Stadium beyond the Stars

by Milton Lesser

© 1960 by MILTON LESSER FIRST Edition

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 60-5840

Made in the United States of America

For

Steven— and for Laurie and Julie, later

Contents

CHAPTER                                                                                               PAGE

1.  The Dark Nebulae..................................................... ................. 1

2.  Derelict!.......................................................................                11

3.  Olympus in the Sky..................................................                27

4.  Trouble on Olympus................................................. .............. 48

5.  The Coalsack Again..................................................                62

6.     Chandlur Strikes........................................................                79

7.    Hunk Strikes Back.....................................................                87

8.      Parade of the Planets...............................................              104

9.      Antares Wont Talk....................................................                 Ill

10.  Rescue!......................................................................... ............ 120

11.Deneb Wont Listen...................................................             133

12.  The Space Captains.................................................. ........... 150

13.  Beyond Sagittarius................................................... ........... 163

14.  The Unknown.............................................................             179

15.  The Teleporter............................................................ ........... 191

16.  The Games................................................................... ........... 203

vii

Stadium beyond the Stars

Chapter 1 The Dark Nebulae

E

VEN before they reached the viewplates, Steve Frazer felt his heart pound with excitement. He knew they were still too early though—for several moments more the starship Hellas, outbound from Earth for three months now, would hang in the gray murk of subspace.

Several moments more, then—the center of the galaxyl

They went up the final steeply slanting companion-way, their magnet boots clanging echoes from the walls and ceiling.

"Maybe we ought to go back," Hunk Little said uncertainly. He was a squat and powerfully built boy in a one-piece black jumper. "We're not supposed to be here during change-over."

Steve Frazer shook his head. "I wouldn't miss it for anything, Hunk. Come on."

Then they stood on the upper observation deck of the Hellas. The familiar gray murk swam and coiled

on the other side of the viewplates, making it seem as if the entire universe were contained in the thin metal hull of the Hellas. And until the change-over from subspace to normal space, that was true enough. Time and matter were negative in subspace; it was sub-space that made interstellar travel possible, and in three months of Earth time the Hellas had soared at translight speed across eight thousand parsecs of the Milky Way Galaxy.

"What time is it?" Steve asked.

Hunk Little looked at his chrono. "0815," he said.

Steve's blue eyes gleamed. "If were on time, change-over ought to be any second now."

"You re a funny guy," Hunk Little said. "What's so special about it?"

"Youll see—" Steve began.

Just then they heard magnet boots clomping up the companionway behind them. Hunk Little gave Steve a despairing look, but Steve just shrugged and smiled. The companionway they'd come up was the only way off the observation deck.

"You think Roy Ambler told on us?" Hunk demanded in his deep voice.

"What do you think? He's the only one who saw us leave quarters."

Hunk made an unpleasant face. "I just love that guy."

Then a crewman wearing a yellow jumper came out on the observation deck and shouted, "What's the matter with you two? You know you're supposed to be strapped down in quarters during change-over. Come on."

Hunk gave him a sheepish look, but Steve said, "It's too late, mister. Look at your chrono. We don't have time to get back."

The crewman looked, and nodded. "Grab something, boys. And hold on tight. You're going to wish you were back in quarters."

Hunk didn't say anything. Steve said, "No, I'm not," and smiled.

The crewman's scowl melted into a reluctant smile. "Never saw change-over before, huh?"

"First trip in subspace," Steve said.

"First time out of Sol System," Hunk added.

"Okay, hold on and watch," the crewman told them. He smiled again. "I guess it really is something, at that."

There were swim-rails near the viewplates, and Steve and Hunk grasped them firmly. So did the crewman. Just then a shrill whistle sounded in the canned air of the Hellas, the crewman shouted, "Brace yourselves!" and Steve felt a shuddering, wrenching pressure grab and squeeze every atom of his lean body. It shook and squeezed him like a giant unseen hand. He heard Hunk's bellow of surprise and pain. He was staring at the nearest viewplate. The gray murk misted. He blinked.

The gray murk drifted away like a wraith of fog before die wind.

And Steve Frazer, his knuckles white as he held the swim-rails, his body wracked by change-over, his forehead beaded with sweat, was staring out at the deep, velvety black of normal space—eight thousand parsecs from journey's start.

His first look disappointed him, but then he realized the Hellas had made change-over on the fringe of the dark nebulae in Ophiuchus. The blackness he saw was the blackness of the nebulae—inert gasses and dust-motes.

Steve relaxed. The change-over pressure was gone. He felt his limbs shaking. And, as the gray murk of subspace had done, the black of the dark nebulae parted. More suddenly, though. It parted almost like a curtain as the Hellas sped at barely sublight speed through normal space.

And in the viewplate Steve saw the myriad stars of the center of the galaxy.

With no atmosphere to diffuse their light, they gleamed like jewels. They did not blink. Their colors were all the colors of the rainbow. They were beautiful. Even prosaic, plodding Hunk Little was moved to exclaim, "Wow!"

"You can say that for me too, boy," the crewman told him.

Steve just stared at the viewplate, mute.

The Hellas, with a crew of fifty under Captain Syrtis Williams, had brought two hundred young Sol System athletes to the center of the galaxy where, ahead among the eternal stars, the Interstellar Olympic Games would be held on one of the planets of the Ophiuchus System.

"Hey, what was that?" Hunk cried.

A shadow had flashed across the viewplate. Steve had seen it, too. The crewman at his side had become suddenly tense.

Even aboard the spacetubs that plow the interplanetary orbits of the Sol System there is a standing joke about ships that pass in space. It takes three men on one to see the other at all—one to announce its approach, one to glimpse it vaguely as it streaks by, one to see it depart. And the Hellas, having just come through change-over from subspace, was still moving at almost the speed of light.

Had the Hellas, parting the curtain of the dark nebulae that hid the center of the galaxy, passed another ship? On the Hellas's prearranged orbit of approach, where no other ship should have been?

"Did you guys see what I saw?" Hunk wanted to know. But Steve squeezed his shoulder, and Hunk was silent.

The crewman was talking into the strap-radio on his wrist. "This is Hatcher on upper ob-deck," he said. "I think we just passed a ship. Right. No more than thirty seconds ago."

Hatcher looked up at Steve and Hunk, smiling grimly. "If that was a ship, it has no business here. Which means it's in trouble. Which means, instead of being a couple of delinquents doing what you weren't supposed to do, you're liable to be the heroes of the day. Come on, let's go."

They turned their backs on the viewplates and headed down the companionway.

"Roy Ambler should see us now," Hunk said. "A couple of heroes."

Captain Syrtis Williams, a half hour later, paced back and forth on the Hellas s bridge. He was a big, slightly stooped blond man with tanned, leathery skin. He wore a yellow jumper with a Captains black stripes on its sleeves.

"We have a fix on the ship," he said. "Tried to raise it by radio, but don't get an answer."

"What ship is it, sir?" Steve asked.

"Antares markings, son. But Antares is so far from the center of the galaxy, which means—"

"Which means," Joe Ito, the Olympic team coach from Earth finished for him, "that that's the Antares Olympic ship."

"Looks that way," Captain Williams agreed.

Joe Ito frowned. "In trouble?"

"No distress call, Coach. But they don't answer the radio. According to the astrogator, they're not moving under their own power. But they're on the gravitational fringe of the Ophiuchus System, about four billion miles out. They're orbiting—very slow. About three and a half miles a second. Without lights, Coach. Without power." Captain Syrtis Williams took a deep breath. "We've been slowing and circling back for the past twenty minutes. It will take us another couple of hours to decelerate and parallel their orbit. Then I'm going aboard."

"In a spacesuit?" Steve asked.

Captain Williams nodded. "There isn't any other way, is there?"

Steve knew there wasn't. And of course the unwritten law of space, like the unwritten law of the sea before it, demanded that any available ship go to the aid of a stricken vessel.

"But what could have gone wrong?" Joe Ito wanted to know.

Shrugging, Captain Williams said, "That's what I'm going to find out. It's also why I sent for you, Coach."

"Me?" Joe Ito looked at him blankly.

"Well, you and Frazer, actually. I have two hundred athletes aboard, Coach, and a fifty-man crew. The crew is absolute minimum, with each man an expert in his own field. Though they've all gone through the motions in Space Academy, not one of them knows much about deep-space boarding. It's a tricky business."

Joe Ito was frowning. "What are you getting at?"

"Well, ordinarily, a Captain doesn't leave his ship. But this time I've got to, Coach. I know my way around in a spacesuit. I spent a couple of years mining in the asteroid belt, which—as you know—is where I met Steve Frazer's father."

Steve felt a lump in his throat. His eyes stung suddenly. Three months before shipping out for the Interstellar Olympics, his father had died in a mining accident on Eros.

"Deep-space boarding is a tricky business, as I said," Syrtis Williams went on. "Hazardous enough for a team of two, it's prohibitively dangerous for one man. I'm going aboard that ship because I have to. There isn't a member of the crew I'd ask to go with me, though several, I'm sure, would volunteer. It would be suicide, though, because they aren't trained for deep-space boarding. It just isn't necessary these days."

"Now it is," Joe Ito said simply.

Syrtis Williams nodded. "Now it is, Coach." His deep-set eyes stared unblinkingly at Joe Ito. "Tell me, do you know of anyone aboard the Hellas who can do the job with me?"

Joe Ito looked quickly at Steve.

Steve Frazer was on the Earth Olympic team as a spacesuit racer. He had grown up in the asteroid belt, prospecting with his father. For the past two years— since he was sixteen—with time out for school, he had helped his father make a living that way. And asteroid prospecting was done in spacesuits.

"I can do it, sir," Steve said.

Joe Ito nodded slowly. "So can Roy Ambler. He's our other racer."

"I know both boys," Captain Williams said. "If I had my choice, I'd rather have Frazer at my side out there. But naturally I can't make him go. He'd have to volunteer. It's very dangerous."

Steve replied promptly, "There's a shipload of Antarean people out there, sir. Apparently they're in trouble. If the situation were reversed, I'd like to think they'd help us."

Captain Williams smiled for the first time. "I was hoping you'd say that, son. You remind me of your father. Don Frazer was a real pioneer—one of the greatest men I ever knew."

Steve felt that lump in his throat again. "He always wished he could go into deep space with you, Captain. One more mining job and he would have—if they'd have taken him despite his age."

"They'd have taken him," Syrtis Williams said simply. He stopped pacing and stood directly in front of Steve. "Well, are you ready?"

"I'm ready, sir," Steve said.

Hunk Little helped Steve into his gear in the aft air lock of the Hellas. "Me," he was saying, "I'm just a muscle-stiff. I wish I could do what you can do, Steve. I wish I was going out there."

"You're the best wrestler on the Earth team," Steve told his friend.

"Wrestler!" Hunk Little snorted. "A—a cave man could wrestle."

"So could the ancient Greeks, who started the Olympic games, Hunk. And in some ways they've produced the highest civilization we've ever had."

Syrtis Williams was already waiting at the outer air lock door, his spacesuit ready for inflation and his bubble-helmet in his hands. A crewman poked his head into the air lock. "Still no radio contact, sir. It's definite now. They don't answer."

"We match their orbit yet?"

"Locked in place ten miles apart, sir. It would be dangerous to get any closer."

Syrtis Williams grinned. "You're telling me! Somebody's being too enthusiastic, mister. Better pull back to twenty miles and hold it there."

"Yes, sir," the crewman replied, and spoke into his strap-radio.

Steve turned to gaze out the air lock viewplate. Against the velvet-black, star-studded immensity of space, the Antares ship was a tiny teardrop mote. Since the Hellas now matched its speed and orbit, it hung there as if motionless. It was dark, silent.

Why?

Syrtis Williams and Steve were going to find out.

Not talking, Hunk Little dropped the bubble-helmet over Steve's head and screwed the lugs home. Hunk tapped the glassite of the helmet and winked. Syrtis Williams's voice was loud and metallic over the intercom.

"Hear me, son?"

"Yes, sir."

"All set?"

"Yes, sir."

"Clear the air lock," Syrtis Williams said. His space-suit was bright red. Steve's was icy blue, with red and white bands on the arms—the same suit he would use in the Olympic games.

Suddenly they were alone in the air lock.

The outer door swung toward them. Steve went weightlessly to it with Captain Williams.

Together, they rocketed into the depths of space.

Chapter 2 n^mi

TOR every action, an equal and opposite reaction. Steve used his shoulder rockets to soar in a swift arc between the Hellas and the Antares ship. He could hear the faint hiss of his air supply inside the inflated spacesuit; could see Captain Williams, a few hundred yards off in space, a roly-poly figure in air-inflated red. And whichever way he turned his head inside the bubble-helmet he had a magnificent view of star-crowded space here at the center of the galaxy.

Except dead ahead.For, dead ahead, the Antares ship loomed ever larger. Steve hadn't realized how big it was until he'd rocketed to within a few miles. Its hull was polished, silvery, reflecting stars like a mirror. Its hundreds of portholes were dark. Why, it's five times the size of the Hellas, Steve thought. It must be almost a mile long.

"Steve?" Captain Williams's voice called over the intercom. "She's heeled over ninety degrees. The air lock will be on top."

In space there was no absolute up and down, of course. A spaceship was a self-contained world with its own self-contained orientation. But relative to the Hellas, the big Antares ship was heeled over.

Steve and Syrtis Williams rocketed to the top side of the Antares ship, where Steve felt—and heard in the air of his spacesuit—the thump of touchdown as his magnet boots landed on the silvery hull of the big ship.

Then he felt himself slipping.

Moments later he floated a hundred yards off in space, spinning, slowly orbiting the Antares ship.

"They don't use magnets," commented Syrtis Williams, who had managed to grasp an air lock lug. "Rocket back slowly, Steve. Grab onto something."

Steve followed the advice, but since the Antares ship's gravitational field was all but negligible, his arms were almost pulled from their sockets when he grasped a second lug across the air lock from Syrtis Williams. Like Newton's equal and opposite reaction for every action, that was another natural law at work—a body in motion tends to stay in motion. Steve had almost gone right by the Antares ship and swung into another slow orbit again.

"You all right?" Syrtis Williams asked.

"Yes, sir." Then Steve saw Syrtis Williams's face inside the bubble-helmet. The Captain's features were twisted with pain. "What's the matter, sir?"

"Made the same mistake you did," Syrtis Williams growled. "Expected magnetization and didn't get any.

But you re a racer, Steve. You're better at this sort of thing than I am. I think I dislocated my shoulder."

"Want me to take you back, sir?"

Syrtis Williams scowled darkly. "Not on your life. We're here to do a job. Let's do it."

"But you—"

"It'll be all right. Open the air lock and help me

inside."

"But you—" Steve began again.

"I'll stay in the air lock. You poke around some, son. We'll keep in touch on the intercom."

Steve nodded, and set to work on the air lock lugs.

In space, an air lock door is fastened but never locked. Locks, of course, are unnecessary, and the fact that they aren't used is an additional safety factor in space travel. Loosening and spinning the outside lugs, Steve knew, would loosen the inside lugs. In five minutes Steve had the air lock door unfastened. Syrtis Williams pushed against it.

Again, for every action an equal and opposite reaction. The air lock door, fifteen feet across, weighed far more than Syrtis Williams did. He was thrust off a dozen yards into space. The door remained sealed.

"What do we do now?" he asked ruefully.

Prospecting in the asteroids in far Sol System had made Steve an old hand at boarding. "We use rockets, sir. Low power. Watch."

Pressing the control button inside his slightly inflated left glove, Steve activated his shoulder rockets. He soared feetfirst at the air lock door, using his own body as a battering ram. The door swung slowly in, to reveal darkness more intense than star-studded space.

Syrtis Williams shook his head and smiled. "I'm glad I had you along."

They entered the air lock together. Steve whirled as the door swung shut behind them.

"Electric eye," Syrtis Williams commented.

"I feel heavy," Steve said.

Syrtis Williams nodded. "Artificial gravity."

"Inside, but not on the hull?"

"Looks that way."

It was absolutely, utterly, Stygianly dark. Steve paced three steps forward. Gravity aboard the Antares ship felt close to, if not exactly, Earth-norm. But artificial gravity meant the ship was still functioning. If it were still functioning, why hadn't it answered their radio call? And why was it orbiting the Ophi-uchus System slowly, a couple of billion miles from nowhere?

"...trouble with having weight again," Syrtis Williams was saying, "is this dislocated shoulder is starting to really hurt." Steve heard a clomp, decided that Captain Williams had sat down on the air lock floor.

Just then soft light glowed all around them. It radiated from the juncture of walls and ceiling in the square, thirty-by-thirty air lock. It was reddish in color.

"Antares is a red star," Syrtis Williams said. "Red would be the normal daylight color for the whole system."

"But if gravity, light—if the ship functions—" stammered Steve.

"Exactly what I was thinking," Syrtis Williams said. "Maybe something happened to their air supply."

Steve looked at the environment gauge on his right wrist. He read off the figures sotto voce, "Temperature, sixty-eight degrees Farenheit, air pressure, eighteen pounds to the square inch. Atmosphere, twenty-one per cent oxygen, two per cent carbon dioxide, the rest inert gasses. More neon than on Earth, sir. A little less nitrogen. Everything's . . . fine ..." Steve's voice trailed off.

Syrtis Williams frowned. His face was pale and beaded with sweat from the pain of his shoulder. "Everything normal," he said. "But they don't answer a radio signal, they haven't given a distress call, and they're in orbit without power. And no lights till we came aboard."

"That's right, sir," Steve said. It was an eerie situation. He felt curious and uneasy, a combination which didn't quite add up to fear. "Can I remove my space-suit?"

"What for?"

"Well, if I'm going to have a look around, and if they have air and gravity I'll make better time without it."

"Yes, but what about keeping in contact?"

"I hadn't thought of that. I'll deflate the suit and leave my helmet here, sir. 1*11 hurry. You ought to have that shoulder attended to."

"Time enough for that later. And be careful. Keep in constant contact."

Steve was about to remove his helmet when Syrtis Williams shouted, "Hold it!"

"Sir?"

"Radioactivity. You check for it?"

"No, sir," Steve admitted sheepishly.

He checked the gauge on his left wrist. The reading was negative.

A moment later, suit deflated, helmetless, he stepped through the inner air lock door and along the main companionway of the Airfares ship.

It was a derelict ship, thousands of parsecs from home and apparently deserted. For no reason that Steve could see.

Half an hour later, he still hadn't been able to discover a reason. Reporting back to Syrtis Williams every step of the way, he had covered a lot of ground.

Engine room; no damage, but the master switch had been cut, the atomics were cool and safe.

Bridge; like the rest of the ship it was lit by the soft red radiance. The control lever had been thrust beyond full-stop to the orbit position. The last entry in the logbook, written in the interstellar patois that was derived from English, was routine. "Leaving subspace 0914. Dark nebulae passed. Ophiuchus System dead ahead. . . ."

It ended—just like that.

Dining deck; here Steve found the biggest surprise of all. There were table-settings for more than five hundred people. Food—cold now—was in all the plates, half consumed. Which meant, as far as Steve could see, that the crew and Olympic-bound athletes aboard the Antares ship had sat down to a routine meal, had begun to eat it—and had vanished.

Boat deck; all the lifeboats were in their tubes.

"That's about it, sir," Steve told Syrtis Williams on the intercom. "They ought to be here. They're not. Somehow they just—left the ship."

"You're sure about the lifeboats?"

Steve said he was sure.

"Where are you now?"

"Boat deck."

"Try quarters yet?"

"No, sir."

"Give it a try, son. Then call it a day. You have no ideas at all?"

"None, sir. How's the shoulder?"

"Feels like a brontosaurus is sitting on me, but I'll manage for awhile longer."

Steve went down from boat deck to the lower prom deck, then down another ramp to quarters. What he found there was the same as dining deck all over again. Personal effects hadn't been removed. Most of die bunks were made. Playing cards of an unfamilar design were spread on a small table in one room.

The Antareans, like Earthmen and the inhabitants of the hundred and twenty other civilized star systems, were human. In their disappearance, this humanness was all too apparent to Steve. It was exactly as if the crew and passengers of an Earth ship had disappeared in the depths of space, eight thousand parsecs from home.

Like their brethren in the far-flung star systems, the Antareans were descendants of Earthmen. Twenty generations ago, Steve knew, when the first translight ships had been perfected and when, coincidentally, Earth was dangerously overpopulated and using its natural resources at a reckless rate, the Great Migration had taken place. It had consumed the major efforts of five generations of Earthmen, and when it was over, human civilization had spread to a hundred and twenty star systems.

And, in an amazingly short time, Earth had become a backwater of the galaxy. Overpopulation had stripped it of its mineral wealth. Many of its best young people had shipped out in the waves of migration which had leapfrogged inward from the arm of the galaxy in which Sol System orbited, toward the center. New frontiers on new worlds brought out the best in people. In a very short time the centers of civilization shifted from Earth's cities to the cities of Antares IV and Deneb II and the Fomalhaut planets and Gregor's Star and the Carelli System and here in Ophiuchus,

Then, too, the early starships employed overdrive, not subspace, to attain translight velocities. On overdrive it took a ship months to span the gap between Earth and Antares and Deneb, and scores of years to reach Ophiuchus. But twenty years ago subspace drive had been developed, so now it was possible to reach Deneb in a matter of days from Earth, and even Ophiuchus in just three months. Subspace drive had held great promise for the far-flung human civilizations; it meant an ingathering of human achievement; it meant a pooling of discoveries made by human beings on a hundred and twenty inhabited worlds.

But, perversely, it also meant trouble. Antares System, for example, was proud of its own achievements and suspicious of Deneb System. Deneb was convinced it had earned the right to be called leader of the galaxy. Since these two outworld systems had far outstripped native Earth in power and wealth, allies gravitated to one or the other.

The Olympic games here in Ophiuchus, Steve knew, were an attempt on the part of the more levelheaded among the scattered outworlds, an attempt which might or might not succeed, to restore a feeling of oneness and mutual cooperation among the centers of civilization. Deneb had wanted the games, the first since the Great Migration, on Denebian territory; Antares had wanted them; even now-pastoral Earth, birthplace of humanity, had put in its claim.

In the end, the Ophiuchus System had been accepted by all contending parties as a compromise. For Ophiuchus, at the center of the galaxy, was symbolic of the limits human migration had reached, and Ophiuchus could be regarded as a doorway past the nebulae-obscured center to the unknown far side of the galaxy.

"Same down here, sir," Steve made his report from quarters. "They left. In a hurry. That's all I can tell you."

"Okay. You've done what you could. Come on back, son."

Steve said suddenly, "Hold it! I hear something." "You hear what?"

Faintly, Steve heard the sound of music. He told Syrtis Williams so on the intercom. "Music? Nearby?"

"Back of quarters. Sick bay's there, I think." "What kind of music?"

"Just music.Simple but nice. A folk melody, I think."

Steve didn't have to be told to investigate. Did the music merely mean someone had left a player on— before disappearing? Or was someone still aboard the Antares ship?

As Steve approached the sick bay, the music grew louder. Bat-wing doors across the width of the corridor separated quarters from the ship's hospital. The music came from an open doorway this side of the division. Steve walked to it cautiously.

Beyond the open doorway a man was singing in a high and quavering, but not unpleasant voice, to the accompaniment of a twanging instrument. Steve didn't recognize the words, but he knew they were in one of the ancient national languages of Earth. French? He thought it was French.

A recording instrument? Or a single Antarean left aboard the ship from which all his companions had mysteriously disappeared; a single Antarean singing incredibly in an archaic Earth language? Steve took a deep breath. He was going to find out. When he reached the doorway, the music stopped. He looked into a small room like all the others he had explored here in quarters. His eyes widened and he felt his pulses racing.

A little old man sat on the bunk in there. He had a stringed instrument on his lap, and he was staring at Steve as Steve was staring at him. He was small and slender with a frizzled shock of white hair and twinkling blue eyes.

"Knew you came aboard," he said. "Was wondering when you'd get down here. Like the song?" He plucked the stringed instrument. "It's French. That's an ancient language of the Mother Planet. Earth."

"I'm from Earth," Steve heard himself saying.

"Earth?That so? I never met an Earthman before."

"Are you an—Antarean?"

"What do you think? This is an Antares ship, isn't it?"

Steve had no answer to that. After the mystery of the abandoned ship, the old man's matter-of-factness came as a surprise. All Steve could say, a little lamely, was, "Where is everybody?"

The old man winked at him. "Out."

"I know, but—"

"My name's Billgarr. Yours?"

"Steve Frazer. Mr. Billgarr, where—"

"No mister. Just Billgarr. We don't use titles in the Antares System."

"Where is everybody?" Steve repeated. Billgarr plucked another note on his stringed instrument. "Getting measured." "Measured?"

Billgarr stood up and came close to Steve. "A ship needs a caretaker. That's me. Nothing much to do, though. I wish I was getting measured, too."

"Getting measured?" Steve said blankly. "Did you say—"

"That's what I said. Physically, emotionally, psychologically, all that stuff. Me, I'm a music teacher. We Antareans are a pretty musical people."

"I know, I read that in school."

"You read about us in school?" The Antarean's continued matter-of-factness was exasperating. "That's good. I know something about Earth too. I can speak French. France was a country in Europe, a peninsula jutting off western Asia into the Atlantic Ocean."

"What did you mean by getting measured?" Steve asked.

"They used to speak French there. In France. A long time ago. You're from Earth? Ever been to France?"

"Actually, I spent most of my life in the asteroid belt. But this getting measured—"

"They drank an extract of grape in France, called beer, I think."

"Wine!" Steve almost shouted the word.

Billgarr's twinkling blue eyes stared at him. Then he smiled. Humor in inflicted exasperation? Steve thought a little desperately. It could be; humor would develop differently on all the outworlds.

Finally Billgarr declared, still matter-of-factly, "They're being measured by extra-humans, Stefrazer." He pronounced Steve's name rapidly, almost the way he pronounced his own, as one continuous, liquid syllable.

"Extra-humans? You mean nonhuman beings? Intelligent beings?" Steve said. "There aren't any."

Spreading out among the stars, mankind had found flora and fauna on all the inhabitable worlds—but no intelligent life except his own kind.

"On this side of the center of the galaxy there aren't any," Billgarr said. "There are on the other side. I ought to know. I've seen them. Do you speak French?"

Steve ignored the question. He wasn't being impolite, if the smile in Billgarr's eyes meant anything. "Extra-humans?" he said. "You—you've seen them?"

"Of course I've seen them," Billgarr said.

Steve didn't say anything. Billgarr went on, "They were just like you. Didn't think any extra-roller sentient life was possible. Till they found us."

"Roller?"

"They don't walk. No legs. They roll. They don't talk. No vocal cords. They think."

"Out loud?" Steve gasped, and realized the foolishness of his question.

"They—telepathize." Billgarr sat down again. "One's aboard—keeping me company."

As if to prove the point, a rumbling sound was heard in the companionway, Steve looked at Billgarr, looked at the doorway, dashed outside. He felt a cold chill on the back of his neck and down his spine.

Something so big that it almost filled the companionway from bulkhead to bulkhead and floor to ceiling rolled toward him. Rolled! It was the only word that fitted.

It had eyes—three of them, like large white saucers, that floated on the smooth pink rolling surface so that they always remained in front.

Who are you? Steve thought.

Then he realized he hadn't thought it at all. The thought had come, unbidden, into his mind. It was the roller—telepathizing.

"I—I'm an Earthman," Steve said out loud.

Another thought, confused, came into Steve's mind. Just Antareans.No one else—yet. Didn't I tell you, Billgarr?

"You didn't tell me anything," Billgarr said out loud.

The roller reached Steve. The three huge lidless eyes surveyed him, unblinking.

Then the roller faded. It didn't move. It just faded.

Steve could see the opposite bulkhead right through it. Then all he saw was the bulkhead.

The roller was gone.

"They teleport," Billgarr said.

"They what?"

"Teleport. Move matter by thought waves. Instantly —anywhere. Its called teleportation." Steve just looked at him.

Billgarr said, "He's calling me. He's angry." "Who?"

"The roller. He wants me to . . . I'm going, Ste-frazer . . ." Billgarr was becoming transparent.

Steve tried to touch him. Billgarr was fading. He was as insubstantial as air. Then Steve was alone in the room.

"Billgarr!" he called.

No answer.

"Billgarr!"

Hallucination?

But he had seen Billgarr, had talked to him. Had seen the roller, had "heard" its thoughts. He was sweating. His hands shook.

"Captain Williams," he said into the intercom. "You—you're not going to believe this."

"The intercom was open. I heard you. I heard Billgarr. What was the—roller like?"

Steve told him. His voice was unsteady. "I'm going to look for them," he said.

He looked. He spent another hour on the ship, searching. He didn't find Billgarr. Didn't find the roller. They had vanished—like the Antarean crew and Olympic contingent had vanished.

Billgarr had called it teleportation.

Steve returned to Captain Williams in the air lock.

"I believe you, son," Syrtis Williams said. "I heard what went on. But if I hadn't—"

"I know," Steve said.

But Syrtis Williams finished the sentence anyway. "If I hadn't, I wouldn't have believed you for a

minute. You know something? I don't think anyone else is going to believe you."

"They've got to," Steve said. "They've got to."

"It won't be easy."

"But don't you understand? Extra-human life, sir! Our first contact with it! We never dreamed. . . ." "Any proof?" "No-o."

But wouldn't the rollers come again—to Ophiu-chus maybe? And why had they removed the Anta-reans from their ship? To measure them? To measure them for what?

Steve climbed into his spacesuit. Still thinking about it, he helped the injured Syrtis Williams rocket back to the Hellas.

Chapter $ Olympus in the Sky

NTIL the Hellas made planetfall on Ophiuchus, Steve was convinced that the most important thing in the world was to make someone believe what had happened aboard the derelict Anta-rean ship.

But when the Hellas came down sternfirst, when the dense clouds of gas cleared from the landing pit, when Steve and Hunk Little and all the other Olympic athletes crowded ob-deck for their first good look at Ophiuchus, when the jet-bus that would take them to Earthtown arrived, its jets roaring, when Steve had his first glimpse of the three suns that dazzled the cloudless Ophiuchan sky—he forgot, at least for awhile, his disappointing return to the Hellas.

Syrtis Williams's dislocated shoulder had been put in speed-time traction; in twenty-four hours it would heal. A warning beacon had been placed on the An-tarean ship; it would be salvaged by the Ophiuchan authorities.

But no one, not even Hunk Little, believed Steve's

incredible story. He wondered if Syrtis Williams was having the same trouble convincing his fellow officers.

"You mean they just disappeared?" Hunk Little asked when Steve finished telling his story. He snapped his fingers. "Like that?"

"Like that," Steve said, a little lamely. "Billgarr said they used teleportation."

Hunk Little's big face scowled and his massive shoulders lifted in a shrug. "Stevie-boy, you know me. I'm your pal. I'd like to believe you. But it sounds—sounds all cockeyed. Maybe you just—"

"Maybe I just what?"

"I don't know," Hunk admitted.

But Roy Ambler, Earth's second spacesuit racer, had more definite ideas on the subject. He was a tall, red-haired boy of eighteen with deceptively guileless eyes and a freckle-splotched face. His family owned extensive mining property on Ganymede, one of the Jovian moons in Sol System, and his father had led the fight for asteroid-leasing by the big mining combines, as Steve's father had led the fight for the small, private homesteading asteroid miners. He had never liked Steve, as his father had never liked Steve's father. And, quick-tempered and egotistic, he resented Steve's position as Earth's first spacesuit racer.

"Why don't you say it?" he asked Hunk Little. "Steve's the biggest teller of tall tales since—" But he didn't finish the sentence.

"Since who?" Steve challenged him.

"Forget it, Frazer. Hunk knows what I mean."

Steve felt his face getting hot. "No. Say what you mean."

"Just forget it. There's no sense going into ancient history."

"What ancient history?" Steve demanded. His voice was unsteady, for he knew what Roy Ambler had in mind.

"Well, you asked for it," Roy said finally. "Your father. Everybody knows how the great Don Frazer used to make up stories to get people interested in his prospecting ventures. Everybody knows—"

That was as far as Roy went, because Steve's fist splatted meatily against his cheek. Roy took three staggering steps back and sat down hard. It was suddenly very quiet on ob-deck.

"Take that back!" Steve cried. "My father never went around conning people into anything."

Roy scrambled to his feet. Steve was waiting, his fists balled and ready. "I'll forget you swung on me," Roy said condescendingly.

"You'll take it back."

"Why should I take back the truth? All Sol System knows how Don Frazer conned people—poor miners —into backing his Eros expedition with a wild story about—"

"Are you crazy?" Hunk Little whispered furiously. "Five hundred homesteading families are living on Eros, thanks to Don Frazer. And he must have thought plenty of that expedition. He died trying to make it a success."

Steve said grimly, "Get out of the way, Hunk."

Reluctantly, Hunk stepped aside. Steve swung wildly, missing, and Roy Ambler, coolly and with precision, landed a left hook in his breadbasket.

The trouble, at the beginning, was that Steve saw red. He was mad and he was wild. He missed three more times while Roy Ambler, in a boxer's crouch, jabbed half a dozen times at his nose until his eyes watered. Steve raised his fists to ward off the rain of blows. Promptly Roy crossed a right into his exposed belly, and Steve stumbled back. Following him, Roy caught a wild right cross on his left palm and countered the miss crisply with a right upper-cut that caught the point of Steve's jaw.

Steve went down as if he had been pole-axed. He heard a roaring sound in his ears, and his eyes were blurry.

"Enough?" Roy Ambler demanded.

Steve got slowly to his knees. One part of his mind was still cool, almost icily calm. That's your father he's talking about, he thought. That's Don Frazer he called the biggest liar in Sol System. And if you let him whip you, he'd make his point.

Steve stood up slowly. The calm part of his mind was in control now. He saw a cocky grin on Roy's freckled face. He jabbed tentatively at it with his left fist. Instinctively, Roy raised his guard. Steve rammed his right fist home under it. Roy doubled over, a look of surprise and pain on his face now. Steve hit him twice, left and right, on the jaw. Roy's knees buckled, but instead of going down he clinched quickly and desperately with Steve. But Steve pushed him away, then followed him, then landed with the right again high on Roy's left cheek. Roy's knees thudded on the floor.

"Take it back," Steve said through clenched teeth.

Before Roy could answer, if Roy was going to answer, another voice cried out.

"Boys!"

Steve swung around. Striding through the circle of Olympic athletes watching the fight was Joe Ito, the coach.

"He—" Roy Ambler began.

"They—" Hunk Little started to say.

Coach Ito raised a hand and cut them off. "I don't care why it started. I don't care who started it. You boys represent Earth here at the games. When you leave the ship you'll have the people of half the worlds of the galaxy watching you, deciding what Earth and Earthmen are like from your behavior. If there's another outburst like this, the boys responsible will be confined to shipboard for the duration of the games." His level gaze met Steve's. "I don't care who they are. Is that clear?"

"It's clear," Steve said.

Roy wiped blood from his lips with the back of one hand. "You're the coach, Mr. Ito." But he glared at Steve.

Joe Ito was a trim little Japanese-American with brush-cut hair and eyes so dark they were almost jet-black. "I want you boys to shake hands," he said. "Right now."

Neither Steve nor Roy made a move.

Joe Ito shrugged. "Look, you don't have to like each other. There's no law says you do. But if you shake hands I'll take that as a pledge that you won't make a spectacle of yourselves either here aboard ship again or—even worse—outside on Ophiuchus. Come on—shake hands."

"I'll shake with you on that, Coach," Steve said. "But I don't have to shake with him."

"I say you do."

Roy Ambler surprised Steve then by smiling a little and saying, "Come on, Steve. If you're willing, I'm willing." Steve looked for a moment at that smile. Superficially it was bland like Roy's eyes, but the smile was pasted there, like a mask. And though Roy's eyes were still guileless, the smile didn't quite reach them.

"Stevie-boy," Hunk Little prompted. "He's meeting you halfway."

In the end Steve had to give in. He stuck his hand out and felt Roy Ambler take it. They shook and parted quickly. Roy's eyes remained bland. Too bland. He isn't finished, Steve thought. He looked at Roy's face. In an hour or so, the red-haired boy was going to develop the granddaddy of all shiners, if the red puffiness under his left eye meant anything. He isn't finished, Steve thought again. I know the guy. He's got something up his sleeve.

Steve didn't know what it was. But he would find out.

The single large planet of the Ophiuchus System had never known one single day's absolute darkness.

It swung in a complex orbit around the three suns of a triple-star system, and at least one of them was always in the eternal daytime sky.

The largest of the three suns was a dazzling, brilliant blue. The smallest was a somber eye of dull orange. The third was white, like Earth's own sun, but smaller, more distant.

As if to welcome the two hundred Earth athletes to a really alien world, all three suns were in the sky when the jet-bus took them from the spaceport to Earthtown, a small section of Olympic City—which the Ophiuchans had built to house the athletes of several dozen interstellar worlds.

The trip from the spaceport to Earthtown took half an hour. Eyes glued to the bus window, Steve temporarily forgot about Billgarr and the roller, forgot his fight with Roy Ambler and the accusation Roy had made. A sense of indescribable wonder filled him. He was here—here at the very center of the galaxy, eight thousand parsecs from home on a strange, lushly tropical world, a world superheated by its three suns.

Earthtown turned out to be a single large building built like a round plastic bubble. Its lower floor housed a cafeteria and a rec hall; the upper floors contained double rooms with Earth-style furniture. On arrival, Steve and Hunk Little were assigned to one of the rooms. Each unpacked his single canvas bag, then they showered and dressed in their lightest jumpers because it was tropically hot on Ophiuchus. They'd hardly spoken since Steve's fight with Roy.

Now Steve stood at the round window, gazing down at the blue and white Earth flag two stories below.

Hunk cleared his throat. "Listen," he said, and cleared his throat again. "I—you know I'm not much of a talker, Steve. I just want you to know, if I— I mean, well, if a guy like Roy Ambler said a thing like that about my old man, I—well, ahh, put her there, Stevie-boy."

They shook hands. Hunk's eyes were smiling warmly in his pleasantly homely face. "But next time, for crying out loud, Stevie-boy, don't go in on him wild like that. He can fight. You almost got yourself clobbered."

"I know," Steve said. "And thanks, Hunk."

"Forget it. But don't go blaming Coach for breaking it up like that. He had to."

"I know he had to," Steve said.

The eternal afternoon of Ophiuchus wore on. An hour after lunch, Coach Ito had his athletes limber up in the underground gymnasium below Earthtown. Then he gave them a pep-talk about being on their best behavior here on Ophiuchus. After he and Roy Ambler had been read the riot act aboard the Hellas it seemed almost anticlimactic to Steve.

"Well, boys," Coach Ito finished, "that's about it. No more workouts till tomorrow. You're free to see the sights if you want." He smiled. "Including Earthtown II. But don't let the eternal daylight throw you. Lights out at eleven o'clock, ship time."

"You mean twenty-three hundred hours, Coach," someone called out, and Coach Ito smiled again. Eleven o'clock was Earth's designation of time. "You trying to make us homesick, Coach?"

"Me for Earthtown II," someone else said, and soon after that Earth's male athletes broke up into small groups and left the building.

Earthtown II, adjacent to Earthtown, was quarters for Earth's female athletes. There had been several social functions aboard the Hellas, all carefully supervised. Friendships had grown, and now perhaps half of Coach Ito's charges headed for Earthtown II to visit the girls they'd known in high school or in athletic meets all over Sol System or had met for the first time aboard ship.

Hunk Little told Steve dolefully, "There's a girl named Jane who's a free-styler on the swimming team who—"

"I saw the two of you at the dance last week," Steve said, smiling slightly.

"All right, all right," Hunk growled. "Don't rub it in. With my ugly mug I couldn't get to first base with her." He shook his head. "As a matter of fact, I think she has a crush on Roy Ambler."

"Bad taste," Steve said, still smiling. "Obviously a case of bad taste." But suddenly he felt a little foolish about his own fight with Roy.

Until Hunk said, "Speaking of Ambler, where is he?"

Steve shook his head. "Search me. I haven't seen him since we got to Earthtown."

"That's funny," Hunk said. "I wonder what he's up to."

"What makes you think he's up to anything?" "Well, you know Roy."

After dinner, Coach Ito sent for Steve.

"Tired?" he asked. "A lot of the boys have already hit the sack."

"No, I'm raring to go. I was planning to take the bus into Ophiuchus City tonight. Hunk Little and I."

"Hunk'll have to take a rain check on that excursion. But you've got an appointment in Ophiuchus City. If you grab the next bus you can just make it."

"Me?" Steve said, surprised. "An appointment with whom?"

Coach Ito took a deep breath. "The Interstellar Olympic Commissioner." "The Commissioner?"

"That's right, Steve. That—well, fantastic story of yours got around. The Commissioner wants to see you."

"Didn't Captain Williams make a report, sir?" "Radio report as I understood it. He'll be in sick bay till tomorrow. The Commissioner wants to see you." "Are you coming with me, Coach?" A pause, then, "I'll go along for the ride, Steve." "What's the matter?"

Coach Ito was frowning. "That story of yours. You sure you don't want to retract it?"

"Retract it? Why should I? I told exactly what happened. Captain Williams—"

"Wasn't actually there with you," Joe Ito finished for him. "All he heard, as I understand it, was what came over your intercom. Steve, sometimes in space, sometimes when you—"

"I saw what I saw, Coach. What do you expect me to do, lie now and say I didn't see it?"

"An extra-human sentient being?"

"Yes."

"Who disappeared into thin air?" "Yes."

Coach Ito shrugged. "I don't think the Commissioner's going to like your story." "Why not? It's the truth."

"The truth as you saw it or think you saw it. Be reasonable, Steve."

"I'm being as reasonable as I can. I'm reporting what I saw."

"All right," Coach Ito said.

"All right" Steve said right back at him. Then they both smiled.

Coach Ito said, "You're a funny guy. The trouble is, I like you." His smile faded. "Well, let's go see the Commissioner."

Steve rarely made snap judgments, rarely took much stock in the first impressions people made on him. But he disliked Chandlur the Denebian intensely.

The man was almost as imposing as his official title —High Commissioner of the First Interstellar Olympic Games. His office was elaborately furnished in the Denebian style, all aglitter with the semiprecious stones that were so common in, and accounted in part for the wealth of, the Denebian System. Chandlur himself wore several large jeweled rings and a tiara on his absolutely bald head.

He was a huge man who dwarfed the Japanese-American, Joe Ito. His enormous hand toyed with a string of opals and star sapphires as he listened to Steve's story. His body, sleekly covered by a multicolored jumper, leaned forward. His head, canted to one side, was most notable for the surprisingly small eyes that seemed to stare beyond Steve to a point in air between him and the far wall of the office. He had the ash-white skin characteristic of the Denebians.

When Steve finished his story, telling it quickly and simply, exactly as it had happened, the High Commissioner of the First Interstellar Olympic Games leaned back in his chair, crossed his hands over his huge belly and said in his deep, resonant voice, "This man Billgarr spoke French, did he?"

Steve clenched his teeth before answering. Chandlur had selected, as a starter, what was perhaps the least important element of the story to carp at. "Not exactly, sir," Steve replied, managing to keep his voice level. "He spoke the Interstellar patois, just like you do, sir. But he was singing in French."

"Singing in French," Chandlur repeated the words and gave Joe Ito a deprecating smile. "Doesn't it strike you as odd, Coach, that an alleged denizen of the Antarean System would sing in an archaic Earth language?"

"Odd," Joe Ito admitted. But he added, "Not impossible, though. The archaic Earth languages are part of our interstellar culture. Experts know them."

"Experts, yes," said Chandlur. He leaned forward, playing with the string of expensive beads. "Doesn't it also strike you as odd that the principals in Steve Frazer's story conveniently disappeared when his little episode with them came to an end?"

Joe Ito, who had not really believed Steve till now, bristled. "Are you calling the boy a liar?"

"My dear Coach," Chandlur said unctuously, "certainly not. But whatever he saw there on the Antarean ship made his imagination run away with him. There are stories of hallucinations in space, of—"

"It wasn't an hallucination!" Steve cried out.

"But of course you don't think it was. No one is blaming you, young man." The High Commissioner turned ponderously to Joe Ito. "You realize that he had just come across eight thousand parsecs of space. He was excited, overwrought. It is natural enough that, sent unexpectedly to an alien ship, he would be victimized by his own fertile imagination."

Joe Ito changed the subject. "Has anything been done about the Antarean ship?"

"As a matter of fact, it has. Which is why I'm so sure our young friend here has been imagining things.

You see, as soon as Captain Williams's radio report was received, we sent a tow ship out to the Anta-rean s orbit."

"Then the derelict was brought in?" Joe Ito asked.

"Indeed it was. There was no—uh, roller' aboard. There was no old man singing—uh, French folk songs. There was no one at all, Coach Ito."

"They just disappeared, sir," Steve said. "We know that."

Chandlur lunged to his feet. "And what else do you know, young man?"

"Well, that there was food in the dining area, that no personal belongings had been packed, that the lifeboats were all in their tubes. Don't you see, sir," he added earnestly, "everyone else aboard the An-tares ship had already disappeared before I got there —just as Billgarr and the rollers disappeared afterwards."

"But I don't see that at all," Chandlur said promptly. Dropping the jewels, he picked up a sheet of paper and scanned it. "Since the Liberté was an Olympic-bound ship, it was one of the tugs of the Olympic Patrol and not the Ophiuchus space-navy that brought her in, and I have the captain's report right here."

"Did you say Liberté?" Joe Ito asked.

Steve blurted triumphantly, "That's a French name. Which proves that Billgarr wasn't the only Antarcan with a knowledge of or an interest in archaic French I"

"Perhaps it proves that," Chandlur the Denebian admitted. "But this report I have here disproves everything else you claim."

Steve and Joe Ito exchanged blank glances.

Chandlur went on, "Something—we don't know what—made the Antareans leave their ship. But they didn't leave suddenly or mysteriously, as you claim. There was no food on the tables on dining deck. Most personal belongings had been packed." He ticked the points off slowly on his big fingers. "And every lifeboat was gone from its tube."

"That's not true!" Steve shouted.

Chandlur looked at him blandly. "Are you calling me a liar?"

"Ask Captain Williams. He—"

"Was injured, remaining in the Liberies air lock while you explored the ship and made your report back to him. The only thing he knows about the interior of the Liberte, young man, is what you told him."

"I wasn't wearing my helmet. My intercom picked up Billgarr's voice. Captain Williams heard it."

"We already went over that, the Captain and I. He didn't hear it very distinctly. He's not sure what he heard. Are you, young man? Are you?"

Steve took a deep breath, let it out and said softly but grimly, "I told you everything that happened—just as it happened. Every word of it is the truth."

The High Commissioner showed them the palms of his hands. "Not according to my report."

"Then the report's mistaken."

"Easy, Steve," Joe Ito cautioned.

"How can I take it easy? Don't you see—contact with an extra-human race could be the greatest thing that happened to mankind since the advent of star travel."

"If there were an extra-human race," the High Commissioner pointed out.

"Why are you trying to cover it up?" Steve blurted. "Why?"

Chandlur shrugged massively, then told Steve, "Will you wait in the anteroom a moment? I'd like a word with your coach."

When the door had shut behind Steve, Chandlur asked Joe Ito, "Have you thought of having him psycho-tested? The journey through subspace sometimes—"

"Steve's a very stable boy," Joe Ito said. "And very intelligent. True, he has a tremendous curiosity and—well, sense of wonder, but—"

"Sense of wonder? Or overworked imagination? Well, I leave that to you, Coach. But I don't want young Frazer to contaminate the other Olympic athletes with his story. I expect that will be your responsibility."

Joe Ito nodded slowly. The High Commissioner's parting shot about his responsibility also signified Joe Ito's dismissal. A moment later he went outside and joined Steve.

"We'd better get back to Earthtown," he said.

"And just ignore what happened?"

Joe Ito scowled. "Can you think of anything else to do?"

Outside, the orange and white suns had set. The blue sun hung poised ten degrees off the horizon. The air was hazy. In the blue twilight, the plastic buildings of Ophiuchus City looked like bright blue bubbles. Ordinarily, the wonder of being here, so far from home, on a strange world would have thrilled Steve. But now he felt as if an intangible yet crushing weight were on his shoulders. He'd seen Billgarr and the roller. No one else had seen them. No one believed or wanted to believe him.

Drop the whole thing?

As they waited for the jet-bus that would take them back to Earthtown, Steve knew he never could do that.

He slept fitfully, and in the morning was at the round window of the room he shared with Hunk, watching die orange and white suns come up.

"They give you a hard time?" Hunk wanted to know.

"The High Commissioner thinks I imagined the whole thing."

"Well, did you?" "Hunk! Not you, too?"

Hunk changed the subject quickly. "I—saw Jane last night," he said. He was blushing, Steve realized. "They held this dance and I danced with her a couple of times. Gosh, she's a nice girl."

"Operator," Steve said, and they smiled at each other, the tension between them suddenly and completely gone.

Hunk said, "I don't care what you saw or what you think you saw, Stevie-boy. No matter what," he added, shuffling his feet, the words not coming easily, "I'm on your side. I want—you to know that, Steve. We're buddies. We're going to stay buddies. Okay?"

Steve couldn't talk right away. Hunk was the best friend he'd ever had, a real pal.

He didn't know, until later that day, how important Hunk's loyalty was going to be.

Coach Ito sent for Steve while he was going over his space-gear after breakfast. He waved to Hunk who, wearing a sweatsuit, was wrestling with the number two wrestler on the Earth team. Hunk waved back, and went down on his rear with a thump. "Don't distract me, Stevie-boy," he said, laughing. The last Steve saw of him before going to find Joe Ito was a big Hunk Little, shoulder muscles bulging, lifting the other Earth wrestler over his head like a sack of grain.

When Steve reached Joe Ito's office at Earthtown, the coach's first words stunned him.

"Steve, did you ever race professionally?"

"Of course not."

"You sure?"

"Coach," Steve said, "you know my background as well as I know it myself."

Coach Ito's eyes didn't leave Steve's. "We've got trouble, Steve."

"What—what's the matter?"

"A report from Olympic Headquarters in Ophiu-chus City. They accuse you of being a professional racer. They say unless we can disprove the charge, you won't be eligible to compete in the games."

"But it's not true! I never raced professionally."

Joe Ito shrugged eloquently.

"Chandlur?" Steve asked him suddenly.

"No, the report came from the chairman of the Eligibility Committee, a Fomalhautian named Lin-kian. I've been in touch with him, but he won't tell me much, won't reveal the source of the charges brought against you. That's standard procedure, Steve. The last thing they'd want is an interstellar incident."

"Is there anything I can do?"

"I've already put a subspace radio call through to Earth, asking for your complete file. All we can do meanwhile is wait. Are you sure there's nothing in your past that—"

"I worked with my father on salvage and mining," Steve said.

"In a spacesuit?"

"Sure. In a spacesuit."

Joe Ito threw up his hands. "Technically, that's the same thing. If you were paid for any work done in a spacesuit, your eligibility's shot."

"But I wasn't paid!" Steve protested. "Dad needed all the help he could get. I was going to junior college at night on Ceres and helping Dad days and week ends."

"Can you prove he never paid you?"

"Dad's dead," Steve pointed out, his face grim.

"And he never paid you?"

"Not a single solar credit. He paid my tuition at Ceres Junior College, though."

"That's different. That's not pay for professional services rendered." Joe Ito stood up. "We'll have to wait for a return of my radio message, Steve. Meanwhile, they don't want you to work out."

Steve felt as if the whole world were dropping out from under him. "I guess I don't have to work out for a few days," he heard himself saying.

Joe Ito wasn't finished. "Here's the tough part, Steve. If we can't get contrary proof, and soon, the Eligibility Committee insists that you ship out to Earth on the next outbound vessel."

"You mean leave Ophiuchus?"

Joe Ito nodded slowly.

"But I . . . don't you see? It's Chandlur. It has to be Chandlur. For some reason he's putting a lid on this Antares ship business. The salvage tow's report contradicted mine completely. It was a false report. And since I'm the only one on Ophiuchus who knows the truth about the Antares ship, this is Chandlur's way of getting rid of me."

"That's a pretty rugged accusation. You have any idea why?"

"No," Steve admitted after a while. He went to

the door. "But I'm going to find out. I've got to find out."

"Let's hope you do, for your sake as well as Earth's. Roy Ambler can't hold your rockets, Steve. We'll lose a first place in racing if you can't compete."

When Steve opened the door, Joe Ito added, "But don't get yourself into any more trouble, Steve. You're in enough already."

That, Steve thought, was putting it mildly.

Chapter 4- Trouble on Olympus

I

HE rest of that day passed like a nightmare to Steve. Hunk Little tried to reassure him. The report from Earth, Hunk said, was bound to clear him. But Steve didn't see it that way at all, for no one could establish whether or not his father had paid him, and on just such a technicality his eligibility for the Olympics might go down the drain.

After lunch Steve went out to the spaceport and watched two big interstellar ships, bringing Olympic athletes from the Sirius and Procyon Systems, come roaring down to the pits. Then he watched the athletes file out with their gay planetary standards fluttering in the wind. The Sirians, boys and girls marching together in double-file in their vivid purple jumpers were singing, their voices swelling richly and carried to Steve on the wind so that he caught the last part of the refrain:

"Oh, Sirius is far away, far away, far away! We've journeyed to the Milky Way, the Milky Way, the Milky Way , .

The melody was a stirring one. Steve felt suddenly envious of the young Sirian athletes who would compete in the games. As they filed by, some of them smiled at Steve. A pretty girl waved.

"... far away, far away, far away!"

they sang, and as quickly as it had come, Steve's envy was gone. Even if his own part in it were jeopardized, even if he might not be permitted to remain on Ophiuchus long enough to see the games, let alone compete in them, the thought of athletes from all the outworlds gathered here to symbolize the unity of mankind across the vast, unthinkable distances of the galaxy was a glorious one.

"...journeyed to the Milky Way, the Milky Way, the Milky Way . .

Steve felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned and saw Syrtis Williams standing there, a look of concern on his space-tanned, gaunt face, his lean body erect and tall, his eyes deep-set and smouldering with the wanderlust that grips all Space Captains sooner or later.

"Heard you've had some trouble, boy," Syrtis Williams said.

"I'm glad to see you up and around, sir."

"Speed-time healing. I spent a night in the sick bay. For my injured shoulder it was the equivalent of three weeks in traction. Amazing, isn't it?"

"I—I wish you'd been able to explore the Antares ship with me, sir. Then all this wouldn't have—"

"I know. Joe Ito briefed me. I've been meaning to talk to you, but a group of us have been busy all day fitting out a salvage vessel to bring the Antares ship in,"

Steve didn't answer at first. Then he gasped, "What did you say?"

"We're fitting out a salvage ship to bring in the derelict."

"But Chandlur—he's the High Commissioner—told me that a tug already brought it in."

Syrtis Williams shook his head. "That's not true. You ought to know yourself a salvage operation's a tricky business. Just getting ready for it takes time."

"Then Chandlur lied, Captain. But why?"

"The story I get is that a tug did go out to the Antares ship. Spent a few hours there, then came back."

"A Denebian tug?"

"So they tell me. And one thing I wanted to tell you, son. Maybe the Space Captains are a crazy breed of men, and maybe I'm the craziest of the lot, but I believe you. I believe what happened on the Antares ship happened just as you told me."

"Thank you, Captain," Steve said softly. "I appreciate that. And sir, we've caught Chandlur in a lie, because he told Coach Ito and me they'd brought the ship in."

Captain Williams shook his head. "So what? He'll deny it, that's all. I guess he didn't know I was one of the Captains fitting out the salvage ship, or he never would have said it. But what difference does it make? A Denebian tug went out there, stayed long enough to see to it that the Antarean ship jibes with Chandlur's story."

"But why, Captain Williams? Can you at least tell me why?"

Captain Williams scowled. "I wish I could. I wish I could tell you the whole of it. I can tell you this much, though. With Earth now a depleted backwater planet, Deneb and Antares are vying for galactic leadership. Not just in the games, though they're the two favorites. In everything from interstellar trade on down, son. And I don't have to point out that the derelict ship is Antarean, while that High Commissioner of yours is a Denebian."

"But that doesn't explain—"

"It hardly explains anything. I know that. But it does give us the general picture. And whatever his reasons, Chandlur is worried enough to have invented that cock-and-bull story about your lack of eligibility. He wants you out of here—in a hurry."

Steve asked, getting the words out quickly, "Captain, if you were in my place, if you'd seen what I know I saw, and if they told you to leave Ophiuchus, would you leave—just like that?"

Syrtis Williams chuckled softly. His eyes were warm when they looked at Steve. "I'm a Space Captain. We're a cocky- breed, son. The answer to your question is no, I wouldn't leave. They'd have to drag me off Ophiuchus."

"That's all I wanted to know," Steve said. For the first time since his meeting with the High Commissioner, he began to feel just a little bit better.

"But it isn't all you'll have to know. I'll keep my ear to the ground, boy. Anything funny going on, chances are the Space Captains will be the first to know. And if you need any help, any kind of help at all, the only thing you have to do is holler. Now I'd better be getting back to that salvage ship."

Steve thanked him and watched Syrtis Williams walk toward the blasting pits, a tall and lonely figure on the wide, seared concrete apron of the spaceport.

"You see Hunk around?" Joe Ito asked Steve when he returned to Earthtown.

"No I haven't, Coach."

"Funny. He's been gone most of the day."

"Any reply from Earth on my eligibility, Coach?"

"Not yet. It ought to come by night." Joe Ito looked up into the sky, where Ophiuchus's three suns shone dazzlingly. "If there was night around here."

Joe Ito went to work with the gymnasts, and Steve went to the rec hall to look for Hunk. The big, homely wrestler wasn't there.

"Tough break, Frazer," a sprinter said when he saw Steve come in. "Weren't really a pro, were you?"

"No."

"Keep your chin up. It'll come out okay."

Steve wished he could feel as optimistic, himself.

Hunk Little came in late that night. Unable to sleep, Steve had drawn the curtain back to watch the strange blue twilight of the Ophiuchus night. The stars were never visible from this planet of eternal day.

The door opened suddenly, and Hunk was there.

"Stevie-boy? You up?"

"Uh-huh."

Hunk was excited. "Listen, I did some spying for you and—" "Spying?"

"Roy Ambler. You know, he was acting like cock-of-the-walk, big-talking how he was going to be Earths number one spacesuit racer."

"He was? I don't get it. It isn't official yet. Some of the guys know the hot water I'm in, but Coach hasn't said anything definite."

"I know," Hunk said triumphantly. "But there was another dance tonight over at Earthtown II—this afternoon, really, and we could eat dinner over there and everything. Anyway, Jane told me how Roy Ambler was boasting he'd be Earth's first racer, so I decided to make like an agent provoker or whatever you call it."

"Agent provocateur?" Steve supplied. He couldn't help smiling, and Hunk smiled with him.

"That's it. Anyhow, what I did was corner Roy Ambler at the dance and tell him you were cleared. His face fell so far he almost had to pick it up off the floor. A few minutes later, he got out of there. Still making like a whatchacallit, I followed him."

"And?" Steve asked tensely.

"And he made a beeline to a viz-phone. Three guesses who he called—and the first two don't count."

"I don't know," Steve said, puzzled.

Hunk Little gave him an exasperated stare. "The trouble with you, Stevie-boy, is you don't have a larcenous atom in your body. He called Chandlur, naturally."

"Chandlur!" Steve gasped.

"I didn't hear all of it, but I heard enough to know who's been telling stories to the High Commissioner. I heard Roy say, T thought you told me he'd be disqualified on the information I'd given you.' Those were the exact words. Anyhow, Chandlur must have reassured him, because Roy left the phone all smiles. But the important thing is, we know now it's been Roy trying to foul you up all along."

"I guess I never should have fought with him."

"What? You should have pushed his smug face in for him."

Roy Ambler supplying the false information out of spite, Steve thought, and the High Commissioner acting on it—for exactly what reason? He didn't know, but he knew he had to find out. He also knew he had to learn the truth about Billgarr and the roller, for everyone but Syrtis Williams discounted his story, and the last few hours he'd almost begun to doubt it himself. Besides, Chandlur's reason for wanting to deport him had to tie in with the mystery of the Antares ship. Except for that, Chandlur couldn't possibly have anything against him.

". . . so," Hunk was saying, "I've got my spies out."

"What? I'm sorry, Hunk. What did you say?"

"Jane and some of her girl friends. A few of them had dates with some Ophiuchan guys tonight, and one of them was even dating a Denebian." Hunk grinned. "We'll have a whole platoon of spies working for us."

Tm not sure I like that," Steve replied. "Chandlur isn't playing games. They could get in trouble."

Just then there was a knock at the door. Hunk and Steve looked at each other. A girl's voice called softly, "Hunk?"

Hunk's jaw dropped. "Hey, that's Jane!" he whispered excitedly to Steve. "She knows she can't come here."

"Hunk? Are you going to let me in? Hunk? It's important."

Hunk's face looked darker in the blue light that streamed in through the window, and Steve realized his friend was blushing. "If they find out she's here at Earthtown," Hunk muttered, "they'd ship her out faster than—"

"Faster than they'd ship me out?" Steve supplied.

Hunk was wringing his big, strong hands together, gaping at the door in indecision. "Go on back, Jane!" he called. "Go on back before they catch you and you have to answer to May Birch." May Birch was the Earthgirl coach.

"I'm only doing what you said," Jane answered at once. "I learned something about your roommate. It's important and it can't wait."

While they were talking, Steve had climbed into his jumper. He didn't want the girl to get into trouble on his account, but she was probably safer inside then-room than outside in the hall. Steve went to the door and opened it.

He saw a small, blond girl with a pert face and big eyes that were now angry. "What's the matter with that Hunk Little?" she demanded caustically. "Does he want May Birch to find out I was here?"

"I—" Hunk began, searching for words.

"Wrestlers," the girl said. "What can you expect from wrestlers?"

"Aw, listen—" Hunk complained.

The girl said, "I'm Jane. You must be Steve Frazer."

Steve nodded.

"Well, at least shut the door behind me," she told him, smiling up into his eyes. When he did, she added, smiling no longer, "Steve, you're in trouble."

"I know I am."

"You don't know how serious it is—now. At the dance I told Hunk one of the girls had a date with a Denebian boy." She smiled again, almost archly. "What I didn't tell him was that the girl was me."

"Hey!" Hunk cried.

Jane ignored him. "Anyway, here's what happened. He showed me around Denebtown's rec hall, all chaperoned by May Birch's opposite number and everything. Then I used the female's prerogative—I went to powder my nose. You see, they said the High Commissioner had come from his office and was spending the night in Denebtown."

"He's not supposed to do that," Steve pointed out.

"People would think he wasn't impartial as High Commissioner."

"That's just what I figured. But after what Hunk had told me, I thought it had to mean Mr. Chandlur was conducting some business he couldn't conduct from Olympic Headquarters."

"Pretty sharp," Hunk said grudgingly.

"I—ah—managed to get lost," Jane went on. "Lost in just the right direction—which was straight to where Mr. Chandlur was staying."

"No!" Hunk said, aghast.

"Oh, yes. When I got there he was issuing orders to a bunch of stiffs and—"

"You mean wrestlers?" Hunk asked, insulted.

"Will you let me finish, Hunk Little? No, I don't mean wrestlers. They were too old, for one thing. They looked like—well, thugs." She glanced at Steve, quickly, anxiously. "I don't remember his exact words, but he was telling them something like: 'The Earth coach won't cooperate, but we have word that they won't be able to clear Frazer in Sol System, at least not right away. I want Frazer off this planet, and I want him off right away.' Tonight, he said. Tonight, Hunk!"

"Why didn't you tell us sooner?" Hunk demanded.

"Because you wouldn't let me," Jane said, arms akimbo. "You didn't even want to let me in here."

"Those stiffs are coming here?" Steve asked her.

"I think so. Once you've been deported, Coach Ito won't be able to do much about it. But what's so important about getting rid of you, Steve?"

"It's a long story, and I don't know the half of it."

Hunk asked, "What're you going to do?"

"Syrtis Williams," Steve said promptly. "He's at the spaceport. I'll go to him."

"And hide?" Hunk wanted to know.

"If I have to.Until Coach Ito has a chance to clear me in Sol System."

"Okay," Hunk said. "The spaceport it is. What are we waiting for?"

Steve shook his head. "You two have done enough for me already. I can make it there on my own."

"Against a bunch of Denebian stiffs?" Hunk said.

"I don't see any Denebian stiffs."

"Yet" Jane told Steve ominously. "Believe me, they're coming. They have orders to shanghai you aboard an outbound ship, Steve."

"I said you've done enough—"

"Stow it," Hunk told his friend, and went to the door. He opened it, peered outside and said, "Coast's clear. Let's go."

The three of them went along the hall to the stairs and down them. It was very quiet. Steve wished it were dark, too, because darkness, now, would be his ally. But beyond the uncurtained glassite expanse of Earthtown's main hall, the blue twilight glowed eerily.

Steve jumped when a voice called his name, "Steve! Over here."

It was Joe Ito. His eyes widened a little when he saw Jane, but he didn't make any comment. "Steve, listen. I just got a call from Linkian. He's the Fomal-hautian in charge of eligibility, remember?" Steve nodded.

"He's a pretty square guy. Not on our side necessarily, but he doesn't like Chandlur. And the High Commissioner, he said, took off for Denebtown tonight. I don't like that, Steve. I—"

"I know, Coach. Jane here told me."

"Mata Hari in a swimming pool," Hunk Little said proudly.

"Earth can't substantiate my eligibility?" Steve asked the coach.

"Not right away, they can't. Chandlur's taking that as a negative. He shouldn't."

"He's doing more than that. He's sent some thugs here to shanghai me aboard an outbound ship and—"

"He can't do that!" Joe Ito cried. He was shocked.

"He's doing it, Mr. Ito," Jane said.

"Then get out of here, Steve," Joe Ito said at once. "Don't even tell me where you're going. I don't want to know. Get out of here, get lost and stay lost. I'll take this up with Linkian in the morning."

Steve knew that wouldn't do any good. If the Denebian thugs failed in their efforts to shanghai him, Chandlur would simply disavow them. And if they succeeded, Chandlur would say they were acting in the best interests of the Interstellar Olympics, would probably manufacture a story to prove that Steve was a troublemaker the same way he'd altered the situation aboard the Antares ship. But at least Steve knew

Joe Ito was on his side, and in favor of his going into hiding.

"What are you waiting for?" Joe Ito asked anxiously. "Get going."

With Hunk and Jane, Steve left through the front door of Earthtown. It was surprisingly cool. A brisk wind brought the scent of Ophiuchus's lush tropical vegetation to them, and Steve could see the great trees which lined the road leading to Ophiuchus City. Beards of a vivid orange variant of Spanish moss hung from their branches.

"It's a long walk," Steve said.

"We need the exercise," Jane told him.

"We'd better keep in the woods," Hunk suggested. "They'll be coming along the road."

Steve shook his head. "You two don't have to come with me. You know where I'm going, Hunk. I'll keep in touch."

But Hunk Little did some head shaking of his own. "We're going to take you there, Stevie-boy—signed, sealed and delivered."

They started walking briskly along the path that led to the Ophiuchus City road and the dense woods on either side of it. They were less than a hundred yards from the woods when a jet-car roared up the road toward them.

This hour of the night, Steve knew, it had to be Chandlur's stiffs.

"Run for it!" Hunk shouted.

They started to run. Jane took half a dozen strides, then stumbled and tripped. She cried out, and Steve and Hunk went back for her.

The jet-car lurched to a stop.

"There he is!" a voice cried.

In despair, Steve realized that Chandlur must have shown them his Olympic registration photo.

Three big men got out of the jet-car and sprinted toward them. Jane was on her feet.

"Run for it!" Hunk shouted. "They're in for a surprise—Earth-style."

But Steve couldn't just run and leave his friends there. Grimly, he waited with Jane and Hunk.

CHaptCt 5 The Coalsack Again

I

HE first man wore a black jumper. He was very big and, like the others, he had the bald head of a Denebian. Hunk didn't wait. He ran to meet him, and they collided all but head on. Steve saw a flurry of arms and legs. The Denebian roared in surprise and possibly in pain. The next thing Steve knew, Hunk had lifted the big Denebian bodily and hurled him at his companions.

Arms flailing air, the thrown Denebian struck and all three went sprawling. But they were up again soon and, sensing that Hunk Little was the tougher of their adversaries, two of them circled him warily. The third made for Steve, who stood with his fists balled, waiting. From the corner of his eye he could see Jane sprinting back toward Earthtown.

Then the Denebian closed with him. Steve felt the air rush from his lungs. The Denebian just grunted. He was a big, powerfully built man who must have outweighed Steve by fifty pounds. His heavy arms circled Steves ribs, and they fell that way, Steve on the bottom.

Jane almost collided with Coach Ito in the main hall of Earthtown. He caught her in his arms and the half-smile on his lips faded when he saw her face.

"What's the matter?"

"Denebiansl" she panted. "They . . . outside . . . Steve . . ."

"Stay here!" Joe Ito warned, and ran for the door. But Jane rushed outside with him.

Steve and the muscular Denebian rolled over and over on the ground. Vaguely, Steve was aware of Hunk Little holding his own with the other two assailants. Then his senses blurred as his head struck something hard, and the Denebian's weight pinned him to the ground. Powerful hands closed on his throat.

"Hunk!' he managed to call once.

After what seemed a long time he felt the pressure leave his throat. The Denebian seemed to sail through air all but weightlessly—to land in a clump of bushes near the side of the path.

Steve got up slowly, expecting to see Hunk standing there. But he saw Joe Ito and Jane.

"Judo/' Jane said, staring wonderingly at the coach. "I never saw anything like it."

Neither, apparently, had the Denebians. With the odds now even at three against three, the fight had gone out of them. When the man he had thrown climbed groggily to his feet, Joe Ito greeted him with a repeat performance. But Steve didn't wait to see it. He went to help Hunk, and sent one of his friend's assailants sprawling with a right cross.

The Denebian got up and ran for the jet-car. Hunk's single remaining attacker had already fled to it, and as Hunk began to chase him Joe Ito shouted,

"Save it for the games!''

But Hunk didn't break his stride. The third Denebian reached the car a moment before he did, and the door slammed. The engine whined and roared. Hunk ate dust as the car sped away.

"At least we gave them something they'll remember," Hunk said as the car disappeared around a curve in the road.

Joe Ito dusted his hands off. "What I said still stands, Steve. Get out of here. Go where you'll be safe. I don't want to know where, because in my official capacity I may be ordered to produce you— and I don't want to be able to. Hunk can keep you informed of what's going on here.'

Steve nodded grimly. Although Chandlur's attempt to shanghai him aboard an outbound ship had failed, he knew the Denebian would not give up. His next attempt might be made under the sanction of the High Commissioner's office itself, and Steve's only protection, then, would be in temporary flight.

He shook hands with Joe Ito, who said, "Don't think we're going to forget you here. I'll do everything I can, Steve, to clear you."

Hunk and Steve walked Jane back to Earthtown II. "Where are you going?" she asked them.

"Can't tell you," Hunk said. "You heard the coach."

She gave him an exasperated stare. "Oh, I wish I were a boy!"

Hunk grinned at Steve. The fight had temporarily dispelled his usual shyness with girls. "I don't," he said.

Waving, Jane went inside.

"Now what?" Hunk asked.

"I'm going to find Captain Williams if I can."

"It's a pretty long walk to Ophiuchus City and the spaceport."

"You don't have to come," Steve said. "You've all done enough to help me already."

"You bet your bottom credit I'm coming. I didn't mean it that way. I meant if Chandlur's stiffs decide to wait for us down the road—"

"We'll take the jet-bus then. Come on. And—thanks, Hunk."

Twenty minutes later they boarded the bus which stopped near Earthtown. The bus had two tramlike cars, and Steve and Hunk climbed on the first one.

Just before the bus started, a figure detached itself from the deep blue shadows in front of Earthtown. It ran for the second car and got on as the bus began to move.

A tall, thin boy with red hair and freckles. Neither Steve nor Hunk saw him. He was Roy Ambler.

The narrow streets of the spacemen's quarter of Ophiuchus City ended at the edge of the spaceport. The all-night joints that lined them were garishly lighted. Spacemen moved in small packs from one source of light to another. Steve heard shouts, singing, laughter.

"Don't they ever sleep?" Hunk wanted to know.

"Not between journeys. Even though we've come a long way and space travel's about as safe as we can make it, every blastoff is a calculated risk," Steve explained, much as his father had explained it to him in answer to the same question years ago in Ceres City, Sol System. "Between journeys they live to the hilt."

They were heading from the spaceport to a rooming house on Tarmac Street. At the spaceport a Sirian had given them Syrtis Williams's address, and for the last half hour they'd been making their slow way there through the throngs that crowded spacemen's quarter at all hours of the day and the arbitrary night in Ophiuchus City.

"Want to ship out for the Rodan Planets, mates?" a seedy-looking character asked them. "Pay's good."

Steve shook his head and the man went away. Another man, very fat, waddled up to them, "Just in time for the Show of the Worlds, men. Very entertaining. If you'll just come this way. One credit admission and—"

This time Hunk shook his head, and the fat man waddled on to find other customers, without even breaking stride. At the next corner a crowd had gathered to watch two men fighting. Further along Tarmac Street, a group of Centaurian Olympic athletes was taking in the sights. They greeted Hunk and Steve and asked them to join the party. Steve declined politely, but he suddenly realized then-Olympic jumpers—in the blue, white and red of the

Earth team—made them stand out. They'd be a cinch to follow.

Hunk, understandably, wanted to gawk at the sights. But Steve hurried him along.

Half a minute after they had passed the Cen-taurians, another figure in blue, white and red came up. He politely refused an offer to join the Centaurian party and hurried on.

"Did you see his hair?" one of the Centaurians asked another.

"Amazing," was the reply.

In the Centauri System, red hair was a rarity.

"Here we are," Steve told Hunk a few minutes later.

The place was a large bubble of plastic like all the buildings on Ophiuchus. It stood on Tarmac Street at the far end of the spacemen's quarter, almost two miles from the spaceport itself and half that far from the amusement center.

Steve thumbed the door buzzer, and they waited. A moon-faced Ophiuchan came to the door.

"Yes?"

"We're looking for Captain Williams," Steve said. "The Earthman?" "That's right." "Not in."

"Well, may we wait?" Steve asked. The moon-faced man took in the color of their jumpers.

"Earth team, are you?" "Yes. We-" "Stay right here."

Moonface went away. Steve looked at Hunk, shrugging. The door remained open. In a little while the two friends heard footsteps approaching from inside.

Moonface didn't come back. A short, utterly bald man in a gray jumper appeared in the round doorway. If his skin weren't bronzed and leathery, Steve would have taken him for a Denebian.

"Name's Mackald," he announced in a crisp, raspy voice. "You Frazer by any chance?"

"Yes," Steve said. "How did you know?"

"Cap'n had a hunch you might show up here. If you were in trouble. You in trouble?"

"We'd like to see Captain Williams," Steve said.

"But are you in trouble?" Mackald persisted.

Steve countered the question with one of his own. "Who are you?"

"Served under Captain Williams once in Sagittarius. Right smack in the heart of the swarm, it was. We had us a time, you bet." Mackald scowled darkly. "Got myself grounded after that." He thumped his right leg. "Bad break in three places. Couldn't get to speed-time soon enough. She hurts in high-G." He added, as if as an afterthought, "Captain Williams saved my life."

Steve didn't say anything.

"Know what the Cap'n told me tonight? He says if an Earthman named Frazer shows up, you do whatever he wants, Mackald. Whatever he needs—if he's in need of help. Which means I'm your man, Frazer. When a Denebian's life is saved, he doesn't forget. You bet he doesn't."

"You're a Denebian?" Steve asked.

Mackald scowled at him. "What's the matter, did I say the wrong thing?" Mackald chuckled. "The way you're looking at me, a Denebian's a bug-eyed monster. Well, I'm from Deneb and proud of it."

"Maybe we better come back later," Hunk offered.

But Steve shook his head. One bad Denebian like Chandlur didn't make the whole population of the Deneb System suspect. And besides, Mackald couldn't have known Steve was in trouble and might come looking for Syrtis Williams—unless the Space Captain had told him.

"No," Steve said, making up his mind. "We'll stick around."

"Then come on in," Mackald invited, stepping back with a limp. "Had my own ship once," he said. "Interstellar it was. Till I hooked up with Syrtis Williams." He lowered his voice to a confidential whisper and went on, "Still got a ship. Interplanetary, though. Beat-up old tub, but I like her. Say, you fellows wouldn't be in need of a ship, would you?" he said hopefully. "I can space out to just about anywhere, five-billion-mile radius though. Wouldn't cost you a credit since you're friends of Syrtis Williams's."

The offer surprised Steve. It also intrigued him. He knew that Chandlur had already sent a tug out to the derelict Antares ship, knew that the tug's crew had cut the lifeboats loose and changed things in general to make it appear as if the Antareans had abandoned ship the usual way. And Steve also knew that space salvage was a complicated operation which would not get underway until a minutia of requirements had been met on the ground. In fact, if Chandlur had any influence with the Ophiuchan port officials, he might delay the salvage attempt indefinitely.

"Did you mean that?" Steve asked Mackald. "About the ship?"

Mackald slapped a hand against his injured leg. "Did I mean it? Boy, I never meant something so much in my life. You need a ship? Now? Tonight?"

"Steve, we better wait for Captain Williams," Hunk warned.

But Steve shook his head stubbornly. "Chandlur already changed things on the derelict," he said. "If we can get out there and find some proof that the roller really exists, if we can present our proof when we got back—it would be too late for Chandlur to try to stop us. Don't you see? Don't you see, Hunk?"

"By the Dog Star!" Mackald cried tremulously. "You really do want a ship. Want to know something? I'm kind of a joke here around the spaceport. License is revoked, on account of this leg. I'm planetbound, boys. For life. First tiling I ever ask a guy is, does he need a ship. They all just look at me and shake their fool heads." He licked his lips. "You really mean to say you need a ship? You need Mackald's ship?"

"If you'll take me," Steve said quickly, before Hunk could argue with him. "There's a derelict out near the dark nebulae—"

Mackald nodded eagerly. "Cap'n told me about her. Antares ship, smack on the edge of the coalsack nebulae. I can take you there, you bet."

Hunk was tugging at Steve's arm, but Steve asked, "Tonight?"

"Any time you say!" Mackald said triumphantiy.

"Where's your ship?" Steve asked.

"At the port. Friend keeps her for me. She can hit 150,000 rn.p.s., boy. A tight little ship, if old. She'd get you out to the coalsack inside of six hours, that's a promise. You really mean you want to go?"

"I really mean it, yes," Steve said slowly.

"Listen—" Hunk began.

"I don't expect you to go with me," Steve told his friend.

"Oh, yeah?" Hunk bristled. "If you're crazy enough to go out there tonight, you think I'm crazy enough to let you go alone? If you go, I'm going."

"But you—"

"But nothing," Hunk said firmly. Mackald's rasping voice, a little  choked with emotion, said, "Then what are we waiting for?"

It was a spaceship. Only just a spaceship. It had stout, stubby lines, some of its plates were buckled and rusted, the nose was crushed in as if it had hit an asteroid head on. If it ran at all, Steve told himself with dismay, it would be because Mackald had managed to hold it together with spit and string.

"Beauty, isn't she?" Mackald rasped.

"Beauty," said the Ophiuchan who had led them to the bubble-hangar, "is in the eyes of the beholder."

Mackald ignored the remark. "How soon can you get her on gantry?" he asked.

"Give me forty-five minutes," the Ophiuchan replied, "and she'll be as ready for space as shell ever be."

Mackald nodded happily. The hangar door slid noiselessly back as the Ophiuchan went to work. In five minutes he returned on the saddle of a jet-tractor, and with reverent care Mackald made the battered spacetub fast to its cables.

Moments later, Mackald's ancient ship was wheeled out into the twilight. Across the concrete apron of the spaceport a launching gantry waited in dark silhouette over the blasting pit.

"I know it's the middle of the night," Roy Ambler said stubbornly, "but I've got to see the High Commissioner. It's very important."

Chandlur's Denebian servant looked at him. "It had better be. Wait here."

Ten minutes later, Roy had told his story to Chandlur. "So," he finished, "they're out at the spaceport right now." He glanced at his chrono. "If they maintain schedule, they'll be blasting off in less than fifteen minutes. We've got to stop them, sir."

Chandlur seated his big bulk at a desk, dialed a radiophone. "Hello," he said. "This is the Olympic Commissioner. There's a ship under the ownership of a Denebian named Mackald. . . . Yes, I'll wait. ... Is that a fact? You're sure?" A smile tugged at the corners of Chandlur's lips. "Very well. No, nothing. Of course not. Just a matter of curiosity. Thank you."

"You didn't tell them to stop the ship," Roy said.

Chandlur's smile had grown. "It really means a great deal to you to be Earth's first spacesuit racer, doesn't it?"

"Never mind about that, sir. I'm doing my duty." "Yes, your duty. Of course."

"Aren't you going to stop that ship?" Roy asked. Chandlur shook his head. "No. No, I'm not." "But-"

"Be quiet, will you?"

"I don't get it," Roy Ambler said.

"Mackald's ship is unlicensed. Mackald doesn't have a licence either. If they blast off, they'll be guilty of a crime against the Ophiuchan authorities."

Roy Ambler was beginning to smile now too.

"We're going to let them blast off," Chandlur said. "And we're going to tell the Ophiuchan authorities where they can be found in space." Chandlur picked up the radiophone again. "Ambler, from now on you don't have to worry. You can consider yourself Earth's number one racer." Looking at his chrono, he put the phone down. "Let's give them all the time they'll need,' he said.

"To hang themselves," Roy Ambler added quietly.

With a roar, and a lurch, and a sustained rattle, Mackald's ancient ship lifted from the gantry.

It reminded Steve of the first spaceships he remembered—the obsolescent tubs his father had used in Sol System's asteroid belt when Steve was four or five years old. If anything, Mackald's little ship groaned and creaked even more.

After acceleration, Hunk Little gave Steve a worried look. Steve shrugged, and then Hunk was smiling as he broke the tension all of them felt with the age-old words, "I'll tell you one thing, she'll never fly."

Awhile later, Steve asked Mackald where the radar screen was located.

"Well now, Sonny," the old Denebian replied, "that's something I never did get to tell you. Radar's all shot. We don't have any."

"Don't have any?" Hunk demanded.

"Seat-of-the-pants reckoning," Mackald told them. "Don't you worry none. I've got a fix on that position in space you gave me. We'll find the derelict, or my name isn't Mackald."

"Mackald," Steve said, looking at the instrument panel. "Mackald, does the fuel gauge work?"

"Sure does."

Steve made some rapid computations. They had enough fuel to reach the orbit of the Antarean ship and to return—with perhaps two hundred million miles in reserve.

We'd better find it, Steve thought, on the first try.

The Ophiuchus police cruiser was a sleek teardrop of a ship. It left Ophiuchus spaceport a half hour after Mackald's old tub, and within moments after blastoff it had a radar-fix established.

"Where are they heading, sir?" a lieutenant of the Ophiuchus police asked his captain.

"Outbound. Straight for the coalsack, it looks like."

"The coalsack? Why?"

"We'll find out," the captain said.

For Steve, rocketing across deep space here at the fringe of the dark nebulae in a spacesuit, it was like living his first encounter with the Antares ship all over again.

Maekald's dead reckoning had been perfect; they'd found the Antares ship and had matched its orbit just under six hours from blastoff. Now Steve, as he was approaching the air lock, was wondering, Chand-lur says I'm lying, Coach Ito and the others and even Hunk think Tm mistaken. What if they're right and I'm wrong?

He dispelled those thoughts from his mind, but it was with uneasiness that he unfastened the lugs of the Antares ship's air lock.

Inside the lock, he stood absolutely still for a moment. He heard the air hiss in the patched space-suit Mackald had given him. He took a deep breath —and then the familiar red glow lighted up the air lock.

Removing his helmet, Steve opened the inner door. Billgarr was waiting for him on the other side. "Wondering when you'd get back," he said. "The roller told me—"

"Gosh, is it good to see you!" Steve blurted. "I was beginning to think Id imagined it all."

Steve hadn't realized how old Billgarr was. His wizened face broke into a puckered grin as he said,

"Imagined me? Would take some imagining, I suspect."

"Is the roller here?"

"Nope," Billgarr said almost cheerfully. "But he told me the next time anyone showed up I could go down to Ophiuchus and tell my story. Rollers are almost finished measuring."

"Measuring?" Steve said.

Billgarr winked at him. "Let's not start that again. Ready to take me down?"

Steve nodded earnestly, then frowned. "The only trouble is, Mr. Billgarr—"

"No mister. It's just Billgarr."

"The only trouble is, I already told as much of it as I knew, and they wouldn't believe me."

Billgarr snorted. "They'll believe me. Let's go low decks and fix me up with a spacesuit. You'll have to show me how to use one of those contraptions, though. Never have."

Steve assured him it was easy—as long as he didn't try anything fancy.

"All right if I take my gee-tar?"

Steve assumed he was referring to the twanging instrument and said he could take anything he pleased. Ten minutes later, while Steve held his guitar, Billgarr was climbing awkwardly into a spacesuit.

"You ought to try tcleportation sometime," he said. "It beats this all hollow."

Billgarr reminded Steve of someone. At first he didn't know who, then it came to him. Put a frizzled wreath of white hair on the Denebian Mackald's head, add some color to his skin and some lines to his face, and he'd look amazingly like Billgarr. Even their voices and way of talking were somewhat similar. Impatiently, Steve thrust the pointless thought aside, for they had work to do.

What he didn't know was that the thought—and the resemblance—would become important later.

Steve helped Billgarr fasten his helmet. Making a motion with his own glove, he showed the old An-tarean how to switch on his intercom.

"Am I coming through?" Steve asked.

"Loud and clear," Billgarr said. "I still say tele-portation—"

His voice trailed off, for they both heard a thumping sound on the hull of the Antares ship.

"Don't tell me we're being boarded again?" Billgarr asked. "Friend of yours?"

Steve shook his head. His had been the only space-suit aboard Mackald's nameless old spacetub. Slowly the lugs on the outer air lock door began to turn.

"Roller?" Steve asked Billgarr tensely.

"Impossible. I told you they teleport."

The door swung in. Steve saw three figures in the silver spacesuits of the Ophiuchus police.

"You from that unregistered ship?" a voice asked over Steve's suit intercom.

Steve had forgotten that Mackald's ship was unregistered. "I'm from Mackald's ship," he said. "This man is an Antarean."

"Name of Billgarr," the old man said.

"Well, we have orders to bring all of you in."

"Police?" Billgarr demanded. "What for?"

"We have orders," the voice repeated. Steve couldn't see any of the policemen's faces. Their helmets were one-way glassite, opaquely silver on the outside.

"But what have we done?" Steve asked.

The answer came promptly. "Took off in an unregistered ship. Came almost five billion miles with an unlicensed pilot. Attempted to salvage a derelict without authority."

It would have been pointless to argue, Steve knew. What he didn't know was how they'd been discovered. Then, all of a sudden, he thought he knew.

Mackald. Mackald was a Denebian, wasn't he? Mackald had agreed to take them out—unlicensed, in an unlicensed ship—at Chandlur's orders. What else could Steve think?

With Billgarr and the three Ophiuchan policemen, Steve rocketed across to the sleek cruiser. Mackald's ship hung in space a few miles off, deceptively bright against the backdrop of the coalsack.

Steve and Billgarr unsuited inside the small cruiser, heard an Ophiuchan speaking over the ship-to-ship radio. "Two of them aboard the tub, you say? Everything under control? Good. Give us a million miles, then rocket back after us."

The cruiser's powerful rocket engines started. Steve looked at Billgarr.

"Don't you worry none," the old man said. "They can't do this to me."

The only trouble was, they had done it.

Chapter O Chandlur Strikes

'M no great brain," Hunk said as he finished telling Coach Ito what had happened, "but it doesn't take much to figure out what Chandlur's trying to do."

"Let me get this straight," Joe Ito said. "The police are holding Steve and this man Billgarr in custody, but they've released you and Mackald. Is that right?"

Hunk nodded. Mackald, who had gone to see Joe Ito with him, also nodded. "Released us on pledge of our own good behavior," he said. "Me, I'm in a mess of trouble, but I've been in a mess of trouble all my life. Don't bother me none. But—"

"But the point is," Joe Ito finished for him, "they haven't released Steve and they haven't released the Antarean Billgarr. Incidentally, did either one of you see him?"

"Just for a minute at the spaceport," Hunk Little said.

Joe Ito scowled. "All right, assume there's something to Steve's story. Assume he knows what he's talking about. They could have released all four of

79

you on pledge of good behavior, as they released you two. They didn't. Steve and Billgarr are still in custody. So whatever Chandlur is trying to hide is going to remain hidden."

"Can't you do anything, Coach?" Hunk asked.

"If it were the police holding Steve and Billgarr, maybe. But you told me the police are holding them— for Chandlur as High Commissioner."

"You got the picture," Mackald said. "Steve is an Olympic athlete in trouble. Billgarr belongs to an Olympic contingent that disappeared. That gives this commissioner fellow jurisdiction."

"Hunk," Joe Ito asked suddenly. "Do you think you can find Captain Williams?"

"He's at the spaceport," Mackald said, "We can find him."

Joe Ito sighed. "I'm an athletic coach. The closest I ever came to intrigue—till now—was the solido-dramas. You'd better find Syrtis Williams and tell him what you told me."

"We'll find him," Hunk said.

The interview was calculated, clever and cruel. Chandlur had a razor-sharp cross-questioning technique. Also, with a few carefully chosen words, he could be infuriating. After just a few minutes, Steve knew he wanted to infuriate Billgarr. He succeeded admirably.

"So you had other visitors between the first and the second time Steve Frazer visited the Liberté, is that what you want me to believe?"

"It doesn't matter what I want you to believe," Billgarr said. "You'll believe what you want to believe. It's the truth, though."

"And these other visitors cleaned up the Liberté?"

"They sure did. Put food and personal belongings in the disposal chutes, straightened out quarters, even sent the lifeboats blasting out of their tubes."

Chandlur gave him an oh-come-now-my-dear-fel-low look. "Really? And why would they do all that?"

"Don't know why," Billgarr muttered.

"Mister Billgarr, how old are you?"

"Not mister. Just plain Billgarr."

"How old are you, Billgarr?"

"We Antareans are long-lived. Statistics show we live longer on the average than any other galactic people."

"That's hedging, isn't it? How old are you?"

Billgarr glared at him. "A hundred and four," he said, "on my next birthday."

"A hundred and four," Chandlur said, almost sweetly. "Does your memory sometimes play tricks on you? It's understandable."

"Of course not!" Billgarr roared. "I'm fit. Give me any kind of test you want to. There's nothing wrong with me. Why, I know Antareans who live good, fruitful lives into their thirteenth decade."

"Indeed?" Chandlur asked mildly. "That is truly commendable. And what, exactly, was your task aboard the Liberté?"

"Music teacher," Billgarr said. "We're a musical people."

"Yes, music teacher," Chandlur aped the words. "I had forgotten. No kind of a trained observer?" "No, but-"

"How is your eyesight?"

"I wear contacts!" Billgarr shouted. "I can see fine."

"Were you wearing them when the—uh, rollers came aboard the Liberté?" "I always wear them."

"We'll let that pass. And if the rest of you An-tareans didn't use the lifeboats, can you tell me again how they left the Liberté?"

"The rollers took them," Billgarr insisted.

"To be sure, the rollers.But how?"

"They teleported."

Chandlur gave him an amused smile. "Teleporta-tion. I take it this alleged magic is the—uh, instantaneous transportation of matter over vast distances via the energy of thought?"

"You take it right," Billgarr insisted. "I don't know how vast the distance was, though."

"And the—uh, rollers teleported you Antareans to do what?"

"To measure us. I told you."

"Measure you? You mean widi rulers and scales and things?"

"We're a strange race of intelligent creatures come from the other side of the galaxy," Billgarr said slowly. "The rollers meet us in space and don't know what to do about it. They figure if they can measure us, test us, study us—"

"A different race of intelligent creatures," Chandlur said, amusement in his voice. He leaned forward, his gross belly drooping over the edge of his desk. "You know perfectly well we are alone among sentient beings in the galaxy. There is only us."

"You haven't met the rollers," Billgarr said. He looked at Chandlur defiantly. "Yet."

"And you're ninety-four?" Chandlur asked blandly.

"A hundred and four."

"Yes, of course. A hundred and four. Physically, I must admit you don't look a day over eighty, but mentally. . . ."

Billgarr stood up, his face livid with rage. Actually, Steve knew, he could have passed for a reasonably hale and hardy seventy-five. "Now look here!" he cried. "I've taken just about all I'm going to take!"

Chandlur didn't meet his eyes. "Have you? Have you now? Did you ever consider this? A shipload of Antareans is missing. You're the only man who knows why, and all you give us is a series of ridiculous lies."

"Maybe you can tell me how come they're missing," Billgarr said sarcastically.

"Not at the moment. But I'm going to find out."

The interview was at an end, and Billgarr and Steve were ushered back to their quarters. They'd been given a room on the fifth floor of the skyscraper-bubble in which Chandlur had his office. There were no bars on the round window and no lock on the door, but every time Steve went to the door it just so happened that a few Denebians were loitering right outside in the hall.

"Now what?" Billgarr wanted to know. "Calling me a doddering old fool!" he fumed.

"Take it easy," Steve suggested. "They can't keep us here indefinitely."

"They can keep you here long enough to miss the games. They can keep me here long enough—and give me enough trouble—to make the rollers decide they'd better break off contact with us. Figure they're from the other side of the galaxy, Stefrazer—from beyond Ophiuchus somewhere. They've admitted that much. If they don't want contact, can you imagine how long it might take us to find them? Figure they have half of the galaxy and we have half. We've settled on a hundred and twenty worlds—out of how many million? But meeting them as equals, sharing our culture and achievements with them as they share their culture and achievements with us— that could be a great thing for humanity."

"I know," Steve said. "I know it can."

"But look at it from the rollers' point of view. They're being careful about it. First they test a bunch of us Antareans, then maybe they plan on seeing the games here on Ophiuchus."

"Did they say that?"

"After your first visit they kind of hinted at it. What they figure is, this is an ideal situation to see how we humans get along. That is, if we can't get along with ourselves, here at the games, when human beings from so many outworlds are together, then we sure as can be won't be able to get along with the rollers. And at a time like this a guy like Chandlur has to be running the show."

"But what's his motive?" Steve asked. "Why should he try his best to give us such a hard time?"

Billgarr shrugged. "Search me." He added quickly, "But I can take a few guesses."

"Like what?"

"Well—no offense to Earth now, son—you probably know Antares and Deneb are the two power centers of the galaxy. First thing Chandlur learns is that the Antares contingent is missing. Right away he's suspicious and—"

"Suspicious? But why? If you don't show up for the games you don't get a chance to win them— leaving Deneb as the odds-favorite all by itself."

"Sure, but maybe he figures we will show up later —after some kind of special training like on a heavy planet or something—that will give us an edge in the games."

"I hadn't thought of that," Steve admitted.

"And that isn't all. You come down here to Ophiu-chus claiming you met an intelligent nonhuman life form. And Chandlur gets to thinking. First off, if the rollers really exist—if your story is true and my story is true—they made their first contact with us Antareans. Not with the Dcncbians, you see the picture, boy? It's a slap in the face to the Denebians and is liable to consolidate Antarcs's position of galactic leadership, and so on."

"But contact with the rollers is more important than who's top dog in the galaxy," Steve protested.

"I know it is and you know it is. But does Chand-lur? It doesn't look that way. Then, too, there's another thing he's probably fretting about."

"What's that?"

"Ophiuchus. She's a strong young world, son, a world that's going places. Antares, Deneb, maybe Fo-malhaut—those are the centers of power now. But Ophiuchus is coming up fast, and if the rollers have made contact here, Chandlur has got to come to the obvious conclusion—their homeworld or at least their colonies lie nearer Ophiuchus than any other human-inhabited system. So, if contact is followed by social intercourse, Ophiuchus and not Deneb or Antares is liable to be the new center of human civilization.

"Not if Chandlur can help it," Steve said grimly. As far as he could see, everything that Billgarr had said made sense. "We've got to stop him—before he stops us. Why, just the secret of teleportation alone —if the rollers gave us that we'd have a whole galaxy as our backyard, as they do."

Billgarr didn't say anything for awhile. Then, shrugging, he said, "How can we? Everything's going his way. Your eligibility is in question. You've technically committed a crime, though the intent wasn't criminal. It's within his authority to ship you out on the next outbound ship. As for me, I'm an old man. He can discredit me without even half trying. I'm just an old music teacher, that's all."

"We've got to stop him," Steve said again.

Billgarr's answer was one word, "How?"

And to that one word Steve had no answer at all.

Chapter 7 Hunk Strikes Back

11 HAT Hunk Little lacked in subtlety and cunning, il he more than made up for in strength and loyalty.

■ After he and Mackald left Joe Ito, the little De-

i nebian advanced several proposals as to how they could win the Space Captains, through Syrtis Williams, to their side.

In general, the idea was a good one. On any out-world the stand taken by several dozen Space Captains would be highly respected; on Ophiuchus, almost on the eve of the Interstellar Olympics, it could be decisive. But Mackald's specific plans called for skullduggery and trickery. One by one, Hunk rejected them with a stolid shake of his head.

"Mackald, Mackald listen," he said finally, "that's a brainstorm of yours, getting all the Captains on our side. Steve and Billgarr will need all the help we can get. But there ought to be a—well, a more direct way."

Mackald licked his lips and proposed one of his favorite schemes again. "If we can convince them Chandlur is out to strip them of their seniority—"

87

"No," Hunk said decisively. "Steve and Billgarr are telling the truth. Let's keep it that way."

"But the Parade of the Planets takes place tomorrow," Mackald protested. "After that, the games. You think you have time for the truth?"

Hunk nodded slowly. "Got me an idea," he said. "Steve won't be wild about it, but he'll like it better than your ideas. I hope."

Quickly he told Mackald what he had in mind. The bald little Denebian's face lit up in a grin. There wasn't any larceny in the idea, but it appealed to him anyway.

"Never!" Roy Ambler cried a half hour later. But his voice, far from being defiant, was a quavering protest.

This was in Roy's room at Earthtown. It's ceiling was low, and Roy was almost scraping it. That was because Hunk, arms outstretched overhead, held him there. Roy's arms and legs writhed in impotent fury, then in fright. Hunk had held him that way for five minutes. Occasionally Hunk would pivot, and when he did Roy Ambler's head would spin perilously close to the door frame or the window.

"Come on," Hunk insisted. "Who sent the police out there after us? Chandlur?"

He spun again. Roy Ambler warded off the door frame with his outflung arms.

Mackald was waiting in the hall, whistling tunelessly between his teeth. It didn't seem like a very necessary precaution, and if the muffled sounds he heard through the closed door meant what he thought they meant, Mackald wished he were inside watching.

He pressed one ear against the door—then jerked away quickly when he saw Coach Ito coming along the hall. Inside the room, Roy Ambler cried out.

"What's going on in there?"

"Nothing you'd care to witness, Coach, I assure you, sure as I'm Mackald the Denebian," Mackald answered quickly.

Joe Ito reached the door. Mackald barred his way.

"I think you ought to let me by," Coach Ito said, not very decisively.

"I'm thinking I better not," Mackald replied.

Joe Ito's face was grim. "Hunk inside?"

There was a brief thump. Joe Ito winced.

'Ties inside," Mackald admitted.

Joe Ito hesitated, then said slowly, "I can't hear a sound. In fact, I wasn't even up here at all. Good luck." Quickly the coach went off down the hall.

Mackald got more comfortable against the outside of the door.

Inside—head spinning near the ceiling—Roy Ambler cried, "All right, all right, I followed you to the spaceport and then reported to Chandlur. All right!"

"And Chandlur alerted the police?"

"Ye-es!"

Hunk put him down. "Lets go see Captain Williams."

But for a while they didn't go anywhere. It was almost ten minutes before Roy Ambler could stand on his own feet.

Hunk's mistake was keeping Roy Ambler as a trump card until all the Space Captains were assembled. They met in an empty hangar at the port. While Hunk outlined the story to them, Mackald waited outside with a subdued Roy Ambler.

At first Hunk had stage fright. He'd always idolized the Space Captains, but he'd never seen them more than one or two at a time. Now though, he—Hunk Little—was addressing a whole hangar full of them, Space Captains from the far-flung outworlds. His wide eyes took in their uniforms and his voice cracked. He even began to stammer.

But soon the tanned, lean faces and the alert, far-seeing eyes, eyes that, collectively, had seen the length and breath of half a galaxy, gave Hunk confidence. They were watching him, listening intently, without comment. Their faces were impassive, but their eyes were curious and friendly. And taking strength from them, Hunk began to speak more confidently. Soon, the words were fairly flowing from his lips, and he saw the Space Captains—first one and then another and then most of them—nodding, their eyes piercing his speculatively.

He concluded, "At first I didn't believe it. But now I'm almost sure what Steve Frazer told us was the complete truth. There's a race of nonhumans out there in space waiting to see what we do. Chandlur the Denebian—for reasons I'm not sure of—wants to break off contact. We can't let that happen. We can't!"

For a few moments there was a hubbub in the hangar as the Space Captains speculated on the possibility, now the probability, if they believed Hunk as he finally believed Steve, of extra-human sentience.

Some of the Space Captains got quickly to the heart of the matter, suggesting that Chandlur s opposition stemmed from the same reasons Billgarr had outlined to Steve. Even the Denebian Captain, a tall hairless man named Westor, nodded his reluctant agreement.

"The one thing we don't have, Hunk," Syrtis Williams said finally, "is proof."

Westor suggested, "We're about ready to salvage the Antarean ship. We can find all the proof we want then."

But Hunk shook his head. "Chandlur tampered with it. He destroyed the proof. Just as he's going to exile Steve from Ophiuchus as soon as he can. Just as he's keeping Billgarr the Antarean in protective custody. If only he'd give them a chance to talk. Just to tell their story, that's all. I've only been able to give it to you second-hand."

"If we Captains petitioned this High Commissioner," one of them said, "we'd get results. We carry some weight around here."

But another one said, doubtfully, "I'd like some proof first. All we've heard is an interesting story."

Hunk was smiling. Captain Williams asked him, "Have something up your sleeve, Hunk?" "Yes, sir." "Let's have it."

Hunk strode past the gantry which took up most of the room inside the hanger and opened the small personnel door at lire base of the great overhead rocket door.

"Mackald!" he shouted.

In a few moments Mackald came in leading Roy Ambler by the arm.

"Mackald, you old reprobate!" Westor the Dene-bian boomed. "What are you doing here?"

"Looking for trouble, I guess, Cap'n. Like usual. This here is Roy Ambler, Earth team. Got him a story to tell."

But Roy's guileless eyes belied that fact. For Hunk had waited too long, had given him a chance to compose himself. And now, among the assembled Captains, Roy knew nothing was going to happen to him.

"He's going to tell you," Hunk said, "how he followed Steve and me to the spaceport, and how he reported our movements to Chandlur, and how the High Commissioner sent the police after us."

"Now that's the kind of proof I had in mind," the doubting Space Captain said.

Roy Ambler's voice was polite and friendly. "Then I'm sorry to disappoint you, sir." His face wore an earnest expression. "But you see, I don't know what Hunk Little is talking about."

"Why, you lying—" Mackald began.

But Syrtis Williams cut him off with a wave of his hand. "Roy, why cl you come here?"

"Hunk asked me to. Then, while I was waiting outside, this man—" he gestured toward Mackald, "gave me the details of an incredible story without a word of truth in it. He even threatened me, said that Hunk would beat me up if I didn't cooperate."

"And?" Syrtis Williams prompted.

"And I'm sorry, sir, but I see no reason to lie to you. I haven't the faintest idea what this Denebian and Hunk Little are talking about, and I won't be threatened into telling lies."

"That's not true!" Mackald cried. "I mean, what Hunk's been telling you, it's the truth."

"You threatened him?" Syrtis Williams asked mildly.

"Well, we had to," Mackald insisted. "When?"

"Before.Before we even got here. Hunk kind of—" Mackald grinned, "scared him some."

Syrtis Williams said, "Roy, I want you to wait outside. Or if you want, you're free to go."

"I'll wait outside, sir," Roy decided.

When he was gone, Syrtis Williams said, "That was a mistake, Hunk. You did manhandle him, didn't you?"

"Yes, sir. I couldn't think of any other way." "Me, I thought of loads of ways," Mackald announced.

"And each more devious, no doubt, than the one before," Westor said, laughing good-naturedly.

After the general laughter subsided, the doubting Space Captain, who was from Procyon System, said, "Then we're wasting our time here." He headed for the door.

"Hold it," Syrtis Williams snapped. "I know Steve Frazer. I've known him for years and I knew his father. If Steve has a story to tell, I, for one, want to listen. Besides," he went on, commanding their attention with his well-chosen words, "if there were any possibility at all of contact with an extra-human culture, shouldn't we, as Space Captains, explore it to the hilt? Wouldn't we be a pack of unimaginative fools and unfit to wear our uniforms, if we didn't?"

"What do you have in mind?" the Procyon Captain demanded.

But it was Westor the Denebian who answered him. "I propose we get up a petition, signed by all of us here right now, asking Chandlur the Denebian to release Steve Frazer of Earth and Billgarr of An-tares into our custody long enough for us to ask them some questions."

The roar of affirmation which greeted this suggestion brought a smile to Hunk's homely face and made Mackald jump up and down with enthusiasm.

"We swung it, boy!" he shouted. "We swung it!"

The petition was drawn and signed by everyone present. It was decided that Westor the Denebian should deliver it to his fellow planeteer, Chandlur.

". . . petition," Roy Ambler finished. "I heard them outside. Westor will probably be here in a few minutes. But nothing says you have to honor their petition, sir."

Chandlur snorted. "Afraid for your position on the Earth team?"

Roy Ambler frowned. "You—you don't like me, do you, Commissioner?"

Chandlur waved the question aside with a fat hand. "There is an old expression, from Earth, I believe. 'Politics,' they say, 'makes the strangest bedfellow.'"

"But you're not going to honor the petition?" Roy insisted.

Chandlur's answer was prompt and bland. "But of course I am. Though naturally I won't remain idle while the Space Captains are conducting their interrogation."

The High Commissioner's smile was smug and confident.

With the assembled Space Captains, Steve listened to Billgarr's excited words as the old Antarean told his story. This was the first time Steve, or anyone, had heard all of it, and somehow the bare walls of die hangar, dominated by the bulk of the rocket-launching gantry, was the perfect setting for it, just as the Space Captains who had come from halfway across the galaxy were the perfect audience.

Steve was still surprised and delighted by their unexpected release from what had amounted to imprisonment, and for the first few minutes after they reached the hangar in Westor's custody he had listened eagerly while Hunk filled him in on the details. Now, though, the only sound was Billgarr's voice.

". . . the first roller," he was saying. "But pretty soon there were others, and inside of five minutes the Liberté was—if you'll pardon the expression-just rolling with them. Teleportation, they said. And of course their language wouldn't be comprehensible to us, and ditto the other way around. Not that it mattered. They don't talk. They think, projecting their thoughts into your brain. Telepathy.

"Anyhow, they said they had known of the existence of our human civilization here on Ophiuchus for some time now—a generation, they said, though how long a generation is for rollers, I couldn't tell you. They were cautious, though—as cautious, I reckon, as we would have been if the circumstances had been reversed. Would we welcome contact with them? Would we be friendly—or hostile? That's what they had to find out.

"Even had factions pro and con on their home-world beyond the center of the galaxy. Leave well enough alone, some of them said. It might be another ten generations or more before those bipedal creatures discover us, so why look for trouble. But others wanted contact right away, thought it would be toi great an opportunity for both races to miss.

"Well, sir, their observers reported the preparations here on Ophiuchus for the Olympic games, and that was the chance they were looking for. So, when the Liberté approached, they teleported every manjack aboard her—excepting me—they figured they'd need to leave someone behind in case another ship showed up, I reckon—teleported the crew and team of the Liberté to their nearest world.

"Had all kinds of tests for my people, mostly psychological and emotional. If we pass with flying colors, and the last I heard there was a good chance we would, the rollers are going to send an observer group to the games here on Ophiuchus. Because if we humans can get along among ourselves, they figure we'd be a good bet to get along with them. . .."

"Waiting for the last minute, aren't they?" Westor the Denebian asked. "Tomorrow's the Parade of the Planets, and the day after that the games begin."

"One way or the other," Billgarr explained, "they promised to get the Antarean team down here in time for the games."

"That," the Captain from Procyon said, "remains to be seen."

"Listen," Billgarr cautioned. "Let me tell you two things about the rollers. They're honorable, so you don't have any worries on that score, Captain. And even more important, they're shy. I mean, really shy. Just look how long it took them to make any kind of contact at all."

"What are you getting at?" Syrtis Williams wanted to know.

"Just this, Captain. Chandlur sent a tug out to the Liberté, and its crew shot off our lifeboats so it would look like we left the normal way. The rollers found out. It scared them. The last thing they wanted was to create the wrong kind of stir among us humans. Why, the way I was told it, they were almost ready to call the whole thing off."

"In short," Westor said, "you mean we have to make all our moves carefully?"

"If we want to establish contact, Captain, we do. I was able to placate them some. Got them to admit all the rollers weren't sweetness and light, but if they suspected—" Billgarr shook his head, "that the big cheese out here himself, the High Commissioner, was dead set against contact, I figure they'd just up and take off and that would be the end of it for maybe five hundred years or more."

"Nice," Westor said grimly. Just then the personnel door opened, but the Denebian Captain went on speaking. "But I can't believe that Chandlur—"

"What can't you believe about me?" Chandlur asked, his enormous girth all but filling the doorway. "What can't you believe about me, Captain Westor?"

Westor shuffled his feet uneasily. "Well, sir, that you—"

The High Commissioner waved a sheaf of papers he held in his big hand. "In the interests of interstellar harmony on the eve of the games," he declaimed, "I felt it my duty to deliver this report to you Space Captains personally. Perhaps, Captain Westor, it will dispell your doubts."

"What report would that be?" Syrtis Williams asked suspiciously.

"A report," Chandlur said, "on the mental state of a hundred-and-four-year-old Antarean music teacher named Billgarr."

In the shocked silence which followed, Billgarr blurted, "Whatever he has there, it's all lies! They never gave me any tests. They never—"

Chandlur looked at him pityingly. "My dear man, will you allow me to proceed?"

"If you had anything to tell us, sure," Billgarr fumed. Angry blood had darkened his face. "But nobody tested me."

"I can vouch for that," Steve said. "All the time we were prisoners—"

"You mean guests," supplied Chandlur.

". . . Billgarr was never out of my sight. They couldn't have given him any kind of test at all," Steve said.

"The lad ought to know, Commissioner," Westor said.

"Indeed? Ought he to know that the room they shared was not only wired for sound but also had a one-way viewscreen built into one of its walls? I must insist that, since the old man had his moment before you Space Captains, I have mine. May I continue?"

Assent was granted grumblingly, and Chandlur began to read excerpts from the report. It was couched in technical jargon, much of which was lost on Steve. But halfway through it, two of the Space Captains had to restrain Billgarr physically. Steve heard such phrases as, "paranoid tendencies . . . delusions of grandeur . . . out of contact with reality. . . ."

When he had finished reading, Chandlur folded the papers and pocketed them. In the shocked silence that followed, Steve said, "Then what about me? Do I have these delusions, too? Because I saw one of the rollers, myself."

Chandlur waved a fat hand deprecatingly. "You are apparently a very impressionable boy. I'm not accusing you of lying. You think you saw what you say you did, but—"

"I know I saw the roller," Steve said. He expected to be angry. Instead, he was icily calm. "I know I saw all the lifeboats in their tubes aboard the Liberté"

Chandlur gave him a mildly pitying look.

"I say," Steve went on, "that between my first and second visits to the Liberté, you had the lifeboats removed from their tubes. I say—"

"That's absolutely ridiculous," scoffed Chandlur. He looked at the assembled Space Captains. "I ask you men, what would have been my motive?"

Steve countered, "When I first saw you, you told me the Liberté had been salvaged. It wasn't—and it isn't."

"That," Chandlur insisted, "is not true. I never told Frazer any such thing."

It was, Steve knew, an impasse. Chandlur's documents were impressive, had been signed by the psychologist on the staff of the High Commissioner. He passed them around now, and some of the Space Captains nodded slowly, reluctantly. Billgarr watched their faces as if his life depended on it. Those who nodded wouldn't meet his eyes.

"Commissioner," Syrtis Williams asked finally, "what do you propose?"

"Two things, Captain," Chandlur answered at once. "First, I must urge you Space Captains to go ahead with your salvage plans. For if you have any lingering doubts—"

"That wouldn't help much," Syrtis Williams pointed out, "if Steve Frazer's story is true."

Chandlur looked shocked. "My word—against that of an impressionable young man?"

Syrtis Williams ignored that. "What's the second thing, Commissioner?"

"As you know, these are the first Olympic games of the Galactic Era. The last thing any of us wants, I'm sure, is the spread of any bad feeling. In order to prevent that, I must insist that Steve Frazer be returned to my custody until such time as an outbound ship can return him—not in disgrace, I assure you—to Earth. And that Billgarr, since his own Antarean contingent is not here to help him, also be returned to my care—for proper psychiatric treatment."

Syrtis Williams's voice was as bland as Chandlur's. "Doesn't it strike any of you as strange," he wanted to know, "that in the short time since our arrival here on Ophiuchus, the Commissioner has made two attempts to have Frazer expelled from Ophiuchus?"

Chandlur countered, "I assure you, the matter of his eligibility was purely coincidental,"

"Convenient coincidence," Mackald said dryly. "I must insist—" Commissioner Chandlur began again.

But Syrtis Williams cut him off. "With no Antareans present, you have jurisdiction in Billgarr's case. But Earth is represented here in full force, Commissioner. So while it's within your rights to keep Steve from competing in the games until such time as his status is settled, it is not within your rights to detain him against his will. / must insist on this. Frazer, here and now, is to be released to my custody. I'll hold myself responsible for him."

"But-"

"That's all, Commissioner."

Anger sparked for an instant in Chandlur's eyes, then died. He shrugged. "Very well, so long as I have your assurance he'll keep his wild stories to himself."

"I'll hold myself responsible for him," Syrtis Williams said again. "Personally."

Chandlur called out, and two guards in Denebian jumpers entered the hangar. With a jerk of his head that made his flabby jowls quiver, Chandlur indicated Billgarr.

The old music teacher looked with mute appeal at Steve, then at Syrtis Williams, then at the other Space Captains.

"We can't let him—" Steve started to say. "We've got to," Syrtis Williams told him. As the Denebian guards reached the door with Billgarr between them, Steve ran past the gantry and

placed his hand on die old man's shoulder. "We won't let you down, Mr. Billgarr," he promised.

Then, for the first time since Chandlur's accusations, Billgarr managed a smile. "Not mister," he said. "Just plain Billgarr."

The guards took him outside. Steve watched them until they were silhouetted against the gantries on the field with the blue light beyond them.

Chapter o Parade of the Planets

ERE comes Earth!" Steve cried excitedly.

He was seated in the grandstand of the great Olympic stadium three miles from Ophiucbus City. It was a bright, hot morning, with Ophi-uchuss three suns high in the cloudless sky. The enormous stadium had seats for a quarter of a million people, most of them Ophiuchans. In honor of the place of origin of the Olympic games, the stadium had been built on the sloping hillsides around a little valley. Lush tropical vegetation had been stripped from the land, which was now bare, with gaunt rocks protruding from the soil skeletaliy beyond the final row of grandstand seats. The stadium had been built to resemble an ancient Greek amphitheater but was ten times larger.

Steve, Captain Williams and the entire crew of the Hellas had arrived early to claim their seats. Even then the grandstand had been thronged, and when the last of the quarter of a million seats was finally occupied, an expectant hush fell on the huge crowd.

Everywhere he looked, Steve saw a sea of color— the lightweight jumpers worn by the Ophiuchans and the space-crews of fifty worlds that had sent Olympic teams to the center of the galaxy. But the stadium itself, its floor the deep, almost incredible blue-green of the native Ophiuchan grass, was absolutely deserted. Not a flag, not a solitary human figure, marred the great expanse of green. In the very center of the field stood a marble altar, and on it was a niche for the Torch of Freedom, which had been lighted at Olympus, Greece and, still burning, had been carried from Earth aboard the Hellas to the center of the galaxy.

The hush lengthened. It was possible to hear the proverbial pin drop anywhere in the enormous grandstand as 250,000 people waited for the Parade of the Planets to begin.

Syrtis Williams looked at his program. "They won t come in alphabetically," he told Steve. "Earth's first, then the rest of the star systems—all fifty who've sent teams—in the order in which they were colonized."

"Earth," Steve read from his program, "then Cen-tauri, Sirius, Rigel, Canopus, Procyon, Altair, Fomal-haut, Deneb, Antares—"

"Antares?" Captain Williams said. "I doubt it."

"Billgarr said—"

Captain Williams shook his head. "Better make that forty-nine star systems, boy. Antares won't show up."

Steve frowned. "Maybe."

"Any minute now," Captain Williams said, looking at his chrono.

Any minute now, Steve thought, and I ought to be down there, marching with Hunk Little and Jane and the other members of the team. His throat felt suddenly constricted, and he blinked his eyes rapidly. But only for a few seconds did he feel sorry for himself. He was here, here on Ophiuchus. That wasn't all it could have been, but considering what had happened, it was enough.

"I want to thank you, sir," he told Captain Williams. "If you hadn't intervened, I might be in custody right now, like poor Billgarr." Even worse, he realized. They could have brought criminal charges against him.

"Listen," Syrtis Williams said. "This business isn't over, not by a long shot." As if he'd somehow read Steve's thoughts he added, "You'll notice that Chand-lur didn't bring the Ophiuchan police in on it."

"I know he didn't. I don't know why."

"Try this for an educated guess. He didn't want anyone else examining Billgarr. He—"

That was when Steve cried, "Here comes the Earth team!"

It was true. Far across the field, a door had opened at the base of the grandstand. And through it, marching five abreast, came the two hundred athletes from Earth.

"Parade of the Planets!" an Ophiuchan near Steve shouted, and a roar of approval from a quarter of a million throats greeted the Earth athletes, first team out on the field.

The wore blue and white jumpers with red trim, and they marched smartly. On their heads were white straw hats with blue bands, worn at a jaunty angle. And leading the two hundred marchers in their procession across the huge field were two figures a dozen paces ahead of the vanguard.

The one on the left, carrying a guidon with Earth's proud blue and white flag, was Hunk Little. Hunk looked so proud he almost strutted. Partly this was for the flag he carried and the team he led. But partly it was for his marching companion.

The one on the right, a smaller figure in a white blouse and trim blue skirt and almost knee-high red boots, was Jane, holding the Torch of Freedom proudly aloft as she marched beside Hunk.

Then Steve completely forgot his own predicament. He felt so happy for Hunk and Jane that a grin split his face from ear to ear. As of last night, no one knew who would carry Earth's guidon and the Torch of Freedom. Now the representatives of fifty worlds knew, Hunk for Earth's blue and white flag, Jane for the Torch of Freedom.

Across the arena they came, stepping smartly. As the Torch of Freedom, which until now had never been seen on the outworlds, progressed from one section of the field to the next, great shouts of enthusiasm greeted it. Jane held her head high. Hunk Little looked proud enough to burst.

Presently the Earth team had taken its place at the far end of the field. Not the biggest contingent that would march in the Parade of the Planets, and certainly not favored to win the games against the tough opposition of worlds like Deneb, Fomalhaut and the still-missing Antares, Earth was still the Mother Planet from which all human civilization had sprung.

Every person in the grandstand stood up and applauded lustily as Jane, at the climax of Earth's role in the Parade of the Planets, marched alone—a solitary, graceful figure—to the altar in the center of the arena. For a moment she paused there, then thrust the torch into its niche on the altar. The flame, carried eight thousand parsecs from Sol System and, symbolically, half that many thousands of years from the first Olympic flame in Greece, fluttered for a moment in the wind, then burned steadily.

The shouts of approval that followed Jane back to the waiting Earth team were almost deafening.

A few moments after that, the second team marched out and across the arena. This was the contingent from Centauri System. Centauri's one habitable planet was small; if anything, the Centauri team, its members in gray jumpers, its silver and black flag held proudly aloft in the alien skies of Ophiuchus, was smaller than Earth's.

Then quickly came the representatives of the other outworlds nearest Earth, those which had been colonized in the first wave of migration to sweep out from the Mother Planet.

Sirius ... a large contingent in vivid purple, its members chanting:

"Oh Sirius is far away, far away, far away . . . We've journeyed to the Milky Way, the Milky Way, the Milky Way . .

And Sirius, less than three parsees from Earth itself, was indeed far away—almost halfway across the galaxy.

Rigel ... in solid orange; Canopus ... its proud athletes in red, yellow and black; Procyon ... in brilliant saffron yellow; Altair . . . another large contingent, in deep blue and gold; Fomalhaut . . . almost four hundred strong, in sleek metallic brown under brown and green banners; Deneb . . . die largest contingent so far, with absolutely hairless men, and women, as if in compensation, with hair flowing down their backs almost to their waists.

There was a pause. By now everyone on Ophiuchus knew the Antares team was missing. On the program, Antares followed Deneb. Strongly, the suns beat down on the teams already assembled on the field; and even stronger burned the Torch of Freedom. The spectators were dead silent, waiting. No one had said, officially, that Antares would not show up, but it seemed a foregone conclusion. Everyone now waited for the white uniforms of the Polaris team, which was scheduled to follow the missing Antares.

"Look!" someone cried.

"Over there! Look!"

"Crimson! Their jumpers are crimson . . ."

Steve found himself on his feet, like everyone else, staring incredulously.

Stepping out smartly, as all the others had done, a team was marching onto the field.

A very large contingent, as large as Deneb's—almost five-hundred strong.

In brilliant crimson jumpers—the missing team-miraculously, at the last moment, here in the great stadium on Ophiuchus—marching as if nothing strange, nothing incredible had befallen them.

An tares!

Chaptet 9 Antares Wont Talk

TEVE found himself running down the sloping aisle of the grandstand almost before he realized what he was doing. The Antares team, here! Here on Ophiuchus while their derelict ship orbited slowly five billion miles out in space. Didn't that confirm his story—and Billgarr's? "Steve!" he heard Syrtis Williams call. "Wait—" But Steve was already running across the field. He wasn't the only one. Reporters from fifty worlds had broken from the press benches and were sprinting across the blue grass toward the Antares team. As Steve approached, he heard a flurry of questions, ". . . gone till now?" "Any statement for Interstellar News?" ". . . derelict."

"Can you tell us why you left your ship?"

"How did you get here—without transportation?"

"Where, by space, were you?"

"Why?"

A man too old to be one of the Antarean athletes held up his hand for silence, but silence was a long

in

time coming. The reporters' questions came, trigger fast, and from the grandstand there rose a great cheer, repeated over and over again: "Antares! Antares! Antares!"

Finally, by shouting at the top of his voice, the gray-haired Antarean was able to announce, "There will be no comments now, gentlemen. Later, Antares intends to issue a statement. Later, not now. Later, gentlemen."

"Coach Harvshaw!" one of the reporters said. "There ve been rumors here on Ophiuchus that if the Antares team showed up at all it would have been after strenuous training for the games on a heavy planet."

"That," Coach Harvshaw said with dignity, "would have been against the rules set forth by the Interstellar Olympic Committee."

"Naturally," retorted the reporter. "Have you any statement?"

"None now, I already told you that."

"But a heavy planet—"

"Then no statement except this; Antares did not in any way violate the rules of the Interstellar Olympic Committee."

Before the reporters could ask any further questions, a voice boomed over the grandstand loudspeakers:

"By order of the High Commissioner, the Parade of the Planets is postponed until tomorrow. The Parade of the Planets, repeat, is postponed until tomorrow! By order of High Commissioner Chandlur."

The teams already on the field milled about in confusion, their guidons and banners drooping.

Coach Harvshaw of Antares told his team, "All right, you all heard that. We're going back to the locker room. You are—none of you—to answer any questions or offer any information. Is that understood?"

As the members of the team nodded, the guidon bearer pivoted smartly and marched back through the ranks of his fellow Antareans. "About face!" he bawled, and the team turned to follow him.

The reporters went after them like pilot fish surrounding a shark.

But an hour later no one, the reporters included, knew anything more about the mysterious arrival of the Antareans. They had marched to their locker room, entered it, and locked the doors—and that was that.

"They can't just stay in there indefinitely," one reporter said.

"They'll have to come out sooner or later." "We'll be waiting."

Steve was in the crowd that had followed the reporters to the locker room. One of them turned to him suddenly. "Say, aren't you Frazer?"

Steve admitted that he was.

"Nebcott," the reporter introduced himself. "Fomal-haut Interstellar Press. You're the Earthman who went aboard the Liberte, aren't you?"

"That's right."

Steve found himself the  center of attention.

Questions were hurled at him from all sides. He had no reason not to answer them. If anything, his cooperating with the press might help Billgarr, he decided. It certainly couldn't do the old man any harm. But he knew he was treading on dangerous ground too, for Syrtis Williams had declared himself responsible for Steve, and though the Space Captain was not under Chandlur's jurisdiction as Steve was, his answers might still make trouble for Syrtis Williams.

"Then you think the High Commissioner is trying to clamp a lid on all this?" one of the reporters asked after Steve had related his own experiences aboard the Liberté.

"I didn't say that. I'm in no position to judge the Commissioner's actions."

"He wants to prevent contact with these rollers?"

"I can't answer that. I'd just be guessing."

"What are you going to do, Frazer?"

"You still have any hope of competing in the games?"

"I'd like to think there's a chance." "And you never raced professionally?" "That's right, I never did."

One of the reporters on the edge of the crowd shouted, "Bus coming!"

With Steve following, they all rushed down the ramp that went under the grandstand and outside. Three large jet-buses were just pulling up.

"For the Antareans?" one of the panting reporters asked the driver of the first bus.

"Just got a call," the Ophiuchan replied laconically.

Soon the crimson-clad Antareans began to file from their locker room. This time a cordon of Ophiuchan police formed an aisle through the crowd for them, and the reporters' questions went unanswered.

Steve had managed to find a position near the lead bus, and as Coach Harvshaw, leading his team, reached it, Steve cried, "What about Billgarr? What are you going to do about Billgarr?"

The Antarean coach looked at him. "You a reporter?"

"No. I'm Steve Frazer, Earth team. I went aboard the Liberie" "Where's Billgarr?"

Steve had to shout to make himself heard. "Chand-lur has him in custody, says he's senile." "He's what?"

"Senile. Imagined the whole thing." Coach Harvshaw's face darkened. "We'll see about that."

"Can I go with you, sir?" Harvshaw shook his head at once. "But I-"

"The answer is no."

"All right, but listen," Steve said. "I was in hot water, just like Billgarr. They released me in the custody of the Earth Space Captain, Syrtis Williams. Maybe you can get them to release Billgarr in your custody."

"Good idea," said Harvshaw. Then the hard lines of his face softened and he added, "We'll try. And thanks for the advice, son."

The Antareans climbed aboard the buses, and with a woosh and a roar they sped away. Steve stood in the brilliant light, watching them until they were dots on the road that would take them to Antarestown in the Olympic compound.

Scattering, the reporters went looking for transportation. Steve walked slowly along the road to Ophiuchus City. An Ophiuchan in a ground-jet stopped for him and drove him the rest of the way in. At Ophiuchus City Steve caught the jet-bus that would take him back to Earthtown.

Two hours later Syrtis Williams was telling him, "I put a call through to Ralpday, the Antarean Space Captain." Williams shook his head. "They tried to get Billgarr away from the High Commissioner."

"And?"

"They couldn't. Ralpday says they won't budge out of Antarestown until the old man goes free. It looks like a stalemate."

"What about the rollers?"

"Ralpday refused to answer any questions about the rollers. If I had to take a guess I'd say the Antareans are afraid the rollers will break off all contact if they learn the way Billgarr's being treated."

"But where are they now?"

"The rollers? I don't know. Wherever they go when they teleport."

Just then Hunk Little came in with Mackald. The big wrestler whistled. "Popping up like that, those

Antareans sure stole the show. Maybe now Chandlur will have to listen to reason."

"He's doing his best not to," Steve said.

"Might have known," Mackald grumbled. "The thing that bothers me is, he's a Denebian just like me. He's making me wish I was born somewhere else and—" Mackald winked, "I haven't exactly led, how they say, a life of rectitude."

Hunk Little said, "A few minutes ago, we almost got mobbed. I thought we'd never get here."

"You and Mackald?" Syrtis Williams asked, giving the wrestler a blank look. "How did that happen?"

"Well, we were coming along the short way from the compound entrance, right past Antarestown and—"

"It was me," Mackald picked up the story for him. "A couple of Antareans rushed out shouting something, then more of them, then a whole mob."

"Billgarr," Hunk Little said.

"He's here in the Olympic compound?" Syrtis Williams asked, amazed.

Mackald shook his head. "Of course not. Me. Don't you get it? Of course, I'm a far better looking type of guy, but the Antareans—at first they thought I was Billgarr. They were so happy to see me, we almost got mobbed. Then they realized the mistake. Never saw so many disappointed people in my life." He repeated, "Of course, I'm a much better looking type of guy, but-"

"Captain," Steve said suddenly, a strange look on his face, "didn't you tell me the Antareans won't do anything until Billgarr is free?"

"That's right. They're afraid the rollers will break contact if they learn what happened to Billgarr. So what?"

Steve turned to Mackald slowly. Once before he'd noticed the resemblance between the Denebian and Billgarr, and what had happened today proved it. "Mackald," he said, "Mackald, how would you like to show Chandlur just what you think of his behavior?"

All Mackald said was, "Come again?"

"Billgarr. You look like him. With a little make-up, you could probably pass for his double. You'd need a fringe of white hair and some lines on your face, because Billgarr is older than you, and some pink pigmentation on your skin, but that would be easy."

Syrtis Williams shook his head. "You mean you want Mackald to pass himself off as Billgarr to the Antareans? It would never work."

"No sir. That isn't what I mean. I'm asking Mackald to pass himself off as Billgarr—to the Denebians."

There was a silence, then Mackald blurted, "Hey now, wait a minute. Wait a minute!"

"All we can do is ask you, Mackald," Steve said. "But look at it this way: sooner or later the rollers are going to learn what Chandlur did and—"

"And," Syrtis Williams finished for him, excitement in his voice, "it would be nice to be able to point to Mackald and say, 'Here's one Denebian who was on your side from the very beginning.' "

Mackald's eyes got big. "But what happens to me in the meantime? I like it here on Ophiuchus. Been living here for years. You want me to change places with Billgarr, huh? What do you think will happen when Chandlur finds out? He's liable to have me deported from Ophiuchus."

Again Syrtis Williams shook his head. "I guarantee you that won't happen. I can see to it. There won't be a Space Captain who'll agree to take you off."

"And," Steve pointed out earnestly, "if things go right with the rollers, you'll be a hero."

"The hero of the day," Hunk Little said.

"Your name in all the solido-casts," Syrtis Williams urged.

"Me?" Mackald gulped. "A hero? A real hero?"

"Just say the word," Syrtis Williams told him.

Mackald paced back and forth. He sat down again, got up, paced some more, went to the round window and looked out. When he turned, he was smiling.

"You know something?" he said. "You just got yourself a hero."

Chapter 10 Rescue!

E had been Mackald the Denebian. Now he was Billgarr.

Steve blinked. He still couldn't believe his eyes.

It was Mackald himself, Mackald who knew his way around Ophiuchus City, who had sent for the make-up specialist. And, exactly as Steve had foreseen, a fringe of white hair, age-lines on Mackald's face and slight pink pigmentation had been enough to create the metamorphosis. Mackald now looked almost as much like Billgarr as Billgarr did. He even wore an Antarean jumper.

While the make-up had been applied, Syrtis Williams hadn't been idle. He'd contacted WTestor, the Denebian Space Captain, and they'd outlined the plan to him.

"Sure, I have friends in Denebtown," Westor said doubtfully. "I can get you inside, but what then?"

Hunk told him, "That's where I come in. If you need muscle, I'll be along."

"I don't like sending one of you boys—" Syrtis Williams began.

"One of us, nothing," Steve said. "You're sending two of us. Billgarr's a funny guy. He trusts me. He's liable not to trust anyone else. I've got to be the one to deliver him to Antarestown."

"That makes sense," Syrtis Williams admitted. "But if Chandlur catches you, I won't be able to intervene. You'd be saying good-by to Ophiuchus for good."

"I'll take that chance, sir. We ought to be able to pull it off, Hunk and Westor and Mackald and me. We'll wait for night. It won't be dark, but at least most of the Denebians will be sleeping. And if there's any doubt about who Billgarr is on the way out, the twilight ought to help."

"He can wear my jumper," Mackald suggested. "And if you want to take a pair of clippers along, we can shave his hair off. Not that he has much more than I do."

For awhile all of them were silent. Then Syrtis Williams asked Westor, "Mind telling me why you agreed to this? I almost didn't call you, but we needed someone who could get us into Denebtown."

Westor shuffled his feet awkwardly. He looked uncomfortable. Finally he said, "Well, I tell you, Captain. One bad apple like Chandlur can give a planet a bad name. I guess I want to do what I can to show Deneb in its true light. There are good Denebians and bad Denebians and indifferent Denebians, just like any other world." He cleared his throat. "Well, you boys ready?"

"We're ready," Steve said. His palms were moist. He heard the blood rushing in his ears. For the first time since he thought of the plan he admitted to himself he was a little—make that more than a little-afraid.

"You, Mackald?" Westor asked.

Mackald's smile was fleeting. "I ought to have my head examined. This is the first time I ever walked into prison of my own free will."

"You will have your head examined," Syrtis Williams told him, "if they think you're Billgarr."

Mackald groaned. They all went downstairs and outside, where Syrtis Williams had a jet-car waiting.

It was too early—two suns still in the sky. But they were too tense and anxious to sit around waiting. They drove to Ophiuchus City and beyond it, and then, with the blue sun alone in the sky and close to the horizon, back to the Olympic compound and Denebtown.

Hunkered down in the blue shadows near the facade of Denebtown's single enormous building, Mackald whispered, "What's keeping him?"

"Got to make contact with his friends inside," Syrtis Williams said, then raised a finger to his lips for silence.

Steve could feel the muscles of his legs growing stiff as he crouched with the others a few yards off the stone walkway that led to Denebtown's main entrance. Leathery-leaved shrubs grew there, helping along with the blue twilight shadows to conceal them. Once a jet-car pulled up, and three Denebians walked up the path and entered the building. Steve flinched. They passed so close he almost could have stood up and touched them.

After awhile Steve asked Syrtis Williams, "You sure they've got him in Denebtown?"

"That's what Westor says. He ought to know."

"But wouldn't Chandlur feel safer keeping Billgarr in Ophiuchus City, itself?"

"Might be too many questions. Linkian or some of the others on the committee might start asking questions. Besides, Chandlur'd have the press to worry about there. And—"

"Here comes Westor!" Hunk whispered excitedly.

It was true. The door at the end of the path had opened, and the Denebian Space Captain came through it. He walked right past the crouching Earth-men and Mackald without stopping. "Around in back," he said out of the side of his mouth, and kept going.

Hunk rose at once, impulsively. But Steve clutched his shoulder, and they waited until Wester, walking rapidly, had reached the foot of the path. Except for the noise Westor's boots made crunching on the stone, there wasn't a sound.

"Let's go," Syrtis Williams said finally, and he, the two boys and Mackald got up to follow Westor.

A Denebian whose face Steve never saw was waiting for them inside the back entrance of Denebtown. With his back to them, he merely nodded his head when he saw Westor walk past him, then fell into step a single long stride behind the Space Captain and several strides in front of the others.

They went up three flights of stairs. Once Steve heard voices along one of the hallways resounding from the circular stairwell, and once, over his head somewhere, he heard the pound of feet. They kept going. Westor's nameless friend seemed to know not only where he was leading them, but that they wouldn't meet any trouble along the way.

At least, Steve hoped he knew that.

Three more flights of stairs, until finally they walked down a hallway and stopped before a door. Mackald was panting like an archaic steam engine. He raised a hand, half in doubt, half in question, as the Denebian who had led the way kept walking, turned down a branching corridor, and disappeared. But Westor shook his head, took a deep breath, and motioned Steve to the door.

"Billgarr knows you best," the Denebian said. "You ought to be the first one he sees."

Tensely, Steve went to the door. Would this be the right place? Would Billgarr be inside, waiting hopelessly, never expecting rescue? Or had they been led into a trap? After all, Westor's unknown friend was a Denebian, wasn't he? Like Mackald who Steve once thought had betrayed them, Mackald—who had now agreed to change places with Billgarr so that the old Antarean could rejoin his people.

Westor had spelled it out. There were good Dene-bians and there were bad ones, as there were among any other people. And while Deneb had its Chand-lurs, it also had its Westors and its Mackalds.

Steve put an ear to the door. First—nothing. Then he smiled. He heard a twanging sound. Billgarr's "gee-tar." Steve rapped on the door once with his knuckles, called, "Billgarr!"

At once the twanging stopped. Steve could hear footsteps inside.

The door opened.

Billgarr, guitar in one hand, blinked. He started to say something, then his jaw hung as he saw Mackald in the dim light of the hallway.

"I'm in here" the old man said. "What am I doing out there?"

"He'll take your place," Syrtis Williams said tersely. "We're delivering you to Antarestown." "Now?" "Now."

"Have to hurry, then, because a couple of guards are going to take me to Chandlur for questioning-right about now," Billgarr told them. "At least, that's what they said at supper."

As if to prove the old man's point, the sound of footsteps was heard far down the corridor.

"Inside!" Syrtis Williams whispered. "Quick!"

They all crowded into Billgarr's room, and waited.

Could Billgarr have been mistaken? Steve felt his heart pounding. If he weren't, they'd have a fight on their hands.

The footsteps came closer, paused outside the door. Mackald was sitting on the bed with Billgarr's guitar on his lap. He twanged it once. The rest of them were flattened against the wall on either side of the door, Hunk closest to it on the left side, Syrtis Williams on the right.

A fist banged against the door peremptorily.

"Billgarr?"

"Right with you," said Mackald from the bed. If they didn't come in, if they waited outside for him and took him down the hall at once, the Earthmen could get away with Billgarr. But if they entered the room. . . .

Which was exactly what they did.

When the door opened, Hunk rose on the balls of his feet, raising one arm overhead. Two guards, one tall, the other thickset and with the widest shoulders Steve had ever seen, entered the room. The thickset one was closest to Hunk. The taller one had a hand weapon, probably a Denebian blaster, belted around his waist.

Hunk brought the edge of his right palm down in a judo-chop at the back of the thickset Denebian's neck. The guard took a step forward and fell to his knees. As he did so, the tall one cried out and retreated.

Syrtis Williams grabbed his arm, hauling him into the room. He staggered forward, broke free as Williams swung on him, missing.

He reached for his blaster.

Steve tried to stop him, but with one motion the guard ripped the blaster from his belt and swept it up in a savage arc that ended against the side of

Steve's jaw. Steve felt himself falling. His vision blurred, and then he was looking up at the tall guard's legs.

"Keep back, all of youl" the guard warned. "You're overed."

For an instant, time seemed to hang suspended. There was absolutely no motion in the little room, and not a sound. Then the guard felled by Hunk climbed slowly to his feet, and simultaneously little Mackald leaped up from the bed and hurled himself at the guard with the blaster.

It roared once and Mackald, a surprised look on his face, fell forward. Both guards, standing side by side now, watched him.

"Two of them," the tall one said incredulously. "Two Billgarrs!"

It was the last thing he said for a while. With an outraged cry, Hunk Little flung his great bulk at the guards. Muscular arms spread wide, he hit them. One big hand closed on each head, and then Hunk brought them together. The sound they made was like a mallet striking hardwood. The thickset guard's eyes rolled. The other one dropped his blaster. Both of them fell.

Steve kneeled near the stricken Mackald, fingered his wrist. The pulse beat was weak and fluttery. The chest of Mackald's jumper was scorched where the ray from the blaster had struck him.

"Is he—" Syrtis Williams began.

But Mackald's eyelids fluttered, and the little De-nebian managed a faint smile. "Don't finish that sentence, Cap'n. It'll take . . . more than one of Chand-lur's hired . . . blasters to kill . . . me."

Syrtis Williams scooped up the blaster. Hunk said, still outraged, "They shot him. They went and shot him."

"Got to hurry," Syrtis Williams said quickly. "They'll have heard that blaster outside. Won't know where exactly it came from at first, but they'll find out. We'll have to be on our way before they do."

Mackald groaned, then grimaced and tried to smile again without success. "I . . . guess you leave me . . . behind as planned."

"No we don't," Steve said. "We're getting you out of here."

Hunk stooped to pick up the fallen Mackald, but Syrtis Williams said, "Not you. We may need your muscle on the way out."

So it was Steve who lifted Mackald as gently as he could. The tough little Denebian was surprisingly light. He didn't weigh much more than a child.

"Go . . . easy," he told Steve. His face was white and bathed in sweat.

They went into the hall, Syrtis Williams leading the way with the blaster, Hunk bringing up the rear, Billgarr and Steve—carrying Mackald—between them.

As they hit the top of the stairs, a voice hailed them from behind. They didn't stop, didn't turn, but plunged on down. Feet pounded in the hallway above and behind them. Steve turned. It was then that he realized Hunk Little had remained behind. Steve heard shouts, a thud, another, more shouting.

"Come on, boyl" Syrtis Williams urged over his shoulder.

Steve went down with Mackald cradled in his arms. Hunk, he kept thinking. What's happening to Hunk now?

If he lived to be a hundred, Steve knew, he would never forget their retreat down those six flights of stairs. At first Mackald had seemed light, but with every step Steve took he seemed to grow heavier. Before they were halfway down Steve felt as if the Denebian's weight would wrench his arms from their sockets. But as hard as it was for him, he knew it was five times as hard for Mackald. And, too, there was the uncertainty about Hunk, who had remained behind to give them enough time to get downstairs and outside.

When they reached the bottom of the last flight of stairs, Steve's arms had become completely numb. Ahead of them, just a dozen steps now, was the back entrance to Denebtown. Then—a quick run outside and around the building to where Syrtis Williams's jet-car was waiting. . . .

But three guards, blasters on their hips, stood with their backs to the door.

"Don't go for those weapons," Syrtis Williams said grimly. "I'll blast you before you touch them." Steve had never heard the Space Captain's voice like that before. He knew Syrtis Williams wasn't bluffing.

The guards must have realized that, too. They didn't make a move after their eyes darted to Syrtis Williams's.

"Get their blasters," the Space Captain told Bill-garr, and the old Antarean advanced spryly, almost cockily, on the guards. In seconds he had disarmed them.

Syrtis Williams jerked his thumb toward the door. "Outside, the three of you."

At first Steve didn't understand, but then he did. Syrtis Williams wanted to clear the path for Hunk when—if—the wrestler came down in a hurry.

Steve was hardly aware of rushing outside, of jogging along the path that went around the side of Denebtown. His jaw throbbed dully and Mackald's weight threatened at every step to nail his legs to the ground. Left leg . . . right leg . . . left again . . . lungs heaving like an overworked bellows . . . and Mackald, head lolling on Steve's shoulder, magnificently managed to encourage him, "Come on, youngster. Not much further. I can see it, youngster. I can see the car. . . ."

And then they were tumbling inside, the three guards standing off a few steps, watching them, Syrtis Williams standing between them and the jet-car with his blaster.

"Billgarr?" he said. "Can you drive? I'm waiting for Hunk."

It was Mackald, though, Mackald stretched out now on the rear seat, who answered. "Not . . . going anyplace . . . without that boy. . . ."

And so they waited.

Denebtown's front door opened suddenly, and half a dozen guards rushed outside. At the same instant,

Steve saw Hunk sprinting around the side of the building, Hunk with bruises on his face and his juniper torn and hanging from his shoulders, Hunk with a bloody nose but grinning."Hunk, hurry!" Steve cried.

Syrtis Williams fired a warning shot over the guards' heads with his blaster. They stopped short. Only one of them was armed, and he hadn't reached for his weapon yet.

Then he did just as Hunk Little leaped into the jet-car.

Syrtis Williams got in right behind him. The blaster seared the blue twilight, missing them.

The jet-car lurched and sped away.

"Hospital?" Syrtis Williams said over his shoulder.

"Not for me," Mackald told him. "That's all those . . . rollers would have to hear ... all this trouble because they . . . they'd break off contact. . . ."

"My people will take care of him," Billgarr offered.

"Mackald?" Syrtis Williams said.

"All right with me, Cap'n."

Panting, Hunk said, "Anyway, Chandlur's goose is cooked now. As soon as we report—"

"We can't," Steve pointed out. "Same reason. The rollers are shy and uncertain, remember? If they get wind of the disturbance, they'll go away and never come back."

"You mean," Hunk demanded angrily, "Chandlur just gets away with it?"

"For now," Syrtis Williams said, "yes. But this isn't over yet, boy."

They weren't pursued. In the crowded confines of the Olympic compound Chandlur's men would run too great a risk of being observed. They sped quickly past Fomalhauttown and Siriustown and Centauri-town until Syrtis Williams called out,

"Here we are."

Williams stopped the jet-car. Hunk got out first, and between them he and Steve carried Mackald as gently as they could.

Up the path at last to Antarestown and the mysteries it held for half a galaxy.

Chapter II Deneb Won't listen

HIELDED by lead, little Mackald was stretched out on a speed-time table. The S-T radiation gun, its nozzle trained squarely on his chest, was suspended from the ceiling of the Antarestown dispensary.

Syrtis Williams took the Antarean physician aside. "Will he be all right?"

"I believe so. S-T radiation speeds up the metabolic functions of the injured area, you see, and—"

"I know," Syrtis Williams said.

The physician shrugged. "Not all the outworlds use speed-time therapy."

Syrtis Williams managed not to smile. The inhabitants of every planet in every star system regarded all the others as outworlds as if, to its own denizens, each planet was the center of the universe.

". . . five or six days perhaps," the physician was saying, "and he'll be as good as new. During that time, you see, the patient's injury will have been treated, subjectively, for almost six months. So . . /'

The physician rambled on, like all physicians everywhere, erecting a wall of jargon between himself and his listeners.

Syrtis Williams caught Mackald's eye and winked at him. Mackald winked back, and even managed a weak smile. Then Syrtis Williams went into Coach Harvshaw's office where Steve, Hunk, and Billgarr were waiting.

Two hours had passed since they had arrived at Antarestown in Syrtis Williams's jet-car. During that time Billgarr had told his story to his fellow planet-eers.

Now Harvshaw said, "It's ironic in a way. At first it seemed that the tests the rollers gave us would be crucial. But now diat we've passed those tests with flying colors—"

"We have?" Billgarr said.

"That's right. Despite the enormous physical differences, the rollers find our psychological and emotional make-up to be basically like their own. But as it turns out, the tests aren't very important. Because if the rollers learn what's been going on here on Ophiuchus, chances are they'll break off contact."

You mean because of Deneb?" Syrtis Williams demanded.

"That's what he means," the Antarean Space Captain, Ralpday, said grimly.

"But don't you see," Steve pointed out, "Chand-lur isn't the only Denebian. He's not representative of his people. There's Westor, who made it possible for us to rescue Billgarr; and Mackald, who was willing to change places with him in Denebtown, and who almost lost his life when we did escape with Billgarr. Can t we tell the rollers that?"

Ralpday was still pessimistic. "We can if we have to, but what good would it do? Here's the situation, Steve. Now that we've passed our tests the rollers are planning to send some emissaries to the games tomorrow."

"Tomorrow!" Hunk blurted. "But every time Steve mentioned the rollers no one would believe him, not even—" Hunk gulped, "me. And I'm his best friend."

"Well," Ralpday admitted, "we have this much leeway. In order for the rollers to come down to Ophiuchus, we'll have to bring one of their telepor-tation cylinders here for them. I guess if we had to we could delay. But if we did, the rollers would know something's wrong, and if they thought something was wrong they still might want to call everything off."

"Give us a few days," Syrtis Williams suggested. "Maybe we can get things ready for them here."

Harvshaw gave the Space Captain a sharp look. "You mean, for example, wait until Mackald is healed?"

"Right. I gather the rollers will shy away from us unless they can be convinced all is sweetness and light for their reception."

Steve frowned. "I'm just a kid, so maybe I ought to keep my big trap shut and listen, but you know what I think? I think it would be a mistake to try-to deceive the rollers in any way. Sure, we humans aren't a hundred per cent paragons—but how can the rollers expect that? If they want to establish contact with us, they've got to accept the good with the bad and hope, the way we hope, that the good cancels out the bad. After all, the rollers didn't let you Antareans test them, did they?"

"Besides," Hunk took up where his friend left off, "why don't they just look at our history? We've got billions of people living on all the outworlds, each world with its own aims and motives, but there hasn't been a war during the entire Interstellar Age. Doesn't that show we humans can get along with each other despite guys like Chandlur?"

"They have a good point there, both of them," Harvshaw said promptly.

"Maybe it's high time we told the rollers to take us as we are," Ralpday agreed. "The thing that bothers me, though, is this, we won't be able to predict what the High Commissioner will do. He wants to stop us, that's for sure. He'll fight tooth and nail to prevent any kind of cultural exchange between humanity and the rollers."

"But why?" Steve asked. "How can you say that for sure? He wouldn't even believe the rollers existed when I told him my story, and when Billgarr told his story to the Space Captains. He said I was a wild-eyed kid, and that Billgarr was senile."

Ralpday shook his head. "That was all sham. Maybe not right away, but after a Denebian tug visited the

Liberté, it was. Which means Chandlur knew perfectly well that Billgarr was telling the truth."

"Huh? 1 don't get it." That was Hunk, looking as perplexed as he sounded.

Ralpday explained, "Way back when we first started our journey to Ophiuchus, the Denebians had planted a spy, an Anterean crewman, aboard the Liberté.

"A spy?" Steve asked. "What for?"

"Originally to keep tabs on our athletes. Later, and quite accidentally, he was able to report on our contact with the rollers. He left the Liberté on the De-nebian tug, so by now Chandlur knows just about everything you know."

Steve was puzzled. "Billgarr didn't tell me anything about him."

Ralpday's smile was wry. "That's because Billgarr didn't know."

"You're right, I didn't," Billgarr admitted. "How'd you find out?"

It was Coach Harvshaw who answered, and he didn't look particularly happy about his answer. "They had a spy aboard the Liberté. We—well—we had one in Denebtown."

Hunk clapped a hand to his head and said, "Ouch!"

"All right, all right," Harvshaw went on defensively. "Deneb and Antares are the vying centers of power in the galaxy, don't forget that. Maybe the Olympic games aren't anything more than athletic contests to you, Hunk—"

"Athletic contests!" Steve cried. "They're the first chance humanity's had to get together—people from all over the galaxy—since the Interstellar Age began."

"That's true, and I wish it were the whole story," Harvshaw said. "But it isn't. Because neither Deneb nor Antares, for propaganda reasons, can afford to come off second best in the games. So," he finished lamely, "we used spies."

"And they found out?" Steve wanted to know.

"Nothing, except that Deneb's going to be a mighty tough opponent."

Syrtis Williams grinned. "You knew that before you ever left Antares."

"Spies," Billgarr said distastefully.

"Anyway," Ralpday brought the conversation back to where it had started, "Chandlur has two very good reasons for trying to balk us. One, he'd like to disqualify Antares in the games. Two, and even more important, he knows of the existence of the rollers, despite any protestations to the contrary, and he's determined to prevent our meeting with them."

"But why?" Steve asked. "Some time ago Billgarr told me Chandlur was afraid, on Deneb's behalf, that Ophiuchus—lying close to the center of the galaxy as it does—would become the most important human world if contact were established. But that doesn't make sense."

"The rollers live on the other side of the center, beyond the Ophiuchus nebulae and the star swarms of Sagittarius, remember?" Ralpday said.

"So what? What difference does it make—since they have this teleportation and can get any place they want instantaneously?"

"It isn't as easy as you make it out," Ralpday explained. "Remember I said we'd have to bring one of the teleportation cylinders down to Ophiuchus for the rollers? That would be true in every case, so for some years at least Ophiuchus would be bound to find itself in the galactic spotlight, as a sort of transshipment point for the rollers' cylinders. And don't think Chandlur isn't aware of that."

"Looks like he doesn't miss a trick," Billgarr said.

"We have some alternatives," Ralpday said. "Three, as I see it." He ticked them off on his fingers, "One, we just let the rollers come after bringing their cylinders here."

"From where?" Syrtis Williams asked.

"We have a pair hooked up between the Liberté and Denebtown. But it's a low-power unit, fit for travel between here and the ship, and that's all. What we'll have to do is teleport back to the Liberté, then take the Liberté through subspace to the roller station nearest us—it's beyond Sagittarius—then bring a really big teleporter back here to Ophiuchus.

"Anyway, the first alternative, as I've said, is to just let the rollers come ahead and hope for the best. The second, we take the Liberté to their station beyond Sagittarius and explain the situation to them. Even though Steve and Hunk seem to favor that, and even though what they say makes a lot of sense, I'm not sure I go for it. The rollers are just plain too cautious, that's all. At the first sign of trouble, they're liable to call the whole thing off."

"And the third alternative?" Syrtis Williams demanded.

"The third one is this, a group of us visit Chand-lur and lay the situation on the line for him—playing down the shyness and caution of the rollers and hoping for the best. Then, if that fails, we can still try alternatives one or two."

"With Chandlur brought up to date on our plans," Billgarr said.

Ralpday's answer was a shrug. "Anyone have a better idea?"

There was a silence. Apparently no one did.

"Then it's settled," Ralpday said. "It's the middle of the night. I suggest we all get some sleep and pay a visit to Chandlur in the morning."

"He'll love us," Hunk said. "After what we did at Denebtown tonight."

Ralpday shook his head. "That was his fault, not ours. He had no right to keep Billgarr a virtual prisoner—especially after the rest of us teleported here. He must have known that we weren't pursued beyond Denebtown. But if he wants to make anything out of that, we'll have an impartial Ophiuchan psychologist run some tests on Billgarr. It won't come to that, though. On this point at least I know Chand-lur'll back down. He'll have to."

Opening the door for them, Ralpday added, "By the way, I'd like you two boys on hand for the showdown with Chandlur in the morning. I like the way you put things and, besides, the most important single element in the games is the youth of the fifty worlds. So, you be their spokesmen. All right?"

Steve and Hunk looked at each other. Hunk shuffled his feet. Steve could sense his friend was waiting for him to give the answer for both of them.

"We'll do what we can," Steve said, and as he left with Syrtis Williams and Hunk, after they'd checked again on Mackald's condition, he realized that what they achieved tomorrow—and if not tomorrow, then a little later out in the unchartered regions of space beyond Sagittarius—might determine the course of human history for the next several generations.

An hour later Steve and Hunk were in their bunks in Earthtown. Hands laced behind his head, Steve was staring at the heavy curtain drawn across the window. He was too restless, too excited to sleep.

As if reading his thoughts, Hunk called from across the room, "Asleep, Stevie-boy?"

"Uh-uh."

"Thinking about tomorrow?"

"I guess so. I told Captain Ralpday we'd do what we can, but we're just a couple of kids and—"

"And even if we had beards down to our toenails, Chandlur's answer would still be the same. That guy isn't going to cooperate a lick, Stevie-boy."

"That," Steve admitted, "is what I was thinking."

Awhile later Steve heard Hunk's regular breathing. But for a long time Steve lay awake wondering what the future held for them—and for mankind.

A rough hand on his shoulder shook Steve awake. "Hey, Hunk, g'way! G'wananlemmesleep!" he protested.

"Steve! Steve, wake up. It's me, Joe Ito."

Coach Ito's voice sounded strange. Steve blinked, stretched and sat up on his bunk. Coach Ito was trying very hard not to smile, but suddenly he gave up the effort and a truly huge grin all but bisected his face. Paper rustled in his hand and he cried,

"Here it is, Steve! What you've been waiting for. A copy of the subspace radio message that just came from Earth. Read it, boy. Go on and read it."

Steve needed no further urging. With all that had been happening on Ophiuchus the past day or so, he'd pushed to the back of his mind the problem of his own status as an Olympic athlete.

Now Joe Ito thrust the sheet of white paper into his hand, laughed, thumped Steve on the shoulder, laughed again and almost sang, "Read it out loud, boy. Go ahead, let Hunk hear it, too."

"Hear what?" Hunk demanded sleepily. His voice was almost a growl.

"Just read it, Steve."

And Steve read:

"Coach Joe Ito, Earthtown, Olympic Compound, Ophiuchus. Eligibility status of spacesuit racer Steve Frazer investigated and confirmed by this office. Fra-zer has complete amateur standing and our best wishes for success in the games." Steve's voice caught. He couldn't go on for a minute.

"Hey, Stevie-boy, that's great!" Hunk cried, and

jumped out of his bunk to pound Steve's back so hard Steve saw stars.

"It—it's signed," Steve finished, "Morelli, Earth Olympic Commissioner, Athens, Greece, Earth, Sol System. It—you did it, Coach. You did it!"

"It just confirms what we knew all along, Steve," Joe Ito said.

Hunk asked, "Does Roy Ambler know yet? Boy, I can just see his face."

"Not yet," Coach Ito said. "But—"

Hunk and Steve weren't listening now, though. Grasping Steve's arm, Hunk had dragged him off the bunk, and they were doing a wild, crazy dance around the little room.

"You'll tear the place apart!" Coach Ito warned.

For answer, Hunk grabbed him, too, and made him join in. Hunk's weight made the floor shake. Then he grabbed Joe Ito's hand again and shook it up and down like a pump handle.

"Give it back to me, it's the only right hand I have," Joe Ito protested. When Hunk released it, the coach managed to say, "As you probably know, they're holding the Parade of the Planets over again this morning. You'll be able to take part, Steve. And tomorrow the games start. If you don't win a gold medal for Earth and Sol System, I'll eat the medal of the man who does."

Some of the enthusiasm drained out of Steve, replaced by a different sort of excitement. "Coach," he said, "I—I won't be able to make the parade."

"You're kidding."

"No," Steve said, "I'm not." Then he explained what had been decided at Antarestown last night.

"It's just a parade," he finished, "and if I can be of any help at all when they visit Denebtown, I want to be there."

"Hunk?" Joe Ito said.

"So who has to parade all the time? I was in the first one, anyway."

Soberly Joe Ito said, "You boys are all right. But tell me this—you will be able to compete in the games, won't you?" He frowned. "Earth, as I see it, can only look forward to two gold medals. Anything else would be gravy. The two are yours, Hunk, and yours, Steve."

"Nothing'll keep me away from those wrestling mats," Hunk vowed.

But Steve didn't answer the question right away. Until he'd reached Ophiuchus, the games were the most important thing in the world to him. Now, with the roller situation coming to a head, he wasn't sure. He just didn't know at the moment.

"I'll race if I possibly can," he told Joe Ito.

"If you possibly can?"

Steve felt awkward. "Believe me, Coach, I'm not ungrateful. You've done a lot for me, more than anyone had a right to expect."

"What does that have to do with it? Earth—" "Earth, like every other human world in the galaxy, is faced with the possibility of contact—friendly contact, Coach—with an alien culture. If I can do anything to help make that happen, I—I'm going to doit."

Coach Ito nodded slowly. What he had no way of knowing, and what Steve didn't know yet either, was that successful contact with the rollers would rest squarely on the shoulders of an eighteen-year-old Earth boy—an eighteen-year-old Earth boy named Steve Frazer.

Steve headed for the shower stall. "We'd better get dressed and have some chow, Hunk. They'll be waiting for us at Antarestown."

High Commissioner Chandlur said, "I could have all of you arrested for what happened here. Two Denebian guards were injured."

He also said, "Please don't tax my patience. I won't —I simply cannot—believe any wild-eyed stories about extra-human life waiting to make contact with us."

And then he said, "So if you—uh—gentlemen will excuse me. . . ."

All this was after Syrtis Williams, Ralpday, Harv-shaw, Hunk and Steve had outlined the roller situation to him. He simply did not listen, had waited impatiently, drumming fat fingers on his desk while they spoke. It was one of the most frustrating experiences Steve had ever had. He knew Chandlur was aware of the existence of the rollers; Chandlur's spy aboard the Liberté would have informed him. Yet Chandlur, convinced that Deneb's role as one of the two centers of galactic culture was more important than a meeting with the rollers, denied all of it.

No one paid any attention to his curt suggestion to end the interview. Chandlur stirred uncomfortably, but stopped drumming his fingers. "Exactly what do you want of me?"

"Cooperation, Commissioner," Syrtis Williams said. "The rollers will call the whole thing off unless they're convinced everyone on Ophiuchus is for the meeting and the establishment of diplomatic relations developing from it. If they believe the High Commissioner himself opposed it—"

"But how can I cooperate in something which simply is not true?" the Commissioner asked blandly.

Ralpday stood up angrily. "It's true and you know it's true, Chandlur. What we came here to find out is what you're going to do about it."

Chandlur rose ponderously to his feet, his bald head gleaming. "Gentlemen, we're wasting each other's time. I have a very busy schedule today."

"But you can't—" Ralpday began.

"Can and will, Captain." Chandlur turned slowly, almost lazily, to face the Antarean Coach, Harvshaw. "Oh yes, I almost forgot. I am glad you're here, Coach. If you hadn't come, I would have sent for you. I'll want a full report on where the Antarean team spent its time after the Liberté was deserted."

Harvshaw gaped. "We already told you. With the rollers."

But Chandlur ignored that. "A rumor is circulating here at Olympic Headquarters to the effect that the Antarean team went into intensive training on a heavy planet beyond the coalsack. If that is true, then of course Antares will be barred from the games."

"It's not true!" Harvshaw gasped.

"You'll have to prove that."

"But it's lies! All lies!"

"My informants indicate that—"

Harvshaw's face was red and his hands shook. "Who?" he cried. "Who told you those lies?"

"They wish," Chandlur almost purred, "to remain anonymous."

Harvshaw advanced on him menacingly, but Ralp-day held his fellow planeteer back. "Don't you see, he's trying to goad you?"

"But he said—"

"I know what he said. He doesn't have any informants, not since the Denebian spy hid from the rollers and later left the Liberté. He can't prove those accusations, and he knows he can't."

Chandlur was still purring. "Can you prove that wild-eyed story about the rollers, or whatever you call them?"

No one answered him. "Tit for tat, gentlemen," he said. "If Antares forgets about these alleged extra-human beings, I'm willing to drop this business of the heavy planet that you—"

"He's right," Syrtis Williams admitted, marching heavy-footed to the door, "we're wasting each other's time, and we've got work to do."

The others followed him, Harvshaw a little reluctantly. "Thanks for nothing," Hunk Little said as they left.

A few minutes later Chandlur was looking at Roy Ambler's unhappy face on his viz-phone.

"I'm glad to see you followed my suggestion about not parading after all," Chandlur said.

"That's easy for you to say. I had to lie to the Coach, tell him I wasn't feeling well."

Chandlur chuckled. "Are you? With Steve Frazer reinstated as Earth's first spacesuit racer?"

"What do you think?"

"And you want to do something about it?"

Roy Ambler nodded.

"Good. Good. Keep close to the wrestler called Hunk Little and to Frazer. Then. . . ."

Roy Ambler listened and nodded again. But his thoughts wandered. He had spent too much time in Steve's shadow, he told himself. And even before that, his father had seen too much frustration at the hands of Steve's father. There'd been a time when Roy Ambler Senior could have picked up a lifetime lease on an enormous quadrant of the asteroid belt, but Steve Frazer's father, proving that a single determined homesteader could venture profitably in the asteroids, had blasted a path for thousands of homesteaders who had followed after him. Sol System disapproved of large lifetime leases. Then, for Roy himself, there had been a series of humiliating defeats in local Sol System racing events. Each time Steve had beaten Roy, Roy Ambler Senior had taken it personally, as if Don Frazer were besting him all over again. And then there had been the final defeat on the eve of departure from Soy System, when Coach Ito had posted team positions. It had, of course, been a foregone conclusion, for Steve had outraced Roy Ambler consistently in the asteroid belt and in the Jovian moons competition. Not that Roy lacked racing ability. He was a more than competent spacesuit racer. He was a very good one. But Steve Frazer, he thought bitterly, had always managed to come up with that barely fractional increase in racing efficiency which meant the difference between first and second place in the meets they'd entered together.

This time, Roy vowed grimly, it wouldn't happen. This time Frazer wouldn't win—even if it meant that neither of them competed. This time Roy wouldn't have to return home and tell his father that Frazer had beaten him again.

And while Roy Ambler made his grim vow, the rollers waited beyond the coalsack nebulae and the star swarms of Sagittarius that hid the center of the galaxy.

Chapter 12 The Space Captains

TEVE and Hunk returned the long way to Earth-town, walking past the great Olympic stadium. Their unsuccessful meeting with Chandlur had made them miss the second Parade of the Planets. It had ended moments before they reached the stadium, and throngs of Ophiuchans and outworlders were milling about the main entrance as they approached.

A holiday mood gripped the crowd. People collected in little knots which dashed this way and that as the parading teams filed out of the stadium, their flags and guidons still held proudly high, the banners whipping in the hot Ophiuchan wind.

The biggest crowd of all had gathered near the bulletin board in front of the main entrance. At first Steve didn't know why, then he heard someone shout,

"Come on, this way! They're posting the order of events!"

Steve and Hunk felt themselves pushed into the press of bodies around the bulletin board. As they

waited their turn in front of it, Steve was thinking of the races. In a general way, he knew how they'd be held. A series of artificial satellites would be placed in orbit around Ophiuchus—six of them, probably. A spacesuit racer, competing with two other racers from each represented planet, would have to follow a prescribed course from satellite to satellite and, finally, back to the stadium.

It would be a grueling test of racing ability and stamina, for the racers would probably be in their suits at least sixteen hours to complete the course. Four of the satellites, Coach Ito had told Steve, would have readily predictable orbits. But the remaining two would have obtained velocities just short of orbital, and their positions would be uncertain. Yet each racer would have to touch down on these, also, before he completed the course.

Just thinking about it excited Steve. He had journeyed halfway across the galaxy to compete in these races. He wouldn't know the exact satellite orbits until the last moment. Then, using what was still called seat-of-the-pants reckoning, he'd have to speed out to all of them and return to the stadium, using nothing more than the shoulder rockets of his spacesuit.

If he entered the races.

"...wrestling on the afternoon of the third day!" Hunk was shouting jubilantly. "So if we go out there to the rollers, we ought to get back in time for me to compete. That's something, huh?"

Steve nodded, happy for his friend. Then his own eyes were scanning the program. This afternoon . . . gymnastic events. Tomorrow morning . . . foot races, marathon. . . . Steve's eyes narrowed, and all at once the sounds of the crowd receded.

Tomorrow morning the spacesuit racing would begin. There it was on the program. Tomorrow morning!

Which meant that if Steve joined Syrtis Williams and the others in their meeting with the rollers, he'd miss the races.

Do they need me? he wondered. Do they really need me out there?

"Where are you going?" Hunk asked. Steve had begun to walk quickly away from the bulletin board. "Back to Earthtown?"

Shaking his head, Steve called over his shoulder, "The spaceport."

It was the first time Steve had seen the salvage ship. It wasn't big and it had engines far too powerful for its size and weight. The name stenciled near the prow was, Milky Way.

"In a way it's symbolic," Syrtis Williams told him. "Milky Way. That's what we call the galaxy, and our half of the galaxy will be getting together with the other half in it."

Westor the Denebian nodded. "According to Bill-garr, we were supposed to teleport out to the Liberté and head for the roller base in the Antarean ship. But you know us Space Captains."

Syrtis Williams grinned. "Once they got wind of this business, there wasn't a Space Captain on all of Ophiuchus who wouldn't have given his eyeteeth to go out there and meet the rollers. And Billgarr told us the teleportation cylinder which brought the Antareans here to Ophiuchus was just a small unit which—"

"It was big enough to get all the Antareans here," Steve pointed out.

"Small means small power component, son. Something about having to recharge it, unless we want to send people through one at a time at several hour intervals. So the quickest way out there is to take the Milky Way—which we're going to do first thing tomorrow morning."

"Tomorrow morning," Steve said.

"What's the matter?"

"The spacesuit races. They're being held tomorrow morning, too.''

Syrtis Williams made a face. "I see what you mean. And you can't decide whether to compete or to come with us, right?"

"That's about it, sir."

"I wish Billgarr were here," Syrtis Williams said slowly. "He could say what I'm going to say much better than I could. He had a hunch about something, son. The rollers. Sure, they'd put the entire Antarean team through an exhaustive series of tests, but everything was so scientific and objective, they hardly got to know the Antareans at all, except as squiggly lines on graph paper and charts and tables and things like that."

"I don't think I follow you, sir."

"Well, there's going to be trouble. Chandlur has a good idea what we're up to, and he won't just stand by. That's where Billgarr's hunch comes in. Assuming Chandlur makes trouble, assuming he tries to throw a monkey wrench into any meeting with the rollers, we'll need a weapon of our own."

"A weapon?" Steve said blankly.

"The rollers, Billgarr said, were extremely interested in Earth."

"But why Earth? We're just a backwater planet now. We—"

"We're the birthplace of humanity," Syrtis Williams said, and Westor and the other Space Captains nodded. "We've spent twenty generations in space, and maybe that's a long time, Steve. But how many millennia were spent—before that—on Earth?"

"I get your point, sir. You mean the rollers are going to be particularly interested in Earth and Earthmen, don't you?"

"Sure, and more than that. The rollers had a birthplace world too—and it's always produced most of their top leaders. If they equate Earth with that world, and if we have some representatives of it aboard the Milky Way to counter whatever bad impression Chandlur's going to make—"

"But surely he isn't coming!"

"On the Milky Way? Hardly. But believe me, he'll be there. To play on the rollers' caution and shyness, to try and break things off before they get started. Anyway, it was Billgarr's hunch that we were going to need you."

"Why me?" Steve wanted to know.

"A lot of reasons. You're from Sol System, Steve. So am I, sure—but I'm a Space Captain and the rollers will know they'll get no trouble from us. Then, too, you've been in on this business almost from the very beginning. One of the rollers even met you, remember? And—how old are you?"

"Just turned eighteen, sir."

Syrtis Williams smiled a slow smile. "All right. Eighteen. You think of yourself as a man, so don't get in a stew over what I'm about to say. You're a boy, Steve. You're still a boy. And the rollers will know, of course, that whatever happens out there won't be half so important as what will happen next year, and the year after that, and the decade after that, and so on. In short, it's going to be the youth of our half of the galaxy and the youth of theirs that..."

Syrtis Williams went on, but now Steve was hardly listening. Why me? he kept thinking. Why me? He'd finally been cleared for the races, hadn't he? Wasn't that why he'd come here? Wasn't it more important than any high-level meeting with the rollers, especially since, as Syrtis Williams said, he was still a boy? But they'd be interested, the rollers would, in the reactions of youth—wouldn't they?

"Why me?" Steve said out loud. "Why not someone else?"

"The reasons I already told you—and something else." Syrtis Williams was grinning. "I've saved the clincher for last, son. You're a spacesuit racer, Steve. You've practically grown up in a spacesuit. And the rollers have this teleportation. How long they've had it, I don't know. But Billgarr says hundreds of our Earth years. So, for a long time, they haven't had to face the rigors of space as we've had to face them."

"They're going to be mighty interested in you, Steve Frazer," Westor the Denebian finished for his fellow Space Captain. "Mighty interested in you and that spacesuit of yours. In a way you're our trump card. An Earthman, young, a spacesuit racer—"

"Now do you see?" Syrtis Williams asked gently. "Colonizing our half of the galaxy as we've done, we humans have had a pretty rough, wild—yet glorious-time of it. As we see it, Steve, in a way you're a symbol of all that."

Stubbornly, Steve said, "I came here to race."

For a moment Syrtis Williams didn't reply. Then he snapped suddenly, "Going to turn pro?"

"Why no, sir, I just—"

"You sure?"

"I'm sure. I don't want to be a professional racer."

"What do you want to be? An asteroid miner like your father?"

Steve shook his head. "Dad always wanted to be a Space Captain, sir. Like you. He never quite made it. I know he'd want me to—become one in his place."

"A Space Captain then. You want to be a Space Captain?"

"Yes, sir," Steve answered. "And not a professional racer?" "No, sir. I already told you."

"Good." In his earnestness, Syrtis Williams sounded a little angry. "I just wanted you to spell it out. You want to be a Space Captain. And how do you think the Space Captains will be spending most of their time—in your generation?"

"I—I don't know."

"Yes, you do. I want you to tell me." Steve licked his lips. "Well, with the rollers, I guess. Paving the way for our two cultures to get together." "You guess?" "I—I'm pretty sure, sir."

"All right. We start tomorrow. At dawn. You can start tomorrow—with us. What do you say, Steve?"

"I just don't know. I wish I had more time to make up my mind."

"The toughest decisions in life," Syrtis Williams said, scowling, "have to be made on short notice. Believe me, boy, that's the truth. Take it from a Space Captain. Well? You be here tomorrow morning?"

Steve didn't answer. If he shut his eyes, he knew he'd see the spaccsuit racers in their bright suits waiting for the starting gun in the personnel pit.

"Dawn," Syrtis Williams said again, "We'll be here. Ready to blast off. We won't wait."

"Yes, sir, I understand that," Steve told him.

But Syrtis Williams had turned to Westor and was saying, "If the radar screens still give you trouble . .."

Steve walked away. The decision was his, and his alone, to make.

As if it had all been planned, Joe Ito presented the other side of the picture when Steve returned to Earthtown.

"Going to be a six-satellite course," he told Steve. "A million-and-a-half-mile course in all. Rough and pretty complex, but you've had them rougher—and more complex—in the asteroid belt. Except for one thing."

"What's that?" Steve asked.

"Well, the tricky part of it is this: two of the satellites will be in unstable orbits. At aphelion they'll be competely clear of Ophiuchus's atmosphere, but at perihelion they won't. At perihelion they'll hit the fringes of the atmosphere. For a man traveling in a spacesuit at a couple of hundred miles a second, its liable to be pretty soupy."

"Couldn't they wait for aphelion?"

"They?" Coach Ito looked at him strangely. "Don't you mean we'?"

Steve said nothing, and the coach frowned a little and went on, "Ordinarily you could wait for aphelion, but as I told you those two orbits won't be stable. You could lose too much time waiting unless you happened to be lucky. Each man will have to make up his own mind, though, because the friction heat can be intense, even on the fringes of the atmosphere, at the speeds you'll be traveling." Coach Ito asked suddenly, "Sounds exciting, doesn't it?"

"I guess, Coach." Steve faltered. "You guess?" "Well, I-"

"What's the trouble, Steve? I don't have to tell you Earth's depending on you to win a gold medal."

"I know, but—" And Steve told Coach Ito of his talk with Syrtis Williams.

When he finished, the coach asked, "You asking me for advice?"

"No, Coach. I have to decide for myself."

"Good, because this isn't something anyone can advise you on. But I wish, when it comes to you kids, they'd keep their politics away—about five hundred light-years away."

Politics?

But wasn't it far more than politics?

If Billgarr's hunch were right, wasn't what Steve had to do out there at the unknown center of the galaxy more important than any gold medal he might or might not win for Earth?

If Billgarr's hunch were right. But it didn't have to be. Maybe Steve was just an eighteen-year-old kid with a race to run.

Maybe . . .

That night, Steve still hadn't made up his mind.

In a way, it was like the beginning of his incredible adventures here on Ophiuchus all over again. For then he and Hunk had slipped up to the Hellas's ob-deck to watch change-over when they were supposed to have remained in quarters. And now, on the eve of the races—when Steve should have been sleeping he donned his jumper, went out into the blue twilight and took the long walk to the spaceport.

Not because he'd made up his mind. He hadn't. But tonight they were putting the racing satellites in orbit, and somehow, as if they could supply the answer Steve couldn't give himself, he wanted to see the small, two-stage rockets blast off.

He reached the spaceport just before the first satellite-bearing rocket lifted off its miniature gantry. Unlike the big spaceships, he knew, these would be liquid-fuel rockets. There would be no instantaneous burst of power, no quick disappearance into the velvet twilight. Instead, the rockets would rise majestically on their exhausts, building power, climbing on a column of smoke and fire, slowly at first, and then a little faster, and then—unexpectedly—very fast, until only their fuel and vapor trails hung in the sky and their whining roar backlashed the ground of Ophiuchus.

Waiting alone beyond the metal mesh fence of the blastoff area, Steve heard the droning radio countdown of the first rocket.

"X minus thirty seconds!"

The last technician, by then, had scurried clear of the gantry. The rocket was waiting, poised, its nose cone, one of the satellite stations for the race, looking patiently skyward.

"X minus twenty!"

Steve's mouth was dry all of a sudden. "X minus ten!" "X minus five!"

"Four .. . three . . . two . . . one . . . off!"

The rocket rose, stood poised on its pillar of fire, climbed, climbed slowly and then not slowly and then Very fast—and then it was gone.

They wheeled the second gantry into place. And soon after that the third, and the fourth, and the fifth, and the sixth . . .

All the rockets had been launched. All the way-stations for the race were speeding on their way to orbit.

Six rockets pointed at the sky. Six rockets blasting off.

Six way-stations in space for a race that, now, was part of an athletic event that, on and off, had absorbed mankind for four thousand years and more.

Or were those rockets symbolic of something else? Of mankind's eternal quest, perhaps, the quest that had taken him down from his trees and out of his caves and up the long ladder of civilization until now he was poised on the brink of the unknown at the center of the galaxy?

Steve walked slowly back to Earthtown. When he reached his room, Ophiuchus's second and third suns were bright on the horizon. Hunk was sleeping soundly. Steve took his spacesuit out of the closet, the ice-blue suit trimmed with red and white.

When he turned with it, deflated and draped over his arm, Hunk was awake.

"Is it time?" Hunk asked sleepily.

"Time for what?"

"You know for what. Til be back before the wrestling starts, but you—"

"I know," Steve said. "I know. That's the hard part of it." He went to the door.

"Hey, wait for me!" Hunk cried. "Where you going?"

Hunk climbed quickly into his jumper. "Where are you going?" he asked his friend again.

Steve took a deep breath. "To the port," he said. "The Space Captains are waiting."

Chapter 15 Beyond Sagittarius

F anyone had told Chandlur the Denebian he was essentially an evil man, he would have been shocked and, in his own view at least, righteously indignant. No, he did not regard himself as an evil man.

But he was a Denebian. Fondling his jeweled tiara, he could picture what life would be like on his homeworld right now. It was a very large planet revolving in an immense orbit around a huge white sun. Its density was surprisingly low so that, despite its size, gravity stood at just slightly more than Earth-norm. Its cities were great, glittering hives of wealth and pleasure. There wasn't much farmland—for low specific gravity accounted for a porous rock layer that would float on water and did not produce good soil.

Chandlur was proud of Deneb II and its place in the galaxy—so proud that he would do anything to maintain it. Little Earth had once worn the mantle of power, little Earth from which humanity had sprung. But Earth was a second-rate planet now, Chandlur told himself. As for Ophiuchus, the site of

163

the Olympic games, it didn't even have Earth's proud heritage. If Earth was the birthplace of humanity, now in cultural eclipse;, then Ophiuchus was a brash, raw frontier world. But too often in the long interstellar history of mankind, Chanelhir knew, the brash, raw frontier planets made their bids for power.

Hadn't Antares done it? And Fomalhaut? Why, they vied with Dencb for center stage in interstellar relations, even though the Antares System had for its luminary a dying old red star, and even though Fomalhaut VII, the chief planet of that system, was a water world with no real natural resources other than those of the sea, and no scenery to match Deneb's Sky Mountains or the great Kaludni Desert which, Chandlur thought with pride, was larger than Earth's Sahara and Gobi put together.

Yes, frontier worlds sometimes became annoyingly aggressive. Even Deneb had once been a frontier system, but that was a very long time ago. And Ophiuchus?

Ophiuchus, here near the center of the galaxy, had fallen into luck. For Ophiuchus, revolving in a complex orbit around its three suns, would soon—unless Chandlur could prevent it—be the gateway to the unknown.

The Ophiuchans as gatekeepers, Chandlur thought, and the Antareans as humanity's emissaries. For hadn't the extra-human rollers made their first contact with Antareans, here in Ophiuchan space? And if contact were consolidated and relations firmly established, wouldn't Deneb be threatened with the same sort of eclipse that had beset Earth, once its pioneers had opened the pathway to the stars? Wouldn't Ophiuchus, due to an astrographical accident that placed it adjacent to roller territory, become the new center of human civilization? And wouldn't Antares, because its Olympic ship Liberie had been contacted first by the rollers, find itself in the same lucky position?

Chandlur went ponderously to the window of his skyscraper quarters in Ophiuchus City. It was not yet dawn—not yet dawn of what might turn out to be the most decisive day in Deneb's history. Chandlur stood looking out at the blue twilight.

Twilight for whom?he thought. For Deneb?

Not if he could help it.

Earlier, he'd received his report from Roy Ambler. He knew that the Space Captains, led by Antares's Ralpday and Earth's Syrtis Williams, would be blasting off just after dawn in the Milky Way. Destination —the roller base beyond Sagittarius. Reason—to consolidate contact with the shy, cautious rollers. Result —glory for Ophiuchus and Antares, eclipse for Deneb.

But the rollers, Chandlur knew, were balanced precariously on the edge of a blade. Push them one way and they would share all the far reaches of the galaxy with humanity, with Ophiuchus and Antares leading the way for mankind. Push them the other way, and they would break off all contact. Make them doubt mankind's motives, make them think mankind was suspicious, neither trusting nor trustworthy, and that would end it.

With a sigh, Chandlur headed for the door. He had already made his arrangements. A ship was waiting for him at the spaceport. He would follow the Milky Way into space and beyond Sagittarius into the unknown. He would not return, even though it meant not being on hand for the opening of the games, until the dream of relations between mankind and the rollers went up in smoke.

A huge, waddling figure in a multicolored jumper, he went downstairs and outside to where his jet-car was waiting. He started driving, heading for the spaceport.

For Deneb, he thought. I'm doing it for Deneb.

The MilkyWay was a small ship, but very powerful. It had been equipped with translight overdrive, not with subspace engines—for here at the center of the galaxy distances were more nearly interplanetary than interstellar, and overdrive would be fast enough.

More than forty Space Captains crowded into the little ship. Ralpday and Syrtis Williams sat at the controls, ready to blast off.

"Frazer," Ralpday said. "He isn't here yet."

"We still have a few minutes."

"You think he'll come?"

"I don't know. Billgarr's outside waiting for him. Have you plotted our course, Ralpday?"

The Antarean nodded. "We head stellar north past die fringes of the coalsack and through the Sagittarian swarm. Then—" and Ralpdav smiled "—no direction at all."

"No direction at all?" Syrtis Williams was puzzled. "Exact center of the galaxy. No directions there." "What's it like?" Syrtis Williams asked after a while. "A single star. White dwarf. You know the kind— where a pocketful of its matter weighs several tons." "No planets?"

Ralpday shook his head. "But planetoids by the millions, varying in size from dust motes to a few pretty big worldlets. The one we're heading for—the roller base—is about forty miles in diameter."

"They're expecting us?"

"I hope so. But we'll worry about that later, Captain Williams. Its going to be tricky, dangerous even, astrogating through those planetoids. You can't imagine what it's like."

"Maybe I can, if it's anything like Sol System's asteroid belt." And, waiting anxiously for Steve and wishing to delay departure as long as he could, Syrtis Williams described the asteroid belt. "So," he finished, "our scientists believe a planet once orbited in space between Mars and Jupiter, blew up for some unknown reason and left all that debris behind it—countless thousands of asteroids all wheeling around the sun about midway between Mars and Jupiter. That's another reason I'd like to have Frazer along, come to think of it. He knows his way around the asteroid belt."

"Roughly the same situation at the center of the galaxy," Ralpday said. "Only more so. Because if your asteroid belt resulted from the destruction of a single planet—"

"Either that," Syrtis Williams broke in, "or pre-planetary particles which never formed a single whole. Our scientists use both theories to account for it."

"Well, anyway, I was going to say that the planetoid material beyond Sagitarius is so extensive that you must think in terms of perhaps half a dozen planets having exploded in the distant past."

"Is it spread out?"

"Hardly. The planetoids orbit the white dwarf in a comparatively small amount of space."

Syrtis Williams scowled. "Is the roller base on the edge of the swarm?"

"Almost exactly in its center, Captain."

"Then how in the universe arc we going to get through?"

"Don't worry," Ralpday said, smiling. "The rollers plotted a course for us. It leads to their base, but that's all. A single deviation, and we'd be in trouble, for the rest of the swarm is uncharted. But then, we have no reason to deviate from course." Abruptly Ralpday changed the subject. "How is Mackald?" he asked.

Grinning, Syrtis Williams said, "He's a hard guy to keep down. He's still in speed-time healing at Antarestown. Another few days, the doctor thinks. But he actually wanted to come along this morning."

Ralpday looked at his chrono. "I'm afraid, my friend, that we'd better prepare for blastoff. You see, the roller orbit through the swarm is temporal as well as spatial."

"Sure, I know. With all those hunks of rock spinning around one another as well as revolving collectively around the white dwarf, we'll have to hit orbit at exactly the right moment. But—"

"Frazer? Apparently he won't come. You'd better send for Billgarr."

"All right, he's just outside," Syrtis Williams said, and clomped on his magnet boots down the com-panionway toward the air lock.

Billgarr knew Stefrazer was late.

The old man was pacing nervously back and forth in the shadow of the Milky Way's tail tubes, glancing anxiously around. It was practically dawn. Ophiuchus's blue sun had climbed several degrees up from the horizon where it had hovered all night, and the white and orange suns were brightening the sky in other directions.

Billgarr shook his head. Call it a hunch or call it intuition or call it an old man's whim, he thought, but I know we're going to need Stefrazer out there.

What was keeping him? Where was the boy?

The blue sun, climbing higher, cast a long, skeletal shadow of the Milky Ways gantry. A metal-runged ladder climbed its side to the ship's air lock. In a few minutes—in a very few minutes now, Billgarr knew— he'd be climbing that ladder. Without Stefrazer?

He heard a voice suddenly, and looked up to see Captain Williams's face in the air lock.

"Billgarr! I think we better get going."

"But can't we wait a few more—"

"There isn't time!" Syrtis Williams bellowed down at him. Billgarr grinned a little. The Earth Captain wasn't mad at him. It was just that the Earth Captain had expected Frazer, too, and was disappointed.

"All right, here I come," Billgarr said, and dispiritedly approached the gantry and the foot of the ladder.

"Billgarr . . ."

"I said I was coming," the old man called. Then, one hand on the ladder, he came to a dead halt. The voice hadn't come from above him. From behind.

He whirled. And felt sudden tears stinging in his

eyes.

Running across the spacefield were two figures—one short and solid with wide shoulders, the other taller, slender, with a blue spacesuit with red and white trim draped over his arm.

Steve Frazer and his friend Hunk Little.

"That's right, sir," Roy Ambler told Chandlur, aboard the converted spacetug Sky Mountain, "Frazer's going out there with them."

"You're sure of this?" Chandlur demanded.

"Positive."

Chandlur didn't say anything for a moment. Then he mused, "So the rollers want a look at Frazer, do they? I wonder why. Clean-cut Earth youth, perhaps, a representative of the birthplace of humanity?"

"Maybe," said Roy Ambler. He wasn't very interested.

"And you, I take it, are all set to compete in the racer

"Yes, sir. With Frazer out of the way, I stand a good chance to—"

Chandlur shook his head. "You don't stand a good chance to do anything. You're not competing."

". . . cop a gold medal and . . ." Roy Ambler gasped. "What did you say? What do you mean, I'm not competing?"

Chandlur smiled a slow smile. "If Billgarr and the others think it's a good idea for Steve Frazer to meet the rollers, I think it's a good idea for you to meet them."

"But I—the whole idea of me helping you was so I could race, without having Frazer in competition. What—what are you going to do?"

"Follow them out there. Meet the rollers, too. Tell them that, as a Denebian, I don't want the rollers meddling in human affairs. That ought to work, but if it doesn't—there's always you."

"Me? But-"

"You, Roy Ambler. You, who tried your best to sell your fellow planeteer out so you could win a medal. The rollers will want to meet you, I think."

"I'm going to enter that race!" Roy Ambler shouted.

He turned, tried to run down the companionway toward the air lock.

Chandlur caught his arm. "You're blasting off with .is."

His deceptively soft hand was very strong. Chandlur held Roy Ambler's arm in a powerful grip. The red-haired boy struggled briefly, then relaxed sullenly.

Chandlur called Sky Mountains control room on his intercom. "Has the Milky Way blasted oft?"

"She's lifting right now, sir."

"Very well. Keep her in your radar. And don't lose her."

"Yes, sir.'*

"Give her five minutes—then follow." "Yes, sir."

A four-man crew, Chandlur thought, and Roy Ambler and himself. Six of them in all to break oft contact between mankind and the rollers. It sounded all but impossible, but it would be the simplest thing in the world. Just show the rollers there was discord, just show them that one faction of humanity, at least, didn't want contact, and . . .

"Sir," the radio voice said, "will they be easy to follow?"

"We're at least as fast as the Milky Way, aren't we?"

"Yes, sir. But—"

"Well?"

"Do you know exactly where we're going, sir? They've probably charted a course, and we haven't."

"All we have to do is follow them," Chandlur assured his pilot. "It will be simple. Nothing to it."

First, the coalsack . . .

All-obscuring blackness and the odd, almost eerie feeling—like subspace all over again—that nothing existed outside the thin shell of the Milky Way.

Weightless, not wearing magnet boots, Steve floated to the viewplate and stared out at—nothing.

The coalsack nebulae, along with the star swarms in Sagittarius, he knew, hid the center of the galaxy from the probing, inquisitive eyes of man. Even from distant Earth you could see them—the coalsack blotting out starlight, the Sagittarian stars as the brightest region in the great sky-spanning band of stars called the Milky Way. And beyond them, waiting—what?

Then, abruptly, they left the coalsack behind them.

Second, Sagittarius . . .

Steve saw stars, stars as he had never seen them before. Clusters of stars, whole spinning systems of stars following their eternal courses around mutual centers of gravity, stars not stripped to a uniform whiteness by an intervening atmosphere, but great bold clusters of stars, red and green and blue and yellow and even mauve, stars to make his head swim and his senses whirl.

The final barrier hiding the exact center of the galaxy . . .

Hunk was at his side as the Milky Way plowed through Sagittarius. Several times they passed stars close enough to see perceptible discs instead of mere pinpoints of light. Once Steve thought he saw a system of planets—tiny pinpoints of light reflecting their mauve parent star's unfamiliar luminosity. Stars and planets never before seen by an Earthman's eyes.

Once Billgarr came up to him. Steve was vaguely aware of the old man saying it was time to eat. He shook his head. He wanted to watch. He didn't want to miss a thing. Billgarr went away, and then returned with two squeeze bottles of liquid nourishment. Weightless, mouthing the squeeze bottle and eating, Steve didn't even remember what the food tasted like. He never took his eyes off the viewplate.

"Hey, look!" Hunk cried after a long time.

The Milky Way had suddenly entered clear space.

They weren't looking out, now, at the blackness of the coalsack, nor at the myriad points of radiance of Sagittarius. What they saw was simply empty space —and, far beyond it, a very long way off—a hazy radiance like the Sagittarian swarm seen from a great distance.

"What's that?" Hunk wanted to know.

Steve took a guess. "We're there, Hunk. We're approaching the center of the galaxy. Apparently it isn't blocked just on our side by the star swarms of Sagittarius. It looks as if it's surrounded by star swarms. Look, you can see them all around."

Just then Syrtis Williams, who had shed his magnet boots as Steve had done, floated over.

"That's right," he said. There was awe in his voice. "We're almost in dead center now."

"But isn't there anything in here at all?" Hunk asked. "Just empty space?"

"Look," Syrtis Williams said, and pointed at the viewplate.

Steve saw a single star—white, not very imposing. And, reflecting its pale light, at this distance just

barely visible, a thousand thousand tiny points of light. "Asteroids?" he guessed.

"Asteroids," Syrtis Williams said, smiling. "You ought to feel at home. There are millions of them, and we've got to thread our way through to the roller base. It's going to be tricky."

"Dangerous?" Hunk wanted to know.

"A little, maybe. But we have an orbit. If we didn't-"

"So this is the center of the galaxy," Hunk said, shaking his head. "Hot dog! And I thought I was just going to do some wrestling!" He winked at Steve. "Who wants to wrestle now?"

"The center's an oblate spheroid of space," Syrtis Williams explained. "Diameter of about six billion miles. The star is a white dwarf. The planetoids—well, that's where the rollers are waiting."

Syrtis Williams made a swimming motion with his arms and legs, propelling himself away from the view-plate. "They're going to need me in the control room," he said, and was gone.

The myriad tiny motes of light came closer and closer—then danced on all sides of the Milky Way,

They had reached the very center of the galaxy.

An oblong of rock, ten times the size of the Milky Way, hurtled by. It spun end over end on its long axis as it flashed across the viewplate.

"That didn't miss us by more than a mile or so," Hunk gasped.

It was the third such narrow escape. On all sides of the little spaceship, now, the pinpoints of light were flashing and dancing. They were beautiful, and they didn't look very deadly. But many of them, zooming through space, were large enough to crush the Milky Way if they struck.

Something touched Steves shoulder. He hadn't realized how tense he'd become. lie whirled so suddenly, forgetting weightlessness, that he drifted off to his right.

"Nervous?" Billgarr asked. He had come out on ob-deck and was floating over Steve's head.

"Eager to get where we're going."

Billgarr made a face of mock horror. "If I'd known a space trip through these planetoids was going to be like this, I'd have waited for teleportation. Those rollers now, they've got themselves a cinch. All they have to do is deliver the first teleportation cylinder anywhere—then they can just teleport. It's like sub-space, only better."

"But how does it work?" Steve asked.

Billgarr shrugged. The motion made him rise slightly toward the ceiling. "There you have me, boy. The way I see it, thought waves are something like the electromagnetic wave lengths of the physical world. Like, well, whoever would have thought, back in the prescientiflc days, that such things as heat, radio, infrared, all the colors we see, ultraviolet on up to X-rays and gamma radiation were really the same thing, just in different wave lengths?"

"Everybody knows that," Hunk pointed out.

"Everybody knows it now. And thought has its own wave length, too. All the others are waves of—well, energy, aren't they?"

Steve said that they were.

"Thought, that's energy, too. We humans have channeled energy waves to our use, all the way from long wave lengths like heat and radio to really short ones like gamma. The rollers have gone one step further, that's all. They've mastered the highest frequency wave lengths of all—thought. And they have teleportation. But I guess you'll get to see it soon enough—if we get along with the rollers."

A few moments later, Ralpday's voice came over the intercom. "All hands to acceleration hammocks," he said. "We're coming in."

Steve, Hunk and Billgarr swam back to the hammock room, where all the Space Captains except Syrtis Williams and Ralpday were already strapped into their hammocks. Reclining, Steve fastened his straps. There was a viewplate on the ceiling above his head, and in it he could see a single planetoid growing perceptibly larger. It seemed quite sizable, but not so big that physical law would dictate a spherical shape. It was shaped, in fact, like a dumbbell, with two swollen ends and a relatively narrow bar of rock connecting them. And on the narrow bar of rock Steve could see a tiny bubble—like a glassite dome on one of Sol System's asteroids.

The roller base?

It looked that way.

Steve waited, heard the scream of the Milky Way's

reversing engines, felt the sudden return of normal weight, and then far more than normal weight. He could feel the flesh of his face contort.

The dumbbell-shaped planetoid loomed closer, the glassite dome grew larger, larger. . . .

The pressure of 8 G's forced Steve's eyes shut. Time hung in the screaming of the rockets, waiting.

And then the Milky Way came down with a thump.

Chapter 14 The Unknown

AYBE, Steve thought, things would have gone better

Y

l if the rollers had shown themselves, had agreed to a face-to-face meeting with the Space Captains. But they hadn't—and it looked as if they wouldn't.

Several hours had passed since the Milky Way made planetfall on the roller base. At the viewplates, its occupants had stared out at the bleak, lifeless surface of the planetoid. It was a grim, desolate place for a meeting of the two highest forms of life the galaxy had produced.

Less than half a mile away, Steve could see the gleaming transparent convexity of the glassite dome. It had an enormous air lock, and the outer door slid noiselessly open.

"What are we waiting for?" Syrtis Williams had asked.

But Ralpday said, "Funny—where are the rollers? They're air-breathers, as we are. They tested us inside that dome—last time."

The dome was empty now.

179

Shrugging, Syrtis Williams suggested that they all   ■ don spacesuits, leave the Milky Way and enter the air lock of the dome.

"I wish at least they'd let us know they're here," Billgarr said uneasily.

And, as if in answer to that, two words impinged on Steve's consciousness.

Welcome, humans.

"You hear that?" Hunk cried.

But of course no one had heard anything. The thoughts were delivered telepathically.

"I'll bet they're underground!" Billgarr blurted. "They said, last time, they had this whole planetoid honeycombed."

The thought came again.

Welcome, humans.

It seemed friendly enough. It was the first—the only—sign of good will the humans aboard the Milky Way had received. Bulky in their spacesuits, they filed from the Milky Way's air lock and across the rock of the planetoid to the much bigger air lock of the dome. When they were all inside, its outer door slid shut and its inner one opened.

You will find the atmosphere breathable, a voice said in Steve's head. You will find the proper temperature.

Syrtis Williams raised a hand for caution. Steve knew he wanted to test the environment before chucking suit and helmet. But impulsively Steve unfastened the lugs of his helmet and removed it. He didn't want their first gesture at the roller base to be one of distrust.

The air was sweet and warm. Syrtis Williams and the other Space Captains removed their helmets. Then, as the others followed his move, Syrtis Williams deflated his suit.

"It's me, Billgarr," the old man called. "Where are you?"

No answer.

Syrtis Williams cleared his throat. "I'm Williams," he said. "Planet Earth. We've come as mankind's first emissaries—"

The words which came into Steve's head shocked him.

We want no emissaries. . . .

A bewildered look on his face, Syrtis Williams repeated the words, "No emissaries? But you—"

No emissaries. We are sorry. It has been decided that contact between mankind and the rollers would be unwise, after all.

"But," Billgarr blurted, "we passed the tests! You said we passed the tests!"

And you did. You are a stable race, you have an intelligence level roughly equivalent to our own, you have a well-developed ethical sense.

"Then—" Billgarr began.

But it has been decided, the telepathic words went on with neither pity nor anger, but merely matter-of-factly, that self-interest is too strong a motivating factor among your people. And naturally we have more to offer than you have. We have teleportation.

Steve's intense disappointment merged with anger. Who did the rollers think they were? And, sure, teleportation was terrific, but mankind had a trick or two up its sleeve, too. Steve heard himself saying, "Wait a minute! We'll admit that—teleportation would be a great boon to mankind. But—" he went to the inner door of the dome's air lock and pounded his fist on the tough glassite "—is this the best you can do?" We do not understand.

"Glassite. That's what we call this material. In Sol System, where I come from, we have hundreds of these domes in the asteroid belt. Are they the best you can do? A pretty good-sized meteor can smash one."

Can you do better? You already said—

"Glassite," Steve broke in triumphantly, "is now obsolete. We're replacing it with forcefields."

Forcefields?

"We utilize the binding force of sub-atomic particles," Syrtis Williams explained, eyeing Steve approvingly. "It's far stronger than any known physical material. No physical material can crush or puncture it. In fact, it's even impervious to cobalt bombs."

The voice was amused.

Then you have a need for protection against bombardment?

"You're twisting my words, I think," Syrtis Williams said coolly. "I merely wanted to point out that defense is so far ahead of offense in human warfare that warfare has been abandoned as an instrument of planetary policy."

For that reason alone. Not for ethical reasons?

Syrtis Williams snorted. "There you go twisting my words again."

It was not going to work, Steve thought. The rollers, apparently, had made up their minds. He listened as Syrtis Williams went on defending the human position, listened with an inner ear as the rollers consistently misconstrued his words. Because different cultures produced semantic problems? Or because the rollers had already reached a decision—a negative one?

Time passed under the dome on the lifeless world. It was eerie. Mankind's representatives, assembled anxiously under the dome, were debating the future of the human and roller races with unseen—and even unheard—roller representatives. It was then that Steve thought, Maybe things would go better if the rollers showed themselves.

But they preferred to remain in hiding. Where? Underground? They had to be underground, as Bill-garr had suggested, if they were on the planetoid at all. And they didn't want to show themselves because they had already reached a decision, had already given it—to break off all contact.

"Look," Syrtis Williams was saying patiently, "you've tested us and studied us and passed decision on us—but we've been willing to take you at face value all along. As far as we're concerned you're the Unknown—with big, fat capital letters. But we think it's important enough to take the chance. We want to establish contact with you—for our mutual good. Can't you at least meet us halfway?"

At first there were no answering thoughts. Steve paced anxiously back and forth. He thumped the glass-ite again, and the thought came.

Yes, your forcefield intrigues us, but. . .

And "but" was followed by a long speech, if a mental one. Initially, the rollers insisted, they had wanted contact. Hadn't they revealed themselves to mankind, and not the other way around? But they were a cautious race. Yes, they admitted it. If self-interest were the prime motivating factor in human thought, caution was for the rollers.

Syrtis Williams wanted to say something in reply. But the rollers weren't finished. Once, long ago, they said, they, too, had been motivated by self-interest. Then there had been wars and strife and destruction —and they never wanted to risk that all over again.

Then, gradually, caution had replaced self-interest, and the rollers hadn't known war in a hundred generations. At all cost—even if it meant humanity stayed on its side of the galaxy and the rollers on theirs—they never wanted to experience such strife again.

"You say self-interest is everything with us," Syrtis Williams persisted, "just as you say caution is everything with you. But you weren't too cautious, were you—when you contacted the Antareans?"

Did Steve hear laughter inside his head? He did, and it probably meant the rollers were pleased with or amused by Syrtis Williams's logic.

Very well, we weren't cautious then.

"Just as self-interest doesn't dominate us as much as you think it does. If I had to name the one thing/' Syrtis Williams said slowly, pondering each word as he went along, "which most motivates mankind, I'd say it was this—I'd say it was a sense of—well, a sense of wonder. That, after all, is why we are here today. Wonder—and perhaps humility in the face of a vast and shoreless universe which makes us realize just how small, for all our achievements, we are. Or," he added with a smile, "how small you are, too,"

That, the rollers responded immediately, is a Space Captain talking. Of course a Space Captain would feel that way. But what about the rest of mankind?

"Same thing," Syrtis Williams insisted, "if you'd give us a chance."

The same thing—for Chandlur of Deneb?

There was a shocked silence. They should have known diat if the rollers knew Syrtis Williams was a Space Captain, they knew a great deal more, too. And now, while the shock was still settling, the rollers continued. Even while testing the Antareans, they hadn't neglected to collect information about other humans. They had mastered telepathy—and apparently other forms of extra-sensory perception as well, for they knew about Chandlur and his attempts to thwart contact, knew even how Roy Ambler had tried to betray Steve for his own selfish ends. They knew that Chandlur, the supposedly objective High Commissioner of the Olympic games, was acting on behalf of Deneb and his own self-interest and that Roy Ambler, a representative of the youth of mankind, betrayed his companion in order to win a race.

Self-interest. . . .

Was there any wonder the roller answer had been a decisive no?

Even now, the roller went on implacably, this

Chandlur of Deneb and this Roy Ambler of Earth are approaching. Even now. . . .

"Here?" Steve said, astonished. "They're coming here?"

Yes, in a spaceship. Chandlur thinks it necessary to tell us that Deneb is opposed to contact. He has judged our caution correctly. Our answer already is no. It will remain no.

There was a pause. Then—for the first time—the roller sounded, at least mentally, excited.

They're going to crash!

"Chandlur?" Syrtis Williams said.

Chandlur of Deneb, yes. They followed you. They had no orbit through the swarm. They are even now . . .

Again, silence.

"Where . . . what . . .?" Syrtis Williams cried. He was a Space Captain first and foremost, and a Space Captain went to the aid of a stricken vessel—no matter who was aboard.

But, for a frustrating moment, the roller's thoughts were elsewhere.

It is a shame, for we too would have wished for contact. The secrets of your half of the galaxy, the secrets of ours—what might not our two races have accomplished together—if only people like Chandlur of Deneb realized that what is in the best interests of all mankind is also in the best interests of their own worlds?

"WHERE ARE THEY?" roared Syrtis Williams.

And the roller said, Their ship crash landed on a small asteroid a hundred thousand of your miles from here. They had no chance at all without a charted orbit. They will die. They have air only for three or four more of your hours. . . .

Syrtis Williams was already running for the dome air lock. "Where? Just tell us where. We've got to rescue them. We can't just let them die."

You cant. Not in a ship that size. Not without an orbit. And by the time we could prepare an orbit for you, they will have died.

"Then we'll chance it without an orbit."

No chance. Suicide. We forbid you to throw your life away.

Syrtis Williams reached the air lock door and pounded on it. But it remained fast.

He should have hated them, Steve knew—Chandlur and Roy Ambler. He had every reason to hate them— not just because they had done their best to keep him from the games, but because tiiey had managed to give the rollers a bad impression. Now, mankind would be chained to its own half of the galaxy. And if they were waiting for death, at this very moment, on an airless little world with only the canned air in their suits granting them a few hours of reprieve before asphyxiation took their lives—if they were waiting like that, why should he care?

But Steve looked down at his own deflated space-suit. Earth's proud icy blue, it was, with red and white trim on the sleeves. A racing suit—for a racer who had come halfway across the galaxy to use it.

And all at once Steve knew, still looking down at the colors of his spacesuit, that he did not feel hatred at all for Chandlur of Deneb and for Roy Ambler. What he felt instead was pity—pity that they should be the way they were, pity that they were narrow enough to put their own interests before the interests of mankind. Pity. . . .

"They're dying," Syrtis Williams was shouting. "They're dying out there, and the rollers won't let us out. They won't let us out!"

"Captain, listen. What good would it do? If they let you out? You'd crash, too. You'd never make it on the Milky Way. You know you wouldn't."

"I've got to try. They have no right to—"

"You don't have to try. Not that way." Steve was already inflating his spacesuit, could feel it going rigid on his arms and legs. "I'm going to try," he said. "I'm going to do it."

"You? What are you talking about?"

"Coach Ito always told me there wasn't a better spacesuit racer in the galaxy. Maybe he was wrong twenty ways from Sunday—but it looks like I'm going to get the chance to prove it."

"What are you talking about?"

"A ship couldn't possibly thread its way there through the swarm—but one man, in a spacesuit, could. One man, Captain. Me."

"In a spacesuit? What good would it do—supposing you reached them?"

"Teleportation," Steve said promptly. "If the rollers let me take one of their cylinders out there—where they crashed—we could all teleport back here."

"They won't let you. They already said—"

"I can do it, don't you see? I can get through. I know I can."

But Syrtis Williams shook his head. "It would be suicide out there. I can't let you do it."

"You would have tried."

"Me? That's different. A Space Captain—"

"But I have a chance to get through. I—"

"Steve!" Hunk shouted.

Steve whirled. On the ground fifty yards off was a gleaming cylinder of silver metal somewhat larger than a man. Steve did not know how it had been produced. The ground was bare and featureless around it. Somehow, it was there. It was just there.

In Steve's mind a voice said, Teleportation unit. Yours to use. Good luck, Steve Frazer of Earth.

Steve adjusted his shoulder rockets. He was aware of all the Space Captains watching him. Of Billgarr smiling.

"I knew it," Billgarr said tremulously. "A hunch. I had me a hunch about you, boy!"

"I won't let you—" Syrtis Williams started to say. But Steve had already reached the gleaming cylinder. It was surprisingly light. It didn't seem to weigh more than thirty pounds, despite its size.

Syrtis Williams came running toward Steve. "You're staying here. I can't let you risk your life."

"Hunk!" Steve cried.

And Hunk Little intercepted the Space Captain, got his big arms around the older man's middle and held on. Syrtis Williams couldn't move.

"You fool!" he cried. "You can't . . . you'll never make it . . . you'll . . ."

Steve carried the cylinder toward the air lock. The other Space Captains parted to let him by.

"You . . . glorious . . . fool!" Syrtis Williams said, and then Hunk let him go and he stood there with the others and watched the air lock's inner door slide.

Steve went through it with the cylinder.

Chapter 15 The Teleporter

N Fomalhaut, Steve guessed, they might know what it was like.

He was out in deep space now, in the silent void.

And on Fomalhaut's chief planet, a water world, they spent a great deal of time underwater, weightless in an environment not really meant for man, but an environment man's audacity and sense of wonder had conquered—just as it had conquered space. And, weightless underwater, with no up or down or sideways, floating effortlessly—that was the nearest you could come to spacesuiting through deep space.

So maybe on Fomalhaut they might know what it was like.

But still there were differences. Underwater, the murky depths obscured your view. Here you could see a billion billion miles in all directions. Underwater, you moved slowly, a few lazy feet at a time. Here, with nothing but the thin skin of an inflated spacesuit between you and the airless, frigid void, you streaked along at hundreds of miles per second.

191

As Steve left the air lock, the rollers had telepa-thized directions to him. Objectively, with neither encouragement or disapproval of what he was attempting. They had simply told him where to go— and given him instructions as to how to operate the cylinder.

Now, racing through deep space, he was riding it. Actually, his shoulder rockets supplied the power; as yet the cylinder was just a burden—it was impossible to teleport without a cylinder to pick up and a cylinder to receive. Steve was straddling it now, his legs clamped firmly about it. Because of its size, it was a burden. But in space it weighed exactly nothing— which was what Steve weighed. In space. . . .

He cut his left shoulder rocket suddenly and applied full power to his right.

A worldlet five times his size had come zooming up. He watched it sail away, a few yards beyond his shoulder. That had been close—and he still had a long way to go.

All about him he could see the pinpoints of light that were the planetoids swarming here at the exact center of the galaxy. Those further away seemed stationary. But on all sides of him lights danced and moved and soared. At the speed he was moving, contact with any one of them would be fatal. The larger ones would crush him. Even the smallest, hardly bigger than motes of dust but shining brightly by reflected starlight, could puncture his air tanks or his suit.. . .

Another large one.As big as a house. There was

The Teleporter

193

very little warning, for their combined speeds of approach were around five hundred miles per second. But Steve could see a very long way off in deep space and his reflexes were those of a racer. His life depended on those two factors.

He skirted the house-sized worldlet—to be confronted by a cluster of pea-sized pellets swarming toward his helmet!

Instinctively, he ducked his head, finger-controlled his shoulder rockets upwards, and watched the pellets streak harmlessly by.

Harmlessly—this time.

Lights swung and danced before his eyes. He had time to check his astro-compass, to hope he was still heading in the right direction. Then one approaching light became a jagged boulder as big as a spaceship. To avoid it, Steve applied power to his left shoulder rocket, then waited to see the boulder dart away.

It did not.

Steve's shoulder rocket had failed to deliver full thrust—jammed temporarily. Sometimes that happened, he knew. In seconds it would be functioning again.

But seconds would be too long.

Steve watched the boulder, tumbling end over end and revealing all its craggy surface, speeding toward him.

Had he come this far, he wondered, to perish in deep space?

With a roughly spherical shape and a diameter slightly over six miles, the little world had negligible gravitation. A spaceship needed only a very low speed of escape, indeed; it would merely have to lift on its rockets.

The Sky Mountain, Roy Ambler knew, wasn't even going to do that. Its tubes were shattered and there was no way they could be repaired, not here, not now.

How much air did they have left? Roy Ambler didn't know. A few hours' supply in his own spacesuit, he thought, perhaps less.

His spacesuit bore the colors of the Earth team, and that was ironic, he thought; a racing suit, but he wasn't going anywhere in it. He had tried, about half an hour ago. Chandlur, who was now sitting on a bare outcropping of rock with the Sky Mountains four-man crew, had suggested it. And Roy, using his shoulder rockets, had blasted a hundred miles or so off the surface of the little world.

He'd quickly returned. A man in a spacesuit wouldn't have a chance out there, he'd discovered. A veritable rain of pellet-sized stones had swarmed all around him. They were deadly. They could puncture a spacesuit in seconds. And if they didn't, miraculously, then the larger ones would crush a man. So Roy had returned to the little world where now he was waiting.

Frazer? he wondered. It was an idle thought, for of course Steve Frazer didn't know of their predicament. But if anyone could get through the swarm here at the center of the galaxy, it would be Steve Frazer. Now, when the end had come, Roy was ready to admit it. Steve Frazer was probably the best space-suit racer in all the galaxy.

But even if, incredibly, Frazer knew of their plight, what could he do to help them? Besides, assuming there were something he could do, he wouldn't lift a finger to do it, would he? Why in the universe should he? He'd given Steve Frazer nothing but a rough time since their arrival on Ophiuchus.

Roy looked up. The little world's sky, with no intervening atmosphere, was a brilliant blue-black, sprinkled with the tiny pinpoints of light that made up the swarm. He could see the nearer ones moving, flashing, streaking through space like star trails on a photographic time exposure.

I was wrong, he thought, wrong to try to keep Frazer from racing. But he'd been the odds-on favorite to win the gold medal in racing, and disqualifying him would have given Roy his chance, wouldn't it?

Roy Ambler shook his head slowly. The Olympic medal, won under those terms, what good would it have been?

But it seemed that all his life he had hated Steve Frazer, had been taught to hate him because his father hated Steve's father. Now—now when it was too late—he realized that was not reason enough. Whatever stood between Roy Ambler Senior and Don Frazer had been between them. Roy had no real reason to hate Steve at all. And if he hadn't hated him with a desperation born of his own father's bitterness, he wouldn't be here now, waiting to die. If he hadn't hated him that way, he would have entered the race and done the best he could, and probably would have shaken Steve's hand, if Steve had won, in honor of victory.

Roy Ambler stared up at the almost-black sky with its points and streaks of light. Suddenly his vision blurred. Tears filled his eyes and rolled down his cheeks. Wearing a helmet, he could not rub them away.

Steve felt an abrupt surge of power as his left shoulder rocket cleared.

At first he thought it was too late, for the surface of the worldlet tumbling toward him was so close he thought he could almost touch it if he stretched out his hand. That was an illusion of space, though, because suddenly the rocky little worldlet was alongside him, and then it was behind him.

He had no time to congratulate himself on his good luck. Other rocks, small and large, sailed by. Again he checked his astro-compass. Still heading on course, he thought. This wasn't just a race with a gold medal and a modest smile in the winner's circle. This was a race on which human life depended. The lives of his enemies. . . .

His enemies? Steve wondered. But was he enough of a paragon, to consider any man his enemy, to hate anyone? He tried to search his heart for hatred, hatred of Roy Ambler, of High Commissioner Chandlur. He couldn't find any. He wanted to find them, to help them.

All at once his body stiffened within the blue suit.

Sunk in reverie, he'd been streaking through space toward a rough, rectangular prism of a world. Twisting, he used his right rocket, and the sudden burst of power dislodged the teleportation cylinder from between his legs.

It sailed serenely through space at right angles to Steve's new course.

He plunged after it recklessly. If he didn't recover it immediately, he knew, it would crash on one of the planetoids.

Closer.

Closer. . . .

A rain of pellets struck Steve's spacesuit. Almost at once he heard the tell-tale hiss of escaping air.

The spacesuit was self-sealing up to a point, but if the holes were too large, or if there were too many of them. . . .

The hissing stopped. Steve took a deep breath. He still had enough air. Enough—for the moment. But how much had he lost?

Shrugging, because there was nothing he could do about it, he went after the teleporter.

High Commissioner Chandlur, too, heard a hiss of air. It meant that the main tank of his spacesuit was empty, meant it would switch automatically to the emergency tank.

And the emergency tank had exactly forty-five minutes of air in it.

Chandlur glanced at Roy Ambler standing near the ruined tubes of the Sky Mountain, turned and studied the huddled figures of the Sky Mountains four-man crew. One of them had been badly shaken up in the crash landing. They'd had to put his spacesuit on for him and carry him outside. But it really didn't matter, Chandlur thought. We could just as well have left him in the wreck. We're going to die here. We're all going to die here.

And for the first time in his life Chandlur wondered what it would be like to five his whole life over again.

He loved Deneb. He was proud of being a Deneb-ian. That wouldn't change.

But he had this nagging doubt—since I love Deneb so much, does that mean I love mankind less? Deneb and mankind—and wasn't there one thing more, one thing he'd forgotten? People, he told himself. People as individuals: like Roy Ambler, whose weakness he had used with cold calculation; like the old Antarean, Billgarr, who wasn't crazy, and Chandlur had known all along he wasn't crazy; like Mackald, a fellow planeteer, a Denebian, who'd almost been killed because of Chandlur; and like Steve Frazer, whose life Chandlur had done his best to ruin.

If I had it all to do over again, Chandlur mused. If I had it all to do over again—why stop contact with the rollers? If such contact would help mankind, then, helping mankind, wouldn't it help Deneb, too? And all the Denebians, together and singly, and all the Antareans, Fomalhautians, Earthmen, Centaurians, Ophiuchans?

But it was finished now, it was done. He, Chandlur, had ruined everything. And now, with less than three

quarters of an hour's air supply left, he was going to

pay-------

"Commissioner!"

He looked up. One of the crewmen had been calling him on intercom.

"Look! Look there, Commissioner!"

His eyes followed the pointing finger. He squinted. He blinked.

What he saw was a bright moving light in the sky amid the swarm of flickering lights. It was moving right toward them. It came closer. Not a rock. . . .

It was a tiny figure, then larger, then—

A man in a spacesuit—the blue, white and red of

Earth. He was straddling a gleaming silver cylinder. "He's coming!" Roy Ambler cried. "He's coming

here!"

And a moment later Steve landed fifty yards away across the barren, rocky world.

"Teleportation," he said, but they just stared at him blankly. He'd forgotten to switch on his intercom. Now he did so and said, "It's a teleporter. The rollers gave it to me, to save you. Come on, let's go."

"But we . . . you. . . ." Chandlur couldn't speak.

And Roy Ambler, who had been up there in his own spacesuit, who had come back down because he knew he didn't have a chance, cried, "You're looking at the best spacesuit racer in the galaxy, Mr. Commissioner. That's all—at the best racer in the galaxy." The words, words which he'd always known were true, came easily. He'd never been able to speak them before.

Steve opened the side of the teleporter. It seemed to be just an empty cylinder. The interior was big enough for one man at a time.

This was a cruder form of teleportation than he'd witnessed on the Liberté, Steve realized. There, the very bulkheads of the ship must have contained a teleporter. There, first Billgarr and then the roller had faded and disappeared. Here, the man-sized cylinder was necessary. Here, a man had to enter the cylinder to be whisked away at the speed of thought.

"What. . . what does it do?" Chandlur asked.

"Teleports you.Back to the roller base." Steve almost said, Or don't you believe in teleportation yet, Commissioner? Almost, but not quite.

They placed the injured man inside first. Steve shut the side of the cylinder. He waited awhile, then opened the cylinder.

The man had disappeared.

Chandlur stared, wide-eyed.

The Sky Mountains three remaining crewmen entered the teleporter, one at a time, and disappeared. "Okay, Roy," Steve said. "I just want to say—"

"You don't have to say anything." Steve smiled a little. "I can see it in your face."

They shook hands, then Roy stepped into the teleporter. "I—I let my father do my thinking for me long enough," he said. "And my hating too. . . ." Steve shut the cylinder.

That left Chandlur and Steve. The big Dcnebian

cleared his throat, and for a moment Steve thought he was going to speak. He cleared his throat again. He had a pained look on his face. "Skip it," Steve said.

"At least do me one favor?" Chandlur said at last. "What's that?"

"You go now. I'll wait till last. I—I'll feel better that way."

Steve nodded slowly. A proud man from a proud planet. It was as close to an apology as he would get. The rollers, Steve thought. If only the rollers could see this, they might change their minds.

Chandlur closed the cylinder on him. Steve waited. He felt nothing. But then the walls of the cylinder became insubstantial. They faded, faded. Steve saw gray murk, like subspace.

Then, with almost no feeling of transition, he saw the dome of the roller base. From the inside. And Roy-Ambler, spacesuit removed, a smile on his face, was rushing toward him. They shook hands.

Steve realized he was still standing inside the tele-port receiver. Clasping Roy's hand, he stepped out just in time to make way for Chandlur.

Then Syrtis Williams and Hunk and Ralpday and the other Space Captains were gathering around him, all shouting at once, all trying to pound Steve's rib's and back.

Suddenly, Steve saw the broad smiles fade. Everyone was staring past him.

He turned slowly to see ten spherical shapes come rolling across the ground toward them.

The rollers.

They had three lidless eyes each. Steve couldn't tell what sort of emotion they felt. He couldn't see emotion in those eyes at all. But perhaps, he thought, the rollers couldn't evaluate the surface manifestations of emotion in us, either. Later, he was to learn that the rollers' skin changed color according to how they felt.

One of the rollers spoke to Steve and the others, mentally. Steve listened.

And smiled so hard he thought he'd dislocate his jaw.

Chapter 16 The Games

N Ophiuchus, here at the Stadium Beyond the Stars, the rollers stole the show. Because they had decided to establish contact, after all.

What they had said, on the roller base, was this: We always worried that you humans were activated too much by self-interest, as—indeed—we had been during the early stages of our development. But what happened here today showed another facet of humanity. For Steve Frazer should have hated these people. If we were right about you humans, he should have been glad to see them die. But he wasn't. He risked his own life to save them.

You are a young race, and, we still think, too much motivated by self-interest. But Frazer showed us what our tests and observations couldn't. There is hope for you. And we are willing to take a chance on you. We are willing to take a chance. All space, Steve thought dreamily . . . from one end of the galaxy to the other ... all space for mankind and the rollers to share . . . and travel across the vast gulf of parsecs at the speed of thought . . . leaving

laggard light and even laggard subspace far behind ... a new era for mankind. . . . He felt like singing.

They were all teleported to the Antarean dressing room at the stadium on Ophiuchus. The rollers appeared suddenly, in the midst of the games. It was Chandlur himself who took a microphone in hand and explained, his voice subdued by awe, what had transpired. It took the rest of that day and most of the next for the first shock of the rollers' appearance to abate. There were conferences, hurried subspace radio messages back and forth to all the outworlds. Vague plans were made, vaguer decisions reached. Experts in all the sciences would meet with their opposite numbers among the rollers. Later, the plans would be made more specific. You could see it building, building-mankind had not known such enthusiasm since the Great Migration so long ago.

"We need a frontier," Billgarr said simply. "Man always needed a frontier to find the best in himself."

"We have the whole galaxy now," Syrtis Williams told him.

The games went on. Hunk Little won a gold medal for Earth in heavyweight wrestling. Jane copped a silver medal, second place, in free-style swimming, trailing a Fomalhautian girl by several yards.

Strangely enough, none of the onlookers worried about whether Deneb or Antares or Fomalhaut won the greater number of points. The games were conducted on an individual basis.

The rollers watched, and approved.

"Going back home?" Syrtis Williams asked Steve after the final Parade of the Planets, after the Torch of Freedom, still burning as it would always burn, had been carried back aboard the Hellas by Jane.

"Yes, sir.For awhile. But f 11 be back."

"I'll bet you'll be back," Syrtis Williams said. "Meanwhile, there's something the Olympic Committee wants you to take back to Earth with you."

Steve looked puzzled. "What's that?"

Syrtis Williams smiled. "Why don't we let Coach Ito tell you?"

They drove in the Space Captain's jet-car to Earth-town, through the crowds that thronged the road between the stadium and the Olympic compound. When they reached Earthtown, they almost had to force their way into Joe Ito's office. Steve was bewildered. As far as he could tell, all the Space Captains on Ophiuehus were waiting there. They'd been talking, but when Steve and Syrtis Williams entered, they fell silent.

Joe Ito said, "Steve, I ... we all. . . ." His voice choked up and he handed Steve a small black box. He cleared his throat as Steve opened it. "I'm not very good at making speeches, Steve. But you earned it."

The assembled Space Captains shouted their approval. Inside the little box a gold medal rested on black velvet.

"But I—I didn't race," Steve protested.

"No?" Syrtis Williams said. "The way the Olympic Committee sees it, you ran—and won—the most important race of all. Look at the inscription."

Steve turned trie medal over. On its back was inscribed:

STEVE FRAZER—EARTH

Outstanding Sportsman First Interstellar Olympic Games

About the Author

Milton Lesser is the author of many science fiction novels, among them THE STAB SEEKERS and EARTHBOUND in the Winston Science Fiction Series. His stories have appeared in leading magazines. He has written for television, edited anthologies, and is an experienced consultant on science fiction articles.

A New Yorker by birth and residence, a graduate of the College of William and Mary in Virginia, he has traveled in twenty-odd countries on three continents, skiing in Canada, mountain climbing in Switzerland and exploring fjords in Norway—all because planet-hopping is still a few years off.