one end.

	Near this knot a group of anti-Darlings was setting up a song:

-

"Trig Darling, he has a foul temper; 
     "Trig Darling's as red as can be; 
"Oh, nobody here loves Trig Darling, 
     "Throw Trigvy out into the sea! 
          "Throw—Trig, 
         "Throw—Trig, 	
          "Throw Trigvy out into the sea!" 

-

	Park hurried up to shush them. Things were going fine, and he didn't want a fight—yet, at any rate. But his efforts were lost in the next stanza:

-

"Trig Darling, he has a pot-bellee; 
     "Trig Darling's as mean as can be ..."

-

	At that moment, apparently, a giant hit Allister Park over the head with a Sequoia sempervirens. He reeled a few steps, shook the tears out of his eyes, and faced Trigvy Darling, advancing with, large fists cocked.

	"Hey," said Park, "this isn't—" He brought up his own fists. But Darling, instead of trying to hit him again, faced him for three seconds and then spat at him.

	Park glanced at the drop of saliva trickling down his chest. So did everyone else. One of Darling's friends asked: "Do you make that a challenge, Trig?"

	"Yes!" boomed the parasite.

	Park didn't really catch on to what was coming until he was surrounded by his own party. He and Darling were pushed together until their bare chests were a foot apart. Somebody called the knicks over; these stationed themselves around the couple. Somebody else produced a long leather belt, which he fastened around the middles of both men at once, so they could not move farther apart. Darling, his red face expressionless, grabbed Park's right wrist with his left hand, and held out his own right forearm, evidently expecting Park to do the same.

	It was not until a big sheath-knife was pressed into each man's right hand that Park knew he was in a duel.

	Somehow he had missed this phase of Vinland custom in his reading.

	Park wondered frantically whether his mustache would come off in the struggle. One knick stepped up and said: "You know the rules: no kicking, biting, butting, or scratching. Penalty for a foul is one free stab. Ready?"

	"Yes," said Darling. "Yes," said Park, with more confidence than he felt.

	"Go," said the policeman.

	Park felt an instant surge of his opponent's muscles. Darling had plenty of these under the fat. If he'd only had longer to train the bishop's body ... Darling wrenched his wrist loose from Park's grip, threw a leg around one of Park's to trip him, and brought his fist down in a lightning overhand stab.

	It was too successful. Park's leg went out from under him and he landed with a thump on his back, dragging Darling down on top of him. Darling drove his knife up to the hilt in the sand. When he jerked it up for another stab, Park miraculously caught his wrist again. A heave, and Darling toppled onto the sand beside him. For seconds they strained and panted, a tangle of limbs.

	Park, his heart laboring and sand in his eyes, wrenched his own knife-arm free. But when he stabbed at Darling, the parasite parried with a curious twisting motion of his left arm, and gathered Park's arm into a bone-crushing grip. Park in agony heaved himself to his knees, pulling Darling up too. They faced each other on their knees, the belt still around them. Darling wrenched his knife-arm loose again, whipped it around as for a backhand stab, then back for an overhand. Park, trying to follow the darting blade, felt as if something had exploded in his own left arm. Darling's point was driven into it and into the bone. Before it had a chance to bleed, Darling tried to pull it out. It didn't yield the first pull. Park leaned forward suddenly. Darling unwound his left arm from Park's right to catch himself as he swayed backwards. Park stabbed at him. Darling blocked the stab with his forearm, making Park feel as if his wrist was broken. He played his last improvised trick: tossed up the knife, caught it the other way to, and brought it around in a quick up-and-out thrust. To his surprise, Darling -failed to block it at all—the blade slid up under the parasite's ribs to the hilt. Park, warm blood running over his hand, twisted and sliced his way across Darling's abdomen ...

	Trigvy Darling lay on his back, mouth open and sand in his sightless eyeballs. The spectators looked in awe at the ten-inch wound. Park, feeling a bit shaken, stood while they bandaged his arm. The knicks gravely took down the vital information about the dead man, filling the last line of the blank with: "Killed in fair fight with Allister Park, 127 Isleif St., N.B."

	Then people were shaking his hand, slapping his bare back, and babbling congratulations at him. "Had it coming to him ..."

	"... never liked him anyway, only we had to take him on account of Brahtz ..." "You'll make a better-chairman ..."

	Park stole a hand to his upper lip. His mustache was a little loose on one side, but a quick press fixed that. He gradually became aware that the duel, so far from spoiling the party, had made a howling success of it.

-

	Leading a double life is a strenuous business at best. It is particularly difficult when both one's identities are fairly prominent people. Nevertheless, Allister Park managed it, with single-minded determination to let nothing stop his getting the person of Joseph Noggle in such a position that he could make him give his, Park's, wheel of if another half-spin. It might not be too late, even if the Antonini case was washed up, to rehabilitate himself.

	His next step was to cultivate Ivor MacSvensson, burg committee chairman for the Diamond Party of the Burg of New Belfast. This was easy enough, as the chairman of the hide committee was ex-officio a member of the burg committee.

	They were dining in one of the small but expensive restaurants for which MacSvensson had a weakness. The burg chairman said: "We'll have to get Anlaaf off, that's all there is to it. Those dim knicks should have known better than to pull him in it in the first place."

	Park looked at the ceiling. "Even if it was Penda's daughter?"

	"Even if it was Penda's daughter."

	"After all, spoiling the morals of a ten-year old—"

	"I know, I know," said MacSvensson impatiently. "I know he's a dirty bustard. But what can I do? He's got the twenty-sixth hide in his fist, so I've got to play cards with him. Especially with the thingly choosing coming up in three months. It'll be close, even with Bishop Scoglund lying low the way he has been. I had a little plan for shushing the dear bishop; it didn't work, but it seems to have scared him into keeping quiet about the ricks of the Skrellings. And the Thing meeting next month ... If that damned equal-rights changelet goes through, it'll split the party wide open."

	"If it doesn't?" asked Park.

	"That'll be all right."

	"How about the Dakotians and the rest?"

	MacSvensson shrugged. "No trouble for fifty years. They talk a lot, but I never saw a Skrelling that would stand up and fick yet. And what if they did try a war? New Belfast is a long way from the border; and the choosing would be called off. Maybe by the time it was over people would get some sense."

	Park had his own ideas. His researches had told him something about the unprepared state of the country. New Belfast had hundreds of miles between it and the independent Skrellings; in case of a sea attack, they could count on the friendly Northumbrian fleet, one of the world's largest, to come over and help out. Hence the New Belfast machine had consistently plugged for more money for harbor improvements and merchant-marine subsidies and less for military purposes ... However, if the Northumbrian fleet were immobilized by the threat of the navy of the Amirate of Cordova, and the Skrellings overran the hinterland of Vinland ....

	MacSvensson was speaking: "... you know, that youngest daughter of mine, she wants to marry a schoolteacher? Craziest idea ... And that boy of mine has the house full of his musical friends; at least that's what he calls 'em. They'll play their flugelhorns and yell and stamp all night."

	"Why not come up to my place?" asked Park with the studied nonchalance of an experienced dry-fly fisherman making a cast.

	"Sure, of course. Glad to. I've got three appoitments, thinging, but hell with 'em."

-

	There was no doubt about it; Ivor MacSvensson was good company even if he did have a deplorable scale of moral values. Park, having made the necessary soundings, finally suggested getting some company. The chairman's blue eyes lit up a bit; there was some lechery in the old war-horse yet. Park telephoned his little waitress friend. Yes, she had a friend who was just dying to meet some big political pipes ...

	Many residents of New Belfast were wont to say of Ivor MacSvensson: "He may be a serpent (crook), but at least he leads a spotless home life." MacSvensson was at pains to encourage this legend, however insubstantial its basis. These people would have been pained to see the boss an hour later, smeared with lipstick, bouncing Park's friend's friend on his knee. The friend's friend was undressed to a degree that would have shocked Vinlanders anywhere but on a beach.

	"Stuffy, isn't it?" said Park, and got up to open a window. The unsuspecting MacSvensson was having too good a time to notice Park thrust his arm out the window and wag it briefly.

	Five minutes later the doorbell rang. By the time MacSvensson had snapped out of his happy daze, Park had admitted a small, wrinkled man who pointed at the friend's friend and cried: "Fleda!"

	"Oswald!" shrieked die girl.

	"Sir!" shouted Dunedin at the boss, "what have you been doing with my wife? What have you been doing with my wife?"

	"Oh," sobbed Fleda, "I didn't mean to be unfaithful! Truly I didn't! If I'd only thought of you before it was too late ..."

	"Huh?" mumbled MacSvensson. "Too late? Unfaithful? Your wife?"

	"Yes, you snake, you scoundrel, you bustard, my wife! You'll suffer for this, Boss MacSvensson! Just wait till I—"

	"Here, here, my man!" said Park, taking Dunedin by the arm and pulling him into the vestibule. For ten minutes the boss listened in sweaty apprehension to Park's and Dunedin's voices, rising and falling, the former soothing, the latter strained with rage. Finally the door slammed.

	Park came back, and said: "I got him to promise not to put in any slurs or tell any newspapers for a while, until we talk things over again. I know who he is, and I think I can squelch him through the company he works for. I'm not sure that'll work, tiiough. He's mad as a wet hen; won't believe that this was just an innocent get-together."

	The imperturbable boss looked badly shaken. "You've got to stop him, Al! The story would raise merry hell. If you can do it, you can have just about anything I can give you."

	"How about the secretaryship of the burg committee?" asked Park promptly.

	"Surely, of course. I can find something else for Ethel-bald to do. Only keep that man shut up!"

	"All right, old boy. Right now you'd better get home as soon as you can."

	When MacSvensson had been gone a few . minutes, Eric Dunedin's ugly face appeared in the doorway. "All clear, Hal—I mean Thane Park?"

	"Come on in, old boy. That was a neat piece of work. You did well too, Fleda. Both you girls did. And now—" Park started to drive a corkscrew into another cork, "we can have a real party!"

-

	"Damn it, Dunedin," said Park, "when I say put your breakfast down on the table and eat it, I mean it!"

	"But Hallow, it simply isn't done for a thane's thane to eat with his master—"

	"To hell with what's done and what isn't. I've got more for you to do than stand around and treat me as if I were God Almighty. We've got work, brother. Now get busy on that mail."

	Dunedin sighed and gave up. When Park chose to, he could by now put on what Dunedin admitted was a nearly perfect imitation of Bishop Scoglund. But unless there were somebody present to be impressed thereby, he chose instead to be his profane and domineering self.

	Dunedin frowned over one letter, and said: "Thane Callahan wants to know why you haven't been doing anything to push the glick-ricks changelet."

	Park mentally translated the last to "equal-rights amendment."

	"Why should I? It isn't my baby. Oh, well, tell him I've been too busy, but I'll get around to it soon. That's always the stock excuse."

	Dunedin whistled suddenly. "The kin of the late Trigvy Darling have filed a wergild claim of a hundred and fifty thousand crowns against you."

	"What? What? Let's see that! ... What's that all about? Have they got the right to sue me, when I killed him in self-defense?"

	"Oh, but of course, Hallow. There's nay criminal penalty for killing a man in fair fight. But his heirs can claim two years' earnings from you. Didn't you know that when you took up his challenge?"

	"Good lord, no! What can I do about it?"

	"Oh, deary me, glory be to Patrick. You can try to prove the claim too big, as this one may be. I don't know, though;-Darling got a big stipend from Brahtz as a parasite."

	"I can always withdraw Allister Park from circulation and be just the bishop. Then let 'em try to collect!"

-

	It would be wearisome to follow Allister Park's political activities in detail for the three weeks after his use of the badger-game on MacSvensson. But lest his extraordinary rise to power seem improbable, consider that it was not until the 1920's in Park's original world that a certain Josef Vissarianovitch Dzugashvili, better known as Joseph Stalin, discovered what could really be done with the executive secretaryship of a political committee. So it is not too surprising that, whereas Park knew what could be done with this office, the politicians of Vinland did not. They learned. Among other things, the secretary makes up the agenda of meetings. He put motions in "proper" form, since a motion is seldom intelligible in the form in which it is presented from the floor. He prompts the chairman—the nominal head of the organization—on parliamentary procedure. He is the interim executive officer; wherefore all appointments go through his hands, and he has custody of all records. He is ex-officio member of all committees. Since a committee seldom has any clear idea of what it wants to do or how it wants to do it, an aggressive secretary can usually run as many committees as he has time for. Whereas the chairman can't speak at meetings, the secretary can not only speak but speak last. He gets the gavel when an appeal is made from the chair ...

	At least, that is how it is done in this world. In Vinland the rules were not quite the same, but the similarity was close enough for Park's purpose—which was still to get back to good old New York and that judgeship, if there was still any chance of getting it.

	It was after the burg committee meeting on the first of June that Park faced Ivor MacSvensson in the latter's office. Park intended to start needling the boss about the body of Joseph Noggle. But MacSvensson got there first, demanding: "What's all this about your making up to the committeemen?"

	"What's that?" asked Park blandly. "I've been seeing them on routine duties only."

	"Yeah? Not according to what I've been told. And I've found out that that girl you had up for me wasn't wedded at all. Trying to put one down on the boss, eh? Well, you can go back to hide-walking. You'll call a special committee-meeting for Friday night. Get those seeings out today without fail. That's all."

	"Suits me," grinned Park. The chairman can demand special meetings, but the secretary's the man who sends out the notices.

	When Friday evening arrived, two-thirds of the seats in the committee-room in Karlsefni Hall remained empty. MacSvensson, blue eyes glacial, fretted. Park, sending out thunder-heads of smoke from the bishop's largest pipe, lolled in a chair, glancing surreptitiously at his watch. If MacSvensson were down at the far end of the hall when the hand touched sixty, Park would simply arise and say: "In the absence of the chairman, and of any other officers authorized to act as such, I, Allister Park, acting as chairman, hereby call this meeting to order ..."

	But MacSvensson, looking at him, divined his attention. He snatched out his own watch, and dashed to the chair. He made it by one and a half seconds.

	Park was not disturbed. He took his place, hearing the boss's growl: "Did you send out all those seeings when I told you to, Park? There's just barely a quorum here."

	"Absolutely. I can't help it if they go astray in the mail." Park neglected to add that, with the proper cooperation from a postal clerk, it is sometimes possible to make sure that certain of the notices, though duly postmarked as of the time they are received, are accidentally misplaced in the postoffice and completely overlooked until the day after the meeting.

	"The meeting will kindly come to order," snapped MacSvensson. He did not like the look of the quorum at all; not one of his tried and true friends was in sight, except Sleepy Ethelbald.

	He continued: "This is a special meeting called to hold in mind the good and welfare of the committee. As such there will be no reading of the minutes. The meeting will now consider items for the agenda."

	MacSvensson caught the eye of Sleepy Ethelbald, who had been primed for just this occasion. Before Ethelbald could rouse himself, another committeeman popped up with: "I move that we take up the fitness of Chairman MacSvensson to last in his present office."

	"Twothed."

	"I move the agenda be closed."

	"Twothed."

	MacSvensson sat up for a few seconds with his mouth open. He had had revolts before—plenty of them—but never one with the devastating speed and coordination of this. He finally mumbled: "All in favor—"

	"Aye!" roared most of the quorum.

	MacSvensson ran fingers through his hair, then squared his shoulders. He wasn't licked yet, by any means. There were more tricks ... "The meeting will now consider the first item on the agenda."

	"I move the impeachment of Chairman MacSvensson!"

	"Twothed!"

	For the second time the chairman sat with his mouth open. Park said gently: "You take up the motion and give me the gavel."

	"But—" wailed MacSvensson.

	"No buts. A motion to impeach the chairman self-movingly shifts the gavel to the secretary. Come on, old boy."

	An hour later Ivor MacSvensson stalked out, beaten. Park could have had the chairmanship himself, but he astutely preferred to keep the secretaryship and put the ancient of days, Magnus Dutt, in that exposed position.

-

	Mayor Offa Greenfield knew his own mind, such as it was. He banged his fist on his desk, making all his chins quiver. "Nay!" he shouted. "I don't know what you're up to, Allister Park, but by the right ear of Hallow Gall, it's something! The freedom of a free people—"

	"Now, now, we're not talking about the freedom of a free people. I'm sure we agree on that matter. It's just a question of the person of Joseph Noggle—"

	"I won't be dictated to! I won't take orders from anybody!"

	"Except Ivor MacSvensson?"

	"Except Iv- nay! I said anybody! Go practice your snaky trick on somebody else, Allister Park; you'll get nothing from me I won't interfere with Borup's running of his Institute. Unless, of course," (Greenfield lowered his voice to normal) "you can get MacSvensson to back you up."

	Greenfield, it seemed, had the one virtue of loyalty. He intended to stick by the fallen boss to the bitter end, even though nearly all the rest of MacSvensson's staunch supporters had deserted him when the effectiveness of Park's coup had become patent.

	But Greenfield was not elected, as were the members of the burg thing. He was appointed by a committee of the Althing, the national legislative body. So Park, for all his local power, could not displace Greenfield at the coming elections by putting up a rival candidate. He could only do it by acquiring sufficient power in the Althing. He set himself to study how to do this.

	New Belfast elected six members to the Althing. As the city was firmly Diamond, nomination implied election. Therefore the six thingmen, however much they bragged about their independence in public, were careful to obey the whims of the boss of New Belfast.

	The repeated efforts of Yon Brahtz to impose his control on the New Belfast Diamonds, by planting stooges like the late Trigvy Darling in their hide committees, had aroused some resentment. Park decided that he could trust his most active supporters, and the six thingmen, to back him in a gigantic double-cross: to desert the Diamond Party altogether and join the Rubies. The goats would be, not merely Brahtz and his squirearchy, but the local Ruby politicians of New Belfast. However, as these had never accomplished anything but draw some patronage from the Althing in the periods when the Rubies were in power there, Park thought he would not find much resistance to their sacrifice on the part of the Ruby leaders. And so it proved.

	Twenty men, though, seldom keep a secret for long. The morning of June 9th, Park opened his paper to find the report of a defiant speech by Yon Brahtz, in which he announced bluntly that "the thanes of the Cherogian March of Vinland will defend the ricks they inherited from their heroic forebears, by any means needful, and moreover the means for such defense are ready and waiting!" Park translated this to mean that if the Scoglund amendment were passed by a coalition of Rubies and insurgent New Belfast Diamonds, the squirearchy would secede.

	But that would mean civil war, which in turn would mean postponement of the elections. What was even more serious, the Diamond thingmen from the seceding provinces would automatically lose their seats, giving the Rubies a clear majority. Since the Rubies would no longer need the support of Park's insurgents, they would be disinclined to make a deal with him to appoint a mayor of his choice.

	Park privately thought that, while in theory he supposed he believed in the Scoglund amendment, in practice both his and the Ruby leaders' interests would be better served by dropping it for the present, despite the growls of the Dakotians and Cherogians. However, the Ruby leaders were firm; that huge block of Skrelling votes they would get by emancipating the aborigines was worth almost any risk.

	As for such questions as the rights of the Skrellings as human beings, or the unfortunate Vinlanders who would be killed or haggled up in a civil war, they were not considered at all.

-

	Park, holed up in the Isleif Street apartment with a couple of bodyguards, answered a call from Dunedin. "Haw, Hallow? Thane Callahan is here to see you."

	"Send him over here. Warn him ahead of time who I—" Park remembered the guards, and amended: "warn him about everything. You know."

	Lord, he thought, all this just to get hold of Noggle, still shut up in the Psychophysical Institute! Maybe it would have been simpler to organize a private army like Brahtz's and storm that fortress-like structure. A long-distance call for the mobilization of his Sons of the Vikings, as he called his storm-troopers. Kedrick, the Bretwald of Vinland, had refused to mobilize the army because, he explained, such an action would be "provocative" ... Maybe he secretly favored the squirearchy, whose man he was; maybe he was just a pacific civilian who found the whole subject of soldiers, guns, and such horrid things too repulsive to discuss; maybe he really believed what he said ...

	Callahan arrived with a flourish. Since MacSvensson was no longer boss of New Belfast, the Sachem went openly about the city without fear of arrest and beating-up by the police.

	He told Park: "It would be worth my life if some of my fellow-Skrellings knew I'd told you. But the Dakotians have an army secretly assembled on the bounds. If the Vinlanders start fickting among themselves, the Dako-tians'll jump in to grab the northwestern provinces."

	Park whistled. "How about the Cherogians?"

	"They're holding back, waiting to see how things are turning out. If the war seems to be fruitbearing, they'll try a little rickting of the bounds themselves."

	"And what will your Skrellings do then?"

	"That depends. If the Scoglund changelet is lost, they'll join the foe to a man. If it goes through, I think I can hold most of them in line."

	"Why do you tell me this, Callahan?"

	The Sachem grinned his large disarming grin. "Two reasons. First, the bishop and I have been friends for years, and I'll stick to his body no matter where his soul may be. Twoth, I'm not fooled, as some of my Skrellings are, by talk of what fine things the Dakotians'll do for us if we help them overthrow the palefaces. The Dakotian realm is even less a folkish one than the Bretwaldate's. I know a thing or two about how they treat their ain folk. So if you'll stick to me, I'll stick to you."

-

	Park would have liked to appear at the opening of the Althing as Bishop Scoglund. But, as too many people there knew him as Allister Park, he attended in his mustache, hair-dye, and spectacles.

	The atmosphere was electric. Even Park, with all his acumen, had been unable to keep up with events. The risks were huge, whichever way he threw his insurgents' votes.

	He kept them shut up in a committee-room with him until the last possible minute. He did not yet know himself whether he would order them to vote for or against the amendment.

	The clock on the wall ticked around.

	A boy came in with a message for Park. It said, in effect, that the Sons of the Vikings had received a report that the amendment had already been passed; had mobilized and seized the town of Olafsburg.

	Who had sent that mistaken message and why, there was no way of finding out. But it was too late for anybody to back down. Park looked up and said, very seriously: "We're voting for the Scoglund Amendment." That was all; with his well-trained cogs no more was necessary.

	The bell rang; they filed out. Park took his seat in the visitors' gallery. He said nothing but thought furiously as the session of the Althing was opened with the usual formalities. The chairman and the speaker and the chaplain took an interminable time about their business, as if afraid to come to grips with the fearful reality awaiting their attention.

	When the first motions came up, a dead silence fell as Park's men got up and walked over to the Rubies' side of the house. Then the Rubies let out a yell of triumph. There was no more need of stalling or delicate angling for marginal votes. Motion after motion went through with a roar. Out went the Diamond chairman and speaker, and in went Rubies in their place.

	In an hour the debate had been shut off, despite howls from Diamonds and their sympathizers about "gag law" and "high-handed procedure."

	The amendment came up for its first vote. It fell short of the two-thirds required by eleven votes.

	Park scribbled a note and had it delivered to the speaker. The speaker handed it to the chairman. Park watched the little white note drift around the Ruby side of the house. Then the Ruby leader got up and solemnly moved the suspension of thingmen Adam son, Arduser, Beurwulf, Dahl, Fessenden, Gilpatrick, Holmquist ... all the thingmen from the seceding area.

	Most of those named didn't wait; they rose and filed out, presumably to catch airwains for their home provinces.

	The amendment passed on the second vote.

-

	Park looked up the Ruby leader after the Althing adjourned. He said: "I hear Kedrick still won't order mobilization. Talks about 'Letting the erring brethren go in peace.' What's your party line on the matter?"

	The Ruby leader, a thin cool man, blew smoke through his nose. "We're going to fight. If Kedrick won't go along, there are ways. The same applies to you, Thane Park."

	Park suddenly realized that events had put him in a suspect position. If he didn't want himself and his cogs to be damned as copperheads, or the Vinland equivalent, he'd have to outshout the Rubies for unity, down with the rebels, etcetera.

	Well, he might as well do a good job of it.

	That afternoon the guards at the Psychophysical Institute were astonished to have their sanctuary invaded by a squad of uniformed knicks with the notorious Allister Park at their head flourishing a search-warrant.

	The charge was violation of the fire-ordnances—in a building made almost entirely of tile, glass, and reinforced concrete.

	"But, but, but!" stuttered Dr. Edwy Borup. Park merely whisked out another warrant, this time for the arrest of Joseph Noggle.

	"But, but, you can't stop one of my patients! It's— uh—illegal! I'll call Mayor Greenfield!"

	"Go ahead," grinned Park. "But don't be surprised if you get a busy signal." He had taken the precaution of seeing that all the lines to the mayor's office would be occupied at this time.

	"Hello, Noggle," said Park.

	"Haw. Who are you? I think I've met you—let me see—"

	Park produced an air pistol. "I'm Allister Park. You'll figure out where you met me sopn enough, but you won't talk about it. I'm glad to see my figuring came out right. Can you start a man's wheel today? Now?"

	"I suppose I could. Oh, I know who you are now—"

	"Nay comments, I said. You're coming along, brother, and doing just as you're told."

	The next step was when Park walked arm in arm with Noggle into the imposing executive building. Park's standing as a powerful boss saw him through the guards and flunkeys that guarded the Bretwald's office on the top floor.

	The Bretwald looked up from his desk. "Oh, haw, Thane Park. If you're going to nag me about that mobilization order, you're wasting your time. Who's— eeee! Where am I? What's happened to me? Help! Help!"

	In bounded the guards, guns ready. Park faced them sadly. "Our respected Bretwald seems to have had a mental seizure," he said.

	The guards covered the two visitors arid asked Kedrick what was the matter. All they could get out of Kedrick was: "Help, Get away from me! Let me out! I don't know who you're talking about. My name's not Kedrick, it's O'Shaughnessy!"

	They took him away. The guards kept Park and Noggle until a message from the acting Bretwald said to let them go.

-

	"By the brazen gates of Hell!" cried Park. "Is that all?"

	"Yep," said the new Secretary of War. "Douglas was a Brahtz man; hence he saw to it that the army was made as harmless as possible before he skipped out."

	Park laughed grimly. "The Secretary of War sabotages—"

	"He does what?"

	"Never mind. He raises hell with, if you want a more familiar expression. Raises hell with the army for the benefit of his party, with the Dakotians about to come whooping in. I suppose it oughtn't to surprise me, though. How many can we raise?"

	"About twenty thousand in the burgish area, but we can arm only half of them rickly. Most of our quick-fire pipes and warwains have been hurt so it'll take a month to fix them."

	"How about a force of Skrellings?"

	The Secretary shrugged. "We can raise 'em, but we can't arm them."

	"Go ahead and raise 'em anyway."

	"All right, if you say so. But hadn't you better have a rank? It would look better."

	"All right. You make me your assistant."

	"Don't you want a commission?"

	"Not on your life! Your generals would go on strike, and even if they didn't I'd be subject to military law."

-

	The army was not an impressive one, even when its various contingents had all collected at what would have been Pittsburgh if its name hadn't been the lovely one of Guggenvik. The regulars were few and unimpressive; the militia were more numerous but even less prepossessing; the Skrelling levy was the most unmilitary of all. They stood around with silly grins on their flat brown faces, and chattered and scratched. Park thought disgustedly, so these are the descendants of the noble red man and the heroic Viking! Fifty years of peace had been a blessing to Vinland, but not an altogether unmitigated one.

	The transport consisted of a vast fleet of private folk-wains and goodwains (busses and trucks to you). It had been possible to put only six warwains in the field. These were a kind of steam-driven armored car carrying a compressor and a couple of pneumatic machine-guns. There was one portable liquid-air plant for charging shells and air-bombs.

	The backwardness of Vinland chemistry compared to its physics caused a curious situation. The only practical military explosives were a rather low-grade black powder, and a carbon-liquid-oxygen mixture. Since the former was less satisfactory as a propellant, considering smoke, flash, and barrel-fouling, than compressed air, and was less effective as a detonant than the liquid air explosive; its military use was largely confined to land mines. Liquid oxygen, however, while as powerful as trinitrotoluol, had to be manufactured on the spot, as there was no way of preventing its evaporation. Hence it was a very awkward thing to use in mobile warfare.

	Park walked into the intelligence tent, and asked the Secretary of War: "What do you think our chances are?"

	The Secretary looked at him. "Against the squires, about even. Against the Dakotians, one to five. Against both, none." He held out a handful of dispatches. These told of the success of the Sons of the Vikings in extending their hold in the southwest, nor surprising considering that the only division of regulars in that area were natives of the region and had gone over to the rebels. More dispatches described in brief fragments the attack of a powerful and fast-moving Dakotian army west of Lake Yanktonai (Michigan). The last of these was dated 6 P.M., June 26th, the preceding day.

	"What's happened since then?" asked Park.

	"Don't know," said the Secretary. Just then a message came in from the First Division. It told little, but the dateline told much. It had been sent from the city of Edgar, at the south end of Lake Yanktonai.

	Park looked at his map, and whistled. "But an army can't retreat fifty miles in one day!"

	"The staff can," said the Secretary. "They ride."

	Further speculation about the fate of the First Division seemed unnecessary. The one-eyed Colonel Montrose was dictating an announcement for the press to the effect that: "Our army has driven off severe Dakotian attacks in the Edgar area, with heavy losses to the foe. Nine Dakotian warwains were destroyed and five were captured. Other military booty included twenty-six machine-pipes. Two foeish airwains were shot down ..."

	Park thought, this Montrose has a good imagination, which quality seems sadly lacking in most of the officers. Maybe we can do something with him—if we're still here long enough ...

	The Secretary pulled Park outside. "Looks as though they had us. We haven't anything to fick with. Not even brains. General Higgins is just an easy-going parade-ground soldier who never expected to have to shoot at anybody in his life. For that matter neither did L Got any ideas?"

	"Still thinking, brother," said Park, studying his map. "I'm nay soldier either, you know; just a thingman. If I could give you any help it would be political."

	"Well, if we can't win by fickting, politics would seem to be the only way left."

	"Maybe." Park was still looking at the map. "I begin to have a thock. Let's see Higgins."

-

	Fortunately for Park's idea, General Higgins was not merely easygoing; he was positively comatose. He sat in his tent with his blouse unbuttoned and a bottle of beer in front of him, serene in the midst of worry and confusion.

	"Come in, thanes, come in," he said. "Have some beer.

	Pfff. Got any ideas? Blessed if I know where to turn next. Nay artillery, nay airwains to speak of, nay real soldiers. Pfff. Do you guess if we started fortifying New Belfast now, it'd be strong enough to hold when we were pushed back there? Nobody knows anything, pfff. I'm supposed to have a staff, but half of 'em have got lost or sneaked off to join the rebels. Blessed if I know what to do next."

	Park thought General Higgins would make a splendid Salvation Army general. But there was no time for personalities. He sprang his plan.

	"Goodness gracious!" said Higgins. "It sounds very risky—get Colonel Callahan."

	The Sachem filled the tent-opening when he arrived, weaving slightly. "Somebody want me?" Belatedly he remembered to salute.

	Higgins barked at him: "Colonel Callahan, do you ken you have your blouse on backwards?"

	Callahan looked down. "So I have, ha-ha. Sir."

	"That's a very weighty matter. Very weighty. No, don't change it here. You're drunk, too."

	"So are—" Callahan suppressed an appalling violation of discipline just in time. "Maybe I had a little, Sir."

	"That's very weighty, very weighty. Just think of it. I ought to have you shot."

	Callahan grinned. "What would my regiment do then?"

	"I don't know. What would they do?"

	"Give you three guesses, Sir. Hic."

	"Run away, I suppose."

	"Right the first time, Sir. Congratulations."

	"Don't congratulate me, you fool! The Secretary has a plan."

	"A plan, really? Haw, Thane Park; I didn't see you. How do you like our army?"

	Park said: "I think it's the goddamndest thing I ever saw in my life. It's a galloping nightmare."

	"Oh, come now," said Higgins. "Some of the brave boys are a little green, but it's not as bad as all that."

	A very young captain entered, gave a heel-click that would have echoed if there had been anything for it to echo against, and said: "Sir, the service company, twentieth regiment, third division, has gone on strike."

	"What?" said the general. "Why?"

	"No food, Sir. The goodwains arrived empty."

	"Have them all shot. No, shoot one out of ten. No, wait a minute. Arrived empty, you say? Somebody stole the food to sell to the local grocers. Take a platoon and clean out all the goods shops in Guggenvik. Pay them in thingly I.O.U.'s."

	The Secretary interjected: "The Althing will never pay those off, you know."

	"I know they won't, ha-ha. Now let's get down to that plan of yours."

-

	The names were all different; Allister Park gave up trying to remember those of the dozens of small towns through which they rolled. But the gently rolling stretches of southern Indiana were much the same, cut up into a checkerboard of fields with woodlots here and there, and an occasional snaky line of cottonwoods marking the course of a stream. The Vinlanders had not discovered the beauties of billboard advertising, which, to Park's mind, was something. Not having a businessman's point of view, he had no intention of introducing this charming feature of his own civilization into Vinland. The Vinlanders did have their diabolical habit of covering the landscape with smoke from faulty burners in their wains, and that was bad enough.

	A rising whistle and a shattering bang from the rear made Park jump around in the seat of his wain. A mushroom of smoke and dust was rising from a hillside. The airwain that had dropped the bomb was banking slowly to turn away. The pneumatics clattered all along the column, but without visible effect. A couple of their own machines purred over and chased the bomber off.

	Those steam-turbine planes were disconcertingly quiet things. On the other hand the weight of their power plants precluded them from carrying either a heavy bomb load or a lot of fuel, so they were far from a decisive arm. They rustled across the sky with the dignity of dowagers, seldom getting much over 150 miles an hour, and their battles had the deliberation of a duel between sailing ships-of-the-line.

	They wound down to the sunny Ohio (they called the Okeeyo, both derived from the same Iroquois word) in the region where the airwains had reported the rebel army. A rebel airwain—a converted transport ship— came to look them over, and was shot down. From across the river came faintly the rebel yells and the clatter of pneumatics, firing at targets far out of range. Park guessed that discipline in Brahtz's outfit was little if any better than in his own.

	Now, if they wanted to, the stage was set for an interminable campaign of inaction. Either side could try to sneak its men across the river without being caught in the act by the other. Or it could adopt a defensive program, contenting itself with guarding all the likely crossings. That sort of warfare would have suited General Higgins fine, minimizing as it did the chance that most of his musical-comedy army would do a lightning advance to the rear as soon as they came under fire.

	It would in fact have been sound tactics, if they could have counted on the rebels' remaining on the south bank of the Okeeyo in that region, instead of marching east toward Guggenvik, and if the Dakotians were not likely to descend on their rear at any moment.

	The Secretary of War had gone back to New Belfast, leaving Park the highest-ranking civilian with Higgins's army. He had the good sense to keep out of sight as much as possible, taking into account the soldier's traditional dislike of the interfering politician.

-

	General Etheling, commanding the rebel army, got a message asking if he would hold a parley with a civilian envoy of General Higgins's army. General Etheling, wearing a military blouse over a farmer's overalls and boots, pulled his long mustache and said no, if Higgins wants to parley with me he can come himself. Back came the answer: This is a very high-ranking civilian; in fact he outranks Higgins himself. Would that island in the middle of the Okeeyo do? Etheling pulled his mustache some more and decided it would do.

	So, next morning General Etheling, wearing the purely ornamental battle-ax that formed part of the Vinland officer's dress uniform, presented himself off the island. As he climbed out of his rowboat, he saw his opposite number's boat pull away from the far side of the little island. He advanced a way among the cotton-woods and yelled: "Haw!"

	"Haw." A stocky blond man appeared.

	"You all alone, Thane?"

	"Yes."

	"Well, I'll be jiggered! You boys kin go along back; I'll holler when I need you. Now, Thane, who be you?"

	"I'm Bishop Ib Scoglund, General."

	"What? But ain't you the wick who started the whole rumpus with all that silly talk about ricks for the Skrellings?"

	The bishop sighed. "I did what I believed right in the sight of the Lord. But now a greater danger threatens us. The Dakotians are sweeping across our fair land like the hosts of Midian, of old! Surely it were wise to sink our little bickerings in the face of this peril?"

	"You say the lousy redskins is doing an invasion? Well, now, that's the first I heered of that. What proof you got?"

	Park produced an assortment of papers: dispatches, a copy of the Edgar Daily Tidings, etcetera.

	The general was at last convinced. He said: "Well, I'll be tarnally damned. Begging your pardon, Hallow; I forgot as how you were a preacher."

	"That's all rick, my son. There are times when, even in a cleric like me, the baser passions rise, and it is all I can do to refrain from saying 'damn' myself."

	"Well, now, that's rick handsome of you. But what does old Cottonhead Higgins want me to do? I got my orders, you know."

	"I know, my son. But don't you see the Divine will in these events? When we His children fall out and desecrate the soil of Vinland with our brothers' blood, He chastises us with the scourge of invasion. Let us unite to hurl back the heathen before it is too late! General Higgins has a plan for joint doing all worked out. If you take it up, he will prove his good faith by letting you cross the Okeeyo unopposed."

	"What kind of plan is it? I never knew Cottonhead had enough brains to plan a barn-dance, not to mention a campaign."

	"I couldn't give you all the details; they're in this paper. But I know they call for your army to put itself in the path of the invaders, and when you are engaged with them for our army to attack their left flank. If we lose, our brotherly quarrel will be one with Sodom and Gomorrah. If we win, it will be surely possible to settle our strife without further bloodshed. You will be a great man in the sight of the people and a good one in the sight of Heaven, General."

	"Well, I guess maybe as how you're right. Give me the rest of the day to study these here plans ..."

	They shook hands; the general made a fumbling salute, and went over to his side of the island to call his boat. Thus, he did not see the bishop hastily don his mustache and spectacles.

	When General Etheling's rebels crossed the river next morning, they found no trace of Higgins's force except for the usual camp-litter. Following directions, they set out for Edgar.

-

	General Higgins, goaded to hurry by Allister Park, sent his army rolling northward. People in dust-colored work-clothes came out to hang over fences and stare at them.

	Park asked one of these, a strapping youth with some Skrelling blood, if he had heard of the invasion.

	"Sure," said the man. "Reckon they won't git this fur, though. So we ain't worrying." The young man laughed loudly at the suggestion of volunteering. "Me go off and git shot up so some other wick can sit on his rump and get rich? Not me, Thane I If the folks in Edgar gets scalped, it serves 'em right for not paying us mair for our stuff."

	As the army moved farther and farther toward Edgar, the expressions of the civilians grew more anxious. As they approached the Piankishaw (Wabash) River, they passed wains parked by the roads, piled with household goods. However, when the army had passed, many of these reversed their direction and followed the army back north toward their homes. Park was tempted to tell some of these people what idiots they were, but that would hardly have been politic. The army had little enough self-confidence as it was.

	Higgins's army spread out along the south bank of the Piankishaw. All those in the front line had, by order, stained their hands and faces brown. The genuine Skrellings were kept well back.

	Park took an observation post overlooking the main crossings of the river. He had just settled himself when there was a tremendous purring hum from the other side of the bridge. An enemy warwain appeared. Its ten tires screeched in unison as it stopped at the barrier on the road. Pneumatics began to pop on all sides. The forward turret swung back and forth, its gun clattering. Then a tremendous bang sent earth, bridge, and wain into the air. The wain settled into the water on its side, half out. Some men crawled out and swam for the far shore, bullets kicking up little splashes around their bobbing heads.

	Up the river, Park could see a pontoon boat putting out from the north shore. It moved slowly by poling; passed out of sight. In a few minutes it reappeared, drifting downstream. It came slowly past Park and stopped against a ruined bridge-abutment. Water gradually leaked through the bullet-holes in the canvas, until only one corner was above water. A few arms and faces bobbed lazily just below the surface.

	The firing gradually died down. Park could imagine the Dakotians scanning the position with their field-glasses and planning their next move. If their reputation was not exaggerated, it would be something devastating.

	He climbed down from his perch and trotted back to headquarters, where he found Rufus Callahan, sober for once.

	Ten minutes later the two, preceded by an army piper, exposed themselves at the east end of the bridge. Park carried a white flag, and the piper squealed "parley" on his instrument. Nobody shot at them, so they picked their way across the bridge, climbing along the twisted girders. Callahan got stuck.

	"I'm scared of high places," he said through his teeth, clinging to the ironwork.

	Park took out his air-pistol. "You'll be worse scared of me," he growled. The huge man was finally gotten under way again.

	At the far end, a Skrelling soldier jumped out of the bushes, rifle ready. He crackled something at them in Dakotian. Callahan answered in the same language, and the man took them in tow.

	As the road curved out of sight of the river, Park began to see dozens of warwains pulled up to the side of the road. Some had their turrets open, and red men sat in them, smoking or eating sandwiches. There were other vehicles, service cars of various kinds, and horse cavalry with lances and short rifles. They stopped by one warwain. Their escort snapped to a salute that must have jarred his bones. An officer climbed out. He wore the usual mustard-colored Dakotian uniform, topped off with the feathered war-bonnet of the Sioux Indian. After more chattering, Park and Callahan were motioned in.

	It was crowded inside. Park burned the back of his hand against a steam-pipe, and cut loose with a string of curses that brought admiring grins to the red-brown faces of the crew. Everything was covered with coal-soot.

	The engineer opened the throttle, and the reciprocating engine started to chug. Park could not see out. They stopped presently and got out and got into another warwain, a very large one.

	Inside the big machine were a number of Dakotian officers in the red-white-and-black war-bonnets. A fat one with a little silver war-club hanging from his belt was introduced to Park and Callahan as General Tashunkanitko, governor of the Oglala and commander-in-chief of the present expedition.

	"Well?" snapped this person in a high-pitched, metallic voice.

	Callahan gave his sloppy salute—which at first glance looked alarmingly as though he were thumbing his nose—and said: "I'm representing the commander of the Skrelling Division—"

	"The what?"

	"The Skrelling Division. We've been ordered by the Althing to put down the uprising of the Diamonds in the southwest of Vinland. They have a big army, and are likely to win all Vinland if not stopped. We can't stop them, and on the other hand we can't let them take all the south while you take all the north of Vinland.

	"My commander humbly suggests that it is hardly proper for two armies of men of the same race to fick each other while their joint foe takes over all Vinland, as Brahtz's army will do unless we join against it."

	General Tashunkanitko crackled something to one of his men, who rattled back. The general said: "It teas taled that your men looked like Skrellings, but we could not get close enough to be sure, and did not believe the tale. What do you offer?"

	Callahan continued: "My commander will not try to push the Dakotians from the area west of the Piankishaw, if you will help him against the rebels."

	"Does that offer bind your thing?"

	"Nay. But, as our army is the only real one at present under their command, they will have nay way of enforcing their objections. To prove our good faith we will, if you agree, let you cross the Piankishaw without fickting."

	The general thought for some seconds. He said: "That offer ock to be put up to my government."

	"Nay time, Sir. The rebels are moving north from the Okeeyo already. Anyway, if we make a truce aside from our thing, you should be willing to do the same. After we've overthrown the Brahtz army, I'm sure we can find some workable arrangement between our armies."

	Tashunkanitko thought again. "I will do it. Have you a plan worked out?"

	"Yes, Sir. Right here ..."

	When the Dakotians crossed the Piankishaw the next day, there was no sign of the large and supposedly redskin army that had held the passage against them.

-

	Across the rolling Indiana plain came the rattle of pneumatic rifles and the crack of air- and mortar-bombs. General Higgins told Park: "We just got a message from General Etheling; says he's hard pressed, and it's about time we did our flank attack on the Dakotians. And this General Tush—Tash—General Mad-Horse wants to know why we haven't attacked the flank of the rebels. Says he's still pushing 'em back, but they outnumber him twa to ane and he's had a lot of mechanical breakdowns. Says if we'll hit them now they'll run."

	"We don't want to let either side win," said Park. "Guess it's time to start."

	With considerable confusion—though perhaps less than was to be expected—the Army of New Belfast got under way. It was strung out on a five-mile front at right angles to the line of contact of the Dakotian and rebel armies. The right wing was the stronger, since it would meet stronger resistance from Tashunkanitko's hardened professionals than from Etheling's armed hayseeds.

	Park squeezed into the observation turret of the headquarters wain beside Higgins. They went slowly so as not to outrun the infantry, lurching and canting as the huge rubber doughnut-shaped wheels pulled them over walls and fences. They crunched through one corner of a farmyard, and the countryside was at once inundated by fleeing pigs and chickens. Park had a glimpse of an overalled figure shaking a fist at the wain. He couldn't help laughing; it was too bad- about the farmer's livestock, but there was something ultra-rural about the man's indignation over a minor private woe when a battle was going on next door.

	Men began to appear ahead; horsemen leaping fences and ditches scattered scouts dodging from tree to fence, firing at unseen targets, then frantically working the pump-levers of their rifles to compress the air for the next shot. One of them was not a hundred yards away when he saw the advancing wains. He stared stupidly at them until the forward machine-gunner in the headquarters wain fired a burst that sent the gravel flying around the scout's feet. The scout jumped straight up and came down running. Others ran when they saw the wains looming out of the dust. A few who didn't see soon enough ran toward the advancing line with their hands up.

	They met larger groups of redskins, crawling or running from right to left with faces set. Each time there would be one face the first to turn; then they would all turn. The group would lose its form and purpose, sublimating into its component human atoms. Some stood; some ran in almost any direction.

	Then they were in a half-plowed field. The plow and the steam tractor stood deserted among the brown furrows. On the other side of the field crouched a hostile wain. Park felt the engine speed up as the two machines lumbered toward each other. Bullets pattered about his cupola. It gratified him to see the general wince when they struck on and around the glass.

	The wains came straight at each other. Park gripped the hand-holds tight. The other wain stopped suddenly, backed swiftly, and tried to run in at them from the side. Their own jumped ahead with a roar. Its ram dug into the side of the other machine with a terrible crash. They backed away; Park could see lubricating oil running out of the wound in the other machine. It still crawled slowly. His own mechanical rhinoceros charged again. This time the other machine heaved up on its far wheels and fell over.

	The fight went out of the Dakotians all of a sudden. They had made a terrific assault on twice their number; then had fought steadily for two days. Their wains were battered, their horses hungry, and their infantry exhausted from pumping up their rifles. And to have a horde of strangers roll up their flank, just when victory was in sight—no wonder General Tashunkanitko, and his officers, let a tear or two trickle when they were rounded up.

	General Etheling's rebels fared no better; rather worse, in fact. The Skrelling regiment ran wild among the rural Vinlanders, doing what they had wanted to do for generations—scalp the palefaces. Having somewhat hazy ideas about that ancestral ritual, they usually made the mistake of trying to take off the whole top of a man's head instead of the neat little two-inch circle of scalp. When they started in on the prisoners, they had to be restrained by a few bursts of machine-gun fire from one of Higgins's wains.

-

	The train back to New Belfast stopped at every crossroads so the people could come out and whoop. They cheered Allister Park well enough; they cheered Rufus Callahan; they yelled for Bishop Scoglund. The story had gone ahead, how Park and General Higgins had devised a scheme for the entrapment of both the rebel and Dakotian armies; how the brave bishop had talked Etheling into it; how Etheling had treacherously shot the brave bishop; how Callahan had swum the Okeeyo with Bishop Scoglund on his back ... It was rumored that the city politician Allister Park had had something to do with these developments, but you never want to believe anything good of these politicians. Since he was Assistant Secretary of War, though, it was only polite to give him a cheer too ...

	Park did not think it would be prudent to show himself to the same audience both as Park and as the bishop, so they were all informed that his hallowship was recuperating.

	As they rolled into New Belfast, Park experienced the let-down feeling that comes at such moments. What next? By now Noggle would have been rescued from Park's knicks and returned to Edwy Borup's hatch. That was bound to happen anyway, which was why Park hadn't tried to use that method of getting Noggle into his power before. The whirling of the wheel of if was a delicate business, not to be interrupted by people with warrants, and he would have to see to it that somebody were left behind to force Noggle to stop the wheel when the right point had been reached.

	It ought not to be difficult now, though. If he couldn't use his present power and position to get hold of Noggle, he'd have enough after election—which would come off as scheduled after all. First he'd make Noggle stop poor old Kedrick's wheel. Then he'd have Callahan or somebody stand over Noggle with a gun while he spun his, Park's, wheel through another half-turn. Then, maybe, Noggle would be allowed to halt his own carousel.

	For the first three days after his return he was too busy to give attention to this plan. Everybody in New Belfast seemingly had written him or telephoned him or called at one of his two homes to see him. Although Monkey-face was a lousy secretary, Park didn't dare hire another so long as he had his double identity to maintain.

	But the Antonini trials were due in a week, back in that other world. And the heirs and assigns of Trigvy Darling had had a date set for a hearing on their damage claim. And, if Park knew his history, there would probably be a "reconstruction" period in the revolted territories, of which he wanted no part.

	For the second time Edwy Borup had his sanctuary invaded by Allister Park and a lot of tough-looking official persons, including Rufus Callahan. Borup was getting resigned if not reconciled to this. If they didn't let his prize patient Noggle escape before, they weren't likely to this time.

	"Haw, Noggle," said Park. "Feel a little more with-doing?"

	"Nay," snapped Noggle. "But since you have me by the little finger, I suppose I'll have to do what you say."

	"All right. You're honest, anyway. First you're going to stop Bretwald Kedrick's wheel. Bring him in, boys."

	"But I daren't stop a wheel without my down-writings. You bethink last time—"

	"That's all right; we brought your whole damn library over."

	There was nothing to it. Noggle stared at the fidgety Bretwald—the period of whose cycle was fortunately just twice his, so that both were in their own bodies at the same time. Then he said: "Whew. Had a lot of psychic momentum, that ane; I just did stop him. He'll be all rick now. What next?"

	Park told everybody but Callahan to go out. Then he explained that Noggle was to give his wheel another half turn.

	"But," objected Noggle, "that'll take seven days. What's going to be done with your body in the meantime?"

	"It'll be kept here, and so will you. When the half-cycle's done, you'll stop my wheel, and then we'll let you stop your own whenever you like. I've made sure that you'll stay here until you do the right thing by my wheel, whether you cure your own case or not."

	Noggle sighed. "And MacSvensson thock he'd get some simple-minded idealist like the bishop! How is it that your pattern of acting is otherly from his, when by the laws of luck you started out with much the same fore-bearish make-up?"

	Park shrugged. "Probably because I've had to fick every step of the way, while he was more or less born into his job. We're not so otherly, at that; his excess energy went into social crusading, while mine's gone into politics. I have an ideal or two kicking around somewhere. I'd like to meet Bishop Scoglund some time; think I'd like him."

	"I'm afraid that's undoable," said Noggle. "Even sending you back is risky. I don't know what would happen if your body died while his mind indwelt it. You might land in still another doable world instead of in your ain. Or you mick not land anywhere."

	"I'll take a chance," said Park. "Ready?"

	"Yes." Dr. Joseph Noggle stared at Park.

	"Hey, Thane Park," said a voice from the doorway. "A wick named Dunedin wants to see you. Says it's weighty."

	"Tell him I'm busy—no, I'll see him."

	Monkey-face appeared, panting. "Have you gone yet? Have you changed? Glory to Bridget! You—I mean his hallowship—what I mean is, the Althing signed a treaty with the Dakotians and Cherogians and such, setting up an International Court for the Continent of Skrelleland, and the bishop has been chosen one of the judges! I thock you ock to know before you did anything."

	"Well, well," said Park. "That's interesting, but I don't know that it changes anything."

	Callahan spoke up: I think you'd make a better judge, Allister, than he would. He's a fine fellow, but he will believe that everybody else is as uprick as he. They'd pull the wool over his eyes all the time."

	Park pondered. After all, what had he gone to all this trouble for—why had he helped turn the affairs of half the continent upside down—except to resume .a career as public prosecutor which, he hoped, would some day land him on the bench? And here was a judgeship handed him on a platter.

	"I'll stay," he said.

	"But," objected Noggle, "how about those thirteen other men on your wheel? Are you going to leave them out of their rick rooms?"

	Park grinned. "If they're like me, they're adaptable guys who've probably got started on new careers by now. If we shift 'em all again, it'll just make more trouble for them. Come along, Rufus."

-

	The funeral of Allister Park, assistant Secretary o£ War, brought out thousands of people. Some were politicians who had been associated with Park; some came for the ride. A few came because they liked the man.

	In an anteroom of the cathedral, Bishop Scoglund waited for that infernal music to end, whereupon he would go out and preach the swellest damn funeral oration New Belfast had ever heard. It isn't given to every man to conduct that touching ceremony for his own corpse, and the bishop intended to give his alter-ego a good send-off.

	In a way he was sorry to bid Allister Park goodbye. Allister had a good deal more in common with his natural, authentic self than did the bishop. But he couldn't keep up the two identities forever, and with the judgeship on one hand and the damage-suit on the other there wasn't much question of which of the two would have to be sacrificed. The pose of piety would probably become natural in time. The judgeship would give him an excuse for resigning his bishopric. Luckily the Celtic Christian Church had a liberal attitude toward folk who wished to leave the church. Of course he'd still have to be careful—girl friends and such. Maybe it would even be worth while getting married ...

	"What the devil—what do you wish, my son?" said the bishop, looking up into Figgis's unpleasant face.

	"You know what I wish, you old goat! What are you going to do about my wife?"

	"Why, friend, it seems that you have been subject to a monstrous fooling!"

	"You bet I—"

	"Please, do not shout in the house of God! What I was saying was that the guilty man was none other than the late Allister Park, may the good Lord forgive his sins. He has been impersonating me. As you know, we looked much alike. Allister Park upowned to me on his death-bed two days ago. No doubt his excesses brought him to his untimely end. Still, for all his human frailties, he was a man of many good qualities. You will forgive him, will you not?"

	"But—but—I—"

	"Please, for my sake. You would not speak ill of the dead, would you?"

	"Oh, hell. Your forgiveness, Bishop. I thock I had a good thing, that's all. G'bye. Sorry."

	The music was coming to an end. The bishop stood up, straightened his vestments, and strode majestically out. If he could only count on that drunken nitwit Callahan not to forget himself and bust out laughing ...

	The coffin, smothered in flowers, was, like all coffins in Vinland, shaped like a Viking longboat. It was also filled with pine planks. Some people were weeping a bit. Even Callahan, in the front row, was appropriately solemn.

	"Friends, we have gathered here to pay a last gild to one who has passed from among us ..."

-

-

THE BEST-LAID SCHEME

	Russell F. R. Hedges did not look like a world-destroyer. He was in fact an almost annoyingly harmless-looking soul, a plump person of forty-five in neat blue serge, with dark hair streaked with gray and in need of cutting, hanging down over his steel-rimmed glasses.

	The folly of trying to judge people by their looks has been pointed out by generations of psychologists and such people. Rut this form of judgment seems to be ingrained in human folkways. Perhaps that is why Coordinator Ronald Q. M. Bloss underestimated Hedges. When the chief executive officer of the great North American continent is told by the head of the Bureau of Standards to do thus-and-so, thus-and-so being a program designed to put the affairs of the continent in the said head's hand, the Coordinator's natural reaction is to ring the buzzer and have the erring subordinate carted off to the hatch.

	Bloss was curious. Finger poised over the button, he asked: "How, my dear Hedges, do you propose to destroy the world?"

	Hedges smiled amiably. He spoke in barely more than a whisper, suspecting the presence of dictaphones: "Simple, my dear Bloss." (He was being offensively familiar; people normally addressed the Coordinator as "your Efficiency".) "You recall my investigations into the nature of Time. The process of temporal forward-jumping, vulgarly known as vanwinkling, has been an established fact for several decades, being a favorite occupation among those who are dissatisfied with the present world and hope to find a better one in the future."

	"I know all that," said Bloss irritably. "You may as well calm yourself, my dear Bloss. Being in a position to be as verbose in my explanations as I please, I intend to indulge my whims in that direction. As I was about to say, the problem of backward-jumping has not hitherto been solved. It involves an obvious paradox. If I go back and slay my own grandfather, what becomes of me? It's all very well to say he wasn't killed, and that something will happen to prevent my carrying out my design. Who shall see to it that my design is in fact frustrated, once I have actually gotten back to his time and located him? Yet, if I kill him, I obviously disarrange subsequent history. Subsequent history is a tough fabric, and will no doubt try to adhere to its original pattern. That it will altogether succeed in doing so, I presume to doubt. In fact, any action on my part in bygone times that affects other persons will set in train a series of events that will ultimately wrench subsequent history of its normal channels. Someone will marry or fail to marry the spouse he would otherwise have chosen, and a great statesman will be born or will fail to be born, as the case may be. So, all I have to do is go far enough back, commit a few sufficiently significant acts, and presto! you and all the other inhabitants of the continent cease to be; or rather, you cease to be the persons you now are. You see, my dear Bloss?"

	Bloss thought he saw very well. He pressed the button.

	Hedges saw him do so. The Chief of the Bureau of Standards looked at his wrist-watch. It was a large wrist-watch, with a lot of buttons and things around its circumference. His fingers moved to one of these.

	"Ah, well," he said, "it seems a demonstration is needed." And he vanished.

	When the guards bounced in three seconds later, they found a worried-looking coordinator. He was not especially disturbed over Hedges' vanishment—he'd seen people do that before when they vanwinkled—but he was wondering if by some remote chance the man might not have actually gone back instead of forward.

	He sent for Vincent M. S. Collingwood, head of the Continental Bureau of Investigation.

	Collingwood pulled a sheaf of papers out of his briefcase. "Hah!" he said. "Here are the files on Russell F. R. Hedges. Our staff psychologist has him down as 'shrewd, ambitious, resourceful, and persevering beneath a deceptively mild exterior.' " Collingwood fixed his chief with a glittering eye. "That, Your Efficiency, is what I call sinister!"

	"I don't know," said Bloss. "Maybe I'm foolish to get excited; maybe he was bluffing and did a vanwinkle on us."

	"Hah!" grated Collingwood. "But did he? If it was an ordinary vanwinkle, he'd be stranded in the future and unable to get back. No, I'm sure there's a dastardly plot behind this."

	Bloss began: "If—" He stopped with his mouth open. Through the White House ran a silent, motionless earthquake, if you can imagine such a thing.

	Bloss stared at the wall behind Collingwood. "That picture," he said. "That picture behind you."

	Collingwood scowled at the blank wall. "I don't see any picture."

	"That's just it. It was there a second ago. And you are wearing a different necktie."

	"Hah! So I am. This is sinister. He's gone back and done something—it doesn't matter much what—and changed subsequent history. Hah!"

	"Stop saying 'hah' all the time," complained Bloss. "I want you to do something."

	"Hah, you don't have to worry about my doing something, your Efficiency. Doing something is just my job."

	"Well, what did you have in mind?"

	"Why—uh—I don't just know. But don't worry."

	"But I am worrying. Can't you at least put some of your men to following Hedges?"

	"Of course, your Efficiency," cried Collingwood. "Just what I had in mind, hah! I'll put de Witt after him. He's the toughest man we have. Besides, he has an artificial eye."

	"What's that got to do with it?"

	"Hah! Wouldn't you like to know!"

-

	Hedges popped back into sight, in the chair just recently vacated by Collingwood. Bloss jumped.

	"Ah, my dear Bloss," said Hedges. "The demonstration was convincing, I trust?"

	"Uh—huh," said Bloss warily. "What do you want me to do now?"

	"I've told you already. Force a bill through giving the head of the Bureau" of Standards the powers I enumerated."

	"All right. But it will take time to prepare it and to get it passed."

	"I know that. I'm in no rush. I shall continue with my usual duties. You will of course not try anything so rash as to have me arrested—or assaulted. If you do, I shall go back quite a way, and I shall devote my efforts particularly to your own ancestors, all of whom I have looked up to be sure I can locate them. Good-day, Your Efficiency."

	Bloss watched him leave in a more conventional manner. The Coordinator thought of telling Collingwood to dispose of Hedges in any way he chose, so long as Hedges was gotten rid of. But he had hesitated. He was a stickler for legality, and the assassination of inconvenient citizens without due process of law was highly felonious in the North America of 2365. Besides, there was a close election coming up, and his opponents would be sure to find his sins out and use them.

	Now, there was an even better reason for preserving Hedges' immunity: if the C. B. I. attacked Hedges with gun or blackjack, but were not successful at the very first try, Hedges would disappear into the past, and would, in revenge, do something really drastic to the fabric of history. Maybe Bloss would find himself no longer Coordinator—or no longer Bloss. As Bloss had considerable affection for himself, the thought of such separation was painful.

-

	Meanwhile Vincent M. S. Collingwood had called in his toughest operative, Mendez S. D. de Witt. This de Witt was in disgrace for having killed a man; he said it was necessary to keep the man from escaping; others said it was not. Nothing had been done to de Witt, but he was made to feel that he'd have to go some to get back in the Department's graces. He was a thick-bodied man with short black hair standing on end. Nobody would have suspected his artificial eye, which he had made some curious uses of in his work. He had a carefully cultivated slovenliness of dress and manner.

	"This Hedges," said Collingwood impressively, "is a dastardly scoundrel. He threatens not merely the foundations of our government and the fabric of our society, but our very existence."

	"Yeah," said Mendez de Witt.

	"He must be stopped! Our glorious land cannot tolerate such a viper in her bosom."

	"Yeah."

	"You have been selected for this—" Collingwood's 'phone rang, and he listened to Bloss. Bloss told him that under no circumstances must R. F. R. Hedges be assaulted, assassinated, kidnapped, or otherwise molested.

	Collingwood continued: "You have been selected for the perilous task of unmasking this sinister force. But in the accomplishment of your aim, Hedges must on no account be assaulted, assassinated, kidnapped, or otherwise molested. You understand?"

	"Yeah," said de Witt. "Whatcha wamme to do, stick out my tongue at him?"

	"Hah! You're as funny as a wheel-chair, de Witt. No, you will first go to work in the Bureau of Standards, where you can keep an eye on him. You will learn whence he derives his time-traveling power, and whether he can be deprived of it without much risk."

	"That ail?"

	"That's all. Good luck, my boy."

	"Some day," said de Witt, "a guy is gonna call another guy 'my boy' once too often. Be seem' ya."

	Mendez S. D. de Witt had several artificial eyes, none of which was quite what it seemed. He occupied a section of laboratory desk in the B. of S. building, and, with soldering-iron and tweezers, deftly assembled the mechanism for yet another spurious optic. This one was to be a paralyzing-ray machine. The mechanism would be installed in the methyl-methacrylate shell at another time; he didn't want the other Bureau of Standards technicians to learn about his eyes.

	One of these technicians sneezed. He ran a finger around the base of his faucet and held it up with a faint smudge of yellow powder on it. He crumbled this trace of powder over his burner, and sniffed.

	"Now who," he said, "has been scattering powdered sulphur around the lab?"

	De Witt could have told him. He could also have told him that the sulphur was radioactive.

	Russell F. R. Hedges marched through the laboratory on the way to his office. He nodded and smiled at the technicians, saying: "Ah, my dear Hutchinson. Ah, my dear Jones."

	When he passed de Witt, giving his laboratory's most recent recruit a look of suspicion, de Witt stared at Hedges' wrist. He shut his good eye—the right one—tight, then blinked it several times.

	Then he went back to his artificial eye.

	When he got home, he at once took out his fake eye. The shell unscrewed into two parts, and inside it was a neat little X-ray camera, full of exposed one millimeter film. He developed this and printed a series of enlargements. They showed X-rays of Hedges' wrist, and of the remarkable wrist-watch worn thereupon. The photographs were mere black-and-gray silhouettes, made by the emanations from the radio-active sulphur that de Witt had scattered around. Each showed the inside of the watch as a jumble of coils and cogwheels, and would have been useless by itself. But de Witt, by comparing a number of pictures taken at different angles, formed a good idea of the workings of the gadget. It was Hedges' time-travel machine all right. On its face were number-disks like those on the odometer of an automobile, reading years and days of the year. All Hedges had to do was set the thing forward or back.

	De Witt promptly set about duplicating the machine. It took him three weeks. Collingwood got pretty impatient by the end of that time.

	De Witt explained: "You see, chief, all I wanna do is chase this guy out of his own time. Then I'll fix him so he won't do nothing."

	"But, de Witt, don't you remember what His Efficiency said about not molesting—"

	"Yeah, I know. But that only has to do with what T do to him now. His Efficiency couldn't kick about what I did to Hedges five hundred years ago, now could he?"

	"Hmmm. Yes. I see your point. Of course I believe in following His Efficiency's orders, but in combatting a sinister force like this ..."

-

	De Witt finished his duplicate time-watch. He strapped it on his wrist and spun the setter.

	Nothing happened, though the dial showed 2360— five years before. The C. B. I. man cursed softly and spun the disks some more, and still some more. Nothing happened until he reached 2298. Then, whoosh, the room blurred into frantic motion.

	De Witt found himself sitting in empty air twelve feet above the ground of a vacant lot, to whose surface he dropped, thump.

	He picked himself up. The explanation dawned upon him. He'd gone back to a date before the boarding-house where he lived was built. Thank God he hadn't tried the stunt in a skyscraper—or on the former site of another building. He wondered what it would feel like to find yourself occupying the same bit of space as a steel I-beam. Probably there'd be a hell of an explosion.

	Then he wondered why the gadget had not worked until he had gone back thirty-seven years. He was thirty-six years old—that must be it: you couldn't occupy your own stretch of time more than once. It wouldn't do to have two Mendez S. D. de Witts running around simultaneously.

	To check, he reversed the direction of the control and advanced the setter slowly. Nothing happened until it registered 2365 again; then whoosh, his boarding-house scrambled into existence, like a movie of a blowing-up in reverse.

	Then he finished his paralyzer. It proved something of a disappointment. It worked, but only at a range of a meter or less. And you had to aim carefully at the victim's neck-vertebrae. 

	But he inclosed the paralyzer in its eye-shaped case, put the case in his left eye-socket, and walked in on Hedges unannounced.

	"Ah, my dear de Witt—" said Hedges, smiling.

	"Okay, skip it. I guess you know who I am, buddy."

	"A C. B. I. man? I suspected it. What do you want?"

	"You're coming with me, get me?"

	"Yes?" Hedges raised his eyebrows, and touched his wrist-watch. He vanished.

	But so did Mendez de Witt.

	It was damn funny, sitting there and spinning the setter, and looking at the shadowy form of Hedges on the other side of the desk. As de Witt was only a second or two behind Hedges in his pursuit, he could keep him in sight. When Hedges speeded up his time-travel, de Witt's strong and agile fingers spun the setter faster; when Hedges vanished for a second, de Witt quickly reversed motion of the setter and picked up Hedges going the other way. When Hedges stopped, de Witt stopped too.

	The C. B. I. man grinned at Hedges. "Gotcha, huh?"

	"Not quite," said Hedges. He fished a hand-grenade from his pocket, and started to pull the pin. Dc Witt just sat there, holding the setter. Hedges put the bomb back in his pocket.

	De Witt laughed. "Thought you'd turn that thing loose and skip, huh? I can skip just as fast as you can."

	Hedges went back to his time-watch. Forward and backward he spun the disks. De Witt followed him. The next time Hedges stopped, there was a third man in the room; a startled-looking old man.

	Hedges looked at him, and jerked a thumb. "One of my predecessors. I recognize his picture."

	"You damn fool," said de Witt. "If he'd been sitting in that chair too it'd have been blooey for both of you."

	"I suppose so, de Witt. It's a bit crowded here, don't you think?" And he began spinning the setter again.

	This time de Witt lost him. He went back to the time he'd been at when he last saw Hedges, and went over it carefully. At last he picked up a glimpse of Hedges bouncing out of his chair and running for the door. De Witt adjusted the setter carefully, and managed to stop just as Hedges reached the door.

	De Witt ran after him. He had to keep him in sight, not only in the three spacial dimensions, but in time also. Although he was a better runner than Hedges, as he caught up with his victim, Hedges twirled the dial on his wrist and began to fade.

	De Witt did the almost impossible feat of running after Hedges and spinning his setter at the same time. They were" outside the Bureau of Standards building. De Witt knew that if he once thoroughly lost his man, he'd never find him.

	They stopped running. Hedges slowed down his setter to where de Wilt could glimpse motor-vehicles flashing backwards past them. Several went right through them.

	"Look out!" yelled dc Witt, as Hedges almost stopped his time-travel at a point that intersected the space-time track of a big truck. No sound came; you could move while traveling in time, but you couldn't hear. Hedges saw his danger and speeded up again.

	Hedges gave up time-flight: since it had only one dimension, you could always find a man by moving back and forth along it far enough. He began running physically again, de Witt after him. They raced down Pennsylvania Avenue. De Witt stole a glance at his watch. It read 1959, Hedges, he thought, must have had that bomb ready so that he could carry out his threat by going into the past and blowing up some innocent bystanders. De Witt, tough as he was, was shocked. He reached for his pistol, which he had hoped not to have to use.

	Hedges was getting winded. He bumped into a pedestrian. De Witt felt a psychic jar run through him.

	Hedges bumped another pedestrian. The pistol vanished from de Witt's grasp, and an umbrella took its place. He knew what had happened: the bumping of the pedestrian, a trivial matter in itself, was one of those first links in a chain of events that change history.

	They were approaching a traffic-circle. In the middle of this was a circular bit of park with an ornamental fountain. A lot of people were sitting around the fountain. De Witt grasped Hedges' intention when Hedges pulled out his bomb. If he couldn't get away, he was going to change history right there.

	De Witt dodged a couple of automobiles, and with straining lungs caught up with Hedges. He hooked the umbrella-handle around Hedges' ankle. Brakes squealed and Hedges fell in front of a car. De Witt leaped on him. Again came that jarring sensation. De Witt knew that they Were both changing as they struggled. People were looking at them, and the sight was entering into their histories ...

	Hedges got the pin out of his bomb just as de Witt remembered his paralyzing eye. He blinked his real eye, and sighted the phoney on the back of Hedges' neck. The bomb fell to the asphalt. De Witt snatched it up and tossed it into the fountain. He screamed: "Duck!" People looked at him blankly. Then the bomb went off, sending up a fountain of water and tossing a statue of a Triton high in the air.

	The jarring sensation became almost unbearable. De Witt was horrified to feel that he had grown a beard.

	A couple of people were cut a little by flying shreds of concrete. But the heavy concrete rim of the fountain had stopped all the bomb-fragments.

	A police-car appeared. De Witt became aware, in that second, of many things he hadn't had time to notice—the ancient appearance of the motor-cars; the colorful costume of the people (colorful, that is, in comparison with the grim black-and-white of his own time).

	Hedges lay on the asphalt looking blankly up at him. De Witt stooped down, took the setter of Hedges' time-watch between the fingers of his left hand, and grasped the setter of his own watch with his right fingers. He gave both setters a twist.

	They were still in the traffic-circle. But it was early morning, and almost nobody in sight. The fountain supported another Triton, very new-looking. De Witt had tried to send them ahead one year, and had succeeded.

	The effect of the paralysis wore off Hedges; he crawled over to the curb around the fountain and sat on it with his head in his hands.

	De Witt looked at him sharply. "Say," he said, "you aren't the same guy."

	"You aren't cither."

	There was little doubt of that; de Witt was six inches taller than he had been, and he still had the horrible beard. His hair was disgustingly long. Mixed up with his memory of his career as a C. B. I. man came another memory, of an easy-going life on a microscopic income, devoted to disreputable friends and the writing of quantities of stickily sentimental poetry.

	"I don't know why I did it," said Hedges. "I'm not ambitious. All I want is a quiet place in the country."

	"That's because you aren't the same man," said de Witt. "I'm not cither. I'm a damned poet." He looked at the flower-bed around the fountain, and began to compose:

-

"The buttercup looks at the yellow rose, 
     "And loves, as I love thee, who knows?
"But the bee won't fly to both at once, 
     "And the buttercup's love—"

-

	"What rhymes with 'once'?"

	"Dunce," said Hedges. "Are you going to do that all the time?"

	"Probably."

	"It's awful. But aren't you going to arrest me or something?"

	"N-No. I'm not a policeman any more." He ran his hand through his long hair. "I think I'll just stay here and be a poet."

	"I really ought to be arrested."

	"You'll have to go back—or forward—to your own time and give yourself up, then. I don't want you."

	Hedges sighed. "The best-laid schemes of mice and men—in changing the history leading up to our time, we of course changed our own history and background. I think I'd like this time too. I brought quite a wad of money along; it ought to be good. I'll buy a little place in the country and raise flowers, and you can come out and write poetry about them."

	"Russell!"

	"Mendez!" Friends for life, they shook hands. 

-

	The soundless, motionless earthquake brought Coordinator Bloss and Vincent M. S. Collingwood to their feet. They stared at each other in terror until the disturbance subsided.

	"You've changed," said Bloss.

	"So have you, Your Efficiency."

	"Not very much though."

	"No, thank God. I imagine Hedges has done all the damage he can. What's this?"

-

	On the Chief Executive's desk appeared two time-watches, and a pencilled note. The note read:

-

To His Efficiency the Co-ordinator of North America, or to Vincent M. S. Collingwood, Director of the C.B.I.:

We've decided to stay here, in 1960. We will try not to disturb the space-time structures any more than is necessary for the rest of our lives. The time watches we are sending back to you, as a means of transporting this note. We advise you to destroy them utterly.

If you want to see how I made out, look up a late twentieth century poet of my name. Regards.
	MENDEZ S. D. DE WITT

-

	Bloss pulled out volume Dam to Edu of the encyclopedia. "Here he is," he announced. "Yes, he was quite a well-known poet. Married in 1964, no children. Died in 1980. It even mentions his friend Hedges. I bet that story wasn't in the encyclopedia last week. What did you do with those watches?"

	Collingwood was staring popeyed at the blank desk. "Nothing—they up and disappeared. That's the most sinister thing I ever saw."

	"Not at all," said the Co-ordinator. "Hedges and de Witt disturbed the history between their time and ours to the point where Hedges never did any timetravel backwards in our time. So those time-watches never existed."

	"Let's see—the watches never existed—but they were on the desk a minute ago—but—they took Hedges back so he could make it impossible for him to have done the thing he did to enable him to go back to make it impossible for him to go back—"

	Bloss got out a bottle and a couple of glasses. "My dear Collingwood," he said, "don't drive yourself crazy trying to resolve the paradoxes of time travel. The watches are one, and I for one say it's a good thing. Have a drink."

	Collingwood snatched up his glass. "Now, Your Efficiency, you're talking sense!""

-

-

THE WARRIOR RACE

	They were serious these days, the young men who gathered in Prof. Tadeusz Lechon's room to drink his mighty tea and set up propositions for him to knock down. Between relief that the war was over without their having come to harm personally, and apprehension for the future, and some indignation at the prospect of foreign rule, there was not much room left for undergraduate exuberance and orneriness. Something was going to happen to them, they thought.

	"Whatever it is," said Tadeusz Lechon, "it is not cowardice, I am sure." He moved his large bald head forward to a cup of tea the color of an old boot, his big gold-plated earrings hobbling. He sucked noisily, watching Frederick Merrian.

	Fred Merrian, a sandy-haired sophomore with squirrel-teeth, looked grateful but still defiant. He was in civilian clothes. Baldwin Dowling, the co-ed's dream, was in a very new U. S. Army uniform. The uniform was so new because, by the time Dowling had reached his unit in Los Angeles, the war was over, and he had been told to return home, free, on anything he liked. He had taken the next 'plane back to Philadelphia.

	Lechon continued: "It is rather an example of the conviction of most thoughtful young men, that human problems must have a solution. Those problems being what they are, one cannot prove that any of them has no solution, the way Abel proved the problem of solving quintic equations algebraically impossible. So they try one idea after another, these young men; it may be Adrenalism or Anarcho-Communism OI Neo-Paganism. In your ease it was non-resistance. Perhaps it is well that they do—"

	"But—" said Fred Merrian.

	Lechon stopped the waiting flood of impassioned argument with a wave. "We have been over all this before. Some day you will tire of Centaurian rule, and join some other movement with equally impractical ideals. Our Centaurian is nosing around the campus. He may visit us. Suppose we let Baldwin tell us what he has learned about them."

	"Yeah, what are they like?" asked Merrian.

	"Much like other people," said Baldwin Dowling. "They're pretty big. I guess the original group of colonists that went to Proxima Centauri were a pretty tall bunch. They have a funny manner, though; sort of as if they ran by clockwork. You don't get palsy with a Bozo."

	Arthur Hsi smiled his idiotic smile. His name was really Hsi A-tsz, and he was Dot at all idiotic. "I came half way und the world so I could study away from the Bozos. Not far enough, it seems."

	Dowling asked: "Heard anything from China?"

	"Bozos are busy, trying to make everything sternly efficient and incorruptible, like themselves. May be the greatest fighters on earth, but don't know China. My father writes—"

	"Shh!" hissed Lechon, his big red face alert. Then he relaxed "I thought it was our Centaurian." There was an uncomfortable pause; nobody had much enthusiasm left for chatter, even if the superman failed to appear. Finally Lechon took it up: "Everybody I talk to says what an impossible thing it was, that war. But if you read your history, gentlemen, you will see that it was nothing new. In 1241 the Hungarians never dreamed the Mongols had things like divisional organization and wig-wig signals. So they were swamped. Our government never dreamed the Centaurians had an oxidizing ray, and airplanes with fifteen centimeter armor. So we were swamped. You follow mc? The tune is always different, but the notes stay much the same."

	He broke off again, listening. A brisk step approached. Somebody knocked. The history professor said to come in. The Centaurian came.

	"My name," he said in a metallic voice, "is Juggins." He was about thirty, with a lantern jaw, high cheekbones, and outstanding ears. He wore the odd plum-colored uniform of the Centaurians: descendants of those hardy souls who had colonized a planet of Proxima Centauri, had fought a three-generation battle against hostile environment and more hostile natives, and had finally swarmed back to earth fifty-odd years ago. Australia had been turned over to them, and their science had made this second most useless continent the world's most productive area. Their terrible stay on the other planet had made them something more and something less than men. Now they ruled the earth.

	"Hello, Mr. Jug—" began Dowling. The Centaurian cut him off: "You will not use 'mister' in speaking to a Centaurian. I am Juggins."

	"Will you sit down?" invited Lechon.

	"I will." The Bozo folded his long legs, sat, and waited for somebody to say something.

	Somebody finally did. Dowling asked: "How do you like Philly?"

	"You mean Philadelphia?"

	"Yeah, sure."

	"Then kindly say so. I don't like it at all. It's dirty, corrupt, and inefficient. But we shall fix that. You will do well to cooperate with us. We shall give you a much healthier life than you have ever known." He got this out with some difficulty, as if saying more than one sentence at a time made him self-conscious.

	Even Dowling, who though a native was not bothered by an excess of local pride, was taken aback by such candor. He murmured: "You guys don't pull any punches."

	"I think I grasp the meaning of your slang expression. We are taught to tell the truth." He made telling the truth sound like a most unattractive occupation.

	Hsi spoke up: "I hope you do something about the water system. This morning when I turned on the faucet, I got a live eel, a size twelve rubber, and about a cubic meter of chlorine gas before the water came through."

	The Bozo stared at him coldly. "Young man, that is an unpardonable exaggeration. A rubber could not possibly pass through the water-pipes."

	"He is juckink," said Lechon helplessly, the stress of conflicting emotions bringing out his Polish accent.

	Juggins shifted his glare. "I understand. That's what you call a joke, is it? Very funny."

	"Have a cigarette," suggested Dowling.

	"We never use the filthy weed. It's unhealthy."

	"Some tea, then," sighed Lechon.

	"Hmm. It is a drug."

	"Oh, I would not say that. Juggins. It does contain caffein, which is a stimulant, but most foods have one or more things like that in them."

	"Very well, if you'll make it weak. And no sugar."

	Hsi poured, and added some very hot water. The Bozo stirred it suspiciously. He looked up to say: "I want you, and everybody in the University, to look on me as a kind of father. There's no sense in your taking a hostile attitude, because you can't change conditions. If you will cooperate—Gaw!" He was staring popeyed at his spoon.

	The lower half of the spoon had melted all at once and run down into a puddle of molten metal at the bottom of the cup.

	"You stirred too hard," said Hsi.

	"I—" said Juggins. He glared from face to face. Then he carefully put down his cup, laid the unmelted half of the spoon in the saucer, rose, and stalked out.

	Lechon mopped his red forehead. "That was terrible, Arthur! You shouldn't play jokes on him. He might have us all shot."

	Hsi let a long-suppressed giggle escape. "Maybe so. But I had that Wood's-metal spoon handy, and it was too good to miss."

	"Is he real?" asked Merrian.

	"Yeah," said Dowling. "A lot of people have wondered if the Bozos weren't robots or something. But they're real people; reproduced in the normal fashion and everything.

	They're a new kind of man, I guess."

	"No," said Lechon. "Read your history, gentlemen. The warrior race. The latest example of what can be done with men by intensive training and discipline. The Spartans and the Osmanli Turks did it in their time. Our Centaurian is more like a Spartan Peer than a Turkish Janissary. Lycurgus would know our father Juggins for a true Spartiate at once ..."

	He went on. The three undergraduates listened with one ear. Merrian was in the throes of a soul-search. Was force an evil when used against creatures like these?

	Dowling and Hsi, not introspective idealists, were concerned with the recasting of their personal plans. Dowling guessed that there would still be local Philadelphia politics to get into when he finished his course, Bozos or no Bozos. There'd have to be go-betweens between the supermen and their subjects.

	Hsi was thinking of the soft job in the Sino-American Transport Co. that his father would shoe-horn him into when he finished college. If he could, by hard work and family influence, worm his way to the Directorate, there were some big deals he had in mind ... There would be the omnipresent and allegedly incorruptible Bozos. But that incorruptibility was, to his mind, still only alleged.

-

	Class reunions, like weddings and funerals, bring together a lot of people who would not ordinarily cross the street to speak to one another. So when the class of '09 broke up after the formalities, Hsi and Dowling and Merrian drifted together and wandered off to a restaurant to compare biographies.

	Baldwin Dowling had filled out a bit, though he still had the wavy black hair and flashing smile. He had acquired a wife and one child. Arthur Hsi looked much the same, but had acquired a wife and six children. Fred Merrian had lost most of his sandy hair, and had received in exchange two wives, two divorces, and a thin feverish look.

	Hsi had just come from a trip to Australia, and was full of it. "It's a wonderful place. Everything goes just like clockwork. No tips, no bribes. No fun, either. Every Bozo is a soldier of some sort, even the ones who run elevators and sell dog-biscuit."

	Fred Merrian showed signs of building up argumentative back-pressure. "You mean you approve of them?" he snapped.

	Hsi looked stupidly amused. "I wouldn't say that, Fred. But we have to get along with them. The Sino-American Transport Company is a huge organization, with subsidiaries all over the Pacific: hotels and airlines and whale-hatcheries and things. So must get along with them. What have you been doing last ten years?"

	Merrian looked bitter. "I'm trying to make a living as a writer. But I won't write the sort of trash the cheap magazines buy, so—" He shrugged.

	"What about you, Baldwin? I seem to hear about you in politics."

	Dowling said: "Yeah, maybe you have. Tm the official mediator for the city of Philadelphia. When one of my—ah—flock gets into trouble with the Bozos, I try to get him out."

	"You look prosperous," said Hsi.

	"I haven't done so badly." Dowling's smile had a trace of leer. "Sort of like a tribune of the people, as Professor Lechon explained it to me."

	"Lechon?" said Hsi. "Is he still here?"

	"Yep, and still dishing out the love-life of the ancient Parthians." He noted Merrian's expression, and said: "Fred no doubt thinks I'm a raw renegade. But as you said, the Bozos are here, and we've got to get along with them. By the way, I met a man who knows you; Cass Young. Said your Chinese business methods had nearly driven him crazy."

	"What didn't he like?"

	"Oh, the way you never mean exactly what you say, and act hurt when some sucker objects to it. And the—ah—dryness of the Oriental palm, as he expressed it. Oh, remember the Bozo Juggins? The first administrator of the University of Pennsylvania? He's still here; administrator for the whole metropolitan area."

	"Really?" said Hsi. "By the way, did Mr. Young tell you what he had been seeing me about?"

	"No."

	"Well, I want to talk to you about it." Hsi looked questioningly at Fred Merrian. Merrian looked at his watch, and reluctantly took his leave.

	"Too bad," said Dowling. "He's the most decent and upright guy I know. But he isn't practical." He lowered his voice. "I could swear he was mixed up in some anti-Bozo movement."

	"That would account for the hungry-wolf look," said Hsi. "Do you know about such movements?"

	"I know a lot of things I don't let on. But what's this deal you have in mind?"

	"I say nothing about a deal." Hsi paused to giggle. "But I see I can't fool you, Baldwin. You know the Morehouse project?"

	"The mailing-tube unification plan? Yeah."

	"Well, Sino-American controls the Philadelphia-Baltimore tube, as perhaps you don't know. And the tubes from Boston to Miami can't be unified without the Philadelphia-Baltimore link, obviously. But we don't want to sell our stock in the link outright."

	"What, then?"

	"If exchange of stock could be arranged—some good friends of ours already hold 45 per cent of the stock in the new Boston-Miami company—it would give us a strong voice in the affairs of the new company."

	"In other words, majority control?"

	"I would not say that. A strong voice."

	Dowling grinned. "Don't try to kid me into thinking these 'good friends' aren't Sino-American dummies. How much stock of the new company do you want? Six per cent?"

	"Seven and a fraction would look better."

	"I get you. But you know how we do things here. The Bozos have their fingers in everything. If you make anything, they grab it; if you lose, that's your hard luck. AH the disadvantages of socialism without the advantages. And it's as much as your life's worth to try to hush one of them up. Still, I might be able to handle Juggins."

	Hsi giggled. "So they are still incorruptible here, eh? How much of that 'healthier life' they promised have you gotten?"

	"Well," said Dowling dubiously, "they did clean things up somewhat."

	"Have you a new water-system yet?"

	"No, though they've been talk—"

	Boom! Far off across the Schuylkill, a yellow flash tore the night sky. Other explosions followed in quick succession. Broken glass tinkled. Hsi and Dowling gripped their table. Dowling muttered: "The fools!"

	"A revolution?" asked Hsi.

	"That's what they think." The faint tapping of gunfire became audible.

	A pair of hard-looking men in uniform appeared in the doorway. Dowling murmured: "Watchdogs." He did not have to describe these police, whose list of virtues stopped after bravery and loyalty to their masters, the warrior race.

	There was nothing to do but sit and listen. When the noise abated, Dowling went over to one of die watchdogs and spoke in a low voice.

	The watchdog said: "Didn't recognize you, Mr. Dowling. I guess you can go home, and take your friend."

	As the two men left the restaurant, Hsi was conscious of the hostile glares of the other customers. Outside, Dowling grinned wryly. "Nobody likes special privilege, except when he's the guy who's got it. We're walking."

	"But your car—" wailed Hsi, a completely unathletic person.

	"I'm leaving it here. If we tried to drive, the watchdogs would shoot first and ask questions afterwards. If we see anybody, we raise our hands and walk slowly."

	Off to the northeast, the sky was red. A lot of houses in North Philadelphia had been set afire by the oxidizers ...

-

	Hsi and Dowling spent the next day at the latter's home, without news of any kind. Edna Dowling tried to pump Hsi on the subject of ancient Chinese art. Arthur Hsi grinned foolishly, and spread his hands. "But Mrs. Dowling, I don't know anything about art. I'm a businessman!"

	The next morning a newspaper did arrive over the ticker. It told of outbreaks, and their suppression, in Philadelphia, New York, Detroit, St. Louis ...

-

	Baldwin Dowling was shown into Juggins' office. The Centaurian looked much the same, except that his hair was turning prematurely gray.

	"Hello, Juggins," said Dowling. Then he sniffed. He sniffed again. There was an unmistakable smell of tobacco-smoke.

	Dowling looked accusingly at Juggins. Juggins looked back, at first blankly, then uncomfortably. "What is it?" he barked.

	Dowling grinned easily. "Don't worry, Juggins. I won't—"

	"You will kindly mind your own business!"

	"What are you sore about? I didn't say anything. And I have every intention of minding my own business. That's what I came here about." He explained about the stock exchange proposed by Hsi. He put the most favorable interpretation on it. But Juggins was not fooled.

	Juggins thoughtfully studied the ornate penholder that marred the Spartan simplicity of his office. He said: "Your plan may be sound. But if my superiors heard of it, they might take a—an excessively rigid view." Silence. "I try to be fair. Haven't I always been fair with the Philadelphians?"

	"Of course, Juggins. And it's about time we showed our gratitude, don't you think?"

	"Of course we Ccntaurians aren't swayed by material considerations."

	"Sure. Utterly incorruptible. But it would make me happy if I could show my appreciation. I'm not one of you selfless supermen, you know."

	"What had you in mind?"

	Dowling told him. Juggins took a deep breath, pursed his lips, and nodded somberly. He kept his eyes on the penholder.

	"By the way," said Dowling, "now that that's settled, there's another little favor you might do for me. I believe one of the people you captured in the recent uprising was an old classmate named Frederick Merrian."

	"What about him?"

	"What are the Centaurians' plans for disposing of the rebels?"

	"The leaders will be shot, and the others blinded. I don't think your Merrian was a leader; I'd recognize his name if he were."

	"For old times' sake, I wondered if you couldn't do something for Merrian."

	"Is he an intimate friend of yours?" Juggins looked at Dowling keenly.

	"No; I've seen him only occasionally since we finished college. He means well, but he goes off on crazy tangents."

	"I don't know what I could do. I couldn't have him turned loose."

	"You don't have to. Put in a death certificate for him. Say he died of natural causes. Then substitute for him one of the regular prisoners in the Lancaster prison farm. They're dying all the time anyway."

	"I'll see."

-

	When Dowling picked up Arthur Hsi, his grin answered the Transport Director's question before it was asked.

	"I offered him a hundred thousand, and he took it without argument."

	Hsi whistled. "I was authorized to pay ten times that much! Our Bozo doesn't know own value yet."

	"Maybe it's the first real bribe he's taken."

	"Really? Well, we don't put him wise to what he could have got, eh? He'll learn soon enough."

-

	Fred Merrian shambled into the visitors' room, looking beaten but brightened a bit at the sight of Dowling, Hsi, and Dr. Lechon.

	He sat down, then looked puzzled. "How come the guard went out? They don't do that ordinarily."

	Dowling grinned. "He's not supposed to hear what we've got to say." He explained the plan for shifting Merrian to the Lancaster farm under a new name.

	"Then—then I'm going to keep my eyes? Oh—"

	"Now, now, don't break down, Fred."

	They got the overwrought writer calmed. He said: "I still don't understand why the uprising failed. You have no idea how careful we were. We thought of everything."

	Dowling said: "Guess you just didn't have the stuff. As long as the Bozos have a large and well-armed corps of watchdogs—" He shrugged.

	"You mean it's hopeless?"

	"Uh—huh. Knowing you, Fred, I know you'll find that a hard thing to reconcile yourself to."

	"I'll never be reconciled to it. There must be something"

	"I'm afraid not."

	"I am not too sure," said Lechon. "Armed uprising, no. With the complicated weapons used nowadays, civilians can do little. It is like trying to stop a—a buzz-saw with your bare hands. But there are other possibilities."

	"What?" asked the three younger men together.

	"Read your history, gentlemen. Read your history." And that was all they could get out of him.

-

	"I'm not worrying," said Juggins. "We can trust each other." He leaned back in his chair and sucked on a cigar. He coughed a bit, and said: "Damn, I keep forgetting that one doesn't inhale these things." He had taken to the American fashion of men's earrings.

	Dowling smiled. "You mean, we'll have to."

	"You might put it that way, yes. What's the proposal this time?"

	Arthur Hsi explained: "You know the Atlantic City project Sino-American is trying to promote? Our subsidiary is all ready to set up."

	"Yes."

	"Well, first, there's a Society for Preservation of Ancient Monuments objecting. Say if we modernize Atlantic City we'll ruin it. Say Hotel Traymore has been there three hundred years and it would be sacrilege to tear it down."

	Juggins waved his cigar. "I can shoot a few of this Society. That'll shut them up."

	"Oh, no," said Hsi, shocked. "Cause all kinds of trouble. People would boycott the project."

	"Well, what do you want me to do then?"

	"If you could have some of these old ruins moved, as a government project—"

	"Hmm. That would cost money."

	"Perhaps my company could see its way to sharing the expense."

	Juggins still frowned. "My superior, the Centaurian MacWhirtle, would have to approve. I think he's suspicious of me."

	Dowling broke in: "Is MacWhirtle married?"

	"Yes, but his wife's back in Australia. Why?"

	"I just had an idea. Go on, Arthur."

	Hsi continued: "Then there's matter of financing improvement company. We thought we could have it issue some common stock, some non-cumulative preferred. Sino-American could buy most of former; public latter. You and MacWhirtle would have a chance at former also, before it was put on market."

	Juggins frowned again. "I seem to remember some rule against non-cumulative preferred. Though I never knew why."

	Hsi explained: "This wouldn't be called non-cumulative; some fancy name, but would mean same thing. You sell so much non-cumulative to public, mid hold common. Then year comes along, you tell preferred stockholders, conditions are very bad, can't pay any dividends at all, on common or preferred. Then next year you say conditions are better. You pay preferred stockholders their regular seven percent—for that year only. You pay yourself regular dividend on common, plus the common stock dividend you didn't pay previous year, plus seven percent preferred stock dividend you didn't pay previous year also. It's wonderful."

	"I see," said Juggins. "I see why there's a rule against it. But I suppose that sort of thing is necessary in modern finance."

	"Oh, absolutely," said Dowling.

	"I try to be fair," said Juggins. "Some of my fellow-Centaurians lean over backward. I think they do more harm than good."

	"Sure," said Dowling. "And do you suppose we could meet MacWhirtle? Socially, I mean."

-

	Dowling dialled his wrist-phone. "Helen? This is Baldwin ...Yep, the old political wizard himself. Doing anything next week-end? ... No, no. It's a party ... In New York ... Uh—huh, got a Bozo for you to waggle your alabaster torso at ...Yep, a very big shot indeed. It's all very discreet, understand ... No, no, I will not! I've told you I'm very well satisfied with the woman I have. Love her, in fact. This is business. Right. See you Saturday."

-

	The Centaurian MacWhirtle was n smaller and older edition of Juggins. Although his manner still retained most of the clockwork stiffness of the uncontaminated Bozo, it was evident he was under a strain of some kind.

	"Sit down!" he barked.

	Dowling sat.

	MacWhirtle leaned forward. "I understand you're —you and that Chinaman Hsi are—are willing to let me have some common stock in the Atlantic City Improvement Company below the price it'll be offered the public at."

	"Yep." Dowling grinned. "Reminds me, can my friend Osborn have his secretarial job back?"

	"Why? What do you know about Osborn?"

	"He was fired for using a preposition to end a sentence with. If we're offering the stock to the public at—"

	The Bozo purpled. "I'll do what I—why you insolent—" The sentence died in sputters, while Dowling mentally kicked himself for breaking his long-standing rule never to joke with a Bozo.

	MacWhirtle calmed himself enough to ask for more details about the stock. Dowling explained.

	MacWhirtle looked intently at his finger-nails. He said, barely audibly: "I could use force, but she'd hate me—" He realized that Dowling was listening to him, and yelled: "Get out! I won't have men spying on my private—"

	Dowling, annoyed but not discouraged, got up to leave. MacWhirtle shouted: "Sit down, you silly ass! I didn't mean it seriously. I admit I've got to have money. You said ..."

-

	Dowling walked from the hotel where he had met MacWhirtle to the Perm Station. It was after four, and the only time of day or night when New York's streets are almost deserted. MacWhirtle had shown a bargaining ability incongruous with the financial innocence expected of a true Bozo.

	On West 35th he approached a group of men. He recognized the uniform of the watchdogs. One of the national police saw him, whipped out a pistol, and fired. Dowling dived down a set of basement steps. He yelled up: "What the hell's the matter with you?"

	There were mutterings in the dark. A deep voice addressed the world at large: "The first open window gets a bullet through it. Go back to bed, all of you." Then the owner of the voice appeared, rocking a bulbous body along on huge flat feet.

	The watchdog flashed a light at Dowling's face, and said: "Glory be, if it isn't Mr. Dowling, the Philadelphia mediator! Come out, Mr. Dowling. I'm sorry one of the boys got nervous and took a shot at you. You see—some of them Bozos was look sick, and we was helping them. Naturally we didn't want nobody to see them in that condition."

	"You'd have been a hell of a lot sorrier if he'd hit me," grumbled Dowling. He followed the watchdog down to the knot. The three Bozos were sick, all right. The reek of regurgitated alcohol implied the nature of their sickness.

	One of the other watchdogs was muttering: "So these' are the supermen, who never have any fun, eh? Well, well. Well, well."

-

	Weathered granite disintegrates, but it takes time. Dowling, as he helped Arthur Hsi to spin their web, reflected that he was getting a paunch. People might refer to him as a "rising young man" still, but without unduly stressing the "young." His daughter was in high-school. He was not altogether pleased to observe that she was turning into a beauty. He'd have to keep her out of sight of the Bozos with whom he was in constant contact.

	Hsi complained: "If we cut a few more Bozos in on this space-port deal, Sino-American might just as well sell out its American holdings and go back to China."

	Dowling grinned. "We've got 'cm where we want 'em, haven't we?"

	"Oh, yes. They follow our—suggestions ---like little lambs. But—"

	Dowling's wrist-phone rang. Juggins' voice said hoarsely: "Dowling! A terrible thing has happened! MacWhirtle has just shot Solovyov!"

	"Killed him?"

	"Yes!"

	Dowling whistled. Solovyov was Administrator for all of North America. Juggins continued: "It was a quarrel over—you remember that girl, that Miss Helen Kistler, whom you introduced to MacWhirtle last year? It was a quarrel over her!"

	"What'll happen?"

	"I don't know, but Australia will come down on us.

	They'll send investigators. God knows what they won't do."

	"Well," soothed Dowling, "We'll just have to stick together. Pass the word along to the others."

-

	Australia came down on them all right. In a week the Middle Atlantic States swarmed with Bozo investigators, stiff, grim, and arrogant. The plain citizens, whose hatred for their masters had become a bit dulled with familiarity, awoke to find their newspapers plastered with drastic new decrees—to "tighten up the incredibly lax moral standards prevailing in North America." "Absolute prohibition of intoxicating liquors." "No married women shall work for pay." "No smoking in public places, the same to include public thoroughfares, hotels, restaurants ..."

	Baldwin Dowling entered Juggins' office—the Philadelphia Administrator now had a huge one with rugs in which one practically sank ankle-deep. Juggins and five other local Bozos were facing one of the investigators, a small waspish man.

	"Get over there with the others," snarled the little man, evidently mistaking Dowling for another Centaurian. The investigator continued his tirade: "And here I find you fallen into the slime of corruption and depravity! Tea! Coffee! Tobacco! Liquor! Women! Bribery! Ccntaurians, eh? Rotten, filthy, weaklings! You're coming with me now. We're taking a special plane to Australia, where you shall stand trial for enough corruption and immorality to hang a continent. Don't worry about packing; you won't need anything but a coffin. Come on!"

	He strode to the door and yanked it open. The six Bozos, looking dazed, started to file out. The frightful discipline of their childhood still told.

	Dowling caught Juggins' eye. Juggins returned his look dully. Dowling muttered: "Going to let him get away with it?"

	"What do you mean?"

	"You're bigger'n he is."

	Light slowly dawned. Juggins faced, his small tormentor. The other Bozos stopped and faced him too.

	"Well?" barked the little man. It did not seem to have occurred to him for an instant that his order might be disobeyed.

	The six moved toward him. He looked puzzled, then incredulous, then furious, then alarmed. He reached for his pocket. The Bozos rolled over him in a wave. A gun went off, once. The Bozos untangled themselves. The investigator lay with half his face shot off.

	"What now?" panted Juggins. "What'll they do when they hear of this? Where can we go? What's that?"

	"That" was the noise of an angry mob, flowing along the street outside and smashing things for no reason other than that it was angry.

	The Bozos raced downstairs, Dowling after them.

	A dozen watchdogs lounged around the entrance of the building. The mob kept clear of them, though none of them had a weapon out.

	"Why don't you shoot?" yelled one of the Bozos to the commander of the police.

	The watchdog yawned ostentatiously. "Because, Jack, we don't like not being able to smoke in public no more'n they do." And he turned his back on the Centaurian.

	That was all the encouragement the mob needed. But by the time they reached the portals, the six Bozos were not there. They had departed for the rear exit with an audible swish.

	Baldwin Dowling, prudently keeping out of the mob's way, dialled his wrist-phone. "Hey, Arthur! Juggins and his friends killed the investigator, and skipped! It looks like maybe they've cracked. I'll try to raise New York, and see if I can start a rumpus there. They're a pushover! See if you can find out what's doing in China! I've got to organize an interim government for Philly. Boy, oh boy!"

	A telephone call to New York informed Dowling that a mob had formed there—several mobs, in fact—and that the Centaurians had fled or been lynched. Their leader, the new New York Administrator, had been dead drunk, and had failed to give orders at the critical time ...

	The New York mob, like the Philadelphia mob, was not actuated by noble motives of daring all for freedom. They were rioting because they had been forbidden to smoke in public.

-

	The same four men who had met in Professor Lechon's rooms in the University of Pennsylvania dormitories, so many years ago, met there again. Fred Merrian was tanned and husky, but subdued. The treatment at the Lancaster camp had almost killed him, but ended by hardening him.

	He said: "The latest radio news is that the Second Garrison Corps is retreating through Russia."

	"Uh—huh," said Dowling. "When they pulled them out of Europe to use against us, Europe went whoosh."

	"Isn't it wonderful?" said Merrian. "It'll be a cleaner, finer world when we've gotten rid of them." He looked at his watch. "I've got to run. Everybody I ever knew wants to pinch me to see if I'm real."

	When he had gone, Tadeusz Lechon (he was quite old now) said: "I didn't want to disillusion him again. You know how he is. It won't be a cleaner, finer world. It'll be the same old world, with rascals like you two running it."

	"If we get rid of them," said Dowling. "They still hold Australia and most of southern Asia. It looks like years of war to me. And if we get rid of the Bozos, a lot of countries will be ruled by watchdogs, who won't be much improvement."

	Arthur Hsi asked: "Why did they fold up so easily? One man with machine-gun could have dispersed that mob here last month."

	Dowling said: "The Bozos didn't have the guts, and the watchdogs didn't want to. So there wasn't anybody to use the machine-gun. But it still seems goofy. Professor Lechon. Why could they beat us twenty years ago, and we beat them now, when they're at least as strong as they were then and we're very much weaker."

	Lechon smiled: "Read your history, gentlemen. The same thing happened to the Spartans, remember, when Epaminondas beat them. Why? They were a warrior race, too. Being such, they were unfitted to live among civilized people. Civilized people are always more or less corrupt. The warrior race has a rigid discipline and an inhumanly high standard of conduct. As long as they keep to themselves they are invincible. When they mix with civilized people, they are corrupted by the contact.

	"When a people that has never known a disease are exposed to it, it ravages them fearfully, because they have acquired no immunity to it. We, being slightly corrupt to begin with, have an immunity to corruption, just as if it were a bacterial disease. The Centaurians had no such protection. When exposed to temptation, from being much higher morally than we are, they fell much lower.

	"The same thing happened to them as to the Spartans. When their government called on them to go to war to preserve its rule over the earth, most of them were too busy grafting off the civilized people to obey. So the Centaurian government found itself with the most powerful military machine on earth, but only a fraction of the men needed to man it. And many of those they did call home were rotten with dissipation, or were thoroughly unreliable watchdogs whose loyalty to their masters had turned to contempt.

	"Aristotle said something on the subject a long time ago, in his Politics. If I remember the quotation rightly, it ran: 

-

'Militaristic states are apt to survive only so long as they remain at war, while they go to ruin as soon as they have finished making their conquests. Peace causes their metal to decay; and the fault lies with a social system which does not teach its soldiers what to make of their lives when they are off duty.'

-

	"All of which will not bring back the people the Centaurians killed, or give eyes back to those they blinded. Aristotle's statement, if true, is no ground for complacency. We have a grim time ahead of us yet.

	"But to a historian like me it is interesting, from a long-range point of view. And it is somewhat comforting to know that my species' faults, however deplorable, do in fact afford it a certain protection.

	"Read your history, gentlemen. The tune is always different, but the notes, as I once remarked, are always the same."

-

-

HYPERPELOSITY

	"We all know about the brilliant successes in the arts and sciences, but, if you knew all their stories, you might find that some of the failures were really interesting."

	It was Pat Weiss speaking. The beer had given out, and Carl Vandercook had gone out to get some more. Pat, having cornered all the chips in sight, was leaning back and emitting vast clouds of smoke.

	"That means," I said, "that you've got a story coming. Okay, spill it. The poker can wait."

	"Only don't stop in the middle and say 'That reminds me,' and go off on another story, and from the middle of that to another, and so on," put in Hannibal Snyder.

	Pat cocked an eye at Hannibal. "Listen, mug, I haven't digressed once in the last three stories I've told. If you can tell a story better, go to it. Ever hear of J. Roman Oliveira?" he said, not waiting, I noticed, to give Hannibal a chance to take him up. He continued:

	Carl's been talking a lot about that new gadget of his, and no doubt it will make him famous if he ever finishes it. And Carl usually finishes what he sets out to do. My friend Oliveira finished what he set out to do, also, and it should have made him famous, but it didn't. Scientifically his work was a success, and deserving of the highest praise, but humanly it was a failure. That's why he's now running a little college down in Texas. He still does good work, and gets articles in the journals, but it's not what he had every reason to suspect that he deserved. Just got a letter from him the other day—it seems he's now a proud grandfather. That reminds me of my grandfather—"

	"Hey!" roared Hannibal. Pat said "Huh? Oh, I see. Sorry. I won't do it again." He went on:

	I first knew J. Roman when I was a mere student at the Medical Center and he was a professor of virology. The J in his name stands for Haysoos, spelled J-c-s-u-s, which is a perfectly good Mexican name. But he'd been so much kidded about it in the States that he preferred to go by "Roman."

	You remember that the Great Change, which is what this story has to do with, started in the winter of 1971, with that awful flu epidemic. Oliveira came down with it. I went around to see him to get an assignment, and found him perched on a pile of pillows and wearing the godawfullest pink and green pajamas. His wife was reading to him in Spanish.

	"Leesten, Pat." he said when I came in, "I know you're a worthy esstudent, but I weesh you and the whole damn virology class were roasting on the hottest greedle in Hell. Tell me what you want, and then go away and let me die in peace."

	I got my information, and was just going, when his doctor came in—old Fogarty, who used to lecture on sinuses. He'd given up general practice long before, but he was so scared of losing a good virologist that he was handling Oliveira's case himself.

	"Stick around, sonny," he said to me when I started to follow Mrs. Oliveira out, "and learn a little practical medicine. I've always thought it a mistake that we haven't a class to train doctors in bedside manners. Now observe how I do it. I smile at Oliveira here, but I don't act so damned cheerful that he'd find death a welcome relief from my company. That's a mistake some young doctors make. Notice that I walk up briskly, and not as if I were afraid my patient was liable to fall in pieces at the slightest jar ..." and so on.

	The fun came when he put the end of his stethoscope on Oliveira's chest.

	"Can't hear a damn' thing," he snorted. "Or rather, you've got so much hair that all I can hear is the ends of it scraping on the diaphragm. May have to shave it. But say, isn't that rather unusual for a Mexican?"

	"You're jolly well right she ees," retorted the sufferer. "Like most natives of my beautiful Mejico, I am of mostly Eendian descent, and Eendians are of Mongoloid race, and so have little body hair. It's all come out in the last week."

	"That's funny ..." Fogarty said. I spoke up: "Say, Dr. Fogarty, it's more than that I had my flu a month ago, and the same thing's been happening to me. I've always felt like a sissy because of not having any hair on my torso to speak of, and now I've got a crop that's almost long enough to braid. I didn't think anything special about it ..."

	I don't remember what was said next, because we all talked at once. But when we got calmed down there didn't seem to be anything we could do without some systematic investigation, and I promised Fogarty to come around to his place so he could look me over.

	I did, the next day, but he didn't find anything except a lot of hair. He took samples of everything he could think of, of course. I'd given up wearing underwear because it itched, and anyway the hair was warm enough to make it unnecessary, even in a New York January.

	The next thing I heard was a week later, when Oliveira returned to his classes, and told me that Fogarty had caught the flu. Oliveira had been making observations on the old boy's thorax, and found that he, too, had begun to grow body hair at an unprecedented rate.

	Then my girl friend—not the present missus; I hadn't met her yet—overcame her embarrassment enough to ask me whether I could explain how it was that she was getting hairy. I could see that the poor girl was pretty badly cut up about it. because obviously her chances of catching a good man would be reduced by her growing a pelt like a bear or a gorilla. I wasn't able to enlighten her, but told her that, if it was any comfort, a lot of other people were suffering from the same thing.

	Then we heard that Fogarty had died. He was a good egg and we were sorry, but he'd led a pretty full life, and you couldn't say that he was cut off in his prime.

	Oliveira called me to his office. "Pat," he said, "You were looking for a chob last fall, ees it not? Well, I need an asseestant. We're going to find out about this hair beesiness. Are you on?" I was.

	We started by examining all the clinical cases. Everybody who had, or had had, the flu was growing hair. And it was a severe winter, and it looked as though everybody were going to have the flu sooner or later.

	Just about that time I had a bright idea. I looked up all the cosmetic companies that made depilatories, and soaked what little money I had into their stock. I was sorry later, but I'll come to that.

	Roman Oliveira was a glutton for work, and with the hours he made me keep I began to have uneasy visions of flunking out. But the fact that my girl friend had become so self-conscious about her hair that she wouldn't go out any more saved me some time.

	We worked and worked over our guinea-pigs and rats, but didn't get anywhere. Oliveira got a bunch of hairless Chihuahua dogs and tried assorted gunks on them, but nothing happened. He even got a pair of East African sand rats—Heterocephalus—hideous-looking things—but that was a blank, too.

	Then the business got into the papers. I noticed a little article in the New York Times, on an inside page. A week later there was a full-column story on page 1 of the second part. Then it was on the front page. It was mostly "Dr. So-and-so says he thinks this nationwide attack of hyperpelosity" (swell word, huh? Wish I could remember the name of the doc who invented it) "is due to this, that, or the other thing."

	Our usual February dance had to be called off because almost none of the students could get their girls to go. Attendance at the movie houses had fallen off pretty badly for much the same reason. It was a cinch to get a good scat, even if you arrived around 8:00 P.M. I noticed one funny little item in the paper, to the effect that the filming of "Tarzan and the Octopus-Men" had been called off because the actors were supposed to go running around in G-Strings, and the company found they had to clip and shave the whole cast all over every few days if they didn't want their fur to show.

	It was fun to ride on a bus about ten and watch the people, who were pretty well bundled up. Most of them scratched, and those who were too well-bred to scratch just squirmed and looked unhappy.

	Next I read that applications for marriage licenses had fallen off so that three clerks were able to handle the entire business for Greater New York, including Yonkers, which had just been incorporated into the Bronx.

	I was gratified to see that my cosmetic stocks were going up nicely. I tried to get my roommate, Bert Kafket, to get in on them too. But he just smiled mysteriously, and said he had other plans. Bert was a kind of professional pessimist. "Pat," he said. "Maybe you and Oliveira will lick this business, and maybe not. I'm betting that you won't. If I win, the stocks that I've bought will be doing famously long after your depilatories are forgotten."

	As you know, people were pretty excited about the plague. But when the weather began to get warm the fun really started. First the four big underwear companies ceased operations, one after another. Two of them were placed in receivership, another liquidated completely, and the fourth was able to pull through by switching to the manufacture of table-cloths and American flags. The bottom dropped entirely out of the cotton market, as this alleged hair-growing flu had spread all over the world by now. Congress had been planning to go home early, and was, as usual, being urged to do so by the conservative newspapers. But now Washington was jammed with cotton-planters demanding that the Government do something, and they didn't dare. The Government was willing enough to Do Something, but unfortunately didn't have the foggiest idea of how to go about it.

	All "this time Oliveira, more or less assisted by me, was working night and day on the problem, but we didn't seem to have any better luck than the Government.

	You couldn't hear anything on the radio in the building where I lived, because of the interference from the big, powerful electric clippers that everybody had installed and kept going all the time.

	It's an ill wind, as the prophet saith, and Bert Kafket got some good out of it. His girl, whom he had been pursuing for some years, had been making a good salary as a model at Josephine Lyon's exclusive dress establishment on Fifth Avenue, and she had been leading Bert a dance. But now all of a sudden the Lyon place folded up, as nobody seemed to be buying any clothes, and the girl was only too glad to take Bert as her lawful wedded husband. Not much hair was grown on the women's faces, fortunately for them, or God knows what would have become of the race. Bert and I flipped a coin to see which of us should move, and I won.

	Congress finally passed a bill setting up a reward of a million dollars for whomever should find a permanent cure for hyperpelosity, and then adjourned, having, as usual, left a flock of important bills not acted upon.

	When the weather became really hot in June, all the men quit wearing shirts, as their pelts covered them quite as effectively. The police force kicked so about having to wear their regular uniforms, that they were allowed to go around in dark blue polo shirts and shorts. But pretty soon they were rolling up their shirts and sucking them in the pockets of their shorts. It wasn't long before the rest of the male population of the United States was doing likewise. In growing hair the human race hadn't lost any of its capacity to sweat, and you'd pass out with the heat if you tried to walk anywhere on a hot day with any amount of clothes on. I can still remember holding on to a hydrant at Third Avenue and 60th Street and trying not to faint, with the sweat pouring out the ankles of my pants and the buildings going 'round and 'round. After that I was sensible and stripped down to shorts like everyone else.

	In July Natasha, the gorilla in the Bronx Zoo, escaped from her cage and wandered around the park for hours before anyone noticed her. The zoo visitors all thought she was merely an unusually ugly member of their own species.

	If the hair played hob with the textile and clothing businesses generally, the market for silk simply disappeared. Stockings were just quaint things that our ancestors had worn, like cocked hats and periwigs.

	Neither Oliveira nor I took any vacation that summer, as we were working like fury on the hair problem. Roman promised me a cut of the reward when and if he won it.

	But we didn't get anywhere at all during the summer. When classes started we had to slow down a bit on the research, as I was in my last year, and Oliveira had to teach. But we kept at it as best we could.

	It was funny to read the editorials in the papers. The Chicago Tribune even suspected a Red Plot. You can imagine the time that the cartoonists for the New Yorker and Esquire had.

	With the drop in the price of cotton, the South was really flat on its back this time. I remember when the Harwick bill was introduced in Congress, to require every citizen over the age of five to be clipped at least once a week. A bunch of Southerners were back of it, of course. When that was defeated, largely on the argument of unconstitutionality, the you-alls put forward one requiring every person to be clipped before he'd be allowed to cross a state line. The theory was that human hair is a commodity, which it is sometimes, and that crossing a state line with a coat of the stuff, whether your own or someone else's, constituted interstate commerce, and brought you under control of the Federal Government. It looked for a while as though it would pass, but the Southerners finally accepted a substitute bill requiring all Federal employees, and cadets at the military and naval academics to be clipped.

	About this time—in the autumn of 1971—the cotton and textile interest got out a big advertising campaign to promote clipping. They had slogans, such as "Don't, be a Hairy Ape!" and pictures of a couple of male swimmers, one with hair and the other without, and a pretty girl turning in disgust from the hirsute swimmer and fairly pouncing on the clipped one.

	I don't know how much good their campaign would have done, but they overplayed their hand. They, and all die clothing outfits, tried to insist on boiled shirts, not only for evening wear, but for daytime as well. I never thought a long-suffering people would really revolt against the tyrant Style, but we did. The thing that really tore it was the inauguration of President Passavant. There was an unusually warm January thaw that year, and the President, the V. P., and all the Justices of the Supreme Court appeared without a stitch on above the waist and damn little below.

	We became a nation of confirmed near-nudists, just as did everybody else sooner or later. The one drawback to real nudism was the fact that, unlike the marsupials, man hasn't any natural pockets. So we compromised between the hair, and the need for something to hold fountain-pens, money, and so forth, and our traditional ideas of modesty by adopting an up-to-date version of the Scottish sporran.

	The winter was a bad one for flu, and everybody who hadn't caught it the preceding winter got it now, so soon a hairless person became such a rarity that one wondered if the poor fellow had the mange.

	In May of 1972 we finally began to get somewhere. Oliveira had the bright idea—which both of us ought to have thought of sooner—of examining ectogenic babies. Up to now nobody had noticed that they began to develop hair a little later than babies born the normal way. You remember that human ectogenesis was just beginning to be worked about then; test-tube babies aren't yet practical for large-scale production by a long shot, but we'll get there some day.

	Well, Oliveira found that if the cctogens were subjected to a really rigid quarantine, they never developed hair at all, at least not in more than the normal quantities. By really rigid quarantine, I mean that the air they breathed was heated to 800 degrees C, and then liquefied, and run through a battery of cyclones, and washed with a dozen disinfectants. Their food was treated in a comparable manner. I don't quite see how the poor little fellows survived such unholy sanitation, but they did, and didn't grow hair—-until they were brought in contact with other human beings, or were injected with sera from the blood of hairy babies.

	Oliveira figured out that the cause of the hyperpelosity was what he'd suspected all along: another of these damned self-perpetuating protein molecules. As you know, you can't see a protein molecule, and you can't do much with it chemically because, if you do, it forthwith ceases to be a protein molecule. We have their structure worked out pretty well now, but it's been a slow process with lots of inferences from inadequate data; sometimes the inferences were right and sometimes they weren't.

	But to do much in the way of detailed analysis of the things you need a respectable quantity of them, and these that we were after didn't exist in even a disrespectable amount. Then Oliveira worked out his method of counting them. The reputation he made from that method is about the only permanent thing he got out of all this work.

	When we applied the method, we found something decidedly screwy—and ectogen's virus count after catching hyperpel was the same as it had been before. This didn't seem right: we knew that he had been injected with hyperpel molecules, and had come out with a fine mattress as a result.

	Then one morning I found Oliveira at his desk looking like a medieval monk who had just seen a vision after a forty-days' fast. (Incidentally, you try fasting that long and you'll see visions too, lots of 'em.) He said, "Pat, don't buy a yacht with your share of that meelion. They cost too much to upkeep."

	"Huh?" was the brightest remark I could think of.

	"Look here," he said, going up to the blackboard. It was covered with chalk diagrams of protein molecules. "We have three proteins, alpha, beta, and gamma. No alphas have execsted for thousands of years. Now, you will note that the only deefference between the alpha and the beta is that these nitrogens—" he pointed "—are hooked onto thees chain instead of that one. You will also observe, from the energy relations wreeten down here, that, if one beta is eentroduced eento a set of alphas, all the alphas will presently turn into betas.

	"Now, we know now that all sorts of protein molecules are being assembled inside us all the time; most of them are unstable and break up again, or are inert and harmless, or lack the power of self-reproduction—anyway, nothing happens because of them. But, because they are so beeg and complicated, the possible forms they take are very many, and it is possible that once in a long time some new kind of protein appears with self-reproducing qualities; in other words, a virus. Probably that's how the various disease viruses got started, all because something choggled an ordinary protein molecule that was chust being feenished and got the nitrogens hooked on the wrong chains.

	"My idea is thees: The alpha protein, which I have reconstructed from what we know about its descendants beta and gamma, once excested as a harmless and inert protein molecule in the human body. Then one day somebody heecupped as one of them was being formed, and presto! We have a beta. But the beta is not harmless: It reproduces itself fast, and it inheebits the growth of hair on most of our bodies. So presently all our species, wheech at the time was pretty apish, catch this virus, and lose their hair. Moreover, it is one of the viruses that is transmeeted to the embryo, so the new babies don't have hair, either.

	"Well, our ancestors sheever a while, and then learn to cover themselves with animal skeens to keep warm, and also to keep fire. And so, the march of ceevilizations it is commence! Chust theenk—except for that one original beta protein molecule, we should probably today all be merely a kind of goreela or cheempanzee—anyway, an ordinary anthropoid ape.

	"Now, I feegure that what has happened is that another change in the form of the molecule has taken place, changing it from beta to gamma—and gamma is a harmless and inert leetle fellow, like alpha. So we are back where we started.

	"Our problem, yours and mine, is to find how to turn the gammas with wheech we are all swarming back into betas. In other words, now that we have become all of a sudden cured of the disease that was endemic in the whole race for thousands of years, we want our disease back again. And I theenk I see how it can be done."

	I couldn't get much more out of him; he went to work harder than ever. After several weeks he announced that he was ready to experiment on himself; his method consisted of a combination of a number of drugs—one of them was the standard cure for glanders in horses, as I recall—and a high-frequency electromagnetic fever.

	I wasn't very keen about it, because I'd gotten to like the fellow, and that awful dose he was going to give himself looked enough to kill a regiment. But he went right ahead.

	Well, it nearly did kill him. But after three days he was more or less back to normal, and was whooping at the discovery that the hair on his limbs and body was rapidly falling out. In a couple of weeks he had no more hair than you'd expect a Mexican professor of virology to have.

	But then our real surprise came, and it wasn't a pleasant one!

	We expected to be more or less swamped by publicity, and had made our preparations accordingly. I remember staring into Oliveira's face for a full minute and then reassuring him that he had trimmed his mustache to exact symmetry, and getting him to straighten my new necktie.

	Our epoch-making announcement dug up two personal calls from bored reporters, a couple of 'phone interviews from science editors, and not one photographer! We did make the science section of the New York Times, but with only about twelve lines of type—the paper merely stated that Professor Oliveira and his assistant—not named —had found the cause and cure of hyperpelosity; not a word about the possible effects of the discovery.

	Our contracts with the Medical Center prohibited us from exploiting our discovery commercially, but we expected that plenty of other people would be quick to do so as soon as the method was made public. But it didn't happen. In fact, we might have discovered a correlation between temperature and the pitch of the bullfrog's croak for all the splash we made.

	A week later Oliveira and I talked to the department head, Wheelock, about the discovery. Oliveira wanted him to use his influence to get a dehairing clinic set up. But Wheelock couldn't see it.

	"We've had a couple of inquiries," he admitted, "but nothing to get excited about. Remember the rush there was when Zimmerman's cancer-treatment came out? Well, there's been nothing like that. In fact, I—ah—doubt whether I personally should care to undergo your treatment, sure-fire though it may be, Doctor Oliveira. I'm not in the least disparaging the remarkable piece of work you've done. But—ah—" here he ran his fingers through the hair on his chest, which was over six inches long, thick, and a beautiful silky white—"You know, I've gotten rather fond of the old pelt, and I'd feel slightly indecent back in my bare skin. Also, it's a lot more economical than a suit of clothes. And—ah—if I may say i with due modesty—I don't think it's bad-looking. My family has always ridden me about my sloppy clothes, but now the laugh's on them; not one of them can show a coat of fur like mine!"

	Oliveira and I left sagging in the breeches a bit. We inquired of people we knew, and wrote letters to a number of them, asking what they thought of die idea of undergoing the Oliveira treatment. A few said they might if enough others did, but most of them responded in much the same vein that Doc Wheelock had; they'd gotten used to their hair, and saw no good reason for going back to their former glabrous state.

	"So, Pat," said Oliveira to me, "it hikes as though we don't get much fame out of our discovery. But we may steel salvage a leetle fortune. You remember that meelion-dollar reward? I sent in my application as soon as I recovered from my treatment and we should hear from the government any day."

	We did. I was up at his apartment, and we were talking bout nothing in particular, when Mrs. O. rushed in with the letter, squeaking, "Abre la! Open eet, Roman!"

	He opened it without hurry, spread the sheet of paper out, and read it. Then he frowned and read it again. Then he laid it down, very carefully took out and lit the wrong end of a cork-tipped cigarette, and said in his levellest voice, "I have been stupid again, Pat. I never thought that there might be a time-leemit on that reward offer. Now it seems that some crafty sarmmabiche in Congress poot one een, so that the offer expired on May first. You remember, I mailed the claim on the nineteenth, and they got it on the twenty-first, three weeks too late!"

	I looked at Oliveira, and he looked at me and then at his wife, and she looked at him and then went without a word to the cabinet and got out two large bottles of tequilla and three tumblers.

	Oliveira pulled up three chairs around a little table, and settled with a sigh in one of them. "Pat," he said, "I may not have a meelion dollars, but I have something more valuable by far—a woman who knows what is needed at a time like thees!"

	And that's the inside story of the Great Change, or at least of one aspect thereof. That's how it happens that, when we today speak of a platinum-blonde movie-star, we aren't referring to her scalp-hair alone, but the beautiful silvery pelt that covers her from crown to ankle.

	There was just one more incident. Bert Kafket had me up to his place to dinner a few nights later. After I had told him and his wife about Oliveira's and my troubles, he asked how I had made out on that depilatory-manufacturer stock I'd bought. "I notice those stocks are back about where they started from before the Change," he added.

	"Didn't make anything to speak of," I told him. "About the time they started to slide down from their peak, I was too busy working for Roman to pay much attention to them. When I finally did look them up I was just able to unload with a few cents' profit per share. How did you do on those stocks you were so mysterious about last year?"

	"Maybe you noticed my new car as you came in?" asked Bert with a grin. "That's them. Or rather, it; there was only one, Jones and Galloway Company."

	"What do Jones and Galloway make? I never heard of them."

	"They make—" here Bert's grin looked as if it were going to run around his head and meet behind —"Currycombs!"

	And that was that. Here's Carl with the beer now. It's your deal, isn't it, Hannibal?

-

-

THE MERMAN

	A Jove nods occasionally, so Vernon Brock forgot to wind his alarm-clock, and as a result arrived at his office with the slightly giddy feeling that comes of having had no breakfast but a hasty cup of coffee.

	He glanced at the apparatus that filled half the scant space in the room, thought, you'll be famous yet if this works, my lad, and sat down at his desk. He thought, being an assistant aquarist isn't such a bad job. Of course there's never enough money or enough room or enough time, but that's probably the case in most lines of work. And the office was really quiet. The chatter and shuffle of the visitors to the New York City Aquarium never penetrated; the only sounds were those of running water, the hum of the pumpmotors, and the faint ticking of typewriters. And he did love the work. The only thing that he possibly loved better than his fish was Miss Engholm, and for strategic reasons he wasn't telling anybody-—least of all the lady—yet.

	Then, nothing could have been sweeter than his interview with the boss yesterday. Clyde Sugden had said he was going to retire soon and that he was using his influence to have Brock advanced to his place. Brock had protested without much conviction that, after all, Hempl had been there longer than he, and so ought to have the job.

	"No," the head aquarist had said. "The feeling docs you credit, Vernon, but Hempl wouldn't do. He's a good subordinate, but has no more initiative than a lamelli-branch. And he'd never sit up all night nursing a sick octopus the way you would." And so forth. Well, Brock hoped he really was that good, and that he wouldn't get a swelled head. But, knowing the rarity of direct praise from superiors, he was determined to enjoy that experience to the utmost.

	He glanced at his calendar-pad. "Labelling": that meant that the labels on the tanks were out of date again. With the constant death of specimens and acquisition of new ones that characterizes aquaria, this condition was chronic. He'd do some label-shifting this evening. "Alligator": a man had 'phoned and said that he was coming in to present one to the institution. Brock knew what that meant. Some fatheaded tourist had bought a baby 'gator in Florida without the faintest notion of how to keep it properly, and now he would be dumping the skinny little wretch on the Aquarium before it died of starvation and the effects of well-meant ignorance. It happened all the time. "Legislature": what the Devil? Oh, yes, he was going to write to the Florida state legislature in support of a bill to prohibit the export of live alligators by more fatheaded tourists, while there were still some of the unfortunate reptiles left alive in the state.

	Then the mail. Somebody wanted to know why her guppies developed white spots and died. Somebody wanted to know what kind of water plants to keep in a home aquarium, and the name of a reliable seller of such plants in Pocatello, Idaho. Somebody wanted to know how to tell a male from a female lobster. Somebody ... this was in nearly illegible longhand, at which Brock cursed with mild irritation—"Dear Mr. Brock: I heard your lecture last June 18th inst., on how we are dissended from fish. Now you made a pretty good speech but I think if you will excuse my frankness that you are all wrong. I got a theory that the fish is really dissended from us ..."

	He picked up the telephone and said, "Please send in Miss Engholm." She came in; they said "Good morning" formally, and he dictated letters for an hour. Then he said without changing his tone, "How about dinner tonight?" (Somebody might come in, and he had a mild phobia about letting the office force in on his private affairs.)

	"Fine," said the girl. "The usual place?"

	"Okay. Only I'll be late; labelling, you know ..." He thought, foolish man, how surprised she'd be when he asked her to marry him. That would be after his promotion.

	He decided to put in a couple of hours on his research before lunch. He tied on his old rubber apron and soon had the bunsen burners going merrily. Motions were perforce acrobatic in the confined space. But he had to put up with that until the famous extension was finished. Then in a couple of years they'd be as cramped as ever again.

	Sugden stuck his white thatch in the door. "May we come in?" He introduced a man as Dr. Dumville of the Cornell Medical Center. Brock knew the physiologist by reputation, and was only too glad to explain his work.

	"You're of course familiar, Doctor," he said, "with the difference between lung-tissue and gill-tissue. For one thing, gill-tissue has no mucus-secreting cells to keep the surfaces moist out of water. Hence the gills dry and harden, and no longer pass oxygen one way and carbon dioxide the other as they should. But the gills of many aquatic-organisms can be made to function out of water by keeping them moist artificially. Some of these forms regularly come out of water for considerable periods, like the fiddler-crab and the mud-skipper, for instance. They're all right as long as they can go back and moisten their gills occasionally.

	"But in no case can a lung be used as a gill, to extract oxygen dissolved in water, instead of absorbing it from the air. I've been studying the reasons for this for some years; they're partly mechanical—the difficulty of getting anything as dense as water in and out of the spongy lung-structure fast enough—and partly a matter of the different osmotic properties of the breather-cells which are each adapted to operate on oxygen of a given concentration dispersed in a medium of given density.

	"I've found, however, that the breather-cells of lung-tissue can be made to react to certain stimuli so as to assume the osmotic properties of gill-tissue. It consists mainly of a mixture of halogen-bearing organic compounds. A good dose of the vapor of that stuff in the lungs of one of the young alligators in this tank should enable him to breathe under water, if my theory is correct."

	"I'd suggest one thing," said Dumville, who had been giving polite but interested "uh—huh's," "which is that when you hold your alligator under water, his glottal muscles will automatically contract, sealing off his lungs to keep out the water, and he'll suffocate."

	"I've thought of that, and I'll paralyze the nerves controlling those muscles first, so he'll have to breathe water whether he wants to or not."

	"That's the idea. Say, I want to be in on this. When are you going to try out your first alligator?"

	They talked until Sugden began clearing his throat meaningfully. He said, "There's a lot more to see, Dr. Dumville. You've got to take a look at our new extension. We certainly sweat blood getting the city to put up the money for it." He got Dumville out, and Brock could hear his voice dying away: "... it'll be mostly for new pumping and filtering machinery; we haven't half the space we need now. There'll be two tanks big enough for the smaller cetacea, and we'll finally have some direct sunlight. You can't keep most of the amphibia without it. We had to take half the damned old building apart to do it ..." Brock smiled. The extension was Sugden's monument, and the old boy would never retire until it was officially opened.

	Brock turned back to his apparatus. He had just begun to concentrate on it when Sam Baritz stuck his gargoyle's face in. "Say, Vuinon, where ya gonna put the bichir? It gets in tomorrow."

	"Mmm—clear the filefish out of 43, and we'll make up a batch of Nile water this afternoon for it. It's too valuable to risk with other species until we know more about it. And—oh, Hell, put the filefish in a reserve tank for the present."

	That means another new label, he thought as he turned back to his chemicals. What would be a good wording? "Esteemed as food ..." Yes. "Closely related to fossil forms?" Too indefinite. "Related to fossil forms from which most modern fish and all the higher vertebrates are descended." More like it. Maybe he could work in the words "living fossil" somehow ...

	In his abstraction he hadn't noticed that the flask into which the oily liquid was dripping had been nudged too close to the edge of the table. The slam of a dropped plank from the extension where construction was still going on, made him start nervously, and the flask came loose and smashed on the floor. Brock yelped with dismay and anger. Three weeks' work was spread over the floor. He took his morning paper apart and swept up glass and solution. As he knelt over the wreckage, the fumes made his eyes water. In his annoyance it never occurred to him that a man's lungs aren't so different from an alligator's.

	He answered the telephone. It was Halperin, the goldfish man. "I'm making a little trip down south; do you guys want me to pick up some bowfin or gar?" Brock said he'd have to ask Sugden and would call back. "Well, don't take too long, Vuinon, I'm leaving this afternoon. Be seein' ya."

	Brock set out on the long semicircular catwalk over the ground-floor tanks that led around to the rear of the building and the entrance to the extension. As an old aquarium man he walked without faltering; he could imagine Dumville's cautious progress, clutching pipes and the edges of reserve tanks while glancing fearfully into the waters below.

	Brock's lungs ached queerly. Must have gotten a whiff of that gunk of mine, he thought; that was a fool thing to do. But there couldn't have been enough to do any real harm. He kept on. The ache got worse; there was a strange suffocating sensation. This is serious, he thought. I'd better see a doctor after I deliver Halperin's message to Sugden. He kept on.

	His lungs seemed to be on fire. Hurry—hurry—Dumville's an M.D.; maybe he could fix me up. Brock couldn't breathe. He wanted water—not, oddly, in his throat, but in his lungs. The cool depths of the big tank and the end of the semicircle were below him. This tank held the sharks; the other big tank, for groupers and other giants of the bass tribe, was across from it.

	His lungs burned agonizingly. He tried to call out, but only made a faint croaking noise. The tangle of pipes seemed to whirl around him. The sound of running water became a roar. He swayed, missed a snatch at the nearest reserve tank, and pitched into the shark tank.

	There was water in his eyes, in his ears, everywhere. The burning in his lungs was lessening, and in place of it came a cold feeling throughout his chest. The bottom came up and bumped him softly. He righted himself. That was wrong; he should have floated. Then the reason came to him; his lungs were full of water, so that his specific gravity was one point something. He wondered for a confused minute if he was already drowned. He didn't feel drowned, only very wet and very cold inside. In any event he'd better get out of here quickly. He kicked himself to the surface, reached up and grabbed the catwalk, and tried to blow the water out of his lungs. It came, slowly, squirting out of his mouth and nostrils. He tried inhaling some air. He thought he was getting somewhere when the burning sensation returned. In spite of himself he ducked and inhaled water. Then he felt all right.

	Everything seemed topsy-turvy. Then he remembered the liquid he'd prepared for the alligator; it must have worked on him! His lungs were functioning as gills. He couldn't quite believe it yet. Experimenting on an alligator is one thing; turning yourself into a fish is another—comic-section stuff. But there it was. If he'd been going to drown he'd have done so by now. He tried a few experimental breaths under water. It was amazingly hard work. You put on the pressure, and your lungs slowly contracted, like a pneumatic tire with a leak. In half a minute or so you were ready to inhale again. The reason was the density of water compared with that of air, of course. But it seemed to work. He released the catwalk and sank to the bottom again. He looked around him. The tank seemed smaller than it should be; that was the effect of the index of refraction of water, no doubt. He walked toward one side, which seemed to recede as he approached it. A fat nurse-shark lying on the bottom waved its tail and slid forward out of his way.

	The other two nurse-sharks were lying indifferently on the bottom across the tank. These brutes were sluggish and utterly harmless. The two sand-sharks, the four-footer and the five-footer, had ceased their interminable cruising and had backed into far corners. Their mouths opened and closed slowly, showing their formidable teeth. Their little yellow eyes seemed to say to Brock, "Don't start anything you can't finish, buddy." Brock had no intention of starting anything. He'd had a healthy respect for the species since one of them had bitten him in the gluteus maximus while he was hauling it into a boat.

	He looked up. It was like looking up at a wrinkled mirror, with a large circular hole in it directly over his head. Through the hole he could see the reserve tanks, the pipes—everything that he could have seen by sticking his head out of water. But the view was distorted and compressed around the edges, like a photograph taken with a wide-angle lens. One of the aquarium's cats peered down inscrutably at him from the catwalk. Beyond the circle on all sides the water-surface was a mirror that rippled and shivered. Over the two sand-sharks were their reflections upside down.

	He turned his attention to the glass front of the tank. That reflected things too, as the lamps suspended over the water made the inside brighter than the outside. By putting his head close to the glass he could see the Aquarium's interior concourse. Only he couldn't see much of it for the crowd in front of the tank. They were staring at him; in the dim light they seemed all eyeballs. Now and then their heads moved and their mouths moved, but Brock got only a faint buzz.

	This was all very interesting, Brock thought, but what was he to do? He couldn't stay in the tank indefinitely. For one thing, the coldness in his chest was uncomfortable. And God only knew what terrible physiological effect the gas might have had on him. And this breathing water was hard work, complicated by the fact that unless watched carefully his glottis would snap shut, stopping his breath altogether. It was like learning to keep your eyes open under water. He was fortunate in having fallen into a tank of salt water; fresh water is definitely injurious to lung-tissue, and so it might have been even to the modified tissue in his lungs.

	He sat down crossleggcd on the bottom. Behind him the larger sand-shark had resumed its shuttling, keeping well away from him and halting suspiciously every time he moved. Two remoras, attached to the shark by the sucking-disks on top of their heads, trailed limply from it. There were six of these original hitch-hikers in the tank. He peered at the glass front. He took off his glasses experimentally, and found that he could see better without them—a consequence of the different optical properties of water and air. Most of the Aquarium's visitors were now crowded in front of that tank, to watch a youngish man in a black rubber apron, a striped shirt, and the pants of a gray flannel suit sit on the bottom of a tank full of sharks and wonder how in Hell he was going to get out of this predicament.

	Overhead, there was no sign of anybody. Evidently nobody had heard him fall in. But soon one of the small staff would notice the crowd in front of the tank and investigate. Meanwhile he'd better see just what he could do in this bizarre environment. He tried to speak. But his vocal cords, tuned to operate in a negligibly dense medium, refused to flutter fast enough to emit an audible sound. Well, maybe he could come to the surface long enough to speak and duck under again. He rose to the top and tried it. But he had trouble getting his watersoaked breathing and speaking apparatus dry enough to use for this purpose. All he produced were gurgling noises. And while the air no longer burned his lungs on immediate contact, keeping his head out soon gave him a dizzy, suffocating feeling. He finally gave up and sank to the bottom again.

	He shivered with the cold, although the water was at 65° Fahrenheit. He'd better move around to warm up. The apron hampered him, and he tried to untie the knot in back. But the water had swollen the cords so that the knot wouldn't budge. He finally wriggled out of it, rolled it up, stuck his arm out of water, and tossed the apron onto the catwalk.  He thought of removing his shoes too, but remembered the sand-shark's teeth.

	Then he did a bit of leisurely swimming, round and round like the sand-sharks. They also went round and round, trying to keep the width of the tank between him and them. The motion warmed him, but he tired surprisingly soon. Evidently the rapid metabolism of a mammal took about all the oxygen that his improvised gills could supply, and they wouldn't carry much overload. He reduced his swimming to an imitation of a seal's, legs trailing and hands flapping at his sides. The crowd, as he passed the front of the tank, was thicker than ever. A little man with a nose that swerved to starboard watched him with peculiar intentness.

	A jarring sound came through the water, and presently figures, grotesquely shortened, appeared at the edge of the circle of transparency overhead. They grew rapidly taller, and he recognized Sugden, Dumville, Sam Baritz, and a couple of other members of the staff. They clustered on the catwalk, and their excited voices came to him muffled but intelligible. They knew what had happened to him, all right. He tried by sign-language to explain his predicament. They evidently thought he was in a convulsion, for Sugden barked, "Get him out!" Baritz's thick forearm shot down into the water to seize his wrist. But he wrenched loose before they had him clear of the surface, and dove for the bottom.

	"Acts like he don't wanna come out," said Baritz rubbing a kicked shin.

	Sugden leaned over. "Can you hear me?" he shouted. Brock nodded vigorously.

	"Can you speak to us?" Brock shook his head.

	"Did you do this to yourself on purpose?" A violent shake.

	"Accident?" Brock nodded.

	"Do you want to get out?" Brock nodded and shook his head alternately.

	Sugden frowned in perplexity. Then he said, "Do you mean you'd like to but can't because of your condition?" Brock nodded.

	Sugden continued his questions. Brock, growing impatient at this feeble method of communication, made writing motions. Sugden handed down a pencil and a pocket notebook. But the water immediately softened the paper so that the pencil, instead of making marks, tore holes in it. Brock handed them back.

	Sugden said; "What he needs is a wax tablet and stylus. Could you get us one, Sam?"

	Baritz looked uncomfortable. "Cheez, Boss, what place in N'yawk sells those things?"

	"That's right; I suppose we'll have to make it ourselves. If we could melt a candle onto a piece of plywood—"

	"It'll take all day fa me to get the candle and stuff and do that, and we gotta do something about poor Vuinon ..."

	Brock noticed that the entire staff was now lined up on the catwalk. His beloved was well down the line, almost out of sight around the curve. At that angle the refraction made her look as broad as she was tall. He wondered if she'd look like that naturally after they'd been married a while. He'd known it to happen. No, he meant if they got married. You couldn't expect a girl to marry a man who lived under water.

	While Sugden and Baritz still bickered, he had an idea. But how to communicate it? Then he saw a remora lying below him. He splashed to attract the attention of those above, and sank down slowly. He grabbed the fish in both hands, and kicked himself over to the glass. The remora's nose—or, to be exact, its undershot lower jaw—made a visible streak on the pane. He rolled over on his back, and saw that he was understood; Sugden was calling for someone to go down to the floor and read his message.

	His attempt at writing was hampered by the fish's vigorous efforts to escape. But he finally got scrawled on the glass in large wobbly capitals: "2 WEIGHTED STEPLADDERS—1 WEIGHTED PLANK—1 DRY TOWEL."

	While they were getting these, he was reminded by his stomach that he'd had no solid food for eighteen hours or thereabouts. He glanced at his wristwatch, which, not being a waterproof, had stopped. He handed it up, hoping that somebody would have the sense to dry it out and take it to a jeweller.

	The stepladders were lowered into the tank. Brock set them a few feet apart, and placed the plank across their tops. Then he lay on his back on the plank, his face a few inches below the surface, fie dried his hands on the towel, and by cocking one leg up he could hold a pad out of water against his knee and write on it.

	He explained tersely about the accident and his subsequent seizure, and told what had happened chemically to his lung-tissues. Then he wrote: "As this is first experiment on living organism, don't know when effect will pass if ever. Want lunch."

	Baritz called to him: "Don't you want us to take the shoks out fuist?" Brock shook his head. The claims of his stomach were imperious, and he had a vague hope of solving his problem without disturbing the fish. Then too, though he'd have hated to admit it, he knew that everybody knew that the sharks weren't maneaters, and he didn't want to seem afraid of them. F.ven a sensible man like Vernon Brock will succumb to a touch of bravado in the presence of his woman, actual or potential.

	He relaxed, thinking. Sugden was ordering the staff back to its work. Dumville had to leave, but promised to be back. By and by the faithful Baritz appeared with what Brock hoped was food. Brock's position struck him as an uncomfortable one for eating, so he rolled off the plank and stood on the bottom of the tank. Then he couldn't reach the surface with his hand. Baritz thrust a lamb chop on the end of a stick down to him. He reached for it—and was knocked aside by a glancing blow from something heavy and sandpapery. The lamb chop was gone—or not quite gone, the larger shark had it over in a corner. The shark's jaws worked, and the bone sank slowly to the bottom, minus its meat.

	Baritz looked helpless at Sugden. "We betta not try meat again—those shok can smell it, and they might get dangerous if we got them wuiked up."

	"Guess we'll have to get the net and haul them out," said Sugden. "I don't see how he could eat mashed potatoes under water."

	Brock swam up, and went through the motions of peeling and eating a banana. After Baritz had made a trip for bananas Brock satisfied his hunger, though he found that swallowing food without getting a stomachful of salt water required a bit of practice.

	The crowd in front of the tank was larger, if anything. The little man with the wry nose was still there. His scrutiny made Brock vaguely uneasy. He'd always wondered what a fish on exhibit felt like, and now, by George, he knew.

	If he could get out and do a few months' research, he might be able to find how to counteract the effect of the lung-gas. But how could he perform experiments from where he was? Maybe he could give directions and have somebody else carry them out. That would be awkward, but he didn't want to spend the rest of his life as an exhibit, loyal as he was to the Aquarium. A better idea might be to rig up some sort of diver's helmet, to wear out of water with the water inside—if he could find a way of oxygenating the water.

	Baritz appeared again, and put his head down close to the water. "Hey, Vuinon!" he said, "God's coming down here!"

	Brock was interested, though not by the theological aspects of the statement. God, better known as J. Roosevelt Whitney, was the president of the New York Zoological Society, and the boss of Minnegerode, the director of the Aquarium (in Bermuda at the moment). Minnegerode, was Sugden's boss. God, the head of this hierarchy, owned among other things a bank and a half, 51% of a railroad, and the finest walrus mustache in Greater New York.

	Baritz put on his child-frightening grin. "Say, Vuinon, I just thought. We can advatise you as the only muimaid in captivity!"

	Brock throttled an impulse to pull his helper into the tank, and motioned for his pad. He wrote: "The male of 'mermaid' is 'merman,' you ape!"

	"Okay, a muiman, unless the gas changed more than ya lungs. Oh, good aftanoon, Mista Whitney. Here he is in this tank. Anything I can do, Mista Whitney?"

	The famous mustache floated above the water like a diving seagull. "How ah you, my deah boy? Ah you making out all right? Don't you think we'd bettah get the sharks out right away? They're perfectly harmless, of course, of course, but you might accidentally jostle one and get nipped, ha-ha."

	Brock, who at 32 was pleased rather than irked at being called "my boy," nodded. J. R. started to get to his feet not noticing that one foot was planted on Brock's rolled-up apron, while the toe of the other was caught in it. Brock received a tremendous impact of sound and current, and through the sudden cloud of bubbles saw J. R.'s massive rear descending on him. He caught the man and shoved him up. As the shiny pink head cleared the surface, he heard a terrified scream of "Glugg—blubb—Oh God, get me out! The sharks! Get me out, I say!" Brock boosted and Baritz and Sugden heaved. The dripping deity receded down the catwalk, to Brock's distorted vision broadening to something like a Daily Worker cartoon of Capital. He wished he knew whether J. R. would be angry or whether he'd be grateful for the boost. If he inquired about the apron it might be embarrassing.

	The cold was biting Brock's innards, and the bananas seemed to have turned into billiard balls in his stomach. The little man with the nose was still there, although it was nearly closing time. Brock climbed onto his plank and wrote directions: "Raise temperature of feed-water slowly. Get me thermometer. Will signal when temperature is right. Should be about 90 F. Run more airlines into tank to make up for lowering oxygen saturation point. Put sharks in reserve tank for present; warmth might harm them, and I need all oxygen in tank."

	By 9 P.M. all was done. The tearful Miss Engholm had been shooed away. Baritz volunteered to spend the night, which proved the most uncomfortable of Brock's experience. He couldn't sleep because of the constant muscular effort required to work his lungs. He tried to think his way out of the mess, but his thoughts became more and more confused. He began to imagine things: that the little man with the nose had been there for no good, for instance. Just what, he couldn't think, but he was sure it was something. Again and again he wondered what time it was. At first he aroused Baritz to tell him at intervals, but toward 2 o'clock Sam went to sleep on the catwalk, and Brock hadn't the heart to awaken him.

	God, would the night never end? Well, what if it did? Would he be any better off? He doubted it. He looked at his hands, at the skin of his fingers swollen and wrinkled by soaking. A crazy idea grew on him with the force of an obsession. His hands would turn into fins. He'd grow scales ...

	It was getting light. Then all these people would come back to torment him. Yes, and the little man with the nose. The little man would put a worm on a hook and catch him and eat him for supper ...

	Under sufficiently strange circumstances the human mind is often thrown out of gear, and spins ineffectually without definite relationship to external things. Perhaps that is because of a weakness in the structure of the mind, or perhaps it is a provision by nature to disconnect it to avoid stripped gears when the load is too heavy.

	People were coming in; it must be after 9 o'clock. People on the catwalk overhead were talking, but he couldn't understand them. His lungs weren't working right. Or rather his gill. But that was wrong. He was a fish, wasn't he? Then what could be wrong with them? All these people who had it in for him must have turned off the oxygen. No. the air-lines were still shooting their streams of tiny bubbles into the tank. Then why this suffocating feeling? He knew; that wasn't air in the airlines; it was pure nitrogen or helium or something. They were trying to fool him. Oh God, if he could only breathe! Maybe he had the fish's equivalent of asthma. Fish came to the surface and gulped sometimes; he'd try that. But he couldn't; his experiences of the preceding day had given him a conditioned reflex against sticking his head out, which his shattered reason was unable to overcome.

	Was he going to die? Too bad, when he had been going to marry Miss Engholm and all. But he couldn't have married her anyway. He was a fish. The female fish lays her eggs, and then the male fish comes along and ... His face twisted in an insane grin at the grotesque thought that struck him.

	He was dying. He had to get oxygen. Why not go through the glass? But no, any intelligent fish knew better than to try to make holes in the glass. Then he saw the little man with the nose, standing and staring as he had yesterday. He thought, you'll never catch me on a hook and eat me for supper; you piscicide; I'm going to get you first. He fished out his jack-knife and attacked the pane. A long scratch appeared on it, then another, and another. The glass sang softly. Tire people behind the little man were moving back nervously, but the little man still stood there. The song of the glass rose up—up—up ...

	The glass, with a final ping, gave and several tons of green water flung themselves into the concourse. For a fleeting second Brock, knife in hand, seemed to be flying toward the little man. Then the iron railing in front of the tank came up and hit his head.

	He had a vague sense of lying on a wet floor, while a foot from his ringing head a stranded remora flopped helplessly ...

	He was lying in bed, and Sugden was sitting beside him smoking. The old man said: "Lucky you didn't get a fractured skull. But maybe it was a good thing. It put you out during the critical period when your lungs were changing back to normal. They'd have had to dope you anyway, out of your head as you were."

	"I'll say I was out of my head! Wait till I see your friend Dumville; I'll be able to describe a brand-new psychosis to him."

	"He's a physiologist," replied Sugden, "not a psychologist. But he'll want to see you just the same.

	"The doctor tells me you'll be out tomorrow, so I guess you're well enough to talk business. J. R. didn't mind the ducking, even after the exhibition he made of himself. But there's something more serious. Perhaps you noticed a small man with a crooked nose in front of the tank while you were there?"

	"Did I notice him!"

	"Well, you nearly drowned him when you let the water out of the tank. And he's going to sue us for damages— way up in five or six figures. You know what that means."

	Brock nodded glumly. "I'll say I do." It means that I don't get your job when you retire next winter. And then I can't get ma— never mind. Who is this little guy? A professional accident faker?"

	"No; we investigated him. He was a trapeze artist in a circus until recently; he says he was getting too old for that work, but he didn't know any other. Then he hurt his back in a fall, and he's been on relief since. He just came in to watch you because he had nothing else to do."

	"I see." Brock thought. "Say, I have an idea. Nurse! Hey, NURSE! My clothes! I'm going out!"

	"No, you're not," said Sugden firmly. "Not till the doc says you can. That'll only be tomorrow, and then you can try out your idea. And I hope," he added grimly, "that it's better than the last one."

	Two days later Brock knocked on Sugden's door. He knew that Sugden and J. R. were in there, and he could guess what they were talking about. But he had no fears.

	"Morning, Mr. Whitney," he said.

	"Oh—ah—yes, my deah boy. We were just talking about this most unfortunate—ah—"

	"If you mean the suit, that's off."

	"What?"

	"Sure, I fixed it. Mr. Oscar Daly, the plaintiff, and I are going into a kind of partnership."

	"Partners?"

	"Yes, to exploit my discovery of lung-conversion. I supply the technique so that he can exhibit himself in circuses as Oscar the Merman. He dopes himself with my gas and parks in a tank. Our only problem is the period when the effect of the gas wears off and the lungs return to normal. That, I think, can be licked by the use of any of several anesthetic drugs that slow down the metabolism. So, when the human fish begins to feel funny, he injects himself and passes out peacefully, while his assistants fish him out and wring the water out of his lungs. There are a few technical details to work out on my alligators yet, but that'll be all right. I'll wear a gas mask. Of course," he added virtuously, "any monetary returns from the use of the process will go to the Zoological Society. Oscar says to send your lawyer over any time and he'll sign a release."

	"Why, that's fine," said Whitney, "that's splendid, my boy. It makes a big difference." He looked significantly at Sugden.

	"Thanks," said Brock. "And now, if you'll excuse me, Sam and I have some fish to shift. So long, cheerio, and I hope you drop in often, Mr. Whitney." He went out, whistling.

	"Oh, Vernon!" the head aquarist called after him. "Tomorrow's Sunday, and I'm driving my family out to Jones' Beach. Like to come along for a swim?"

	Brock stuck his grinning head back in. "Thanks a lot, Clyde, but I'm afraid I might carelessly take a deep breath under water. To be honest, the mere idea gives me the horrors. I've had enough swimming to last me the rest of my natural life!"

-

THE CONTRABAND COW

	A bat zigzagged across the sluggish reach of the lower Nueces, and Homer Osborn piled out of the rowboat with the painter in one hand. Since most of the boat's load was now concentrated on its rear seat by Charles Kenny's broad behind, its bow rose high into the air, and Osborn had little trouble in hauling the boat well up onto the sand.

	Then he took hold of the bow and braced his legs to hold the craft level. Kenny grunted his elephantine way slowly toward the bow, crouching and holding the gunwales with both hands, and lifting his feet carefully over the fishing-tackle.

	"Hey," said Osborn, "don't forget the critter!"

	"Not so loud!" Kenny halted, backed one step, reached under the middle seat, and brought up a package the shape of a brick and a little larger. Attached to this package by a stout cord was one real brick. As Kenny raised the package, the brick dangled revolving on the lower end of the cord.

	Osborn suggested: "If you untie it, we can throw away the sinker ..." '

	"Naw," said Kenny. "You don't know how a real fisherman does it. Homer. You want to keep your sinker attached until you're ready to cook your critter. Then if a Fodals shows up; you heave the evidence ka-plunk into the river. You cain't swallow half a pound of critter in one second, you know."

	"Okay, boss," said Osborn, and tied the painter to the nearest pecan tree.

	Kenny stretched his cramped muscles. "Now, if we can just find a dry spot ..."

	"Don't think there is such a thing in this part of Texas," said Osborn with slight asperity.

	"... we'll have plenty of time to get to Dinero before she's too dark."

	"With no fish for the girls."

	"Aw, Homer," wheezed Kenny, "you don't get the idea. A real fisherman don't care if he catches anything or not. Reckon this spot'll do."

	"If that's dry," said Osborn, feeling the sandy soil with his hand, "I'm a—"

	"Hush your mouth, Yankee, and help git some wood. Careful; don't go steppin' on a snake. Used to be 'gators in this part of the river too; I reckon the hide-hunters killed 'em all."

	Osborn returned after ten minutes of collecting soggy scraps of firewood, to find Kenny, by some private thaumaturgy, conjuring a fire out of a heap of equally unpromising fuel.

	When the fire was going, the massive department head opened a can of beans and hung it in the flames. Then he sat back, uncorked the whiskey-bottle, took a swig, passed the bottle to Osborn, and sat back looking at the deepening blue sky.

	"And to think," he said, "that a young squirt like you would give this up to go back to Brooklyn!"

	"No snakes in Brooklyn anyway."

	Kenny sighed. "When you learned to say 'bird' instead of 'buid' I thought I'd make a real Texan out of you. Mebbe I will yet."

	"Not likely. Seriously, boss, you can find plenty of biochemists, and it would mean so much to Gladys and me—"

	"Not another biochemist who can make the discovery of the age. You go turnin' out discoveries of the age, and the San Antone labs will go on gettin' appropriations, and when your contract's up I'll offer you another you cain't afford to turn—what's that?" Kenny was silent for a frozen quarter-minute, then resumed: "Imagination, I guess. Unless maybe you are. bein' followed."

	"I'm not imagining that," said Osborn. "You know Pedro, who runs the steakeasy on Apache Street? Well, he asked me—"

	"Pedro got padlocked the other day," interrupted Kenny.

	"Yeah? You don't say!"

	"Yep. Damn fool insisted on servin' roast beef. It takes a long time to cook, and you're apt to have a lot left over, so the Fodals got him with the evidence. What did he say to you?"

	Osborn explained: "The word got out among the leggers that this synthetic protein of mine was going to put 'em out of business. I explained that I could make a steak, all right, but it wouldn't taste like a steak and would cost twenty times as much as a hunk of prime Mexican critter delivered in San Antonio by a reliable steaklegger. He didn't seem convinced."

	"So now you think the leggers are out to get you," said Kenny. "Well, mebbe the repeal act will pass when it comes up Monday in Delhi. The Bloodies have tried hard enough; I've been up all night for a week, gittin' folks to write letters and send telegrams."

	Osborn sighed. "Not likely, boss. The Hindus disagree on everything else, but not on eating critter."

	"Hear they lynched a Fodals in Dallas last week," said Kenny, poking at the fire. "Good idea on general principles, but I'm afraid it won't do the Bloody vote no good come Monday."

	"You're a fanatic," said Osborn quietly. "Now me, I vote Bloody, but I can take my critter or leave it alone. What really gripes me is getting my research mixed up in a prohibition question."

	"You wouldn't care if your synthetic steak stopped all this corruption and law-breakin'? You'd be famous."

	"Nope. Don't want to be famous, outside the technical periodicals. What I want is to get back to Brooklyn."

	Kenny laughed and heaved himself to his feet. "Looks like those coals are about ready for the critter. You start it; I'm going to get me some more wood. And any time you can figure how to repeal the anti-vaccicidc law, you can write your own contract, or I'll get you a new one in Brooklyn, Belfast, or any place you pick."

	Kenny crunched off into the brush, muttering about the iniquity of a Union Now scheme which gave the cow-worshipping sons of India, on a straight population basis, a clear majority in the Assembly of the Federation of Democratic and Libertarian States.

	Homer Osborn nervously unwrapped the package. The crackle of the heavy yellow paper seemed inordinately loud. His mouth watered at the sight of the steaks, for which he had paid Agard, his pet steaklegger, a fat wad of his and Charles Kenny's money.

	He then pulled a lot of pieces of heavy steel wire out of his boot. These, when joined together, made a rickety but serviceable grid.

	The sound of Kenny's movements died away. No, thought Osborn, he would never learn to like Texas, really. The Gulf Coast region was fairly comfortable this early in spring. But in a couple of months San Antonio would be a baking inferno, outside the laboratories ...

	He slapped a mosquito, and extended the grid over the coals. A flame licked the fat on one of the steaks, and a pearly drop fell into the coals, sending up a brief spurt of yellow.

	As the hiss of that drop of fat died out, something came out of the darkness and wrapped itself like an affectionate anaconda around Homer Osborn's wrist, and something else calmly took the grid, steaks and all, away from him.

	"You," said the voice, "are under arrest for violation of the anti-vaccicide law. Title Nine, Section 486 of the Criminal Code of the Federation!"

	"Huh?" said Osborn stupidly. It had all been done so swiftly and competently that he had not recovered his wits.

	"Which reads," continued the voice, "Paragraph One: The eating of cattle, which term shall include all animals of the subfamily Bovinae of the family Bovidae, the same comprising kine, buffaloes, bison, zebus, gayals, bantengs, yaks, and species closely related thereto, or of any parts or members thereof, or ff any hashes, gravies, soups, or other edible products thereof, is hereby prohibited!"

	"B-But, I wasn't eating—" In the twilight Osborn could now make out the turban and beard of a towering Sikh of the Border Patrol.

	"Par-r-ragraph Two: The killing, for any parpose whatever, and the assault, molestation, capture, imprisonment, sale, purchase, possession, transportation, importation into or exportation out of the Federation of Democratic and Libertarian States, or any territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof ..."

	"Okay, okay!" shouted Osborn, as the Patrolman carefully set down the evidence and with his free hand snapped a handcuff on the culprit's wrist. "I know your damned law, and I think it's a lousy invasion of my personal liberty—"

	"I am sorry, sir," purred the Indian. "I merely carry out my orders. Now let us go; it is about a mile to my car."

	Osborn groaned, mentally consigning Mr. Clarence Streit to the most elaborately sadistic Hell he could imagine. He thought of yelling for Kenny, but decided that it would be better not to involve his boss; Charley could do more for him from outside the bars.

	The thought that most pained Homer Osborn was the recollection of how cocksurely he had brushed aside his wife's cautions before leaving. Gladys would kid him about this in front of their grandchildren, if they lived that long.

	He let the Sikh tow him gently up the infinitesimal rise that passed for the bank of the Neuces River. Better, he thought, make enough noise to warn Kenny, so that the department head should not blunder into them.

	He declaimed: "Who the Hell are you, to come halfway around the world to butt into our affairs?"

	"I am Guja Singh, sir, Patrolman Number 3214. As for the mixing, surely you know that the Federation government was forced to send us of India to enforce the anti-vaccicide law, because none of your American officials could be trusted to do so."

	"Yeah, but what the hell business is it of yours in the first place? I'm not hurting—"

	"Ah, but you are," continued the soft, slightly accented voice. "The sacrilege of vaccicide harts us of India to our very souls."

	"Well, but aren't you a Sikh? I thought they didn't take this cow-worship business seriously."

	"We of the Udasi sect take it seriously, sir. Obsarve this branch and duck, please. Please, sir, do not think too harshly of me because I do my duty. Do you think we enjoy patrolling this hostile land, where we dare not go out in your cities except in pairs?"

	"Well, why do it, sap?"

	"You mean me personally, sir? I joined the force largely because my father, though he could have secured me a position at Delhi, was reluctant to do so lest the charge of nepotism be brought against him."

	"Who's your father?"

	"Arjan Singh, sir. You have heard of him?"

	"Sure. A politician." Osborn put scorn into it.

	Guja Singh sighed unhappily. "I fear we shall never understand the mysterious West. Nothing appears to please you ..."

	They walked on in silence. Osborn cooled off somewhat, and was thankful that his captor was not a really tough guy, despite his formidable appearance. Still, Homer Osborn knew better than to try to get away; he had met Fodals cops of this superficially humble type before.

	They reached the road, and a few rods away Osborn made out the bullet-shape of a patrol car parked by the side. They were halfway to it when Guja Singh halted and stood with his head up silently, as if sniffing the air. Osborn strained his cars, and thought he made out a whisper, unintelligible but urgent, from the trees.

	"Put those up!" came a voice.

	The Fodals released Osborn, jerked out his pistol, and fired. Osborn had already started to run when the flash and report from behind him were mixed with a tinkle of glass. Something struck his body a light blow and shattered, and as he took his next step he smelled geraniums.

	He knew what that meant, and tried to stop breathing ...

	But not quickly enough. His muscles all at once began to jerk uncontrollably, as if he had St. Vitus' dance, and the sand came up and hit him with a thud.

	The convulsion—more exasperating than painful— died, and hands tried to heave him to his feet. His legs buckled, and a couple of men picked him up and carried him, not too gently.

	He tried to talk, but he could not control his tongue: "Th upp sh mwa-a-a th uh uwzze idea?"

	No answer. Somewhere in the darkness another contingent was breathing heavily as it toted six-feet-three of Sikh patrolman. The sound of a door-latch compounded this, and Osborn made out the shape of a vehicle, not Guja's patrol-car. Somebody had a flashlight. Osborn saw dimly that the conveyance looked like a rather large delivery-truck.

	"Don't bother with him; he's already got one handcuff on."

	The response to this advice was to pull Osborn's un-manacled hand behind him and snap the empty half of the pair of handcuffs over the wrist. Next he was boosted into the body of the truck, and the door boomed shut behind him.

	As it did so, a light flashed on, penetratingly, right into his eyes.

	"Sit down, you two."

	There were wisps of straw under Osborn's feet, and a definite smell of cow. Osborn knew that he was in a cattle-runner's truck. He sat, and was aware of Guja Singh beside him. They were seated on a bench built into the inner side of the door at the rear of the body. At the front end were that damned searchlight and—when his eyes got accustomed to the glare—a pair of powerful-looking dark-men with submachineguns under their arms.

	The body jerked and swayed into motion; there was no sound from outside. Sound-insulation that would keep the moo of a smuggled steer in would likewise keep the noise of the external world out.

	"Who the hell do you think you are and what the hell do you think you're doin—" began Osborn, but soon gave up when no response was coming from the men with the guns. He pushed himself into the angle of the corner to keep from being thrown about by the motion of the truck.

	So his imagination had not played him tricks! Next question, whose was the gang? Not one of the indigenous steakleggers; they were mostly individuals or small concerns, on amicable terms with the local Texan police forces and hence constrained to the more seemly forms of illegality. Hijackers? The method suggested it, but such downright criminals would hardly concern themselves with anything so recondite as the synthetic-protein experiments of the San Antonio branch of the Federal Research Laboratories.

	That left the great Mexican critter-kings; shadowy but sinister figures: the modern equivalent of the old political generals who had run the country before the great period of Mexican prosperity and peace in the middle of the century. Some of Osborn's scientific Mexican acquaintances were bitter about the vaccicide law for having conjured this robber-baron class out of its feudal graves.

	The truck-body bounced and shuddered silently over invisible miles. Homer Osborn thought a great volume of private thoughts, and at last out of sheer boredom went to sleep on Guja Singh's shoulder.

	The motion was easier, though as far as one could tell from the dark interior of the truck it might have been up, down, or sideways. Then it stopped altogether.

	"Stand up," commanded one of the guards.

	They did, and the door swung open. The searchlight winked off automatically, and was replaced by the vaster but more diffused light of early morning on the desert.

	Osborn had narrowed the list of kidnapper suspects down to the big Three: Ximinez, Dualler, Stewart.

	Endless, arid, gently rolling plain; patches of white rock on brown dirt; occasional sage, mesquite, cactus—the last with bright red or yellow flowers; a hint of low mountains to the west, already shimmering in the heat: that meant Harmodio Dualler, even though Homer Osborn had never before been in the Bolsom de Mapimi.

	"Jump down."

	Osborn gave the guard a venomous look and jumped.

	He avoided falling, and, with Guja Singh, was herded toward one of a small city of adobe house and barns. He saw that there were a great many trucks parked about, most of them with appropriately deceptive signs painted on their weatherbeaten sides: "Ft. Worth Express Co.," "Lone Star Cleaners & Dyers," "Jerrehian, the House of Rugs." An Indian cowboy with a pink ribbon around his black hair trotted by on a horse.

	The others were no rancheros; dark suits, panama hats, and not a scrape in the lot. They shoved Osborn and the Sikh through a gate in a wall, revealing more hundreds of yards of adobe structures, until a big man in shirt-sleeves came out and spoke to them in Spanish. Osborn guessed this to be Harmodio Dualler; powerful, sallow, not fat but with a big roll of fat around his neck.

	Dualler looked sharply at Guja Singh, and asked the boss of the kidnappers what the obscenity he meant by bringing this one. The boss kidnapper stopped flicking the dust off his shoes with his handkerchief, shrank visibly, and squeaked that Osborn had not been alone for a minute, and that therefore it was necessary cither to bring this one too or to let the prey go, and he had been merely trying to do his duty ...

	"I obscenity on God!" roared Harmodio Dualler, "hast thou no more brains than a burro? But I will attend to thee later; bring these ones in."

	Seated behind his desk with his hat still on, Dualler dug out a package of gum which he offered to his prisoners. They did not consider it politic to refuse. When all three were chewing, Dualler said in good English: "I am sorry there has been a little mix-up here—"

	"How long," interrupted Osborn, "do you think you can get away with this? I'm a citizen of the Federation ..."

	Dualler laughed softly. "Pipe yourself down, my friend. The nearest town is Cuatro Cienegas, and that is fifty miles across the desert, and what Harmodio Dualler says in the state of Coahuila, that goes."

	"Well, what do you want of us?"

	"Of you, it is simple. I want all your samples of this phoney critter that you have made, and all your notes and writings. All your everything that has to do with it. Understand?"

	"Uh, huh," said Osborn. "I thought so."

	"As to this one," said Dualler, eyeing the Sikh, "it was a. stupidity that he was ever captured. I can't shoot you, my friend, because your patrol will come looking for you; and I can't even less hold you prisoner until you die of old age, and I can't let you go. So what the hell am I to do with you?"

	Guja Singh said loftily: "You can give me back my lost honor."

	"Now how the hell do I do that thing?"

	"You can fight mc like a man. Guns, knives, anything you say."

	Dualler sighed. "Mr. Osborn, what can I do with such a foolish one? He thinks I'm an old-time cabellero fighting duels like in the movies. I'm a businessman. Your country has all gone to hell since you let those Asiatics in, though I don't complain because it makes much business for me. Hernán, take this one away."

	"Now, Mr. Osborn," continued the critter-king, "I'll tell you what I will do. Tomorrow, I will arrange a television hook-up in a confidential channel—you have got a secretary?"

	"I've got an assistant."

	"Good. You will tell this assistant to pack up all your phoney-critter stuff and send it to an address in Laredo, where a man of mine will pick it up. You must make it plain that if this assistant misses something that would make it so another one could do the same thing, you—uh—it'll be just too bad."

	"Meaning?"

	Dualler looked embarrassed. "Don't make me talk of these unpleasant things right out, Mr. Osborn. I hate to have my guests get accidentally-like killed, especially a so young and promising one."

	Osborn protested: "You're all wet, Señor Dualler. My synthetic protein can't possibly compete with the real thing ..."

	Dualler heard him out, then said: "Ah, yes, that is the thing I would say if I was in your place. Even if you are telling the truth, which I don't believe, I know that in this so wonderful Age of Science you will quickly improve your product."

	"But listen, damn it, I'll prove to you—"

	"No use, Mr. Osborn. Take this one away too, Jesus-Maria."

	Osborn was taken to a cell-like room: sparse but comfortable furniture; a small, high, barred window; a lack of furnishings and ornaments that could be put to practical use by a prisoner on escape bent. The heat was severe, even after Osborn had stripped to his shorts. He wondered why a man as rich as Harmodio Dualler had not air-conditioned his ranch, until he remembered the scarcity of water in the Bolsom de Mapimi.

	The only concession that Dualler had made to his boredom was a carton of cigarettes. When he got hungry, he pounded on the heavy oak door and yelled. Nothing happened.

	In fact, Osborn was convinced by sunset that he had never spent a day of such exquisitely horrible boredom in his life. If being in jail was like this, he resolved never to do anything that would land him in such a predicament.

	Before dark he was let out and taken to eat with the gang, who treated him with carefully controlled politeness. Guja Singh was there too, looking famished.

	When the Sikh sat down, he took one look at his plate and half rose. "I can't eat critter. Dualler! It's against my beliefs, and I'm still an officer—"

	"That's all right," beamed Dualler. "Some of Mr. Osborn's synthetic beef, specially removed from his laboratory."

	Osborn looked at Guja's plate, and knew at once that he had never turned out such a realistic imitation of a steak. Guja, after going through a mental struggle, tried the steak.

	He chewed a few times, then said judicially: "That is not bad. If this is the imitation, no wonder the Americans go to such illegal lengths to get the real thing ..."

	Osborn had taken a bite of his own to make sure, and spoke up: "That is the real thing, Guja; they fooled you."

	"What? Why—" The Sikh burst out with an inarticulate roar and bounded to his feet, his rawhide-bottomed chair going over with a crash. He knocked one of the Mexicans clear across the table before the rest piled on him.

	The fight did not last long; the patrolman seemed suddenly to go limp with weariness, and let his antagonists fasten themselves to his arms. His dark face was pale and glum, as if the last spiritual prop had been knocked out from under him.

	"I am ruined," he said.

	"Oh, come on, Mr. Singh," said Dualler. "It's not as bad a thing as that. I just had to make sure you would not make trouble for us when I let you go." At this point a grinning henchman appeared with his hands full of motion-picture camera and sound-track recorder. "You see, Jesus-Maria has made a nice record of this scene, in three-dimension color. That goes in my safe. When you get back to your headquarters, you tell them you got drunk—"

	"I don't drink," moaned Guja Singh.

	"Well, then, that you got full of the marijuana. Anyway you will know nothing about Mr. Osborn, and nobody will know about you eating the critter."

	"I am ruined," was all the Sikh would say, until they took him back to his room.

-

	"Sst! Osborn!"

	Homer, getting ready for bed, looked around for the source of this whisper, which sounded as if it came from miles away. After looking in the closet and under the bed, he located its source in the little window. He stood on his chair and opened the fly-screen.

	"Guja?"

	"Yes. Put your hand out and catch this."

	Osborn, wondering, did so. Something swung up and past his window; after several tries he caught it. It was the end of a long strip of cloth, to which was tied a small automatic pistol. Guja Singh had been swinging the strip of cloth by its other end from the next window.

	"Where'd you get this?" asked Osborn.

	"They did not think to search my turban." (Osborn realized that the strip of cloth was the patrolman's unwound headgear.) "Take the pistol; you will need it. I heard a couple of Dualler's men talking of how they were going to kill you as soon as they get your scientific things; they did not know I understand Spanish."

	"But what about you?"

	"Never mind me. Good-bye." And the turban-cloth was hauled back with a faint hiss through the bars of Guja's window.

	Osborn reasoned that he had better keep his pants on in order to have a pocket in which to carry the gun. He was donning them when there were excited shouts from outside, and the sound of men running. Osborn could not make out the words, and presently the hubbub died away without his being enlightened.

	But the next morning Guja Singh appeared without his turban, and looking more gaunt and hopeless than ever.

	"He tried to hang himself by that head-scarf of his," explained Harmodio Dualler. "We had to dope him to put him to sleep." The critter-king shook his head. "I thought I knew how to handle men, but with a so unreasonable one as this one ...Ts, ts. I'm glad you are a reasonable one, Mr. Osborn. Now we will go in the communication room; everything is set up."

	The room in question had a television booth at one side. Swank, or love of gadgets, thought Osborn; in the United States few private telephone-subscribers cared to have their expense quadrupled "for the doubtful privilege of being able to see the faces of persons with whom they were arranging bridge-dates or arguing about a grocery-bill.

	But there was the contraption, and Osborn knew that there was one in Charley Kenny's office as well. They did come in handy in transactions where the identity of one of the speakers was open to question. This perhaps explained Dualler's use of a set, since he was engaged in a business that was illegal according to the laws of the Federation if not the laws of the Estados Unidos de Mejico.

	Dualler explained in detail what Osborn was to tell his assistant, and they sat chummily on the bench in front of ike. The ubiquitous Jesus-Maria lounged against the far wall of the room with a gun in plain sight.

	The call was put through; Kenny's round face snapped into focus on the screen.

	"Homer!" cried Kenny. "Where in God's name are you?"

	Dualler murmured: "Tell him—"

	The critter-king broke off as he observed that the hard object which had suddenly been dug into his ribs was the small pistol which Osborn had received from the Sikh.

	"Just a minute, boss," said Osborn. He gave his head an infinitesimal jerk toward the unsuspecting Jesus-Maria, and told Dualler: "Send him out—and tell him to send Guja Singh in here."

	Dualler smiled. "Do I have to search—" Osborn jabbed him with the muzzle, and the Mexican stopped his sentence and gave the required order.

	Homer Osborn's muscles quivered tautly, and he could feel that Dualler's were tightening, too; the slightest relaxation on his part, and either Dualler would be shot or would attack him roaring an alarm.

	"Boss," he told the visiscrcen, "this is important. First, can you arrange to switch this call to the house of a Hindu politician named Arjan Singh in Delhi?".

	Kenny's jowls quivered and his voice rose to a squeak. "Are you nuts. Homer? Think of the expense, and it's the middle of the night in India ..."

	"I know. Can you?"

	"I—I suppose so, if it's a life-and-death matter."

	"It is." Osborn raised his right hand to bring the gun momentarily into the view of the ike. "Any minute now Senor Dualler and I will be trying to kill each other."

	Kenny's eyes popped, but he buzzed his switchboard operator and told her what to do. While they waited for the connection, Osborn told Kenny what had happened. He finished: "Now that you know where I am and everything, boss, I think Senor Dualler understands that he can't bump me off the way he was planning to."

	"He was going to murder one of my researchers?" exploded Kenny, "Why, you fat yellow slob, you—"

	The department head had not yet run out of expletives when Guja Singh entered, and almost immediately afterward Kenny's operator announced that the call to Delhi was through.

	Dualler was still silently smiling, though in a dark and dangerous manner. The screen winked, and in place of Kenny appeared a bald, brown, hooknosed man in a dimly-lit booth.

	"Whozh calling me from Texas thish time of night?" yawned the newcomer.

	Osborn, still keeping an eye on Dualler, asked: "That your old man, Guja?"

	"Guja!" cried the image, suddenly wide awake; it rattled a string of questions in Hindustani.

	"Easy, mister," said Osborn. "Guja, how many votes does your father control in the Assembly?"

	"Three."

	"Let's sec—three from thirty-seven is thirty-four; that'll do it. Fine. You, Dualler, move over this way. Guja, you take Dualler's place." Osborn slid off the end of the bench to remove himself and his gun from the field of the ike. He lowered his voice to a murmur to Dualler, "You tell Mr. Arjan Singh that you'll bump off his son if he doesn't switch those votes in favor of repeal tomorrow. Get it?"

	Dualler did so. Arjan Singh's eyes popped; he cried an agonized question at Guja. After some Hindustani dialogue, Arjan Singh announced in a voice of brave despair: "If it is God's will that my son shall die, he shall die. He will not betray the family honor."

	"Then tell him," Osborn ordered Dualler sotto voce, "that when he arrived here you got him drunk so he ate a steak, and you've got a movie record of it, and will publish it if the votes aren't changed. That for the family honor!"

	This threat finally broke down father and son. "I'll do it," said Arjan Singh; "but how do I know you will go through with your part?"

	"Why shouldn't I?" smiled Dualler. "It is nothing to me if this one eats a whole steer at one sitting."

	"But what is your object? This is a strange piece of black—"

	Osborn reached over and pushed the switch; the screen went blank.

	Harmodio Dualler turned a puzzled face up to Osborn.

	He said softly: "I don't understand, my friend. The other, yes, but not this—unless it is to cause that anti-vaccicide law to be repealed—that is it!"

	"Yep," said Osborn. "Now—"

	"So," interrupted Dualler, "we rancheros will no longer enjoy our position, eh? Those obscenities in Mexico City will not be afraid of us, and they will steal our ranches to divide among the peons, as they did under Cardenas? The critter-business of Mexico will again be destroyed? Very well, you have ruined me, Mr. Osborn, but you won't live to—" And Dualler hurled himself on Homer.

	For a big man, he moved with rattlesnake speed; one hand caught Osborn's right wrist and twisted it violently before Osborn had the presence of mind to shoot. The other caught Osborn's neck in a vise.

	"Guja! Catch!" cried Osborn, wriggling in this grizzly-bear hug. He flipped the pistol toward the Sikh, who caught it, stuck the muzzle into Dualler's ribs, and fired three times, the sharp crack muffled by the critter-king's clothing.

	Harmodio Dualler slumped to the floor, dead.

	Then there was a knock on the door, and Jesus-Maria's anxious voice; "Is all well with thee, boss?"

	"Lock it," said Osborn, and he began searching furiously about the room for inflammables.

	Guja Singh shot the bolt home, whereat there were louder knocks and loud demands for admittance.

	"Mr. Osborn," said Guja Singh, "how will you get those films out of the safe?"

	"Think this place will burn?"

	"Why, with all those oak beams, yes. I see!" The patrolman fell to work building the bonfire. Osborn lit the pile of crumpled papers at the base, and a tremendous bang on the door announced that the gang were trying to batter their way in.

	The fire crackled and roared upward; the heat and smoke became nauseating.

	Osborn told Guja Singh: "You pick up Dualler and make as if you were carrying him out from an accident. Lucky those bullet-holes didn't bleed much."

	Guja Singh heaved the massive body over his shoulders in a fireman's carry. Then Osborn threw the bolt, to confront a lot of amazed Mexicans with guns in their hands.

	"The machine exploded," he announced. "Your boss is hurt, and the place is on fire." (The last statement was not strictly necessary, as the communications room was a roaring oven.)

	The gang scattered with cries of alarm, yelling contradictory directions at each other to fetch water, fetch blankets, run for their lives.

	Osborn and Guja strolled to the front door and out, through the courtyard, out the gate, and toward the truck-park before somebody yelled: "Hey, you, where do you theenk you are going with our boss?"

	Guja dropped the corpse, and the two dashed to the nearest truck. The key was in the ignition-lock and the fuel-tank was full. With gunfire crashing behind them, they whirled the vehicle around on two wheels and streaked down the road toward Cuatro Cienegas.

-

	At five P.M. they arrived at the San Antonio laboratories. Somebody spotted them, and before they reached the Administration Building Charley Kenny rushed out to greet them on the front steps.

	"Where's Gladys?" gasped Osborn.

	"She went home; when we didn't hear from you all day—"

	"We've been driving like bats from hell—"

	"Yes; how did you escape—"

	"Did the repeal act pass?"

	"Sure, by one vote. Hey—George! Run in and 'phone Mrs. Osborn that Homer's back—"

	"I'll 'phone her myself—"

	"But wait, you haven't told me—"

	While this was going on, people began streaming gradually up as if drawn by a magnet. They paid little attention to anybody save Guja Singh. The tall patrolman became visibly uneasy under their regard. He muttered: "What is this, another lynching? I think I'd better go."

	He started to walk dignifiedly off; the crowd closed in >n him and followed. He began to run, but the crowd, with one Texan roar, pounced on him.

	"Hey!" cried Osborn.

	"It's all right." said Kenny.

	"The hell it's all right! Gimme a gun or something ..."

	He broke off as he observed the action of the crowd, which, instead of tearing the Sikh to pieces, had hoisted him on their shoulders and were parading him down the street with deafening cheers. Guja Singh looked bewildered.

	Kenny explained: "Our switchboard operator listened in on your conversation with that guy in India, and she got it sort of mixed up, but reckoned as how your patrolman friend was makin' his old man swing the repeal vote. Anyway that's her story, and all San Antone thinks he's responsible. Was he. or did you have a hand in it? Can't imagine Harmodio Dualler doin' it of his own accord."

	Osborn explained what had happened.

	"Then it was your doin'! We'll have to see that the credit goes to you, instead of that—"

	"I don't want the credit!" said Osborn. "All I want is to call my wife and tell her the good news!"

	"What good news?" but Osborn had broken away and run into the building. Kenny followed as fast as his bulk allowed. He reached the 'phone booth in time to hear Osborn shout: "... Gladys? I got the greatest news in the world! We're going back to Brooklyn!."

-

-

THE GNARLY MAN

	Dr. Matilda Saddler first saw the gnarly man on the evening of June 14th, 1956, at Coney Island. The spring meeting of the Eastern Section of the American Anthropological Association had broken up, and Dr. Saddler had had dinner with two of her professional colleagues, Blue of Columbia and Jeffcott of Yale. She mentioned that she had never visited Coney, and meant to go there that evening. She urged Blue and Jeffcott to come along, but they begged off.

	Watching Dr. Saddler's retreating back, Blue of Columbia crackled: "The Wild Woman from Wichita. Wonder if she's hunting another husband?" He was a thin man with a small gray beard and a who-the-Hell-are-you-Sir expression.

	"How many has she had?" asked Jeffcott of Yale.

	"Three to date. Don't know why anthropologists lead the most disorderly private lives of any scientists. Must be that they study the customs and morals of all these different peoples, and ask themselves, 'If the Eskimos can do it why can't we?' I'm old enough to be safe, thank God."

	"I'm not afraid of her," said Jeffcott. He was in his early forties and looked like a farmer uneasy in store-clothes. "I'm so very thoroughly married."

	"Yeah? Ought to have been at Stanford a few years ago, when she was there. It wasn't safe to walk across the campus, with Tuthill chasing all the females and Saddler all the males."

-

	Dr. Saddler had to fight her way off the subway train, as the adolescents who infest the platform of the B.M.T.'s Stillwell Avenue Station are probably the worst-mannered people on earth, possibly excepting the Dobu Islanders of the Western Pacific. She didn't much mind. She was a tall, strongly-built woman in her late thirties, who had been kept in trim by the outdoor rigors of her profession. Besides, some of the inane remarks in Swift's paper on acculturation among the Arapaho Indians had gotten her fighting blood up.

	Walking down Surf Avenue toward Brighton Beach, she looked at the concessions without trying them, preferring to watch the human types that did and the other human types that took their money. She did try a shooting-gallery, but found knocking tin owls off their perch with a .22 too easy to be much fun. Long-range work with an army rifle was her idea of shooting.

	The concession next to the shooting-gallery would have been called a side-show if there had been a main show for it to be a side-show to. The usual lurid banner proclaimed the uniqueness of the two-headed calf, the bearded woman, Arachne the spider-girl, and other marvels. The piece de resistance was Ungo-Bungo the ferocious ape-man, captured in the Congo at a cost of 27 lives. The picture showed an enormous Ungo-Bungo squeezing a hapless Negro in each hand, while others sought to throw a net over him.

	Although Dr. Saddler knew perfectly well that the ferocious ape-man would turn out to be an ordinary Caucasian with false hair on his chest, a streak of whimsicality impelled her to go in. Perhaps, she thought, she could have some fun with her colleagues about it.

	The spieler went through his leather-lunged harangue. Dr. Saddler guessed from his expression that his feet hurt. The tattooed lady didn't interest her, as her decorations obviously had no cultural significance, as  they have among the Polynesians. As for the ancient Mayan, Dr. Saddler thought it in questionable taste to exhibit a poor microcephalic idiot that way. Professor Yogi's legerdemain and fire-eating weren't bad.

	A curtain hung in front of Ungo-Bungo's cage. At the appropriate moment there were growls and the sound of a length of chain being slapped against a metal plate. The spicier wound up on a high note: "... ladies and gentlemen, the one and only Ungo-Bungo!" The curtain dropped.

	The ape-man was squatting at the back of his cage. He dropped his chain, got up, and shuffled forward. He grasped two of the bars and shook them. They were appropriately loose and rattled alarmingly. Ungo-Bungo snarled at the patrons, showing his even yellow teeth.

	Dr. Saddler stared hard. This was something new in the ape-man line. Ungo-Bungo was about five feet three, but very massive, with enormous hunched shoulders. Above and below his blue swimming-trunks, thick grizzled hair covered him from crown to ankle. His short stout-muscled arms ended in big hands with thick gnarled fingers. His neck projected slightly forward, so that from the front he seemed to have but little neck at all.

	His face—well, thought Dr. Saddler, she knew all the living races of men, and all the types of freak brought about by glandular maladjustment, and none of them had a face like that. It was deeply lined. The forehead between the short scalp-hair and the brows on the huge super-orbital ridges receded sharply. The nose, though wide, was not apelike; it was a shortened version of the thick hooked Armenoid or "Jewish" nose, The face ended in a long upper lip and a retreating chin. And the yellowish skin apparently belonged to Ungo-Bungo.

	The curtain was whisked up again.

	Dr. Saddler went out with the others, but paid another dime, and soon was back inside. She paid no attention to the spieler, but got a good position in front of Ungo-Bungo's cage before the rest of the crowd arrived.

	Ungo-Bungo repeated his performance with mechanical precision. Dr. Saddler noticed that he limped a little as he came forward to rattle the bars, and that the skin under his mat of hair bore several big whitish scars. The last joint of his left ring-finger was missing. She noted certain things about the proportions of nis shin and thigh, of his forearm and upper arm, and his big splay feet.

	Dr. Saddler paid a third dime. An idea was knocking at her mind somewhere, trying to get in; either she was crazy or physical anthropology was haywire or—something. But she knew that if she did the sensible thing, which was to go home, the idea would plague her from now on.

	After the third performance she spoke to the spicier. "I think your Mr. Ungo-Bungo used to be a friend of mine. Could you arrange for me to see him after he finishes?"

	The spieler checked his sarcasm. His questioner was so obviously not a—not the sort of dame who asks to see guys after they finish.

	"Oh, him," he said. "Calls himself Gaffney—Clarence Aloysius Gaffney. That the guy you want?"

	"Why, yes."

	"Guess you can." He looked at his watch. "He's got four more turns to do before we close. I'll have to ask the boss." He popped through a curtain and called, "Hey, Morrie!" Then he was back. "It's okay. Morrie says you can wait in his office. Foist door to the right."

	Morrie was stout, bald, and hospitable. "Sure, sure," he said, waving his cigar. "Glad to be of soivice, Miss Saddler. Chust a min while I talk to Gaffney's manager." he .tuck his head out. "Hey, Pappas! Lady wants to talk to your ape-man later. I meant lady. Okay." He returned to orate on the difficulties besetting the freak business. "You take this Gaffney, now. He's the best damn ape-man in the business; all that hair really grows outa him. And the poor guy really has a face like that. But do people believe it? No! I hear 'em going out, saying about how the hair is pasted on, and the whole thing is a fake. It's mortifying." He cocked his head, listening. "That rumble wasn't no roily-coaster; it's gonna rain. Hope it's over by tomorrow. You wouldn't believe the way a rain can knock ya receipts off. If you drew a coive, it would be like this " He drew his finger horizontally through space, jerking it down sharply to indicate the effect of rain. "But as I said, people don't appreciate what you try to do for 'cm. It's not just the money; I think of myself as an ottist. A creative ottist. A show like this got to have balance and proportion, like any other ott ..."

	It must have been an hour later when a slow, deep voice at the door said, "Did somebody want to see me?"

	The gnarly man was in the doorway. In street-clothes, with the collar of his raincoat turned up and his hat-brim pulled down, he looked more or less human, though the coat fitted his great sloping shoulders badly. He had a thick knobby walking-stick with a leather loop near the top end. A small dark man fidgeted behind him.

	"Yeah," said Morrie, interrupting his lecture. "Clarence, this is Miss Saddler, Miss Saddler, this is our Mister Gaffney, one of our outstanding creative ottists."

	"Pleased to meetcha," said the gnarly man. "This is my manager, Mr. Pappas."

	Dr. Saddler explained, and said she'd like to talk to Mr. Gaffney if she might. She was tactful; you had to be to pry into the private affairs of Naga head-hunters, for instance. The gnarly man said he'd be glad to have a cup of coffee with Miss Saddler; there was a place around the corner that they could reach without getting wet.

	As they started out, Pappas followed, fidgeting more and more. The gnarly man said, "Oh, go home to bed, John. Don't worry about me." He grinned at Dr. Saddler. The effect would have been unnerving to anyone but an anthropologist. "Every time he sees me talking to anybody, he thinks it's some other manager trying to steal me." He spoke General American, with a suggestion of Irish brogue in the lowering of the vowels in words like "man" and "talk."

	"I made the lawyer who drew up our contract fix it so it can be ended on short notice."

	Pappas departed, still looking suspicious. The rain had practically ceased. The gnarly man stepped along smartly despite his limp. A woman passed with a fox-terrier on a leash. The dog sniffed in the direction of the gnarly man, and then to all appearances went crazy, yelping and slavering. The gnarly man shifted his grip on the massive stick and said quietly, "Better hang on to him, Ma'am." The woman departed hastily. "They just don't like me," commented Gaffney. "Dogs, that is."

	They found a table and ordered their coffee. When the gnarly man took off his raincoat, Dr. Saddler became aware of a strong smell of cheap perfume. He got out a pipe with a big knobbly bowl. It suited him, just as the walking-stick did. Dr. Saddler noticed that the deep-sunk eyes under the beetling arches were light hazel.

	"Well?" he said in his rumbling drawl.

	She began her questions.

	"My parents were Irish," he answered. "But I was born in South Boston—let's see—forty-six years ago. I can get you a copy of my birth-certificate. Clarence Aloysius Gaffney, May 2, 1910." He seemed to get some secret amusement out of that statement.

	"Were either of your parents of your somewhat unusual physical type?"

	He paused before answering. He always did, it seemed. "Uh-huh. Both of 'em. Glands, I suppose."

	"Were they both born in Ireland?"

	"Yep. County Sligo." Again that mysterious twinkle.

	She paused. "Mr. Gaffney, you wouldn't mind having some photographs and measurements made, would you? You could use the photographs in your business."

	"Maybe." He took a sip. "Ouch! Gazooks, that's hot!"

	"What?"

	"I said the coffee's hot."

	"I mean, before that."

	The gnarly man looked a little embarrassed. "Oh, you mean the 'gazooks'? Well, I—uh—once knew a man who used to say that."

	"Mr. Gaffney, I'm a scientist, and I'm not trying to get anything out of you for my own sake. You can be frank with me."

	There was something remote and impersonal in his stare that gave her a slight spinal chill. "Meaning that I haven't been so far?"

	"Yes. When I saw you I decided that there was something extraordinary in your background. I still think there is. Now, if you think I'm crazy, say so and we'll drop the subject. But I want to get to the bottom of this."

	He took his time about answering. "That would depend." There was another pause. Then he said, "With your connections, do you know any really first-class surgeons?"

	"But—yes, I know Dunbar."

	"The guy who wears a purple gown when he operates? The guy who wrote a book on 'God, Man, and the Universe'?"

	"Yes. He's a good man, in spite of his theatrical mannerisms. Why? What would you want of him?"

	"Not what you're thinking. I'm satisfied with my—uh—unusual physical type. But I have some old injuries—broken bones that didn't knit properly—that I want fixed up. He'd have to be a good man. though. I have a couple of thousand in the savings-bank, but I know the sort of fees those guys charge. If you could make the necessary arrangements—"

	"Why, yes, I'm sure I could. In fact I could guarantee it. Then I was right? And you'll—" She hesitated.

	"Come clean? Uh—huh. But remember, I can still prove I'm Clarence Aloysius if I have to."

	"Who are you, then?"

	Again there was a long pause. Then the gnarly man said, "Might as well tell you. As soon as you repeat any of it, you'll have put your professional reputation in my hands, remember.

	"First off, I wasn't born in Massachusetts. I was born on the upper Rhine, near Mommenheim, and as nearly as I can figure out, about the year 50,000 B. C."

	Dr. Saddler wondered whether she'd stumbled on the biggest thing in anthropology or whether this bizarre man was making Baron Munchausen look like a piker.

	He seemed to guess her thoughts. "I can't prove that, of course. But so long as you arrange about that operation, I don't care whether you believe me or not."

	"But—but—how?"

	"I think the lightning did it. We were out trying to drive some bison into a pit. Well, this big thunderstorm came up, and the bison bolted in the wrong direction. So we gave up and tried to find shelter. And the next thing I knew I was lying on the ground with the rain running over me, and the rest of the clan standing around wailing about what had they done to get the storm-god sore at them, so he made a bullseye on one of their best hunters. They'd never said that about me before. It's funny how you're never appreciated while you're alive.

	"But I was alive, all right. My nerves were pretty well shot for a few weeks, but otherwise-I was all right except for some burns on the soles of my feet. I don't know just what happened, except I was reading a couple of years ago that scientists had located the machinery that controls the replacement of tissue in the medulla oblongata. I think maybe the lightning did something to my medulla to speed it up. Anyway I never got any older afier that. Physically, that is. And except for those broken bones I told you about. I was thirty-three at the time, more or less. We didn't keep track of ages. I look older now, because the lines in your face are bound to get sort of set after a few thousand years, and because our hair was always gray at the ends. But I can still tie an ordinary Homo sapiens in a knot if I want to."

	"Then you're—you mean to say you're—you're trying to tell me you're—"

	"A Neanderthal man? Homo neanderthalensis! That's right."

-

	Matilda Saddler's hotel room was a bit crowded, with the gnarly man, the frosty Blue, the rustic Jeffcott, Dr. Saddler herself, and Harold McGannon the historian. This McGannon was a small man, very neat and pink-skinned. He looked more like a New York Central director than a professor. Just now his expression was one of fascination. Dr. Saddler looked full of pride; Professor Jeffcott looked interested but puzzled; Dr. Blue looked bored. (He hadn't wanted to come in the first place.) The gnarly man, stretched out in the most comfortable chair and puffing his overgrown pipe, seemed to be enjoying himself.

	McGannon was asking a question. "Well, Mr.—Gaffney? I suppose that's your name as much as any."

	"You might say so," said the gnarly man. "My original name was something like Shining Hawk. But I've gone under hundreds of names since then. If you register in a hotel as 'Shining Hawk' it's apt to attract attention. And I try to avoid that."

	"Why?" asked McGannon.

	The gnarly man looked a his audience as one might look at willfully stupid children. "I don't like trouble. The best way to keep out of trouble is not to attract attention. That's why I have to pull up stakes and move every ten or fifteen years. People might get curious as to why I never got any older."

	"Pathological liar," murmured Blue. The words were barely audible, but the gnarly man heard them.

	"You're entitled to your opinion, Dr. Blue," he said affably. "Dr. Saddler's doing me a favor, so in return I'm letting you all shoot questions at me. And I'm answering. I don't give a damn whether you believe me or not."

	McGannon hastily threw in another question. "How is it that you have a birth certificate, as you say you have?"

	"Oh, I knew a man named Clarence Gaffney once. He got killed by an automobile, and I took his name."

	"Was there any reason for picking this Irish background?"

	"Are you Irish, Dr. McGannon?"

	"Not enough to matter."

	"Okay. I didn't want to hurt any feelings. It's my best bet. There are real Irishmen with upper lips like mine."

	Dr. Saddler broke in. "I meant to ask you, Clarence." She put a lot of warmth into his name. "There's an argument as to whether your people interbred with mine, when mine overran Europe at the end of the Mousterian. It's been thought that the 'old black breed' of the west coast of Ireland might have a little Neanderthal blood."

	He grinned slightly. "Well—yes and no. There never was any back in the stone-age, as far as I know. But these long-lipped Irish are my fault."

	"How?"

	"Believe it or not, but in the last fifty centuries there have been some women of your species that didn't find me too repulsive. Usually there were no offspring. But in the Sixteenth Century I went to Ireland to live. They were burning too many people for witchcraft in the rest of Europe to suit me at that time. And there was a woman. The result this time was a flock of hybrids—cute little devils they were. So die 'old black breed' are my descendants."

	"What did happen to your people?" asked McGannon. "Were they killed off?"

	The gnarly man shrugged. "Some of them. We weren't at all warlike. But then the tall ones, as we called them, weren't either. Some of the tribes of the tall ones looked on us as legitimate prey, but most of them let us severely alone. I guess they were almost as scared of us as we were of them. Savages as primitive as that are really pretty peaceable people. You have to work so hard, and there are so few of you, that there's no object in fighting wars. That comes later, when you get agriculture and livestock, so you have something worth stealing.

	"I remember that a hundred years after the tall ones had come, there were still Neanderthalers living in my part of the country. But they died out. I think it was that they lost their ambition. The tall ones were pretty crude, but they were so far ahead of us that our things and our customs seemed silly. Finally we just sat around and lived on what scraps we could beg from the tall ones' camps. You might say we died of an inferiority complex."

	"What happened to you?" asked McGannon.

	"Oh, I was a god among my own people by then, and naturally I represented them in dealings with the tail ones. I got to know the tall ones pretty well, and they were .wiling to put up with me after all my own clan were dead. Then in a couple of hundred years they'd forgotten all about my people, and took me for a hunchback or something. I got to be pretty good at flint-working, so I could earn my keep. When metal came in I went into that, and finally into blacksmithing. If you put all the horseshoes I've made in a pile, they'd—well, you'd have a damn big pile of horseshoes anyway."

	"Did you limp at that time?" asked McGannon.

	"Uh-huh. I busted my leg back in the Neolithic. Fell out of a tree, and had to set it myself, because there wasn't anybody around. Why?"

	"Vulcan," said McGannon softly.

	"Vulcan?" repeated the gnarly man. "Wasn't he a Greek god or something?"

	"Yes. He was the lame blacksmith of the gods."

	"You mean you think that maybe somebody got the idea from me? That's an interesting idea. Little late to check up on it, though."

	Blue leaned forward, and said crisply, "Mr. Gaffney, no real Neanderthal man could talk as entertainingly as you do. That's shown by the poor development of the frontal lobes of the brain, and the attachments of the tongue-muscles."

	The gnarly man shrugged again. "You can believe what you like. My own clan considered me pretty smart, and then you're bound to learn something in fifty thousand years."

	Dr. Saddler said, "Tell them about your teeth, Clarence."

	The gnarly man grinned. "They're false, of course. My own lasted a long time, but they still wore out somewhere back in the Paleolithic. I grew a third set, and they wore out too. So I had to invent soup."

	"You what?" It was the usually taciturn Jeffcott.

	"I had to invent soup, to keep alive. You know, the bark-dish-and-hot-stones method. My gums got pretty tough after a while, but they still weren't much good for chewing hard stuff. So after a few thousand years I got pretty sick of soup and mushy foods generally. And when metal came in I began experimenting with false teeth. I finally made some pretty good ones. Amber teeth in copper plates. You might say I invented them too. I tried often to sell them, but they never really caught on until around 1750 A. D. I was living in Paris then, and I built up quite a little business before I moved on." He pulled the handkerchief out of his breast pocket to wipe his forehead; Blue made a face as the wave of perfume reached him.

	"Well, Mr. Cave-man," snapped Blue sarcastically, "how do you like our 'machine age'."

	The gnarly man ignored the tone of the question. "It's not bad. Lots of interesting things happen. The main trouble is the shirts."

	"Shirts?"

	"Uh-huh. Just try to buy a shirt with a 20 neck and a 29 sleeve. I have to order 'em special. It's almost as bad with hats and shoes. I wear an 8-1/2 and a 13 shoe." He looked at his watch. "I've got to get back to Coney to work."

	McGannon jumped up. "Where can T get in touch with you again, Mr. Gaffney? There's lots of things I'd like to ask you."

	The gnarly man told him. "I'm free mornings. My working hours are two to midnight on week-days, with a couple of hours off for dinner. Union rules, you know."

	"You mean there's a union for you show people?"

	"Sure. Only they call it a guild. They think they're artists, you know."

-

	Blue and Jeffcott watched the gnarly man and the historian walking slowly toward the subway together. Blue said, "Poor old Mac! I always thought he had sense. Looks like he's swallowed this Gaffney's ravings hook, line, and sinker."

	"I'm not so sure," said Jeffcott, frowning. "There's something funny about the business."

	"What?" barked Blue. "Don't tell me that you believe this story of being alive fifty thousand years? A cave-man who uses perfume? Good God!"

	"N-no," said Jeffcott. "Not the fifty thousand part. But I don't think it's a simple case of paranoia or plain lying cither. And the perfume's quite logical, if he were telling the truth."

	"Huh?"

	"Body-odor. Saddler told us how dogs hate him. He'd have a smell different from ours. We're so used to ours that we don't even know we have one, unless somebody goes without a bath for a couple of months. But we might notice his if he didn't disguise it."

	Blue snorted. "You'll be believing him yourself in a minute. It's an obvious glandular case, and he's made up this story to fit. All that talk about not caring whether we believe him or not is just bluff. Come on, let's get some lunch. Say, did you see the way Saddler looked at him every time she said 'Clarence'? Wonder what she thinks she's going to do with him?"

	Jeffcott" thought. "I can guess. And if he is telling the truth, I think there's something in Deuteronomy against it."

-

	The great surgeon made a point of looking like a great surgeon, to pince-nez and vandyke. He waved the X-ray negatives at the gnarly man, pointing out this and that.

	"We'd better take the leg first," he said. "Suppose we do that next Tuesday. When you've recovered from that we can tackle the shoulder."

	The gnarly man agreed, and shuffled out of the little private hospital to where McGannon awaited him in his car. The gnarly man described the tentative schedule of operations, and mentioned that he had made arrangements to quit his job at the last minute. "Those two are the main thing," he said. "I'd like to try professional wrestling again some day, and I can't unless I get this shoulder fixed so I can raise my left arm over my head."

	"What happened to it?" asked McGannon.

	The gnarly man closed his eyes, thinking. "Let me see. I get things mixed up sometimes. People do when they're only fifty years old, so you can imagine what it's like for me.

	"In 42 B.C. I was living with the Bituriges in Gaul. You remember that Caesar shut up Werkinghetorich—Vercingetorix to you—in Alesia, and the confederacy raised an army of relief under Caswallon."

	"Caswallon?"

	The gnarly man laughed shortly. "I meant Wcrcaswallon. Caswallon was a Briton, wasn't he? I'm always getting those two mixed up.

	"Anyhow, I got drafted. That's all you can call it; I didn't want to go. It wasn't exactly my war. But they wanted me because I could pull twice as heavy a bow as anybody else.

	"When the final attack on Caesar's ring of fortifications came, they sent me forward with some other archers to provide a covering fire for their infantry. At least that was the plan. Actually I never saw such a hopeless muddle in my life. And before I even got within bow-shot, I fell into one of the Romans' covered pits. I didn't land on the point of the stake, but I fetched up against the side of it and busted my shoulder. There wasn't any help, because the Gauls were too busy running away from Caesar's German cavalry to bother about wounded men."

-

	The author of "God, Man, and the Universe" gazed after his departing patient. He spoke to his head assistant. "What do you think of him?"

	"I think it's so," said the assistant. "I looked over those X-rays pretty closely. That skeleton never belonged to a human being."

	"Hmm. Hmm." said Dunbar. "That's right, he wouldn't be human, would he? Hmm. You know, if anything happened to him—"

	The assistant grinned understanding. "Of course there's the S.P.C.A."

	"We needn't worry about them. Hmm." He thought, you've been slipping: nothing big in the papers for a year. But if you published a complete anatomical description of a Neanderthal man—or if you found out why his medulla functions the way it does—hmm—of course it would have to be managed properly—

-

	"Let's have lunch at the Natural History Museum," said McGannon. "Some of the people there ought to know you."

	"Okay," drawled the gnarly man. "Only I've still got to get back to Coney afterward. Tins is my last day. Tomorrow Pappas and I are going up to see our lawyer about ending our contract. It's a dirty trick on poor old John, but I warned nun at the start that this might happen."

	"I suppose we can come up to interview you while you're—ah—convalescing? Fine. Have you ever been to the Museum, by the way?"

	"Sure," said the gnarly man. "I get around."

	"What did you—ah—think of their stuff in the Hall of the Age of Man?"

	"Pretty good. There's a little mistake in one of those big wall-paintings. The second horn on the wooly rhinoceros ought to slant forward more. I thought about writing them a letter. But you know how it is. They say 'Were you there?' and I say 'Uh-huh' and they say 'Another nut.' "

	"How about the pictures and busts of Paleolithic men?"

	"Pretty good. But they have some funny ideas. They always show us with skins wrapped around our middles. In summer we didn't wear skins, and in winter we hung them around our shoulders where they'd do some good.

	"And then they show those tall ones that you call Cro-Magnon men clean-shaven. As I remember they all had whiskers. What would they shave with?"

	"I think," said McGannon, "that they leave the beards off the busts to—ah—show the shape of the chins. With the beards they'd all look too much alike."

	"Is that the reason? They might say so on the labels." The gnarly man rubbed his own chin, such as it was. "I wish beards would come back into style. I look much more human with a beard. I got along fine in the Sixteenth Century when everybody had whiskers.

	"That's one of the ways I remember when things happened, by the haircuts and whiskers that people had. I remember when a wagon I was driving in Milan lost a wheel and spilled flour-bags from Hell to breakfast. That must have been in the Sixteenth Century, before I went to Ireland, because I remember that most of the men in the crowd that collected had beards. Now—wait a minute—maybe that was the Fourteenth. There were a lot of beards then too."

	"Why, why didn't you keep a diary?" asked McGannon with a groan of exasperation.

	The gnarly man shrugged characteristically. "And pack around six trunks full of paper every time I moved? No, thanks."

	"I—ah-—don't suppose you could give me the real story of Richard III and the princes in the Tower?"

	"Why should I? I was just a poor blacksmith or farmer or something most of the time. I didn't go around with the big-shots. I gave up all my ideas of ambition a long time before that. I had to, being so different from other people. As far as I can remember, the only real king I ever got a good look at was Charlemagne, when he made a speech in Paris one day. He was just a big tall man with Santa Claus whiskers and a squeaky voice."

-

	Next morning McGannon and the gnarly man had a session with Svedberg at the Museum, after which McGannon drove Gaffney around to the lawyer's office, on the third floor of a seedy old office-building in the West Fifties. James Robinette looked something like a movie-actor and something like a chipmunk. He glanced at his watch and said to McGannon: "This won't take-long. If you'd like to stick around I'd be glad to have lunch with you." The fact was that he was feeling just a trifle queasy about being left with this damn queer client, this circus freak or whatever he was, with his barrel body and his funny slow drawl.

	When the business had been completed, and the gnarly man had gone off with his manager to wind up his affairs at Coney, Robinette said "Whew! I thought he was a halfwit, from his looks. But there was nothing halfwitted about the way he went over those clauses. You'd have thought the dams contract was for building a subway system. What is he, anyhow?"

	McGannon told him what he knew.

	The lawyer's eyebrows went up. "Do you believe his yarn?"

	"I do. So does Saddler. So does Svedberg up at the Museum. They're both topnotchcrs in their respective fields. Saddler and I have interviewed him, and Svedberg's examined him physically. But it's just opinion. Fred Blue still swears it's a hoax or a case of some sort of dementia. Neither of us can prove anything." 

	"Why not?"

	"Well—ah—how are you going to prove that he was or was not alive a hundred years ago? Take one case: Clarence says he ran a sawmill in Fairbanks, Alaska, in 1906 and '07, under the name of Michael Shawn. How are you going to find out whether there was a sawmill operator in Fairbanks at that time? And if you did stumble on a record of a Michael Shawn, how would you know whether he and Clarence were the same? There's not a chance in a thousand that there'd be a photograph or a detailed description you could check with. And you'd have an awful time trying to find anybody who remembered him at this late date.

	"Then, Svedberg poked around Clarence's face, and said that no human being ever had a pair of zygomatic arches like that. But when I told Blue that, he offered to produce photographs of a human skull that did. I know what'll happen: Blue will say that the arches are practically the same, and Svedberg will say that they're obviously different. So there we'll be."

	Robinette mused, "He does seem damned intelligent for an ape-man."

	"He's not an ape-man really. The Neanderthal race was a separate branch of the human stock; they were more primitive in some ways and more advanced in others than we are. Clarence may be slow, but he usually grinds out the right answer. I imagine that he was—ah—brilliant, for one of his kind, to begin with. And he's had the benefit of so much experience. He knows us; he sees through us and our motives." The little pink man puckered up his forehead. "I do hope nothing happens to him. He's carrying around a lot of priceless information in that big head of his. Simply priceless. Not much about war and politics; he kept clear of those as a matter of self-preservation. But little things, about how people lived and how they thought thousands of years ago. He gets his periods mixed up sometimes, but he gets them straightened out if you give him time.

	"I'll have to get hold of Pell, the linguist. Clarence knows dozens of ancient languages, such as Gothic and Gaulish. I was able to check him on some of them, like vulgar Latin; that was one of the things that convinced me. And there are archeologists and psychologists ...

	"If only something doesn't happen to scare him off. We'd never find him. I don't know. Between a man-crazy female scientist and a publicity-mad surgeon—I wonder how it'll work out ..."

-

	The gnarly man innocently entered the waiting-room of Dunbar's hospital. He as usual spotted the most comfortable chair, and settled luxuriously into it.

	Dunbar stood before him. His keen eyes gleamed with anticipation behind their pince-nez. "There'll be a wait of about half an hour, Mr. Gaffney," he said. "We're all tied up now, you know. I'll send Mahler in; he'll see that you have anything you want." Dunbar's eyes ran lovingly over the gnarly man's stumpy frame. What fascinating secrets mightn't he discover once he got inside it?

	Mahler appeared, a healthy-looking youngster. Was there anything Mr. Gaffney would like? The gnarly man paused as usual to let his massive mental machinery grind. A vagrant impulse moved him to ask to see the instruments that were to be used on him.

	Mahler had his orders, but this seemed a harmless enough request. He went and returned with a tray full of gleaming steel. "You see," he said, "these are called scalpels ..."

	Presently the gnarly man asked, "What's this?" He picked up a peculiar-looking instrument.

	"Oh, that's the boss's own invention. For getting at the mid-brain."

	"Mid-brain? What's that doing here?"

	"Why, that's for getting at your—that must be there by mistake—"

	Little lines tightened around the queer hazel eyes. "Yeah?" He remembered the look Dunbar had given him, and Dunbar's general reputation. "Say, could I use your 'phone a minute?"

	"Why—I suppose—what do you want to 'phone for?"

	"I want to call my lawyer. Any objections?"

	"No, of course not. But there isn't any 'phone here."

	"What do you call that?" The gnarly man rose and walked toward the instrument in plain sight on a table. But Mahler was there before him, standing in front of it.

	"This one doesn't work. It's being fixed."

	"Can't I try it?"

	"No, not till it's fixed. It doesn't work, I tell you."

	The gnarly man studied the young physician for a few seconds. "Okay, then I'll find one that does." He started for the door.

	"Hey, you can't go out now!" cried Mahler.

	"Can't I? Just watch me!"

	"Hey!" It was a full-throated yell. Like magic more men in white coats appeared. Behind them was the great surgeon. "Be reasonable, Mr. Gaffney," he said. "There's no reason why you should go out now, you know. We'll be ready for you in a little while."

	"Any reason why I shouldn't?" The gnarly man's big face swung on his thick neck, and his hazel eyes swiveled. All the exits were blocked. "I'm going."

	"Grab him!" said Dunbar.

	The white coats moved. The gnarly man got his hands on the back of a chair. 'I he chair whirled, and became a dissolving blur as the men closed on him. Pieces of chair flew about the room, to fall with the dry sharp pink of short lengths of wood. When the gnarly man stopped swinging, having only a short piece of the chair-back left in each fist, one assistant was out cold. Another leaned whitely against the wall and nursed a broken arm.

	"Go on!" shouted Dunbar when he could make himself heard. The white wave closed over the gnarly man, then broke. The gnarly man was on his feet, and held young Mahler by the ankles. He spread his feet and swung the shrieking Mahler like a club, clearing the way to the door. He turned, whirled Mahler around his head like a hammer-thrower, and let the now mercifully unconscious body fly. His assailants went down in a yammering tangle.

	One was still up. Under Dunbar's urging he sprang after the gnarly man. The latter had gotten his stick out of the umbrella-stand in the vestibule. The knobby upper end went whoowh past the assistant's nose. The assistant jumped back and fell over one of the casualties. The front door slammed, and there was a deep roar of "Taxi!"

	"Come on!" shrieked Dunbar. "Get the ambulance out!"

-

	James Robinette sat in his office on the third floor of a seedy old office-building in the West Fifties, thinking the thoughts that lawyers do in moments of relaxation.

	He wondered about that damn queer client, that circus freak or whatever he was, who had been in a couple of days before with his manager. A barrel-bodied man who looked like a halfwit and talked in a funny slow drawl. Though there had been nothing halfwitted about the acute way he had gone over those clauses. You'd think the damn contract had been for building a subway system.

	There was a pounding of large feet in the corridor, a startled protest from Miss Spevak in the outer office, and the strange customer was before Robinette's desk, breathing hard.

	"I'm Gaffney," he growled between gasps. "Remember me? I think they followed me down here. They'll be up any minute. I want your help."

	"They? Who's they?" Robinette winced at the impact of that damned perfume.

	The gnarly man launched into his misfortunes. He was going well when there were more protests from Miss Spevak, and Dr. Dunbar and four assistants burst into the office.

	"He's ours," said Dunbar, his glasses agleam. "He's an ape-man," said the assistant with the black eye.

	"He's a dangerous lunatic," said the assistant with the cut lip.

	"We've come to take him away," said the assistant with the torn pants.

	The gnarly man spread his feet and gripped his stick like a baseball bat by the small end.

	Robinette opened a desk drawer and got out a large pistol. "One move toward him and I'll use this. The use of extreme violence is justified to prevent commission of a felony, to wit, kidnapping."

	The five men backed up a little. Dunbar said, "This isn't kidnapping. You can only kidnap a person, you know. He isn't a human being, and I can prove it."

	The assistant with the black eye snickered. "If he wants protection, he better see a game-warden instead of a lawyer."

	"Maybe that's what you think," said Robinette. "You aren't a lawyer. According to the law he's human. Even corporations, idiots, and unborn children are legally persons, and he's a damn sight more human than they are."

	"Then he's a dangerous lunatic," said Dunbar.

	"Yeah? Where's your commitment order? The only persons who can apply for one are (a) close relatives and (b) public officials charged with the maintenance of order. You're neither."

	Dunbar continued stubbornly. "He ran amuck in my hospital and nearly killed a couple of my men, you know. I guess that gives us some rights."

	"Sure," said Robinette. "You can step down to the nearest station and swear out a warrant." He turned to the gnarly man. "Shall we slap a civil suit on 'cm, Gaffney?"

	"I'm all right," said the individual, his speech returning to its normal slowness. "I just want to make sure these guys don't pester me any more."

	"Okay. Now listen, Dunbar. One hostile move out of you and we'll have a warrant out for you for false arrest, assault and battery, attempted kidnapping, criminal conspiracy, and disorderly conduct. We'll throw the book at you. And there'll be a suit for damages for sundry torts, to wit, assault, deprivation of civil rights, placing in jeopardy of life and limb, menace, and a few more I may think of later."

	"You'll never make that stick," snarled Dunbar. "We have all the witnesses."

	"Yeah? And wouldn't the great Evan Dunbar look sweet defending such actions? Some of the ladies who gush over your books might suspect that maybe you weren't such a damn knight in shining armor. We can make a prize monkey of you, and you know it."

	"You're destroying the possibility of a great scientific discovery, you know, Robinette."

	"To Hell with that. My duty is to protect my client. Now beat it, all of you, before I call a cop." His left hand moved suggestively to the telephone.

	Dunbar grasped at a last straw. "Hmm. Have you got a permit for that gun?"

	"Damn right. Want to see it?"

	Dunbar sighed. "Never mind. You would have." His greatest opportunity for fame was slipping out of his fingers. He drooped toward the door.

	The gnarly man spoke up. "If you don't mind, Dr. Dunbar. I left my hat at your place. I wish you'd send it to Mr. Robinette here. I have a hard time getting hats to fit me."

	Dunbar looked at him silently and left with his cohorts.

	The gnarly man was giving the lawyer further details when the telephone rang. Robinette answered: "Yes ... Saddler? Yes, he's here ... Your Dr. Dunbar was going to murder him so he could dissect him ... Okay." He turned to the gnarly man. "Your friend Dr. Saddler is looking for you. She's on her way up here."

	"Herakles!" said Gaffney. "I'm going."

	"Don't you want to see her? She was 'phoning from around the corner. If you go out now you'll run into her. How did she know where to call?"

	"I gave her your number. I suppose she called the hospital and my boarding-house, and tried you as a last resort. This door goes into the hall, doesn't it? Well, when she comes in the regular door I'm going out this one. And I don't want you saying where I've gone. Nice to have known you, Mr. Robinette."

	"Why? What's the matter? You're not going to run out now, are you? Dunbar's harmless, and you've got friends. I'm your friend."

	"You're durn tootin' I'm gonna run out. There's too much trouble. I've kept alive all these centuries by staying away from trouble. I let down my guard with Dr. Saddler, and went to the surgeon she recommended. First he plots to take me apart to see what makes me tick. If that brain-instrument hadn't made me suspicious I'd have been on my way to the alcohol jars by now. Then there's a fight, and it's just pure luck I didn't kill a couple of those internes or whatever they are and get sent up for manslaughter. Now Matilda's after me with a more than friendly interest. I know what it means when a woman looks at you that way and calls you 'dear.' I wouldn't mind if she weren't a prominent person of the kind that's always in some sort of garboil. That would mean more trouble sooner or later. You don't suppose I like trouble, do you?"

	"But look here, Gaffney, you're getting steamed up over a lot of damn—"

	"Ssst!" The gnarly man took his stick and tiptoed over to the private entrance. As Dr. Saddler's clear voice sounded in the outer office, he sneaked out. He was closing the door behind him when the scientist entered the inner office.

	Matilda Saddler was a quick thinker. Robinette hardly had time to open his mouth when she flung herself at and through the private door with a cry of "Clarence!"

	Robinette heard the clatter of feet on the stairs. Neither the pursued nor the pursuer had waited for the creaky elevator. Looking out the window he saw Gaffney leap into a taxi. Matilda Saddler sprinted after the cab, calling "Clarence! Come back!" But the traffic was light and the chase correspondingly hopeless.

-

	They did hear from the gnarly man once more. Three months later Robinette got a letter whose envelope contained, to his vast astonishment, ten ten-dollar bills. The single sheet was typed even to the signature.

-

Dear Mr. Robinette:

I do not know what your regular fees are, but I hope that the inclosed will cover your services to me of last July.

Since leaving New York I have had several jobs. I pushed a hack (as we say) in Chicago, and I tried out as pitcher on a bush-league baseball team. Once I made my living by knocking over rabbits and things with stones, and I can still throw fairly well. Nor am I bad at swinging a club like a baseball bat. But my lameness makes me too slow for a baseball career.

I now have a job whose nature I cannot disclose because I do not wish to be traced. You need pay no attention to the postmark; I am not living in Kansas City, but had a friend post this letter there.

Ambition would be foolish for one in my peculiar position. I am satisfied with a job that furnishes me with the essentials, and allows me to go to an occasional movie, and a few friends with whom I can drink beer and talk.

I was sorry to leave New York without saying goodbye to Dr. Harold McGannon, who treated me very nicely. I wish you would explain to him why I had to leave as I did. You can get in touch with him through Columbia University.

	If Dunbar sent you my hat as I requested, pit .re mail it to me, General Delivery, Kansas City. Mo. My friend will pick it up. There is not a hat store in J town where I live that can fit me.

With best wishes, I remain, 
Yours sincerely, Shining Hawk
alias Clarence Aloysius Gaffney

-

* * * * * *
Book information

THE WHEELS OF IF

turned—and Allister Park spun from our own New York through a dizzying succession of alternate worlds to New Belfast... biggest city in the Bretwaldate of Vinland, the country that might have been if some historical crises had turned out the other way	

Park's frantic efforts to get back to his own if-world turn Vinland upside down—and create a marvelously inventive and entertaining classic of SF.

In addition to this famous novel, this collection includes "The Gnarly Man," "Hyperpilosity," and four other stories in the inimitable De Camp manner.

L. SPRAGUE de CAMP was born in New York in 1907. After working for a correspondence school and co-authoring a standard book on inventions, he became a star of the golden age of SF with his stories in Unknown and Astounding. Of recent years he has been more active in nonfiction and historical novels, and has edited several fantasy anthologies. SF fans who utter  the war-cry "Yngvi is a louse!" at odd times are often unaware that it comes from a de Camp story.

-

THE WHEELS
OF IF
And Other Science-Fiction

L. SPRAGUE DE CAMP

A BERKLEY MEDALLION BOOK
PUBLISHED BY BERKLEY PUBLISHING CORPORATION

-

To my valued colleague, collaborator and friend
FLETCHER PRATT

-

Copyright 1949 by L. Sprague de Camp

All rights reserved

Published by arrangement with the author

BERKLEY MEDALLION EDITION, OCTOBER, 1970

SBN 425-01893-8

The Wheels of If, copyright 1940, by Street & Smith Publications, Inc., for Unknown Fantasy Fiction, October 1940

The Best-Laid Scheme, copyright 1941, by Street & Smith Publications, Inc., for Astounding Science-Fiction, February 1941

The Warrior Race, copyright 1940, by Street & Smith Publications, Inc., for Astounding Science-Fiction, October 1940

Hyperpelosity, copyright 1938, by Street & Smith Publications, Inc., for Astounding Science-Fiction, April 1938 The Merman, copyright 1938, by Street & Smith Publications,  Inc., for Astounding Science-Fiction,  December 1938

The Contraband Cow, copyright 1942, by Street & Smith Publications, Inc., for Astounding Science-Fiction, July 1942

The Gnarly Man, copyright 1939, by Street & Smith Publications, Inc., for Unknown, June 1939

BERKLEY MEDALLION BOOKS 
are published by-
Berkley Publishing Corporation 
200 Madison Avenue New York, N. Y. 10016

BERKLEY MEDALLION BOOKS ® TM 757,375 
Printed in the United States of America