Son of the Stars

A Science Fiction Novel

Son of the Stars

by Raymond F. Jones

Jacket illustration by Alex Schomburg

Cécile Matschat, Editor Car/ Carmer, Consulting Editor

Copyright, Î952 By Raymond F. Jones

Copyright in Great Britain and in the British Dominions

and Possessions Copyright in the Republic of the Philippines

FIRST PRINTING, JANUARY, 1952 SECOND PRINTINC, MAY, 1954

M-554

Back-Yard Scientists

I HAVE meant this book to be a tribute to the "backyard scientists" of America. These are the thousands of boys and girls like Ron Barron—whose story this is—who work in basements or attics or back-yard laboratories to recreate the drama of science in their own way. These are the scientists of tomorrow.

A ten-year-old boy in Texas begins the search by producing rotten-egg gas with his Christmas chemistry set. At sixteen he has a well-equipped basement laboratory. A girl in Oregon is astonished at the wonder of her first glimpse through a microscope in Junior High. When she enters college she takes her laboratory with her—a box containing her own microscope and a few hundred slides.

In the years to come we have a responsible chemist in an industrial laboratory, and a technician searching for new wonder drugs found in molds from every

part of the world. There are the future scientists of America. And this is how they start.

This is the beginning, and all the steel and brick buildings of a college campus or a thousand learned professors cannot duplicate such a moment. The capacity for wonder cannot be taught. It is there from the beginning, or not at all.

Fortunately, that great wonder is in most of us, in the beginning, at least. Unfortunately, it survives in only a few of us. In the fury of living, a sunset becomes just a sunset, and seeds and leaves a nuisance to be raked and burned.

But the back-yard scientists, and those in the industrial and university laboratories are the ones in whom wonder has not died or been smothered. Some, like Ron Barron, have well-equipped laboratories in which the techniques of several sciences are practiced. And their work is not mere "play" science. Solid studies and very real contributions have been made by some of these young people in basement, attic, or backyard labs.

Their work is not well known publicly, except when brought to light deliberately as in the annual Science Talent Search conducted by one of the leading electrical manufacturers. Here, in a contest for university scholarships, an astonishing amount of talent is exhibited by teen-age boys and girls when they place their research projects before the judges.

Every field of science is represented. Mathematics, electronics, biology, astronomy—everything a child might wonder about, the shapes of the world, the lightning in the sky, the bugs under a stone, the stars overhead.

It is a thing of great importance for our nation and for the whole world that wonder be not crushed in those in whom it still survives. For these are the researchers who will man the laboratories of industry and universities in the next decades.

So I am writing this book also as a plea that those might be helped to find out more of the useful things of the universe. I have known what it means to set aside a project because essential wire or parts could not be bought.

To parents fortunate enough to have a back-yard scientist in the family, I would say that nothing will be remembered with such gratitude in later years as the assistance, financially and morally, that will make possible the research the young scientist wishes to pursue, whether it be a homemade telescope, or a bug collection, amateur radio, or a chemistry lab.

But something still more is needed now. Scientists of the past could be content with their apparatus and their learned papers. Today a scientist aware of only the physical universe is no more than half a scientist. There is the world of fellow men—who are of equal or even greater importance than the world of atoms and stars. We have come upon this fact almost too late, and the older generation of scientists are sometimes bewildered by the anger of their fellow men because they have made possible the destruction of a world.

The new scientists need to be as much aware of

the value of their fellow men as of the value of the atom. They need a spiritual and moral value that has never been a prerequisite before.

A child wonders about these things, too, but sometimes it seems that they are even more difficult to explain than the green of a leaf, or the colors of a sunset. But they must be explained lest wonder about them cease also.

The story of Ron Barron and his contact with an inhabitant of another world is fiction, a story laid of necessity in the future, when science might make it possible. But Ron Barron is not fiction. He is a synthesis of the best in the many back-yard scientists I have known. If it happened to one of them, this is the way it would happen.

R. F. J.

Contents

CHAPTER                                                                                               PAGE

Back-Yard Scientists   .....      v

1.    The Wreck................................................................       1

2.    Beyond Help............................................................ 12

3.    Clonar........................................................................ 22

4.    Clonar Talks............................................................ 34

5.    Under Guard............................................................ 47

6.    Desecration...................................................... •     60

7.    Desperate Chance ......     71

8.    Disaster.................................................................... 82

9.    Friend or Enemy...................................................... 91

10.    With the Help of the Press   .   .    .                    101

11.    Compromise............................................................. ..... HO

12.    Betrayal.................................................................... ..... H9

13.    Escape........................................................................ ..... 128

14.    In Hiding................................................................... ..... 139

15.    "I Can Go Homer....................................................      151

16.    Deadline....................................................................      161

17.    An Alien Forever ......               173

18.    Attack!.......................................................................      186

19.    Homeward ........           200

Glossary....................................................................      209

Chapter 1 The Wreck

I

HE dog liked the wind in his face. With his paws on the door of the car he pressed his sharp nose beyond the cowling and crouched there, ears flattened and eyes half closed against the rush of air, Ron Barron reached over and ruffled the collie's thick hair behind his ears.

"Better pull your head in, Pete. I don't want to lose you on a turn."

The dog moved back reluctantly and sat up on the seat as if impatient that they should be taking so long to get wherever they were going. But Ron glanced at the speedometer and lifted his foot sharply from the pedal.

They were on the flats east of Longview, moving toward the mountains. Ron was used to speeding here. This was the section of highway that was roped off by the police on Saturday afternoons for the speed runs

of the Mercury Club members. These were the Long-view hot-rod car builders and owners.

But no matter how important this trip, Ron knew he couldn't afford to be speeding now. As president of the club he would really earn them a black eye that way. It was tough enough convincing the public that hot-rodders could be respectable.

Ron's car was the pride of the club. A long flattened torpedo, brilliant in its lacquered natural aluminum finish, it was the result of hundreds of hours of shaping metal and machining engine parts.

Ron had watched the sun rising a few minutes before, as he left the house with Pete and his gun. Now, approaching the eastern hills, he was in shadow again, and the chill morning air tightened his skin with pleasurable coolness. This was a hunting trip, he had told the folks. But he hadn't told them the thing he intended to hunt.

Atop the back-yard building he used for a shop and laboratory there was a homemade meteor recorder that scanned the skies of Longview night after night, leaving a record of shooting stars that passed over the valley. A dozen times during the past two years he had obtained records indicating that meteorites had fallen in the surrounding mountains. Four times he had succeeded in locating fragments of these and they now rested on the specimen shelves in the lab. Last night his device had left the most intense record he had ever seen.

It indicated an enormous mass falling across the valley and landing in the mountains beyond town. He wondered that half the town was not out looking for it this morning. Luckily, it fell during the early morning hours when few were awake to see it, and so he appeared to be alone in the search for it this morning.

Finding it was largely a matter of luck. His instrument had given him the direction of fall, but the meteorite could be anywhere along a five-mile stretch of that direction line, and the terrain was rough.

Pete, the collie, sniffed the air exuberantly as the car left the flats and began its climb into the foothills and wound slowly through the mountains beyond. On the skyline ridge overlooking the valley Ron stopped the car in a small clearing off the road.

He sat for a moment examining the chart he had made from the recording of his instrument the night before. This was the closest he could drive to the near end of the directional line along which the meteorite might lie.

"Come on, boy, let's go," he said.

He opened the door and Pete slid carefully to the ground, racing ahead between the familiar trees. Ron followed, but a few feet from the car he hesitated and returned for his gun. Pete raced back.

"We might as well take it along. Maybe we can get ourselves a squirrel this morning."

He checked the box of shells in his shirt pocket and slipped one into the breech of the gun. Then they resumed their pathway through the trees.

It was an old story to Pete, for they had taken many morning tramps such as this in search of squirrels and other game during season. The hills were familiar ground to him and Ron.

There was no hour quite so peaceful or unhurried as this, Ron thought. He stopped occasionally and turned his field glasses on a distant bird in the high pines that lined the hills. Within minutes he spotted a dozen Blue Jays and almost as many Orioles. Then he checked his chart once more and brought out his pocket compass. He was on the line along which he intended to search.

"This way, Pete," he called to the dog trotting far ahead.

The going became rougher. They left the trail and began working through the trees and underbrush. After a quarter mile of stiff climbing Ron came to a high point and raised the field glasses once more.

Any meteorite as large as the one indicated by his instrument should have carved a sizable path in the growth on the hills. He searched carefully ahead and behind, and on either side of the imaginary line he had laid out. No marking of the kind he sought appeared. Ahead of him was a shallow ravine. And beyond that another hill. And farther in the distance the repetitious backs of other hills humped like sleeping elephants in the morning sunlight.   .

He whistled to Pete and heard the dog barking and running through the underbrush. He started racing into the ravine they had to cross.

By noon Ron had wound his way over almost a dozen such hills and ravines without results. At last he sat down in the shade of a tall pine. Pete lay at his feet panting with the exertion of chasing squirrels.

"It looks like this one is a bust," said Ron. "I thought sure we'd be able to find something with a track like that."

From his pack he drew a thermos and a bag of sandwiches his mother had fixed. He ate slowly while he contemplated the thrill of finding a meteorite as large as he believed this one to be.

When he had finished lunch he got up and glanced ahead. Pete pressed against his leg and Ron scratched the collie's ears affectionately.

"One more hill," he said. "If nothing shows there, we'll call it a day."

Pete responded with an agreeable bark, and they began moving again.

The afternoon sun was bearing down hard when Ron came to the top of the next ridge. He wiped the sweat from his face and scanned the surrounding hillsides with the glasses.

"That does it," he said finally. "Let's be getting back to the car. Nothing short of a plane search will find anything that's here. Maybe we can get Charlie Moran to take us up on Sunday afternoon and look around a bit."

He put the glasses away and started retracing his path, intent on searching as closely as possible on the return trip against the possibility of having missed the meteorite on the way out. But Pete seemed to have different ideas. He hung back and darted a short distance in the same direction they had been going.

"Come on, Pete—let's go!"

The dog answered with a sharp bark and remained where he was. Then, certain that he had Ron's eye, he loped away.

"What in the world—? Pete! We've got to get back home."

The dog paid no attention. He ran swiftly through the underbrush and disappeared at last in the green cover of the opposite hillside.

Irritated by this unreasonable action, Ron debated whether to go ahead and let Pete follow, or to see where Pete wanted to go. As he watched, he saw a faint brown figure topping the next ridge. He turned his field glasses upon it and saw Pete looking into the ravine beyond. Barking furiously and repeatedly, he looked toward Ron, then toward the ravine.

Ron lowered the glasses, his breath quickening. Was it possible that the dog had found what they were searching for? It couldn't be, he thought. There was no way by which the dog could have any knowledge of the meteorite or locate it. Nevertheless, Ron began running down the hillside and up toward the ridge where the dog waited.

As he approached, Pete came down to meet him, barking wildly. His eyes were sharp and bright with the glory of some discovery of his own. Ron topped the rise and stood at the vantage point from which Pete had called him.

And then he saw it.

A narrow, pine-studded ravine only three or four hundred feet wide at the top was below him. The pines were young and short, and a swath had been cut through them as if by some colossal lawn mower.

In a mile-long path the tops had been sheared off. Ron s eyes followed from the faint beginning of that line where only the tips had been touched. At the other end the cutting object had torn its way into the heart of the grove at the bottom of the ravine.

He held his breath in a moment of wonder. Then he was racing headlong down the steep slope. The lines of the fallen object began to appear as he made his way down. He saw the metallic sheen of polished sheet metal.

He understood why it had been dffficult to see from above. Besides being hidden by the trees, the object was a light green in color, just a shade lighter than the pine needles that surrounded it.

Ron almost gasped aloud as the size of the thing became apparent at last. A hundred yards up the hillside, he stopped to survey it. The thing was circular— or had been before the crash that smashed the forward third of it, he supposed. At least two hundred feet in diameter, he guessed. There were darker spots on the disc which appeared like portholes.

Pete was quiet, nuzzling Ron's hand as if trying to convey his own understanding of the awe and mystery of this magnificent find.

Ron stood there for long seconds trying to convince himself that it wasn't what it appeared. But he knew it was. It had to be.

It was a ship—a flying saucer.

He felt a trembling in Pete's body as if the dog were aware of something Ron could not see or feel.

They moved forward, Pete staying close now. As they came down to the level floor of the ravine Ron got a better view of the giant machine. It was tilted only slightly and the edges of it rested on the sides of the ravine.

When he got an edgewise view, Ron estimated the ship was thirty-five or forty feet thick at the center. And it was truly disc-shaped as the saucers had been described in so many previously unverified reports.

There was space to walk under the ship, except at the forward end where the collapsed wreckage touched the bottom of the ravine. As he walked under it Ron saw how great the damage was. The forward half was wrinkled and torn. Jagged girders of the skeleton structure hung down, crumpled and broken like the bones of some great animal. Through the breaks Ron glimpsed rooms of furniture and machines and stored goods carried by the alien ship.

So the stories were true—the stories of flashing discs that soared through the skies at unheard-of speeds. And here was one of them. But where had it come from, he wondered?

Was it a military ship of this nation or of some other?

Or had it come from the stars?

There was no sign of life. The terrific force of the crash could hardly have left any survivors among the crew. As he stood there staring up into the dark, mysterious chambers of the ship there was only silence in the air, except for his own swift breathing and the panting of the dog.

He would have to report the wreckage to the authorities, and he ought to do it quickly, he thought. But for just a few minutes longer he wanted the privilege of being alone with the ship.

He wondered if he could climb up and get inside it. The broken skeleton offered a precarious ladder-way. He adjusted the field glasses and turned them upward.

There was an alien strangeness about all that he saw. There was color everywhere. Each chamber seemed to be finished in its own shading. Nowhere was there the drab hue of military camouflage. There were brilliant greens, yellows, and orange, and colors for which he knew no name.

As he moved to view it from a different angle he saw a fluttering in the grass beyond him. It looked like sheets of paper dropped from the ship. He gathered up a dozen of them.

They were faintly yellow-tinted sheets, but the material was not paper. For a moment he thought they were metallic, then guessed plastic. They had the curious feel of both, but seemed to be neither.

Then he turned them over. They were covered on one side with heavy black symbols. But they were symbols of a kind he had never seen. He well knew that there existed a thousand languages and dialects whose symbols he did not know. But somehow there was an instinctive sensing that these were symbols of a language spoken nowhere upon the face of the Earth.

He rolled the sheets and put them in his pocket. He glanced upward again.

A ship from the stars, he thought. This had to be a ship from the stars.

The breeze blowing through the ravine and under the ship seemed suddenly more chill.

Creatures of other worlds had spanned the hostile wastes of interstellar space before man and had come to make contact. Were they hostile or were they friendly? Actually, they had not made contact—deliberately, at least. All the stories of flying saucers so far had given no indication that the crews desired contact with human beings. They had remained aloof from any communication with man.

Yet, regardless of the possible hostility of the creatures who had built and flown this ship, he could not help the feeling of awe and the thrill of being in the presence of the unknown.

He moved along the crumpled edge of the skin of the ship where it lay upon the ground. The metal was thin, but it would not bend under all the pressure he could put upon it.

Halfway, he stopped and knelt down. There on the green metal and in the grass beside it were drops of red. Drops of blood.

He glanced quickly upward and around him. Pete sniffed cautiously. Then Ron saw that there were more drops forming a twisted pathway along the wreckage and up into the depths of the ship.

Someone had come out of the ship after it crashed. Someone hurt and bleeding.

He turned slowly and tried to follow that trail of blood through the grass. Almost unconsciously he slipped his gun into his hand and gripped it hard.

The trail soon grew faint and died away, and Ron could make out no footprints in the tall grass.

"Come on, Pete." His voice was a whisper. "Let's see the topside."

Abruptly Pete uttered a short bark. Ron turned. Blocking the way out from under the ship was a figure weaving unsteadily against the lighter background of forest beyond.

It was the figure of a man. Yet instinctively Ron knew, almost as if there were an invisible aura about that figure, that here was a man not of Earth, but one born out somewhere beyond the stars themselves.

Chapter 2 Beyond Help

F

OR a moment the two stared at each other. Then the stranger took a slow step forward, staggering as he moved. From his throat came a single unknown sound.

Involuntarily, Ron backed. His gun came up to the ready. With a sudden faint growl Pete brushed against him. "Quiet," said Ron.

He ignored the movements of the dog, keeping his eye on the advancing stranger. Without warning, the collie whirled and made a high leap, knocking the gun from Ron's hands.

In astonishment and with a burst of fear at his de-fenselessness, Ron stared at the dog—and at the fallen gun over which he stood.

Pete whimpered a moment as if begging forgiveness, then darted away. He clambered up and put his huge paws upon the naked brown chest of the

12

man. His weight almost bowled the man over, but the stranger put his hands upon the dog's head and patted gently.

Pete ran back to Ron and whimpered again with an inviting cry.

Ron picked up the fallen gun. "So you think he's O.K." He spoke slowly.

Ron trusted the instincts of the dog. He felt safe for the moment at least and wondered what could be done to make contact.

As if understanding Ron's decision, the man staggered forward again, uttering a stream of unknown sounds. Suddenly he collapsed upon the ground, his hands almost touching Ron's shoes.

Ron stared at those hands. There were six fingers on each.

Pete licked at the man's face and whimpered for Ron to give attention.

Ron knelt down. He touched the brown skin which had a texture quite different from his own. His hand jerked away as if burned.

Then he put it forward again. The temperature of the individual was incredibly high. Ron wondered if it could be normal or if the injury had caused it.

He opened his canteen and touched the mouth of it to the lips of the brown man. A trickle of water filled the man's mouth. He swallowed automatically.

Ron saw then where the trail of blood had come from. There was a wide gash under the arm. Once clotted over, it was beginning to bleed again. He considered the best way to get help. The car was miles away now, but if he remembered correctly, the highway should not be more than a quarter of a mile from this point. If he had only started his search at this end of the line-He glanced upward again to the mighty, broken ship. The significance of this discovery was staggering. Here was the gateway to new worlds of which man had dreamed since he first watched the stars.

He fought down the rising feeling of awe and near-reverence for the figure lying upon the grass beside him. Medical aid was needed and the practical question was whether the stranger could make it to the highway or not. As Ron considered this, the eyes opened and the man struggled to a sitting position.

He murmured and indicated the canteen. Ron passed it to him and scanned his face as he upended the container. That face looked young, Ron thought. He was tall and hard-muscled, but Ron wondered if he were actually any older than himself.

He was dressed only in shorts that came to his knees and were of some shining fabric that Ron had never seen before. The shoes were soft, like moccasins.

In his own curiosity now, the stranger reached out a hand almost shyly and touched Ron's clothing and his arm. Then he touched Pete's head and smiled fondly at the dog as if there were some secret understanding between them. Pete responded with a grunt of contentment.

This baffled Ron, but he gave no more thought to it now. He stood up and looked toward the mouth of the ravine, then began walking slowly toward it.

Pete started to follow, then halted and looked after the stranger.

The latter arose stiffly, as if with pain, and moved with halting steps. Ron looked into his eyes, trying to ask if he could continue or not. As if sensing the intent of the glance, the stranger smiled faintly.

Ron led the way carefully up the hill on a long, zigzag slope. The high afternoon sun pierced the mountain air with sharp, hot light. He tried to keep to the shade of the pines, but they were too scrubby for much protection.

Gamely, however, the stranger continued to follow with no sound of pain or discomfort. At last they came within sight of the highway and heard the rush of cars.

Ron indicated a shady spot a few yards off the highway where the man would not be seen.

"You take care of him, Pete," he said. "I'll be back in a few minutes. Just take it easy."

They sat down beneath the tree as if they both understood. As Ron turned away, Pete had his head on the man's lap.

Ron moved swiftly down the road. He hoped that he had done right for the stranger, and that the hike to the road had not injured him further.

A dozen cars passed in each direction during the first few minutes of his walk. He hailed each one going his way but most were tourists hurrying to get as many miles behind them as possible before sundown.

At last he heard an ancient, wheezing model T coming. He glanced up at the familiar sound. It was old Mike Peters who lived in a mountain cabin and came down to town each day for yard work. He considered passing up Mike's offer, then thought better of it. The car clattered to a stop.

"Ron, boy, what are you doing out here in the hills? Your car break down? I always told you you would mess around with that engine until it wouldn't run at all. Now you take Old Reliable here-—"

"I've been out hunting, Mike. I left my car about five miles down the road. I wonder if you would take me down as fast as you can?"

"Sure. Hop in." The car shuddered to a faster pace as he climbed aboard.

He kneaded his fingers impatiently while swifter cars honked and swirled around them. He wished he were in one of them, but he knew that the chances were slim that any would have stopped.

"Where's your dog?" said Mike. "You can't hunt without Pete, can you?"

"I left him chasing squirrels. I'm coming back to pick him up. If you see any of my folks in town, tell them I'll be home in a little while."

In a few minutes they came to the turn-off where Ron had left the hot-rod. The gleaming aluminum shone sun-bright from a distance.

"It's a pretty thing," said Mike approvingly, "but she won't last as long as Old Reliable here."

"Longer. Thanks a lot, Mike." Ron leaped from the car as it barely slowed. In a moment he was in his own and roaring back up the highway toward Pete and the stranger.

He found them almost as he had left them. The eyes of the stranger glowed with interest at the sight of the car. He touched it, gently passing his hand over the smooth surface as if it were some fine toy of which he approved.

Ron helped him in, and Pete sat on the floor at his feet. In a moment they were speeding down the highway toward Longview.

The questions that flooded Ron's mind now were those he had forced into postponement: What was to be done with the stranger? Where could he be taken for medical care? The most logical thing was to notify the police and the Air Force officials at Crocker Base fifty miles north of Longview.

But he felt reluctant to do that. Once he did, the stranger would be overwhelmed with investigators and there would be little chance to become acquainted with him. And somehow he did want very much to become acquainted and learn the answers to the thousand questions he had about the big ship.

He was fascinated by Pete's acceptance of the man. That in itself was a minor mystery. He decided that the thing he'd had in the back of his mind all the time was the right thing to do. He would take him to his own house and call Dr. Smithers.

He knew his family's reaction when they came home would be one of uproar, at least that of his mother and small sister. His father—he wasn't exactly sure how his father would take it.

As for Doc Smithers, the old family physician could be trusted to help, and keep such a matter as this strictly confidential.

Ron turned off the highway as he approached town, and came in on the back streets where he ran less chance of being recognized by someone who might later ask about the stranger.

At last he turned down his own block. It was a tree-lined street of old and well-kept houses. His was a white, two-story house with a massive gabled roof. It was almost in the center of the block.

As he drew up and turned in the driveway he was surprised by a call from the porch swing, and a familiar figure hurried down the steps toward him.

With pleasure, he recognized Anne Martin, dressed for tennis in white skirt and blouse and carrying her racket. For the first time, Ron remembered their date to play that afternoon.

"When you didn't come, I decided to walk over to Shirley's house, but she wasn't home, either," said Anne. "Why didn't you—?"

Then her dark eyes went wide at the sight of the brown stranger with the caked blood along one side of his chest. His head was slumped over now in half-consciousness.

"What happened, Ron? Who is he?"

"I forgot all about the tennis, Anne, but I'm sure glad you're here. I can't tell you all the details now, but the folks aren't home, so will you take the car over and get Doc Smithers? It would be a lot quicker than if I called and waited for him to get his old crate over here."

"Sure, Ron—whatever I can do to help—"

The stranger roused and looked about slowly. He glanced down the street at the trees and the houses and then at Anne. Ron motioned toward the house and helped him out with difficulty. He must weigh close to two hundred, Ron thought. "Hurry, Anne," he said.

She nodded and slipped behind the steering wheel. It was her pride that Ron had taught her to drive the powerful car. She was the only girl at Longview High who drove a Mercury Club hot-rod.

As the car purred away from the curb, Ron helped his strange acquaintance up the walk and into the house. Pete followed, watching carefully.

With difficulty, Ron got him up to the second floor spare bedroom and onto the bed. He lay unmoving. Ron covered him with a sheet after removing the moccasin shoes. There seemed nothing more to be done until Doc Smithers arrived.

Ron waited on a chair beside the bed and examined closely the features of that quiet face. He felt that the deep brown tone of the skin was not its natural color. It seemed more like an intense sun tan.

The cheeks were very high-boned and rather thin. The forehead was high above deep-set eyes. The nose was straight and narrow. The quality of the hair on the head was perhaps the strangest feature of all, except for the six-fingered hands. It was deep black and not heavy, but it seemed to lie in a fine mat of soft, velvety filaments unlike the long, thick strands that composed Ron's own hair.

The eyes were closed, still. Ron wondered what scenes they had seen, what far worlds they had gazed upon. Where was the home of this visitor, and why had he come to Earth?

Ron was convinced now that he was no more than a boy, in the mid-adolescence of his own species, just as Ron was at his present age of sixteen.

There came abruptly the deep-throated sound of Ron's car in the driveway. He ran downstairs as Doc Smithers entered with Anne.

"Hello, Ron, what's the trouble here?" said Smithers. "Anne tells me you've got someone hurt. Why didn't you take him over to the hospital?"

Ron led the way up the stairs. "I didn't think it was serious enough for that," he said. "It's a very unusual case. You'll see."

Smithers saw at once. He took one of the six-fingered hands that lay atop the sheet and held it for a moment while his glance went to Ron's face. Ron said nothing. The Doctor bent over the bed.

Smithers was a wiry little man who had delivered both Ron and Anne at birth, and he frequently expressed the opinion to them and anyone else who would listen that the world was going to the dogs in a hot-rod. But he could not conceal his fondness for them, just the same.

"Who in the world is he?" he said. "I never saw him around town before."

"I don't think he's been around town. I found him in the woods while Pete and I were hunting."

Carefully, Smithers cleaned and dressed the wound under the arm. "Not much injury there, but this fellow feels like he must have a fever of a hundred and ten."

He applied a stethoscope to the brown chest. A startled look crossed his face. Then he moved the instrument slowly over the torso.

Putting this away at last, he drew a thermometer out of his bag and put it between the parched lips. While he waited he touched the flesh of the stranger gently, running his fingers over the bone structure. He touched the hair on the head and raised again one of the hands with six fingers.

When he held the thermometer to the light he shook his head unbelievingly.

"What is it?" said Ron.

"I don't know. This only goes to a hundred and eight. His temperature is 'way beyond that."

"People can't live with such temperatures!" said Anne.

"They're not supposed to. Where did he come from, Ron?" Smithers said. He sat on the chair by the bed and looked up at them.

"This man is a living impossibility. He cant be alive, but he is—with a temperature that ought to be fatal. More than that, his heart is not on the right side. His skeletal structure is all wrong. His internal organs feel jumbled and out of position. There are these hands, and this hair—

"This person is not even human, Ron. It's impossible for me to begin to diagnose the injury or illness of such a structure as his. He may be dying. He should be dying by all the rules I've ever learned.

"If he is, he's beyond any medical science of which we know at present. There's no help for him."

Chapter 3 Clon

ON shook his head in frantic rebellion against the Doctor's pronouncement. "He can't die. Doc, you've got to do something for him. He can't die now after he's come from—" "Yes," said Smithers slowly, "where has he come from?"

Ron looked from the Doctor to Anne. He began with his discovery of the record on his machine. He told of his hunt and the discovery of the ship and its strange crewman.

Smithers listened carefully, but when Ron finished he shook his head as if not wanting to believe. "Ron, boy, you're pulling an old man's leg. I'm too old for that sort of thing."

"I'm telling it just as it happened," said Ron. "I wouldn't have any reason for making up a thing like that. You said a moment ago that he isn't human. And I can show you the ship."

22

"III have to take your word for it, but 1*11 need a week or so for the idea to soak through this ancient skull of mine. I've had no expectation of meeting visitors from other worlds before I die.

"If your story is true, it makes it more hopeless than ever to find medical assistance for this fellow. His biological structure may be so different that our medicine might be sheer poison."

"Do you have any idea what might be wrong?"

"Only guesses. I'd say that the brown of his skin is due to burn. Probably radiation burn, and if that is as fatal as some types of atomic radiation known to us, he hasn't got a chance. I would say he is also suffering greatly from a state of shock due to the crash.

"The only thing I could suggest is that we take him down to the hospital for a series of intense biological examinations to determine what might be normal for his species, but I'm sure we don't have time for all that. I suspect he is quite low. We can make a try, that is all."

Ron stared at the quiet face. "We have to try, of course."

At that moment the figure stirred unexpectedly, turned partly on one side, his face grimacing somewhat as if with pain. He sat up with recognition of Ron in his eyes.

"He must have tremendous powers of recovery," murmured Smithers. "Or else I am mistaken about the depth of shock involved."

Ron had come to think of the stranger in terms of "boy" instead of "man," and now he watched him glance across the room. Pete had come in unnoticed and was staring intently at the boy. Abruptly the dog turned and padded out of the room.

Ron sat down on the edge of the bed. He longed to cut down the communication barrier between them and wondered if he were strong enough to try.

He looked into the boy's eyes and pointed to himself. "Ron,** he said carefully. He pointed to the Doctor. "Doctor Smithers." He indicated Anne and spoke her name.

A faint smile of understanding came to the brown lips. The boy nodded and pointed to himself. "Clonar," he said. And then he pointed to the three of them and pronounced their names in clear accents.

Ron pointed now to himself and Smithers. "Men," he said. Indicating Anne, he said, "Woman."

Clonar pointed quickly to himself. "Men —men, Clonar. Anne, woman."

"That's very good," murmured Smithers. "It takes a high degree of intellect to grasp such concepts that quickly."

"This will be easy," said Anne in a breathless voice. "We can teach him enough to let us know what he needs."

"We can try anything—if only there's time enough," said Smithers. "I have no way of knowing how much of that we may have."

At that moment they heard the sound of Pete's walking along the hallway again. He entered the room carrying a package in his mouth. Carefully, he took it to Clonar and dropped it upon the bed.

"What is that?" said Smithers.

Clonar opened the package and exposed a red mound of hamburger. The three of them laughed involuntarily.

"Pete wants to help, too," said Anne. "That's the best thing he could think of."

"He robbed the refrigerator to get it, though," said Ron, "and it wasn't here when we left this morning. Mother must have got it for dinner tonight—"

Clonar looked at the meat. Abruptly, he jabbed two fingers into it and raised it to his mouth.

"No—no!" exclaimed Ron. "You can't eat that raw!" He tried to take the meat from Clonar. Pete suddenly slapped his forepaws against Ron's chest and made a protesting growl.

"Pete, what's the matter with you? Behave yourself."

Clonar was expressing agitation now. He put the meat aside and reached forward to touch Pete. He put an arm about the dog and drew him close. He broke off another bit of meat and put it to his mouth. Smithers raised a hand as Ron moved to stop him.

"Wait," said the Doctor. "There's something funny here. Clonar wants it. It's—no, it couldn't be—" He shook his head in dismay.

"It's what?" said Anne.

"It's almost as if he asked the dog to find it for him!"

And suddenly Ron remembered that scene back in the ravine where Pete had protested his raising the gun against Clonar. He remembered how Pete had been the one to insist that the search be continued when he had been ready to abandon it.

"Doc!" he said in a hoarse voice. "Is it possible? Do you suppose that Clonar can in some way communicate with the dog? Make him understand what he needs and wants?"

"I don't know," said the old man wearily. "I just don't know. I have seen and heard more in the last half hour than I ever expected to experience in all my long life.

"Actually, this may be very sound. If Clonar is suffering from burn and shock, as I supposed, heavy protein intake would be indicated. That is exactly what we have here. If he somehow managed to indicate to the dog his basic need, he may have been able to make it understandable in terms of the things Pete knows. Hence, Pete went to the refrigerator where he knew meat was sometimes kept, and brought what he could find. I don't know—I just don't know."

In silence they watched Clonar eat the entire mound of three pounds of raw hamburger. Only when he was through did they realize they had let him continue to eat with his fingers.

Ron went to the bathroom and brought soap and water and towels. Clonar readily comprehended their use, as if such items were exact counterparts of those in his own civilization.

Anne brought ice water from the kitchen and Clonar drank copiously. When he was finished, he lay down on his back and slowly closed his eyes. Tension and strain seemed to have gone out of his face.

"Sleep," said Ron softly.

Clonar opened his eyes and smiled briefly and understandingly, then closed them again. "Sleep," he said.

Dr. Smithers picked up his bag. "We may as well go out. There is nothing more we can do at the moment."

They closed the door quietly behind them. Ron nodded toward the living room as they reached the foot of the stairs.

"Will you come in and sit down for a while, Doctor?"

Smithers picked his hat from the hall table. "I ought to be getting back to the office." But he did follow them and sat on the edge of the sofa, moving his hat nervously in his hands.

"I don't know what to tell you, Ron," he said. "The story you have given me is utterly unbelievable, but Clonar is his own evidence. If he does manage to survive, we must give him a thorough biological examination to determine the exact nature of his make-up."

"I wonder what will become of him—if he lives," said Anne. "Imagine itl A single individual surviving a flight across millions of miles of space. Perhaps from outside the solar system—or even the Galaxy itself.

"Imagine the feeling of being alone among strangers at such a distance from home. Unless his own people come for him he will have to spend the rest of his life with us. We've got to help him and see that he learns our ways and how to get along among our kind. Yet, even if he does, he will never be one of us, because he isn't human."

"I wonder what human means, anyway," said Dr. Smithers. "I have seen some pretty weird specimens who called themselves human, and yet they were

meaner and ornerier and more low-down than any rattlesnake I ever hope to meet up with.

"And then in my profession I have seen others who were so sick and so miserable that they didn't even look human, and some of them had a brilliance of mind and a sweetness of spirit that would shame the most of us.

"So it's not the way a creature looks, the way he walks or stands, or the shape he's in that determines whether he's human or not. It's the stuff that's in his head and in his heart, and this Clonar looks like he's got ample quantities of the right kind of stuff in both places. Offhand, I'd say we couldn't go wrong on him/'

"I worry about what will happen," said Ron, "when the public finds out. A man from the stars—they'll want to put him on radio and television. They might even put him in the movies and give him a part like a monster from some other world. I don't want that to happen to him."

There was the abrupt sound of a car door closing in the driveway. Ron glanced through the window and saw his parents and sister coming toward the house.

"I'd best be getting along," said Dr. Smithers.

"No—wait," said Ron. "I've got to tell them. Won't you stay here with me while I do?"

Ron's face seemed to have grown paler as he faced the task of telling his parents about Clonar. The responsibility he had undertaken seemed suddenly overwhelming—responsibility to Clonar, responsibility to his father and mother.

■

The end result was that he was asking them to accept responsibility for Clonar by keeping him in their house. Asking this was more than he had a right to, he thought.

Dr. Smithers recognized these thoughts in the swift wave of concern that passed over the boy's face.

"Sure, I'll stay—if you think my two bits' worth will help any."

The outer door opened. Mr. Barron stopped to put his hat in the hall closet. Then he caught sight of the occupants of the living room.

Ron's father was a neat figure of a man, his hair faintly graying at forty-five. Ron often compared him favorably with Anthony Eden.

He waved. "Hi, Ron. Hello, Doctor—Anne, how are

"You look like you're following that weight program I gave you," said Smithers.

"Never miss a day. But I didn't expect to see you here—not that I'm not glad, provided, of course you're not here professionally."

"What a lawyer! Hedging even a casual greeting with a dozen provisos."

George Barron laughed and sat down beside him. "Well, is anyone sick?"

"Nothing is wrong—in the family, that is," said Smithers. "Ron has a little story to tell. He happened to give it to me first, and he wants my corroboration. That's why I stayed, if you don't mind."

"Certainly not, but what is this serious business all about?" He tried to act jovial, but the sight of Ron's tense face prevented this. "Shall we go up to your

room, son?"

"No, it's all right here, if Francie keeps out of the way. I'd like Mother to hear it, too, if you'll ask her to come in."

Mrs. Barron was almost as tall as her husband, and she boasted that she was as slim as when they were married. Ron didn't know about that, but he was proud of their appearance together.

She protested now, however, that she had dinner to prepare, and couldn't they do without her. But George Barron understood the look on his son's face, and knew that he needed their attention. He insisted that she come in.

Ron began his story. Carefully and earnestly he related all the details of his find, and of the reaction of Clonar in the house. As the story progressed, a score of varying emotions were visible on the faces of his parents.

He could see it first in his mother, a reaction of ridicule and disbelief, shading to a growing horror, and finally to a distinct repulsiveness and rebellion against the whole idea.

His father showed incredulity at first, and then careful weighing of the possibilities. Finally he seemed to grasp the tremendous importance of the situation, but this was coupled with the conviction that he must see it personally, before he would be convinced that the ship actuaUy existed, or that Clonar was as Ron said.

When the story was finished, there was a long moment of silence. George Barron cleared his throat and glanced at Dr. Smithers.

"You can confirm this?" he said.

The Doctor nodded. "Although I have not seen the ship, I have seen Clonar. The structure of his body is so alien that he can scarcely be called human, physically, yet he is capable of speech and understanding as Ron has said—and is very human in his thoughts, I am convinced."

"I hardly know what to say," said Mr. Barron. "A thing of this kind is something that you see only in fantastic movies. You hardly expect it to happen to a workaday lawyer in an ordinary American city. But if it is true we must take steps to inform the proper authorities to see that Clonar is provided for, and to see that those who can understand this vessel are directed to it."

"I'd like to take you to the ship," said Ron. "We can go this afternoon; there's time. I want you to come, too, Dr. Smithers."

"And I'm supposed to stay in the house alone, I suppose," said Ron's mother suddenly. "With this—this monster!"

"Mother—please! Don't ever use a word like that about Clonar. He's as human as any of us, even if he is different. Isn't it so, Dr. Smithers?"

"I think we can see that it's not necessary for you to stay alone with him," said Smithers. "I'm sure I can forego my visit to the ship this time."

"I think this is the most preposterous thing I ever heard of," she continued. "It's not our concern to take care of this—whatever you want to call it—from another planet. How do we know what these ships are doing here? It's something for the government to take charge of. I refuse to have this creature in my home. He's not going to stay here. You've got to see that he's removed, George!"

"Wait a minute, Mother," begged Ron. "You haven't even seen Clonar."

His father touched his shoulder gently. "We'll see that this matter is taken care of as fairly as possible. Your mother has an understandable point, Ron. This is something so new that a person can hardly be expected to grasp it.

"Your mother is used to taking care of a household and shopping for our needs and attending PTA meetings. It is not exactly easy for her to comprehend the significance of a house guest who has come from the stars."

He turned to the Doctor. "Shouldn't this individual, first of all, be removed to a hospital? We are hardly equipped to take care of him here in our home!"

"I would say that he should, except for one fact— that there is really nothing that could be done for him in a hospital. Actually, he would merely be an object of curious poking and prodding, and that could very easily be the death of him.

"There's nothing that medical science can do for him, but there may be a great deal that the friendship of Ron and Pete can accomplish.

"I understand your point of view, Mrs. Barron. Your desire to be rid of the responsibility of this individual

is only natural. I can offer no suggestion in that respect except to let your conscience be your guide/'

"Well, perhaps we can agree that he will stay for a short time until the authorities decide what is to be done with him," said Mr. Barron. "It's the least we can do. And we'll see about going to the ship, Ron."

At that moment a sudden, high-pitched scream came from the upper floor. It was Francie, the nine-year-old, crying in utter terror.

"Mommie!Mommie—there's a man up here with six fingers on his hand. There's a man in our house with six fingers . . . !"

Clíttptet 4 Clonar Talks

T took quite a while to calm Francie and subdue her sobbing. Her fright turned into anger against Ron, and she took the view that it was a practical joke he had somehow directed at her, personally. Mrs. Barron resumed her insistence that Clonar be removed and they have no more to do with the affair. George Barron tried to maintain a serene confidence to promote harmony and reassure the rest of them. But Ron recognized the depth of his father's disturbance.

"I want you to come with us to the ship, Doctor," said Mr. Barron. "We will need a number of witnesses when we take our story to the authorities. I'll call Chief Harrington and get him to send a man over to stand guard at Clonar's room." "Dad!"

"Now just a minute, Ron. We can't take any unnecessary risks. Because everything about Clonar has

been amicable so far doesn't mean that we can wholly trust this alien individual.

"We don't know his way of thinking. We don't know the purpose of his ship in the vicinity of Earth. Prudence demands that we use safeguards."

"Of course, but—it's just that Clonar is a friend.

Don't ask me how I know. Maybe it's because of the

way Pete accepted him. But I feel that it is so, that

we don't have a thing to worry about."                                           ,

"Posting the guard won't hurt him."

"Why don't you come with us, Mother?" said Ron.

"I don't want to see it," snapped Mrs. Barron. "I don't want anything to do with this, and the sooner that monster is taken out of the house, the better. Bringing the police in here—you'll soon have the place so cluttered full of people that we'll have to move out ourselves. Perhaps you'd like to turn the whole place over to this Clonar!"

"Not quite that bad," George Barron laughed. "Well see that some change is made soon. I'll phone the Chief, and then we'll be on our way."

When the special guard arrived twenty minutes later he was given detailed instructions about what to do, without being told of Clonar's origin. He was puzzled about the whole thing, but accepted Mr. Barron's word for it.

Doctor Smithers checked the sleeping boy again. As far as he could tell, everything was as well as it could be in an individual whose temperature was probably more than a hundred and ten.

They left in Mr. Barron's car. Doctor Smithers sat beside him in the front seat. Pete refused to be left out and climbed in the back between Ron and Anne. The dog assumed an air of importance that made Anne laugh. She stroked his silky head.

"He acts like he's taken charge of the whole affair!" she said.

"Sometimes I wonder if he hasn't," Ron said soberly.

They parked the car off the highway and hiked the quarter of a mile to the hidden ravine. It was lucky, Ron thought, that the ship had landed in such a hidden spot. Even the long slash it had made through the trees was invisible from the road. As it was, they were almost upon it when Ron pointed dramatically below them.

"There it is!"

Silence froze about them, the three who were seeing it for the first time. They were suddenly as still as the mountain rock upon which they stood.

Ron watched their faces, feeling as if he alone were free to move from that spot.

Anne's face was bright as if some secret joy had been released within her. Dr. Smithers' wrinkled face was the way Balboa's must have been at first sight of the great Pacific, Ron thought.

But it was his father's face that held him.

"From the stars—" George Barron murmured. "From the stars—"

It was as if he were uttering a prayer. He seemed to Ron like a transfigured stranger. His face was pale and his eyes never moved from the splendid wreckage.

And then all at once his father's expression changed, as if some feeling of glory had been too much to endure. His face became its normal ruddy tone. His eyes lost that yearning luster.

Matter-of-factly he murmured, "Let's get down there and have a look."

Ron followed silently, sensing that he would never see his father's face like that again—and knowing, too, that he would never forget that moment.

The slope became too steep. Ron stepped ahead of them, taking Anne's hand. "This way, Dad," he said.

He led the way along the zigzag path he'd used in bringing Clonar up.

They reached the bottom. In silence, the two men moved about slowly, examining with their own eyes the thing he had discovered. Anne stayed by him, and Ron pointed out the spot where he had first seen Clonar, and the trail of blood leading out of the ship.

"Can't we go in?" She laughed self-consciously at the whisper to which her voice had fallen.

"I didn't try the first time. Maybe we could make it the same way Clonar got out." He put his foot on the unyielding sheet metal.

Mr. Barron called to them. "I wouldn't do that, Ron."

"It looks safe enough. We want to get a look inside."

"I don't think we should attempt it. This thing is of tremendous importance. If it is actually a spaceship as it appears to be, its military value is beyond anything we can imagine.

"We must report it to the authorities, and they will insist that only the most highly qualified scientists make an examination of the ship. I'm afraid we might disturb something of value, particularly in the wrecked portion where there might be only faint clues to some of the most important principles of the ship."

Ron stepped down, his eyes upturned still to the dark spaces, mysterious and inviting.

"I guess you're right. Maybe we can get Clonar to take us through when he's able."

"The authorities may not even want Clonar to go back into the ship."

"It's his! They can't keep him out of his own ship!"

"Well, we'll see. But I don't think we should disturb a thing. We'll phone the Air Base this afternoon so that a guard can be placed to keep vandals out."

"What about Clonar himself?" said Ron. "He can t just be turned over to a hospital to be examined like a guinea pig. He may not be our kind of human, but he's got human rights."

Mr. Barron continued staring up into the ship. "We may not have anything to say about it. This is an extremely important affair and it will be up to the authorities to decide what is to be done with Clonar."

Ron made no answer, but Anne felt his hand tighten in hers. She understood the friendship he wanted to offer Clonar. They moved away again to another sector of the wreckage.

"I'm not going to let them treat Clonar like a guinea pig," Ron said. "We've got to keep them from it."

It was dark by the time they reached town again. They dropped Anne at her house, after seeing Smithers home.

"You'll give me a call if anything important happens, won't you, Ron?" she said.

"1*11 call early in the morning. If Dr. Smithers thinks it's all right, we'll see what can be done about teaching Clonar some more English."

When they reached home George Barron placed a long-distance call immediately to his personal friend, Colonel Middleton, at the Crocker Air Base. He avoided speaking of any details of their find over the phone, but he obtained the Colonel's promise to come first thing Monday morning.

Since this was Saturday, it meant another full day without protection for the wreckage, but Mr. Barron could be no more insistent than he had been without telling the whole story. As well hidden as it was, the ship ought to be safe one more day, he decided.

Ron was dismayed as he overheard the call. He knew the Colonel from visits the officer had made to their house.

"Did it have to be Middleton?" he asked. "Couldn't you go higher, or get someone else?"

"He's about the most accessible, with suitable authority to handle the matter," said Mr. Barron. "What's the matter with Middleton?"

"He'll never understand. He'll never understand a thing like this, or a person like Clonar."

George Barron smiled faintly and rested his hand upon Ron's shoulder.

"I agree with you, son," he said. "Middleton won't understand. He won't understand a thing you're thinking of at this moment—a dream of the stars and light-years of space.

"He won't understand your dream of close friendship with this fellow, Clonar, from a world that man has never seen. Not many can understand such a dream, Ron. That's why we haven't reached the stars before this.

"But you have to learn to deal with men who do not understand your dreams and do not have any of their own. They're everywhere, and they have power and authority. And they must be dealt with on their own terms of what they call practical realism. To Middle-ton and the others who will come after him, the practical realism in this matter is that here is a ship that offers tremendous military value. It may contain sources of power capable of revolutionizing our air force. Clonar himself may possess knowledge which will advance our science a hundred years, a thousand, even. Those are the practical matters, Ron. And they have to be met and considered."

"I understand all that—but Clonar is my friend, not a specimen in a bottle."

Mrs. Barron virtually refused any discussion of the subject with either of them. Ron himself saw to Clonar's needs before going to bed.

A couple of times during the night he got up to take a look and found Clonar sleeping soundly each time, without any evidence of distress. The police guard, who had been called in for another shift, was unhappy about the whole thing.

"That's a queer-looking bird you got there, Ronnie," he said. "Where did you pick him up anyway?"

"Personal friend from India. You know, a fakir—one of those guys that can climb a rope suspended from thin air. You be good to him or he'll conjure up a snake that will wrap around your ears."

In the morning Ron personally prepared breakfast for Clonar. There would be no more raw hamburger, he promised himself. The thought of it made his own stomach roll slightly, but it seemed to have done what needed to be done for Clonar.

He chose a sample of everything he could think of that Clonar might be willing or able to eat, concentrating on the protein foods. A couple of fried eggs with large strips of lean bacon, milk, and some white beans left over from the night before. These he thought should be heavy enough on the protein to satisfy Clonar.

The boy was awake and cheery when Ron entered the room. He looked with interest at the tray of food and examined the dishes and utensils closely. He placed the glass of milk to his hps and drank half the contents without stopping.

It was as good a time as any to continue their English lessons, Ron thought. He pointed to the items of food.

"Eggs," he said.

Clonar responded eagerly. "Eggs."

Ron gave the specific name of each item and then the general names of classes and groups as he had done the previous day. Clonar caught on rapidly. And once he learned a word, he seemed not to forget it or the manner of its usage.

Ron's parents and Francie were preparing for Sunday school, but Ron wanted to continue the language lesson. Dr. Smithers dropped in as the Barrons were leaving for church.

"How's the patient doing?" he asked.

He applied the stethoscope to Clonar's chest—not because he could tell anything specific about the physiology of Clonar, but for purposes of comparison with yesterday's condition.

The heart beat seemed a little slower. Respiration was slower and more even. The temperature remained as high as ever.

"The hamburger treatment looks like it worked," he said. "Maybe I should try that on some of my other patients. Clonar looks like a new man today."

"Do you think he can stand it if we push him on the English learning?"

"Get him to tell you the moment he feels like it's too much. I think he probably has excellent sensitivity for such matters, much as animals do—and as most humans badly need.

"I'll be getting on to church. Dr. Hamilton said that if I don't show up there once in a while he's going to announce my funeral. I'll drop by again this afternoon."

Ron called Anne then, and she got her family to drop her off on their way to church. As rapidly as Clonar could absorb it, they fed him words and phrases, quickly passing from nouns only to more difficult concepts of verbs and other parts of speech.

Within an hour Clonar was able to speak in simple sentences. By the time the family returned from church he could use astonishingly complex phrasing.

Anne glanced at her watch as she heard the arrival of Ron's family. Within a few moments her own arrived.

"I hate to leave now, but I'm afraid they'll send me to an orphanage if I stay away all day," she said.

"Stay for lunch," said Ron. "Ask them, anyway."

Anne obtained permission, and after lunch they drove hard again to break down the communication barrier surrounding Clonar. Ron raided his father s library of stacks of reference books, particularly those on astronomy and aircraft, and his own books on spaceflight.

He concentrated on the vocabulary of these things and then began to press questions upon Clonar.

"Can you tell us where you came from?" he said.

"Yes, I think so," said Clonar slowly. "Give me your books."

He turned the pages of the astronomy books, glancing at the star maps and the pictures of distant island universes.

"This," he said suddenly, jabbing his finger at a page. "This is my home."

Ron stared. Clonar was pointing to a magnificent Mount Wilson photo of the Great Nebula of Andromeda.

Ron breathed deeply before he spoke. "A million fight-years—" he whispered.

That meant that not only did Clonar's people have spaceflight, but also that they could exceed the velocity of fight. How far ahead of Earth science they must be!

"Why did you come here?" asked Ron after a time. "To find—" said Clonar, groping for the right word. "To find-"

"Explore?" suggested Ron. And then he gave a definition of the word in terms of those that Clonar already knew.

Clonar nodded. "Yes, I think so. Explore is the word."

"Did you intend to communicate with Earthmen?"

"No. Our ships, which you have sometimes seen, gave us a report of your difficulties and wars. Our commanders said it would not be wise to let ourselves be known to you. But now that I have met you," he added gently, "I think that they were wrong."

"Was your ship alone—or were there others who may be able to take you back home?"

"There were others. My father was in command of this ship. It was assigned some final details in four solar systems of this sector of the Galaxy. The fleet commander knew that much, but as far as I know, the crash came so quickly that no word could be sent of our exact location.

"I am not sure of the cause of the crash. Everyone else, including my father and brother, was killed. The only reason I survived was that I was strapped in the sleeping net because for several days I had worked long overtime on a special project. I went to the communications room at once, but it was crushed so that I could not even get in, and there was no power to operate the equipment. There is no way of ever letting them know I am alive—and there is almost no chance that they could find me, even if they wished to spend time on such a search. I am alone, and I will have to make my home with you for the rest of my life.

"It's not easy to say this, Ron and Anne. You can't know what it's like to be lost at such distance from home. You have offered me friendliness. I have to ask you to help me find a way to live among your people."

"Don't worry about that!" said Ron. "One more thing I'd like to know—about Pete. Can you talk with him?"

Clonar smiled and glanced at the shaggy dog on the floor. "Pete and I understand each other," he said. "We have on our world a form of communication. It's like—" he stopped, fumbling for a word.

"Telepathy?" said Anne. "We don't have it, but we think there are possible means of minds communicating with each other directly without speech."

"That's it. I can't do it with you. We can do it in special instances, and always with animals of intelligence such as Pete's. As soon as I left the ship I felt out for intelligent minds. His was the first I found, and through him I knew that you were friendly. He can accept thoughts only in the form of very simple concepts as a whole, you understand, but that was enough for what I needed."

"It was plenty!" said Ron. "That hamburger saved your life, according to Dr. Smithers."

"Yes, I think it did."

Clonar paused. "There is one favor that I must ask now. My father and brother—I need to take care of them. Will you help?"

"Sure, we will. What do you want to do?" "Put them in the— Make a hole in the planet and cover their death." "Bury them?" "You do the same thing?"

Ron nodded. "As soon as you wish to go, we will help you, but don t you think you should rest another day or two until you are better?"

"Yes," Clonar said. "I think I should." He lay back on the pillows in sudden weariness as if he hadn't realized his own exhaustion. He closed his eyes a moment and then looked up at them. "I'm sure my commanders were wrong," he said.

Chapter 5 Under Guard

noLONEL MIDDLETON arrived early Monday morning. He was a small man with a precise mustache and ■ fussy mannerisms that kept his hands in constant J motion.

Mr. Barron went alone with him to the wreckage of the saucership. Ron wanted to accompany them, but his father suggested it would be better for the Colonel to form his own opinion and estimation of the ship's value. They left without even introducing him to Clonar.

Clonar seemed in exuberant spirits when he awoke that morning. His first request was to get out of bed.

It was wonderful to see him looking so well, Ron thought. His vitality seemed incredible in bringing such rapid recovery from the weakness and shock of only two days ago.

The deep brown color seemed to be fading also,

47

verifying Dr. Smithers' opinion that it was a burn of some type. He asked Clonar about it.

"Color? Brown?" said Clonar. They laughed together, for this was the way their speech went. They had reached a point of considerable fluency, and Clonar's grasp of idioms was swift. But every third or fourth sentence brought them to a brick wall in the form of some word Ron used, or Clonar needed, which had to be explained or supplied.

After much discussion, Clonar agreed. "I was burned. My normal color is about like yours."

"But will there be other harm?" Ron described the effects of atomic radiation burns.

"We don't use that kind of energy in our ships. Long ago we developed secondary kinds, out of the primitive type you mention. Their radiations do not have the same deadening effect upon our persons. I will be white in a few days."

He stood up and stretched in the morning sunlight. The muscles rippled across his broad chest and shoulders. What a man he'd be on the Longview football team, Ron thought!

He smiled to himself at the thought of Clonar in one of his high-school classes. Clonar could probably make a good many of the Ph.D.'s in the country look like kindergarten kids.

"Clothes are the problem now," he said.

"Clothes?"

Ron touched the T shirt he had on. He estimated Clonar as about two inches taller than his own six foot height, and about twenty-five pounds heavier. Ron considered himself no slouch in the muscle department, but he admired Clonar's bulging biceps and thick layer of chest muscles.

"You might be able to get into my T shirts," he said. "But shoes and trousers are something else again."

With his mother s sewing tape, he measured Clonar. He estimated shoe size by comparison with his own. Then he phoned an order to Garman's Department Store, which they agreed to deliver after lunch.

Clonar donned his own knee-length shorts and the moccasins, and one of Ron s T shirts to go down to breakfast.

Mrs. Barron had been introduced to Clonar the day before, and her insistent demands that he be removed had been overcome temporarily merely by being ignored.

Clonar entered the kitchen and spoke, as Ron had so carefully taught him to do. "Good morning, Mrs. Barron."

She looked up from the pan of eggs on the stove. For a moment Ron saw a wavering hostility on her face, and then it seemed to break. He sensed that she saw in Clonar's face some of the vigor and courage that she loved in the boys of Ron's generation, and some of the agony of homesickness that filled his heart.

She forced a smile to her Hps. "Good morning, Clonar—and Ron. Breakfast will be ready in a moment. Your father and the Colonel have gone already."

Ron breathed easier. "Yeah, I know. I talked with Dad. We decided to be lazy this morning. Where's Francie?"

"She's out, too."

Ron heard the sudden roll of skates on the walk in front of the house.

He glanced at Clonar. This was the way it was on Earth, he thought. You had a family, and you loved them, and they loved you, and after school and maybe the army you'd go away and there'd be a family of your own. This was the sum of living, and it was all a guy could ask for. Even the great ships and the exploration of a thousand alien planets could never take the place of this. He wondered if that's the way it was with Clonar. But it was not the time to ask, for Clonar's eyes were staring, turned inward upon distant, private worlds that Earthmen couldn't see.

After breakfast they went out to Ron's lab and shop building. Ron showed him everything, from the remains of the first chemistry set he'd got at nine, to the fine machine tools used in building the hot-rod.

He showed him collections that had been gathered sporadically over a period of eight years, the butterflies, the rocks, and the precious meteorites. Then he explained how he had detected the fall of the ship and set out to search for it.

Clonar expressed deep interest in all these things, and Ron explained in detail how the meteor detector worked when a moving spot of light was picked up by a mirror, which activated an optical homing device that centered on the spot and followed its flight.

"Actually, there have to be two of these to plot a line of fall," said Ron. "The other is at Anne's house, and data from it comes over here by a small radio transmitter/' "Radio?"

Ron grinned. They were off again. He showed Clonar his amateur transmitter and receiver and explained its workings in great detail.

"I don't get much time to use this any more, but I have a schedule with some other guys around the country once a week. Every Tuesday night from seven to nine o'clock we get together for a rag-chew and exchange traffic."

Clonar smiled and held up his hand. "One word at a time, please!"

Ron explained the ham lingo, but Clonar's expression seemed suddenly intent and far away from the things being spoken.

"Could this—could this reach my other ships?" he said.

"How far might they be?"

"Perhaps as much as a light-year."

Ron shook his head. "The best we've done yet is bounce a wave off the moon. How can you communicate over such distance? We couldn't do it with these transmitters. Our waves travel only at the speed of light. Do yours exceed that?"

"We have a wave that you evidently haven't discovered. Its speed of propagation approaches infinity."

"Can you build the equipment?"

"I don't know enough to construct and calibrate a generator of those waves. If I only had that much, perhaps I could reach them as close as they are—but the equipment aboard ship must be completely destroyed from what I saw of the communications chamber."

He shook his head slowly in abandonment of the hope he'd briefly held. He touched the panels of Ron's transmitter appreciatively. "It must be—fun, anyway."

As quickly, he changed the subject. "Can we go out to the ship this afternoon—to bury them?"

"As soon as the clothes come. Won't there be many besides those of your family? Won't we need help to take care of them all?"

"Yes, but for my father and my brother I would like to have only you present."

"Of course."

Clonar leaned against the transmitting desk, his eyes staring out the window. He continued speaking almost as if to himself.

"Many spacemen go out and are never heard from again. We understand that is the price for knowledge of distant worlds. Life goes on at home.

"But for me, it's as if I were the last one left alive on the planet, and all the rest of those I know are gone. Can you imagine such a thing, Ron?"

"I can try, but none of us can really feel it who haven't experienced it. I'll do everything I can to make Earth your home, but I know we can never replace the things you have lost forever."

"If you can understand that," said Clonar, "then it will be easier. And I will hope that someday your mother will understand and like me."

Until almost noon they talked, always working toward enlargement of Clonar's vocabulary. A few minutes before twelve there was a sudden sharp buzz from a gadget on the wall. It buzzed again—three, four times. Sharp and hard.

"That's Mom," said Ron. "She complained about having to yell out the back door. Three buzzes mean she's mad about something. Four indicates a medium tornado."

"Tornado?"

Laughing, they moved toward the house.

Mrs. Barron was already at the kitchen door when they left the lab.

"Ron, come here quick and tell me what this means!"

She held the door aside while they entered, then marched past them to the front window of the house.

"Look out there!"

Ron stared through the window. Parked at either side of the house were a couple of jeeps, and in each was an armed MP with Air Force insignia on his uniform.

"Mrs. Peabody called me on the telephone a few minutes ago," said Ron s mother, "and told me she tried to enter the house. Those two imbeciles out there refused to let her in without a pass!"

Understanding swept over Ron in a smothering wave.

"Middleton!" he said in disbelief. "You'd expect them to throw a guard around the ship, but no one but Middleton would put a guard at our house."

"I don't understand."

"Have you called Dad?"

"I tried. He wasn't in the office."

"Maybe he's still with Middleton. But wherever they are, this is the Colonel's doing."

Clonar regarded the situation with a puzzled frown. "What is it, Ron? I don't understand."

For once Ron was at a loss to try to make the stranger understand. He was aware that Clonar's world was unified and knew no such things as large armies and mountains of weapons for inter-species fighting. Neither was there crime or insanity.

"They are guards," he said, feeling the hopelessness of any term he might choose.

"Guards?"

"To keep out any people who might want to harm you."

Clonar's eyes looked startled. It had been the wrong word again.

"I mean there are people who might think you know something valuable to them, and they might try to use force to get it from you."

Clonar was bewildered. He didn't understand at all. Dismayed, he turned again to look at the jeeps and the unhappy MP's, and the slow changing knot of passers-by who stared.

"I guess they've got some in the back alley, too," said Ron.

"We can't put up with this," his mother said irritably. "We've got to—"

She stopped abruptly with a glance at Clonar.

"Please, Mother," said Ron. "It's Middleton's fault. Of all the dumb desk-jockeys in the Air Force I don't see why Dad had to ring in Middleton on this. They've got officers who could understand this thing."

"What will I tell Mrs. Peabody and the rest of my friends? That they have to get a pass from the FBI before they can come in our home?"

"Well get it straightened out, Mother. We don't have to put up with everything this dumb Middleton is going to think up from now on.

"Let's forget it for the moment, huh? How about some lunch?"

"It's all ready. I was just about to call you."

"Thanks, Mother. Clonar and I are going back out to his ship this afternoon—if those jeep riders don't try to keep us in the house."

As they finished the last sandwich, the delivery truck from the department store drove up. From the corner of his eye, Ron saw the driver get out and be turned back by the MP's.

Rage gathered in his throat as he raced for the front door.

"Wait a minute!" he called.

The driver turned back as he ran down the walk. The MP's closed in on him.

"Nobody goes in the house," said one of them.

The driver looked at Ron, ignoring them. "What goes on with these meat-heads at your house, Ron?"

"Don't blame these boys. They are just doing their job. It's the fault of the chief meat-head on up the line. We'll get it straightened out. You got the pants and other things?"

"I've got to see what's in the package," said the MP.

Silently, Ron opened it for inspection. "I'm going out in a few minutes," he said. "I hope nobody's going to try to stop me."

"You and your friend?"

"Me and my friend."

"Not without one of us following you."

He turned away, considering the ease of ditching a jeep with his hot-rod.

A voice spoke suddenly out of the congestion of passers-by on the sidewalk. "Ron! Wait a minute—I want to talk to you."

It was Dan Gibbons, the local AP man. Ron knew him from winning the speed runs on the East Flats and getting his picture on the AP wire through Dan.

"What goes on here?" said Dan. "Anything I can make a story of? An ordinary citizen doesn't have MP's sitting around in jeeps in front of his house and keeping people out for nothing."

Ron hesitated. Sooner or later the story would get out, and nobody would get it any straighter than Dan, which would be best for Clonar and everyone else.

But he hesitated saying anything until he had conferred with his father about it.

He nodded slowly. "There's a story, all right—and a good one. I'll give it to you just as soon as I can, Dan, but it's not ready to break yet."

"Just a hint. It must be something good. Flying saucers. Little green men from Venus. You dabble in things like that—it would be just up your line."

Ron felt a sudden cold chill shrouding him from head to toe. And then he realized with relief that

Dan's words were just a joking guess. How surprised he would be when he found how close to the truth it was.

"Not now. Later, I may need your help." "I'll do whatever I can if you'll let me in on what's up-

"You can count on a call," promised Ron.

When Clonar was dressed, it would have been difficult to tell him from a student of Longview High, Ron thought. His skin was already the shade of a good suntan. The only strangeness that could not be hidden was his hair, but combed and oiled a bit it had a black sheen that hid the texture except at very close inspection. And there were the six-fingered hands.

"You'll do," said Ron approvingly. "Let's be on our way."

They wore rough slacks for the job ahead. With shovels and picks loaded into the rear compartment of the car, they started off.

A jeep motor started as they made preparations, and the little car coughed energetically after the hot-rod.

Through the town and along the Flats Ron watched the jeep in his mirror. The longer he watched the more irritated he became with the presumptuous arrogance of Colonel Middleton.

"I may be sticking my neck way out," he muttered, "but I'm going to lose that monkey."

Clonar looked at him quizzically, wondering at the exact meaning of that combination of words, but he said nothing as the wind whipped against his face.

The car picked up speed as they climbed through the foothills. It was entirely possible that the accompanying MP did not even know where the ship was. Counting on this, he drove past the point of turn-off on the highway.

He gasped with dismay as he did so. The place was no longer hidden. Two great six-wheelers that had obviously been emptied of tons of equipment were in the clearing. Guards and technicians moved about possessively.

The car roared to a halt and backed around. The jeep driver glanced darkly at Ron, understanding his intended move.

"I wouldn't try to think up any more tricks like that," he said.

Ron drew up and parked beside the trucks. He and Clonar began getting out the shovels.

"I wonder if they have done any harm to—the bodies," murmured Clonar. "Would they do that?"

"I don't know. I suspect we're going to find out a lot of things in the next few minutes."

They moved away toward the trail with the tools. Almost at once, a guard barred their way with leveled rifle.

"There is no entrance to this area. You are on United States Military Preserve."

Ron felt his anger wash away prudence. "What would you be guarding so carefully? Wouldn't be a flying saucer or anything like that, would it?"

The guard's eyes widened. "You'd better move on, fellas."

"Listen! I'm Ron Barron. I found this ship and my

father brought Colonel Middleton to it this morning. This man here is the owner and surviving crewman. You will move aside, if you please, and allow him access to his own property!"

"It may have been his once, bud, but right now you're encroaching on the property of Uncle Sammy. Get moving!"

Chapter 6 Desecration

HLONAR'S face darkened now as he understood the command. His hand shot out and closed upon the

J

guard's wrist. Clonar was swift and powerful, but if the guard had been eager to kill, his bullet would have found Clonar's body. As it was, the gun dropped, the bullet exploding into the ground at their feet.

Instantly, other soldiers, including the jeep driver, rushed up and seized Ron and Clonar.

Ron cried out too late to his friend. "Stop it, Clonar. This won't get us anywhere!"

"It will get you twenty years," snarled the guard, rubbing his crushed wrist.

The jeep driver held Ron with arms pinned behind him. Ignoring his helplessness, Ron blasted at the guard, "Can't you get it through your fat head that this fellow owns that ship? He is the only survivor of

60

its crew. You are the intruders. Tell that to the Colonel from me!"

The guard's angry face was swept with indecision. He looked to the jeep driver. "Is this guy really telling the truth?"

"As far as I know. Hank and I are guarding the house. We've got orders to cover them twenty-four hours a day. It's straight from the Old Man."

"I dunno—I didn't sign up for any of this modern man-from-Mars stuff. I guess I belong to the older generation already. Let's get down there and see what Hornsby has to say about these two guys. It's his baby, anyway."

The MP nudged Ron in the back. "Will you guys be good if we let go?" "Sure."

"You'd better leave those tools here. Just what did you think you were going to do, anyway? Bury the ship?"

"The people in it," said Ron quietly.

The soldiers hesitated. "O.K. But you'll have to see what Hornsby says about it, anyway."

They moved silently through the forest and down the slope toward the bottom of the ravine. Ron felt sick at heart. He should have told no one about the ship's location until he'd had a chance to learn Clonar's wishes. But it was too late now. He could imagine technicians scurrying like pack rats through those sacred corridors.

As they approached the ship, he saw that a hatch had been forced in the top of the vessel. They moved down a short, circular stairway and came to a central area from which corridors radiated like the spokes of a wheel. But only half of these were in existence, the others being shut off by the wrecked portion. Emergency lights had been widely strung by the technicians, and from somewhere came the popping of a small gas engine supplying power.

The guards led them to an adjacent chamber. Inside, a man sat before a desk examining written materials found in the ship. His face was round and smooth and pink, and as he glanced up and saw them approaching its color deepened to a furious red.

"Captain Hornsby—'* the guard began.

"What does this intrusion mean?" the captain demanded. "You were told to deny entrance to all comers."

"Sir, I-"

"Return at once to your post. You will be penalized later for this disobedience of orders. We shall deal with these intruders here."

The two soldiers went out silently and the officer eyed the two boys from head to foot.

"Were you not told that you were trespassing on military preserve?"

For a moment Ron did not speak. He wondered how it was that the moment some men were given uniforms, they disgraced them by dropping all human-ness of thinking. He guessed that Hornsby had once been a minor technical executive of some company, and had stayed on where a captain's bars added to the weight he could throw around.

"Well—what have you to say for yourselves? This intrusion is a serious matter I"

"Mister," said Ron slowly, "who do you suppose this ship belongs to?"

The captain's eyes narrowed and his unpleasant grin showed his teeth set tight. "Shortly, young man, you will no doubt have the privilege of learning how to address an officer. I only wish that I might have the opportunity of teaching you myself! I suppose you are going to tell me that this property of the U. S. Air Force belongs to you?"

"No. Not me. It belongs to my friend, here. He is called Clonar, and he is the only surviving member of the crew which flew this ship from its home world."

For a moment the captain's jaw sagged. But only for a moment. He reached out a hand toward Clonar, his face changing expression with chameleon swiftness. You couldn't win, thought Ron.

"This is a wonderful privilege!" said Hornsby. "Why didn't you tell me at first? The Colonel said you were at the Barron home, and I intended to look you up and invite you out here. I apologize for my rudeness, but you understand how careful we must be."

Clonar remained silent. Hornsby looked at Ron. "I understood you had been quite successful in teaching him English?"

"He understands the language, but the actions of Earthmen he sometimes finds very baffling."

"Ah, yes, of course! The customs and habits will naturally be different. But I am sure we can understand each other on a technical level."

Heturned to Clonar. "This ship interests me greatly, but I havesome suggestions to offer regarding the aerodynamical construction—"

Ronbroke in. "Captain Hornsby,this ship travels faster than light in outer space."

Fora moment Ron thought he had delivered an effective blow. Hornsby was silent and seemed, actually, to deflate just a trifle. Then he struck out again at a simmering pace.

"It'sunbelievable! Is it actually true?" he asked of Clonar.

Clonarnodded. Ron felt sick at the expression on his face.

"It'sincredible that they didn't bring you down here in the first place to tell us what you know of these matters!" said Hornsby. "But, as military commander of this project, I command your services to explain the power plant and other militarily useful devices of this vessel."

Ronopened his mouth, but Clonar signaled him to silence.

"I shallbe glad to," said Clonar. "We may begin at once, if you wish."

TheCaptain nodded, and stalked out bearing a flashlight for use in still-dark corridors. He led the way as if he, not Clonar, were conducting the exploration of the ship.

"Youdon't have to put up with this," Ron whispered as they hung back, "I know wecan get Hornsby off our necks, in time."

"It'sall right. I just want to make sure the power plant was destroyed. But I don't understand, Ron— I don't understand this man and the others we have met. They are not like you. What is the matter with them?"

"They are afraid," said Ron, "afraid of everything that they do not understand. That is true of many earth people."

Hornsby seemed suddenly aware that he had marched off ahead of them and waited impatiently while they caught up.

"It is the power plant we are most interested in, Mr. Clonar," he said. "We understand, of course, that it is atomic in nature, but we need the technological details to understand its construction and operation. Were you in a position to become familiar with these?"

"Yes. I was assigned to plant maintenance during the flight."

"That is good," said Hornsby. "I was afraid you might have been a bug collector or something of the sort attached to the expedition." He laughed in halfhearted joviality. "We always send out such with our own expeditions, you know."

Clonar led the way on down the corridor, flashing the light that Hornsby surrendered to him. The corridor almost paralleled the edge of the wreckage, Ron sensed. Clonar slowed. The walls seemed distorted here, and then the light shone on the end that was simply pinched together.

"I think the next corridor back will show us what we want."

Clonar led them to one of the concentric, connecting hallways they had just passed. There, they passed along its curved route for a short distance and daylight appeared ahead and below.

Clonar stood at the ragged edge of the floor and scanned the light over the ruin. It looked as if here had once been a great chamber filled with vast machines. It extended from where they stood to the center of the vessel at the right, and an equal distance on the other side. The skeletal sticks of main members hung to the floor of the ravine.

"There's the power plant, Captain Hornsby," said Clonar, a bitter smile showing in the half-darkness. "There's not a bolt that anyone could identify. All that is left of the ship consists of living and storage quarters and navigation and control rooms. I fear you will find little of interest in my ship, Captain."

For a long time Hornsby seemed to be studying the face of Clonar. "I hope you are not deliberately attempting to conceal items of military value to us," he said thinly. "We intend to go over this ship with a fine-toothed comb and analyze every metal and every mechanical device. It would be to your advantage not to attempt to conceal anything."

"We can finish our tour through the ship and you can see for yourself."

"Proceed."

Ron had not realized the tremendous thing this ship could be. It had an immense volume that left him feeling completely lost as Clonar led them through the maze of corridors.

He saw at close hand the chambers of various colorings that he had observed on the day of discovery.

They were not harsh, and their mingling gave out a sense of pleasure and exuberance that seemed to say that Clonars race was of creatures who enjoyed life to the fullest.

Clonar showed them endless storerooms stocked with specimen materials from hundreds of alien planets. He exhibited stores of photographs of planets that no Terrestrial telescopes had even seen. They showed strange and alien forms of life, nightmare creatures inhabiting worlds whose surface and atmosphere would be instant death to Earthmen exposed to it.

There were laboratories in every field of science useful to such an exploring party.

Ron wished with all his heart that he might have taken such a tour alone with Clonar before anyone else found out about the ship. There was mystery and wisdom here in such profusion that it made his throat ache with longing to know of these things and the worlds from which they came.

But Hornsby was plainly bored by anything that he could not instantly classify as a "weapon." And technicians were everywhere.

During more than half the tour Ron caught a note of increasing agitation in Clonar's voice and manner. By the time they were through he was visibly upset.

And then he spoke of the matter. "What have you done with my people who were found dead within the ship?" he demanded harshly. "Where have you taken them?"

"That was the first thing we took care of, naturally.

We had to clean up the ship. It was in pretty horrible condition."

They were back near the central chamber now and Hornsby approached a door they had not entered previously. Inside, they saw a half dozen men working intently over benches. And then Clonar got a glimpse of the interior of that room and what the men were doing. He uttered a great cry in his own tongue, which split the air within the room and turned the heads of all who were there.

He rushed in, shoving aside those who blocked him, moving from bench to bench. Behind him, Ron also saw. The bodies of those who had been killed in the crash were neatly laid out, and were being immersed in preservative for study.

Ron felt something sick and cold within him. Then from the far end of the room came another cry of rage in an alien tongue. Clonar stopped beside a figure torn and mangled and in part decayed—but now carefully prepared like some specimen animal.

"Ron—Ronl" called Clonar, and now there was a great sob in his voice. "Ron—come here—"

Ron raced toward him and stood by the container over which he leaned.

"My father," he sobbed in rage. "My father—and here is my brother—"

He turned slowly. With the majestic rage that fell upon him, every man in the room except Hornsby felt something of the magnitude of the desecration they had committed. Suddenly Clonar picked up a metal bar from a near-by table and hurled it down the length of the room. A man fell as it caught him across the side of his head. Ron cried out to Clonar.

Clonar was beyond hearing now. He rushed toward the nearest man, picked him up bodily and hurled him across the room. Even Ron gasped at the awesome power of those muscles he had admired in Clonar.

Hornsby vanished out the door, but the others gathered for a rush, picking up such weapons as they could find about them.

"Stop it, Clonar! They'll kill you!" Ron cried. Clonar met them headlong. He seized a club of packing case lumber from the nearest man and smashed it against the man's head. The others hurled themselves upon him in a single overwhelming mass, and bore him down.

For a moment that mass struggled like some writhing, shapeless animal. From its midst came the bellowing roar of Clonar's rage in his native language.

Then suddenly that roar was still. The mass was quiet. One by one, figures began to disengage themselves. When they all stood up, Clonar lay alone on the floor, his face a mass of blood and bruises.

Ron knelt beside him. He was still breathing, and once his head rolled from side to side in the pain of his injuries.

Hornsby appeared in the doorway, a gun in his hand. He lowered it as he grasped the situation.

"Good work, men. Take him out."

Ron stood up, his bitter eyes holding them. "Good work!" he said. "You can be proud of this day's work—

youve beaten and robbed a man who came across light-years of space. A stranger, accidentally thrown upon our hospitality. His dead you have pickled like freaks from the bottom of the sea—the dead of a race that had possibly reached the stars before ours had left the caves. You should be very proud for—"

"Shut up!" snarled Hornsby. "Shut up, and get out."

"What do you think you are going to do with him?"

"We'll take care of him, all right! Well patch him up and give him a taste of what it means to encroach on a military preserve. The best thing you can do, kid, is get out of here just as fast as you can. Ill give you exactly five minutes to be up the hill and on your way."

Chapter 7 Desperate Chance

n EORGE BARRON was already home when Ron arrived late in the afternoon. The MP's and their jeeps I] were gone, too. Ron slumped wearily into a chair in the living room, across from his father. He asked about the guards.

"I took care of that as soon as your mother got word to me," said Mr. Barron. "Colonel Middleton is, shall we say—a little overzealous in the performance of his duties.

"As soon as he got one look at the ship this morning he called the Base and ordered truckloads of equipment and technicians. I didn't know about the guard business until your mother phoned."

" 'Overzealous' is a mild way to describe Middleton and some of his men," said Ron.

In detail he told the story of what had happened at the ship.

George Barron's face became incredulous as he heard it.

"What land of man is that Hornsby?" he exclaimed. "The same kind as Middleton—a blundering, stupid—" "Ronl"

He looked up to see his mother standing in the doorway near him.

"I'm sorry, Mother, but you didn't see what they did to Clonar. And the way they treated the remains of his father and brother I You'd feel just as bitter about it if you had seen it, too."

"That does seem dreadful," she murmured. "Surely they didn't need to do that!"

"What happened finally to Clonar?" asked George Barron.

"I'm not sure. They made me get out of there. Said they were taking him to the VA hospital. He may be dead, for all I know. Dad—won't you do something? Cant you do something?"

"I'm almost ready to believe you had better judgment than I," Mr. Barron admitted grimly. "I'll call Middleton and see what can be done."

Mrs. Barron said, "Let me fix you something to eat. You look exhausted and dinner will be quite a while yet.

"Thanks, Mom. A couple of sandwiches and milk will do fine. And a man-sized piece of that white cake I saw this morning."

Ron ate slowly, wondering what had become of Clonar. Wondering if Clonar would become so embittered by this experience that he would be full of hate for all Earthmen, including himself. When he was on the last of the cake, his father came in and sat across from him.

"I got Middleton, finally," George Barron said. "I think you can see Clonar in the morning. He's in the VA hospital, all right.

"But the Colonel is bitter about your going up there this afternoon. It didn't help any."

"Clonar merely wanted to bury his dead. He had the right to do that!"

"Of course he did. It's just another example of the terrible misunderstanding that takes place when people fail to communicate properly with one another."

"It's an example," said Ron bitterly, "of what happens when men like Middleton and Hornsby are put in positions of a little authority."

"I can't argue with you there, either. But Middleton said they are sending a general out from Washington to take charge. He'll bring a large group of scientists to investigate the ship and Clonar. They may arrive tomorrow or the next day."

"Will they let Clonar come back here?"

"I don't think so. Middleton says he's going to remain in custody of the military until they get all the information possible from him. He says Clonar is a national resource."

"Resource! We've got to get him out of there. You know Senator Clauson well enough to ask him to exert some pressure—and you know Representative Terrence pretty well, too."

"I can try—I will try, because I agree that Clonar's rights have been violated. But I fear that Middleton's view of him as a national resource will be a widely held one.

"In times like these, when we're concerned with rights on a global scale, there is sometimes the danger of forgetting the individual. The very struggle defeats its own purpose. But I'll try. I promise you that, Ron."

Mrs. Barron came in as Ron finished putting the dishes away.

"I almost forgot," she said. "Anne called and said you'd been neglecting to give her reports on Clonar. I think she'd like to have you come over. She mentioned a swim this evening."

The mention of Anne's name was like the sudden drawing of a curtain revealing the ordinary life of Longview, from which he seemed to have departed so long ago. The preoccupation with Clonar had almost blotted out all normal considerations of living.

"I promised her I'd call her," he said. "I should have done it this afternoon. I'll get my swim trunks and drive over there."

"She and the rest of the gang will already be at Vogler's Pool," his mother said. "Anne said you should join them if you wanted to, and if you got home in time."

"O.K. Thanks, Mom."

After starting out he drove slowly. He didn't actually want to go swimming. He didn't feel much like seeing the rest of the gang and taking part in their horseplay.

He did want to see Anne, however, and talk to her about Clonar. He felt as if just talking it over with her would remove some of the muddy enigma that clouded the problem now.

As the throaty purr of Ron's car was heard in the parking area among the other hot-rods and jalopies, a dozen loud yells were hurled his way from the bathers in the pool. He climbed out and waved as he ran toward the bathhouse.

"Hurry up," Stan Clark yelled. "Anne's about to pine away."

Ron grinned faintly.

Then another voice called, "Where's your man from Mars? Why didn't you bring him along?"

He stopped cold, hesitated without turning, and then resumed his walk at a slow pace. So Anne must have told them! He'd forgotten to warn her not to. But he'd supposed she would see the obvious necessity of that.

An angry resentment grew in him because of Anne's indiscretion. He dressed quickly for the pool. Outside, he plunged in and swam to the spot where she sat on the bank kicking her feet in the water.

"Hi, Ron!"

With a rush of water, he drew himself up beside her. She said, "I heard you and Clonar went out to the ship this morning. What happened?"

"Anne, you haven't told them all about Clonar, have you?"

"Shouldn't I? He'll be with us from now on." "No, you shouldn't. Not yet, anyway. They can't be made to understand in a few minutes. There's this

man-from-Mars stuff that some half-wit yakked about when I came in. Clonar can't stand that sort of thing. You know that."

"I'm sorry, Ron. Rut I wonder if you're not wrong, I don't know of anyone more willing or able to accept and understand Clonar than this bunch from Long-view High. Think a minute. Wouldn't he fit in here? Wouldn't he be understood by Stan, and Marj, and Joe, and Harry, and Nancy, and all the rest? Even Con, the 'man-from-Mars' half-wit, could get it through his thick skull, I'll bet."

As they sat talking, those whose names she had mentioned and a dozen others began to slowly congregate about them at the edge of the pool.

"What is this that Anne's been telling us?" said Stan. "She said you actually found a ship, a flying saucer, and somebody was still alive in it. What's the story?"

Ron hesitated. The anger he had felt toward Anne a moment ago began to die away. Perhaps she was right, he thought. Clonar had been introduced to the adult world with disastrous consequences. If Ron couldn't make his own friends understand, then there was little hope for Clonar.

He glanced into the faces about him. Mentally, he placed them beside the Middletons and the Hornsbys of the world. He and his gang were still awkward and unsure of themselves, although their loud mouths and cocky glances would never betray them. But they had no preposterous self-importances to build up. They had not yet reached the stage where you felt the need to grab for the man above while standing on the neck of the one below. These guys and gals could understand Clonar if anyone could, he thought. And Clonar could learn to understand them.

After a long pause, he nodded. "Anne's right."

Then briefly and sincerely he outlined what had happened, including the day's tragedy. When he finished there was no snickering about men from Mars. And looking into their faces, there never would be, he thought warmly.

"What are they going to do with Clonar?" asked Stan. "Keep him locked up for the rest of his life? That's a heck of a thing to do."

"It is," said Ron, "a heck of a thing. It makes your stomach roll over just thinking about it. Somehow, we're going to get him out.

"But when we do, he'll be coming back here. He's going to have to live with us, you and me. Here in this town. He's going to have to learn how to spend his life with people like us. He's had a rotten deal so far. I'd like to ask every one of you, personally, to show him that isn't the kind of deal he's going to get from here on out.

"You can figure it for yourselves. He's lost everything he ever had. He'll never see his family again. Put yourselves in his shoes, and see how you'd like to be treated."

The faces were sober. Some of them were a little angry even, that he should have thought it necessary to deliver them a lecture. But they understood.

"Bring him around," said George Hamilton, who was vice-president of the Mercury Club. "We'll give him a square deal. The guy who doesn't will have to answer to the rest of us. Thanks for giving us the dope, Ron."

As if by mutual consent, they edged away again, churning the water, leaving Ron alone with Anne.

"You see," she said, "you were wrong about them."

"I think I was. I'm sorry I got sore. How about a swim before we have to leave?"

"O.K. Race you out to the float!" She flipped into the water as she spoke the words.

He felt better the next morning as he and Anne and Pete started for the hospital on the north side of Long-view. It was a warm, sunny day with white fragments of cloud drifting swiftly in the upper winds.

"Has Clonar told you anything about his world?" said Anne. "I wonder if it's anything like this one."

"Yes, he's told me quite a bit. Physically, the planet is much like this one. It would have to be, to produce a species so much like our own.

"The gravity is almost the same, about eight or ten percent greater, which accounts for Clonar's physical development. The atmosphere is much like ours, with a little higher percentage of nitrogen. There are chlorophyll-producing plants, and large bodies of water, and a sky very much like our own."

"How about the rotation of the planet?"

"It moves about a much whiter sun than ours, but at a greater distance. Both the day and the year are longer there, Clonar says. As near as he can guess, his day is about half again as long as ours."

"It must be hard for him to adapt to ours."

"No. He's used to the irregularity of space, where they become rather careless about length of days and nights. And he's a pretty adaptable guy, anyway—provided you don't try to adapt him by locking him up."

The hospital was a huge red building, still new-smelling. The Colonel had made arrangements, but there were many minutes of red tape unwinding before they finally got in to see Clonar,

He was propped up, with his head bandaged. One eye was covered, but he smiled all over his face, as far as they could see, when they entered.

"Ron! Anne!" he exclaimed.

Ron grasped the six-fingered hand and slapped his fist against Clonar's shoulder. "They treating you all right here, boy?"

"They treat me fine—except they keep me here. I shouldn't have become so angry, but I felt so sick at the sight of what they had done. Do you know if they will go ahead as they planned?"

"I'm terribly sorry that happened. My father got them to bury your people. You must believe me. All of our people are not like—those who—"

"Perhaps not," said Clonar sadly. "But I can't live on your world, Ron. I couldn't endure it for a lifetime. Even if all your people were as kind as you and Anne have been, it would be a lonely place."

He shut his eyes and gripped Ron's hand tightly. A bright pool formed in the corner of the one unband-aged eye and broke and swif dy rolled across his cheek.

"I wish we could do something about it," Ron said. "There's nothing on Earth we can do to get you back home."

Clonar opened his eyes, his voice steady once more. "Ron, when we were in the ship yesterday we passed the communications room. Maybe you remember there was a technician burning away some of the collapsed walls to open the corridors and rooms beyond?"

"Yeah, I think I know the spot you mean."

"He had almost opened the communications room. I thought the whole interior had been crushed, but yesterday it looked as if half the room had been merely pinched together, like the corridor, and that the equipment was almost unharmed! I said nothing then because I wanted to ask you if you thought there might be a chance of using it."

"To reach the rest of your fleet?"

"I'm sure I could, if I could get it in working order."

Ron considered silently. He knew Colonel Middleton and he knew Hornsby. Neither would let Clonar take anything from the ship, nor would they let him have access to anything which might enable him to leave, since they hoped to pick his brains of every bit of advanced knowledge he possessed, and there was little chance that the new officer in charge would be different.

He shook his head. "They'd never let us." "That's what I thought. Has Hornsby started tearing the equipment apart already?" "He may have."

"Look, Ron! The one instrument I must have is the wave generator. This produces waves of near infinite velocity of propagation. If I had the generator, your equipment at home could power it sufficiently to catch

the fleet if they come anywhere near this solar system. But without the generator, I'm lost.

"Would it be possible for you to get aboard the ship at night and take the things I need? Every hour counts, because the fleet may abandon this sector and go beyond the range of any transmitter I could put together."

"That's a big order," said Ron soberly. "Heaven only knows what they will do to me if I'm caught."

"Of course," said Clonar. "Forget it," he added quickly. "Already I have caused you enough trouble."

"No—it isn't that," said Ron. "It's a desperate chance, with almost zero odds on success. But I'll try, Clonar. If that's your only chance to go home, I've got to try."

Chapter 8 0««^

I

HEY were quiet in the hospital room for a long time. And then Ron said, "Where will I find this instrument? How will I know what to take?" Clonar rummaged in a drawer by the bed and drew out a pencil and pad. "I'll draw a picture."

Carefully, he sketched the radial and concentric corridors. Then he drew the communications room, indicating the portions he'd observed to be crushed. A third sketch showed details of the panels on which the instrument was mounted.

"It is fastened to the racks with snaps which can be dislodged by making half a turn. Cut away any wires which connect to other parts of the panel. I wish you could get it, but I don't want you to put yourself in danger because of me."

Ron folded the papers and put them into his pocket. He had to admit to himself that he didn't know how he

was going to cany out the task, but he had to give it a try.

"Have they talked to you much?" asked Anne. "Do they try to question you about the ship?"

"Somebody came in this morning and asked a lot of silly questions. I didn't answer and finally he went away. I don't see why they make such a fuss over my ship. If there is anything useful there to your people, I would gladly give it. But they rush at me demanding the principle of this or that. They're crazy!"

"No, Clonar, only frightened because of the danger of war."

Clonar exhaled heavily. "How primitive your world must be! Our history tells of such things, but they happened so many generations ago that I cannot imagine how it must be."

"But isn't there something you can do," said Anne, "to teach us how to prevent war? Something your people have learned out of their long history?"

Clonar shook bis head, "My people have been without this problem for so long that there is nothing I know which can heal such sickness."

At noon they were asked to leave. As they drove back home they remained silent most of the way, thinking about the request Clonar had made and how Ron was going to keep his promise.

"Are you going to tell your father about getting the gadget for Clonar?" Anne finally asked.

"I can't do that. He'd never approve, and I wouldn't blame him. It's a fool thing to try to do, but Clonar's situation is desperate. I'm afraid Hornsby will tear up everything in sight to see what makes it tick. Provided he hasn't done it already. I'll have to go it alone in that case."

"How are you going to get out of the house without them asking questions?"

"I hadn't even got that far in my stewing. I'm working from the other end—what will happen at the ship."

"I'll go with you," said Anne. "We'll tell the folks that we're going to the new show down at the West End."

"Oh, no! I'm not going to ring you in on this. There'll be trouble enough if I get caught alone."

"I don't need to be in on it. I can wait in the car. You'll have to park far away and go on foot. It won't hurt anything if I stay with the car, and you'll have an excuse to get out of the house."

It was logical, he thought, but he hated to bring Anne into any part of the thing.

"Maybe—" he said.

"But how will you get through the guards and into the ship?"

"Well, if the technicians are working at night I'll be sunk, but I'm counting on their not doing that. There'll probably be a ring or two of guards outside, but they won't expect much trouble since the general public doesn't know about the ship. I think I can get through them. Doing it the second time with the instrument will be the tough one. I forgot to ask Clonar how much it weighs. The best way into the ship, I think, would be to climb up through the wrecked section."

"You can't crawl over that jagged stuff in the dark!"

"1*11 put on a couple of pairs of jeans and some heavy gloves."

"Oh, Ron—it seems too impossible. For once, I'm almost in favor of calling it 'quits.'"

"You and me both, Anne. But we'd kick ourselves forever after if it cost Clonar his one chance of getting home."

He pulled up to the curb in front of her house. "Be here in time for the last show!" she said. "Ill be ready."

"O.K. I can't think of any better deal."

His announcement that he and Anne were going out to a show caused no stir at home except Francie's monotonous song that "Ron's going out with his girrrl again—"

He ruffled her hair. "Wait until the boys come after you, kid. Will I give them a rough time if I'm still around!"

He put the heavy gloves and jeans in the car early in the afternoon and changed to them later in the darkness of the evening before driving to Anne's.

The night felt warm as they drove toward the hills. Pete was along, lying on the floor in front of Anne.

"With all these clouds, we won't have a moon," said Anne.

"It would be a break if we got a thunderstorm to cover some of my noise, but we couldn't be that lucky."

Occasional moonlight broke through the low, swirling cloud masses as the car climbed into the bills. The wind picked up as if thunderstorm turbulence were not far away.

Then Ron stopped, more than a mile from the turnoff point. "This will have to be it," he said. "I don't dare drive any closer. I'm going to take Pete with me. If I send him back alone that will mean I want you to bring the car up and I'll meet you near the turn-off. Keep the motor running and have the car turned around. Otherwise, I'll come back here with Pete."

"O.K., Ron," she said quietly. "Do be careful and don't take too many chances. Give it up if you have to."

"Keep track of the time. I shouldn't be gone more than an hour and a half. If it goes beyond two and a half, go back to the house and tell Dad what I've done. The fat will really be in the fire then, but he'll be the only one able to get it out. They'll start wondering why we aren't back from the show if they don't hear from us by then."

He slipped the gloves on his hands, and patted Pete on the head. "Come on, boy. Stick with me and keep quiet."

Silently, the two figures vanished in the dark woods. He wore tennis shoes to deaden his footfall, and was skilled in moving quietly from long days of hunting. Pete had learned well, too. But the most important goal they'd ever had before was a jackrabbit or a deer.

The very magnitude of their objective now seemed to load his feet with clumsiness that cracked every dry branch and rustled every leaf in the forest.

He was approaching from the same direction he had come the first time, on the day of the discovery. He became aware that he had badly underestimated the time needed. It took him almost a half-hour to reach the spot above the ravine where the ship lay.

He knew there ought to be a sentry somewhere in the vicinity.

"Where is he, Pete?" he whispered. "Where's the guard?"

Pete's head turned and he muttered low in his throat. Then Ron got a glimpse of a shadowy figure not fifty feet away. The guard was sitting on a log, his head against his arm and his rifle upright.

It would be impossible to descend the slope without attracting the guard's attention. Ron touched Pete. "Draw him away."

Pete hesitated a moment, then moved slowly away through the brush. In a few moments, from beyond the guard there came the rustle of trash as if Pete were kicking it around. The guard straightened instantly and moved cautiously toward the noise.

As silently as possible, Ron worked his way down toward the ship. He came upon it from the wrecked side. Farther down the ravine, in front of the ship, two guards sat by a small fire.

The light of their fire cast a yellow glow under the ship and onto the wreckage. It was faint, but any movement he might make would draw their instant attention, he knew.

He kept to the darkness in the deeper part of the wreckage and felt of the jagged metal parts for handholds to draw himself up. He watched the guards out of the comer of his eye.

He had taken a step when the guards leaped up and called into the darkness at the top of the ravine.

"What's up? What's going on up there?"

Ron froze into position to hear the other guard's words. "Nothing but some animal. I chased him off into the brush."

He breathed a sigh of relief. The two guards called back hearty derision to their comrade above.

Then Ron was above the faint rays of the firelight and in the absolute darkness of the wreckage. He slipped, and half-fell a dozen times, and once the shriek of torn cloth betrayed him and left him panting in anxiety on a narrow girder for long minutes. But the guards did not appear.

It took a full twenty minutes before he felt the smooth surface of the corridor floor. He pulled himself up on it and lay breathing a moment in anxious relief.

From the edge he looked down and noted that he could lower the instrument straight to the ground in a shadowy spot. He had brought a stout cord for the purpose, but had not been sure it could be used. It would make the task a lot easier than having to carry possibly fifty pounds down the way he had come up.

He rose after a brief rest, and moved on into the ship. From the map he felt sure he knew which corridor he was in. The room he needed was on one of the concentric branches that turned off halfway along this one.

The map indicated how many he had to pass to reach it. Three of them. He counted them off in the darkness by feeling along the walls, not wishing to risk a light any sooner than necessary.

There were markings in Clonar's language on each corridor. When Ron reached the one he thought was correct, he risked a brief moment of light to read the mark which he had memorized from the map. Then he moved again in darkness along the new corridor.

Once more he counted by noting the number of doors with his hands. He passed five and halted. This point was perilously close to the edge of the wreckage. The whole end of the corridor had been opened by a welder to get to the communications room on one side of it.

Half-shading the flashlight with his hand, he turned it on. Ahead, the jagged opening led to the room he sought. His heart began beating more rapidly. Anxiety mounted that he would be caught before he finished his work.

He suppressed a compulsion to flash the light down the corridor behind him. There was no purpose in it except to allay his fears, but its multiple reflections might draw any chance guard left in the ship.

He moved on into the room and turned the light on the panels.

They had been completely stripped.

He almost cried aloud at the sight. Wooden benches had been set up around the room. On these were the panel units, dismantled to the last component part. Beside them were pieces of test equipment and cameras which had been used to photograph everything before it was touched.

But such care would do Clonar no good now, Ron thought. He sagged against the wall, playing the fight slowly over the ruin. He felt as if the defeat were his own instead of Clonar's.

And it was! He had a responsibility to Clonar—and to his own race. A responsibility to show that Earth-men knew how to receive a guest from the stars.

But they didn't. They knew only how to grab and destroy.

Ron turned the light on the diagram Clonar had drawn. The generator was indicated as the smallest of the panels. With this clue, he picked out a mass of components that he thought might have been it. The chassis was stripped. No two elements were left connected.

He wondered if there were yet something here of worth to Clonar. He picked up as many of the components as possible and stuffed them into his pockets. He had no way of carrying them all, and somehow he felt certain that the entire mass held nothing of worth any longer.

The shambles of the communication room seemed symbolical of all the hopes of Clonar, and there was nothing at all that Ron could do to bring order out of this ruin.

He switched off the light and moved back along the corridor the way he had come.

■

Chapter 9 Friend or Enemy?

is apprehensions seemed to have doubled because of the failure of his mission. If he had been weighted down with the instrument on the return trip, the purpose would have overshadowed the danger. Now he had only danger left.

In the darkness and silence he felt himself approaching panic and fought it back. He wanted to break and run as fast as he could down the radial corridor, flashing the light in all directions to make sure he was not watched by a hundred waiting guards.

He forced himself to pad slowly and silently through blackness, counting the passageways he crossed. At last he came to the end and saw the firelit wreckage below. The voices of the chattering guards came faintly to his ears. And suddenly it seemed as if it were endless miles he had to go to reach the ground. The climb down through the twisted metal seemed an unbearable task.

He glanced at his watch. More than an hour and a half had already passed since he left Anne.

Wearily, he dropped over the edge of the floor and hung in the darkness until his feet caught the narrow edge of a sloping girder. He clung to it and slid down.

He groped and tested and moved from piece to piece. Halfway to the ground, he felt a sudden slash of fire along his right thigh. He groaned with the pain of it and lay flat, biting his hp in agony.

A projecting spear of metal had slashed open the heavy jeans and the flesh of his leg.

After endless minutes, he resumed the slow descent. Every step now seemed to throw the injured leg into contact with some object, and it was like touching it with a hot slab.

As he came in range of the guards' fire he noted with some relief that they seemed crouched in almost the same position he had last seen them. There was no sign of Pete. He felt a rising dread that the dog might have been shot, although he had heard no report.

He reached the floor of the ravine at last and hurried from the wreck with cautious haste. He began ascent of the hill behind the ship. Numbness was creeping over his leg, and every minute increased the panicky desire to get away.

Then, as he reached the top, he heard rustling in the brush above him. He flattened himself against the hillside. The rustling continued straight toward him as if he were spotlighted. He recognized the shaggy shape of the dog.

"Pete," he whispered softly. The dog nuzzled his face. "That was a good job, old boy. Now we've got to get out of here fast."

The reappearance of the dog was a break. He could send Pete to bring Anne closer and save him travel on the injured leg. Then, as he rose to continue, he clawed at a small, precariously balanced rock. The object overturned and hurtled through the underbrush.

Almost at once a voice cried out from near by, "Halt, or I'll fire."

Ron grew cold, but he seemed beyond panic now. He put an arm around the dog. "Stop him, Pete."

The dog slipped away. Ron looked down toward the guards at the fire. They seemed not to have heard. Abruptly, there was the sound of a scuffle in the brush, and the sound of a man's cursing.

Ron approached quickly. Pete had the guard down with one wrist gripped threateningly between his teeth. The gun had fallen to one side. Without allowing himself to be seen, Ron passed quickly by and disappeared into the forest.

The man's cries rose, and began ringing through the ravines while Ron raced heedlessly and almost blindly. At a distance, he risked his flashlight to see the pathway, approaching by the shortest route to the road at a point below the turn-off.

When he reached the highway he was breathing heavily and his leg throbbed in agony. There was still a half mile to go.

When he had covered half this distance, the road straightened out. He pointed the flashlight ahead of him and pressed the button intermittently. He had once taught Anne a little Morse code, but he doubted that much of it had soaked in. He tried anyway, spelling her name and then his.

After a few moments, he saw the car lights go on and heard the welcome roar of its engine. She drew up beside him.

"Ron, I thought you were never coming!"

He climbed in beside her. "Turn the car around and wait a few minutes. Pete's back there."

For minutes he had been hearing the commotion of pursuing guards in the underbrush and random shots being fired, evidently at Pete. With relief, he heard the sound he had been waiting for, the soft, swift padding of the collie's feet on the road.

"Come on, Pete!"

The dog leaped over the rear section of the car and slid into the seat, crouching at Ron's feet. The cries of the guards roared after them as Anne pressed the accelerator to the floor.

Ron lay back with his eyes closed and breathed deeply, aware again of the pain in his leg.

"I didn't get it," he said. "The trip was a failure."

Anne kept her eyes on the road. Her hands gripped the wheel in deft control of the speeding car.

"Did you get hurt? You were limping."

"A scratch on the leg." He told her the rest of the details of the fruitless trip.

"Isn't there any kind of law your father could use to make them stop destroying Clonar's property that way?"

"Middleton never heard of the law. He makes his own as he goes along."

As they approached their neighborhoods, Anne said, "You let me drive you home and take the car. I'll bring it back in the morning."

He hesitated. "Well, all right, Anne, if you don't mind I would appreciate that. I feel kind of woozy. Gosh—Dad will really throw the book at me for this!"

She drew up to Ron's house and stopped at the curb. They could see the figure of his father reading by the living-room lamp.

"Might as well face it." Ron took a deep breath and climbed out.

"See you first thing in the morning. Good night."

" 'Night, Anne."

He watched the car until it disappeared around the corner. "I'm a lucky guy." He patted the furry head of Pete. "Just about the luckiest guy there is," he said.

Pete muttered what seemed to be a low growl of approval, and they turned toward the house. Ron could feel fresh blood oozing down his leg as he reached the porch and opened the door.

Then he was standing before his father, aware of how he must look. The older man glanced up and dropped his book with a start.

"Ronl What in the world happened to you?"

Ron crossed the room and flopped into a chair by the fireplace. He spilled out the entire story of his visit to Clonar, his promise, and the vain attempt to get his generator. Mr. Barron's face was grim when Ron had finished.

"How bad is the hurt? Let's see that leg."

Ron drew up the trouser, exposing the long, deep gash. His father made a noise of exasperation.

"That's a job for Smithers. We'll have to get him over here and have him work on it."

"It can go until morning, Dad. Let's not get Doc out tonight."

"You know as well as I do that it needs immediate care."

George Barron went to the phone and dialed Smithers' number.

Ron heard the one-sided conversation. Doc was out on a delivery. He'd come when he got back.

George Barron returned to the room and stood by the mantel looking down. "I don't know what to say, Ron," he said. "This was about the most foolish, irresponsible piece of business that I've ever known you to pull in your whole life. And yet, I suppose that from your point of view it looked like a sensible display of loyalty."

"I knew the risk I was taking and how you would feel, Dad, before I ever went up there."

"Do you know exactly why you went?"

"I went because of what Colonel Middle ton, acting as Earth's representative, has done to Clonar. I did it to try to make up for this—and to get Clonar home."

"And to make up for what I have done?"

"I guess that's about it. I know that all military men are not like Middleton. We should have tried one that's not."

"I think this changes the whole picture of things quite radically," said Mr. Barron, "and before we blame the Colonel for eveiything, let me give you another point of view. One that has persisted in the back of my mind in spite of my wanting to help Clonar.

"The point is this: Have you fully thought out the possible reasons behind Clonar's presence here?"

"Of course. He told me they came for exploration and study. If you're trying to say that they—"

"Just a moment, son. I'm trying to say that we have only Clonar's word for it. And we have no way whatever of testing how truthful that word is. I want to believe in him just as much as you do. So far, however, I have no real basis for that belief, and this present incident puts a wholly negative character on it."

"What does that have to do with it? Can't you see how it is for him? The only survivor of his crew a million light-years from home. Can't you understand how lonely and sick he must be inside?"

"You're not telling me anything about Clonar. You are telling me how Ron Barron would feel in those circumstances. Am I not right?"

Ron squirmed miserably in his chair. "Isn't that the natural way to feel? You can see it on his face and in the way he talks!"

"Ron—Ron. You pride yourself on your ability to think. You know something of semantics, and take pride in its application. But you are not applying straight thinking now. You are thinking the way you want to think, instead of with the facts at hand. Be honest with me."

"I don't have any evidence to think otherwise about him. Until I do, it's as equally false to be suspicious of him."

"It is not false to be careful. In spite of Middleton's faults, that is what he is doing. He had to treat this ship as one belonging to a potential enemy. It's the only way we can think sanely about it at the moment.

"We cannot be carried away by the fact that we want to be friends with a stranger. He is a representative of a race many hundreds of years ahead of us in science. We have only his word as to the reason for the ship's presence near Earth.

"And now, in view of the foolhardy mission upon which he sent you, I think we have a right to view him with a great deal of suspicion. Exactly why did he want this instrument so badly? Badly enough to have you risk your standing with your own people and possibly your life? He seems to have had no concern whatever for the greatness of the risk he asked you to undertake."

"It's not that way at all, Dad."

"But it is! There is every possibility that he wants the instrument in order to guide the rest of the ships here—for conquest!"

"No!" Ron jumped up, grimacing against the pain in his leg. "It isn't that way, Dad! I will never believe that it is!"

George Barron spread his hands in resignation. "All right, son. I don't know that it is that way. But let us understand each other. Neither of us knows. Let us both do everything we can to find out. Is that good enough for you?"

Ron nodded. Til do everything I can to prove Clonar's intentions. And I know that in the end I will be able to show you he is our friend."

"I hope you can, Ron. I hope that you can."

At that moment there came a loud knocking and heavy steps upon the front porch.

"Must be Doc," said Ron. "But that doesn't sound like his step."

George Barron opened the door. Two uniformed MP's stood without. Pete uttered a low growl and strode toward them as Mr. Barron invited them in.

"We were pretty sure it was you," said one of them. "The dog was a dead give-away."

"What do you want?" said Mr. Barron.

"A military warrant will be issued for this boy," said the leader of the two. "He was found trespassing on a military preserve and has molested property of the United States Government."

"Just a moment," said Mr. Barron. "The United States Government, as represented by Colonel Middle-ton, has seized property it had no right to seize. That property has been damaged beyond repair. My son attempted to recover useful portions before that happened. He failed to get there in time. The fumblers in charge of this operation had already stripped the vessel of irreplaceable mechanisms. I am preparing to see that suit is brought against this illegal seizure. Therefore, I would not be so glib if I were you in speaking about poaching upon military preserve."

Ron felt weak with appreciation as he saw his father's eyes blaze the way they did in the court room when attacking a breach of justice. The two MP's wilted visibly.

"We're just doing our duty," said the leader doggedly. "And we were attacked in the course of that duty. No one can do that and get away without the penalty of the law. We shall bring charges before Colonel Middleton."

"You do that. I am taking my charges to Colonel Middleton's superiors. Now if you will leave this house it will be appreciated. Good night, gentlemen."

They retreated to the doorway slowly. "You talk a good line of court-room law, sir. But I think you had better reconsider. Everyone believes this is an enemy ship, and if that is true, tonight's offense comes under the Espionage Act."

Chapter 10

With the Help of the Press

ON scarcely slept that night. Dr. Smithers had finally arrived at two o'clock in the morning and had taken eight stitches in his leg.

The pain of that seemed unimportant, however, beside the turmoil his father had succeeded in stirring up in his mind. As he lay wide awake watching the sunrise over the distant hills, he went over the conversation again, word for word.

The worst part of it was his own understanding of his father's viewpoint. He almost wished he could be blind to it, and completely dogmatic about his own convictions.

It was part of growing up, he thought, to learn to be suspicious of everything you wanted to believe in, and call it prudence. But surely some things could be taken at face value. Dogs and small children had the ability to pick such things. It was only as you

grew up that you lost that precious ability. And he had lost it already, he thought, because his father s argument sounded so reasonable to him.

Pete hadn't lost that ability, however, but you couldn't expect the brass hats to trust the judgment of a collie dog—even if it were far better judgment than their own. Even Dr. Smithers last night had surprised him by agreeing somewhat reluctantly with his father that they had been incautious in accepting Clonar so readily.

He beat the pillow as if to pound sleep out of it. His head was weary with the conflict of loyalties that churned within it.

He must have dozed, for he was surprised by the turning of the door knob, and the sun was higher as he stirred.

"Awake, Ron?" his father said. "How are you feeling this morning?"

"Like a new two-dollar watch. I'm just about to get up."

"You'd better stay off that leg today. Give it a chance to heal. Anyway, I have a little bad news for you."

"It couldn't be any worse than it already is."

"A little. Colonel Middleton just called. I have never known him in such an uproar. He has banned you from seeing Clonar again."

Ron shot up to a sitting position. "He can't do that. It's terrible! He's making Clonar literally a prisoner."

George Barron nodded. "I told him he was going too far. He said there is a Lieutenant General Gillispie on his way from Washington to take over. He'll be in today, and there's a good chance he may call on you for your side of the story.

"I don't know this Gillispie, but if and when he comes it would be worth your while to make friends with him. He may be another Middleton, or he may not."

"But you're not going to leave it all up to them, are you? You said something about calling the Senator."

His father nodded. "Yes, I'm going through those channels and see if I can get Clonar released in my custody. But that's liable to be a tough job. National security is the military's responsibility, you know.

"I just wanted to tell you not to try to go up to the hospital today, and to be ready for Gillispie if he should call."

Mr. Barron turned toward the hall.

"Wait a minute," said Ron. "Middleton said I'm barred from seeing Clonar, but what about Anne?"

His father grinned and shrugged. "Who knows? She might try. See you this evening."

Ron sat up in bed for a long time after his father was gone. He put his arms about his knees and stared out at the sunny splendor of the day.

He wondered what he would be thinking about if he were alone among a strange people a million light-years from Earth with no chance of seeing home again. But Clonar wasn't thinking of these things, he tried to tell himself. Clonar was thinking of ways to infiltrate into the confidence of Earthmen and betray them.

It didn't make sense. But whether it did or not, the final proof was not going to be determined by the methods they were using.

Clonar had to be given freedom if anyone wanted to know what he was going to do. As he thought of it, Ron straightened suddenly in bed. There was one source of pressure for Clonar s freedom that he had stupidly ignored. Dan Gibbons, the AP man!

He had been so conscientious about keeping Dan out of this until the brass had their chance that he'd forgotten about his reporter friend. Well, the brass had done their bit. Now Dan could put the story before the people who would be the judge of Clonar.

He got out of bed and put in a call to the news office from the upstairs extension.

"Hi, Dan," he said. "This is Ron Barron. Remember the story we talked about a couple of days ago?"

"Yeah, I remember," said Dan dryly. "I'm writing it up now."

"You're what?"

"It seems you told every kid in the Mercury Club about it first. Then it went all over town. Finally, I got the authentic dope from Colonel Middleton. I'm going to interview your friend, Clonar, and get some pictures today."

"No, wait, Dan! You can't print Middleton's story-he doesn't know anything about this. Come out here and let me give it to you the way it really happened."

"Well, O.K.—if you've got something. Can't you give it to me over the phone?"

"I'd rather not. And I'm laid up with a game leg today or I'd come in to your office. I wish you'd come out to the house."

"O.K. Be out in an hour or so."

Ron dressed slowly, and went down the stairs irritated at himself for the way things had turned out. It looked as if he had not done a single thing right. He'd muffed every chance he'd had for getting Clonar a break.

His mother looked up as he came into the kitchen. "I was hoping you were still asleep," she said. "What would you like for breakfast?"

"I'll take a pair sunny side up and some grapefruit if you have any."

She moved from the refrigerator to the stove. "It seems good to have our home to ourselves again without that strange creature around," she said.

"Won't you stop calling him a creature, Mother? Look, did you ever stop to think that a million light-years away there's another home something like ours? A mother there is getting breakfast for what's left of her family, but the father and a boy will never return. She has no idea whether they are alive or not. Can you understand a thing like that, Mother? That's Clonar s home. The one he's never going to see again."

She smiled at Ron, her eyes wistful. "You almost make me understand. You almost make me want to take him in and comfort him, in spite of myself.

"But I'm so used to the familiar things that the new repels me. Why is his hair so different? Why does he have to have six fingers? Why isn't his heart in the right place? And what is a light-year? I don't understand these things/'

"A light-year is the distance that light travels through space in one of our years. His ship can travel so much faster than light that it can cross a million light-years in a fraction of a man's lifetime. And Clonar is different because his world is a little different, and because the seed from which his race came was not the same as ours. But his feelings and ideals and desires are almost like ours. I'm sure of it. Those are the things that count. And they are the things that I have not been able to make the military understand."

"I'm afraid they are the things that people like me can never understand, either. But keep trying. It seems as if I get a faint glimpse of it every once in a while."

As he finished eating, the phone rang. "It's Anne," said Mrs. Barron.

"Hi, Anne. Is everything all right?"

"It is with me. How did you make out? How's the leg?"

"Doc fixed the leg, but otherwise things are rough. Middleton won't let me see Clonar. I wonder if you would take over the few things I got away with last night and see if they are of any use to him? Middleton didn't say you couldn't go in. Maybe you could get away with it."

"I'll try."

"If you're coming now, stop at the news office and pick up Dan Gibbons. I've got a date with him this morning. He's got an O.K. to see Clonar for an interview. Maybe you could go with him."

"All right.Til be over as soon as possible/'

He went back through the kitchen. "Anne's a nice girl," his mother said.

"You can say that again," he agreed. "Got a head on her shoulders, tool"

In the lab building he flopped into a chair at his desk. The leg was stinging too much to stand up to work on anything. There were a half-dozen projects in various stages of incompletion, but none that seemed very urgent this morning. He avoided even glancing at his ham set, because he had missed his schedules for the week.

On the desk top he spread out the components he had taken from the ship. None of them had any familiarity about them. Most were opaque cylinders with bands about them that looked as if they were connecting rings of some kind. Three of the objects looked somewhat like electronic tubes, except that the elements were completely buried in some plastic substance. He had no notion as to how they might function as tubes.

He was leaning over the desk when the door suddenly swung open behind him. He turned about and raised a hand in greeting.

"Hi, Anne. Thanks for coming over, Dan. Pull up chairs. I'm a cripple this morning."

"Anne told me something about your little escapade last night," said Dan as he sat down. "Sounds like you really let yourself in for some hot water."

"I made Middleton mad at me. He'll get over it. I'm sorry about the delay in giving you the story on this. I figured that the military had priority. I didn't realize how they'd botch up the whole thing.''

"What do you mean, botch up? I thought Middleton gave me a pretty straight story."

"Tell me what he told you, and I'll tell you what I mean."

"He said that Clonar is evidently a member of an enemy alien system that has been sending the saucers as scouts for the past few years. He said that was strictly off the record, of course, that I wasn't to excite the public by mentioning their hostility.

"He said that what I could release was the fact that Clonar had come here in a ship apparently designed for military purposes, that it had accidentally crashed, and that due to the alertness of his office the vital functions of the ship were being analyzed. That's about the substance of it."

"It's hogwashl He has no evidence whatever of hostility on the part of the ships. They are not designed for military purposes, but rather exploratory use. Here's a sample of what I mean by their botching the job."

He extended a hand toward the pile of components on the desk. "This is the heart of one of the most advanced pieces of technological equipment this Earth has ever seen, a device that could send radio waves across light-years of space instead of merely bounce them off the Moon."

Dan eyed the litter, frowningly. "You mean the instrument should have been left intact? That now the device is useless?"

"Yes. I don't believe that any of our technicians can put it together again."

Backtracking then, Ron gave Dan the details of the whole affair.

When he finished, Dan's eyes were alight with excitement, and a thick stack of notes was in his hands. "This will really make a story now! It makes Middle-ton's little publicity play sound like a fairy tale. I'll get my camera to get a few shots of you and Anne. We'll really bust this story in a big way!"

Chapter 11 Comp

N mid-afteraoon Ron glanced up at his clock and realized that Anne was long overdue, unless the visit to the hospital had turned into something very unusual. He trusted her, but he couldn't help carrying a little shred of worry in the back of his mind when she had his powerful car out alone. He gnawed at a finger nail, watching the red second hand of the clock sweep steadily.

Voices broke into his reverie of worry. His mother's voice and one that he didn't recognize. He twisted in the chair to get a glimpse through the window. Coming from the house was his mother and a stranger.

Ron recognized instantly who the stranger must be. General Gillispie. The uniform and the insignia spelled out the name to him.

His breath sucked in sharply and involuntarily. There was something of honor and dignity being

offered him in the personal visit of this powerful man. And there was a certain humility, he thought. Middle-ton had not even bothered to ask for his story. Perhaps his father had been right—it was possible that General Gillispie was not another Middleton.

He opened the door at his mother's knock. She introduced them. The General offered a hard handshake and the square of his face broke into pleasant lines.

"Wouldn't you like to go into the house?" said Ron.

"This will be fine," said Gillispie. "I like the atmosphere of your place out here. What I would have given to have had one like it when I was a boy!"

His eyes roved appreciatively over the specimen shelves, the chemistry corner, the ham rig.

"I'll leave you now," said Mrs. Barron.

"Mother, please let me know when Anne comes with the car," said Ron. "She's been gone a long time."

"Shall I call Mrs. Martin?"

"No, don't worry her. Anne's all right. But I just want to know." "All right."

"I saw your friends at the hospital until a short time ago," said General Gillispie. "I kept them from visiting the patient, so perhaps that is why she is late."

"Oh, I'm glad to know that. I was worried."

"We didn't have a chance to discuss the things I want to discuss with you, although some of them came up. Miss Martin seems like a very lovely and intelligent girl"

"She's been with me through most of this business of the saucer, which is what you have come to talk about, of course."

"You've had quite an experience," said the General, "the honor of being the first to welcome a visitor from another planet. It's something no other Earthman will ever do. You have a unique place in history."

"So have some other people," said Ron quietly.

"Some regrettable things have occurred," agreed General Gillispie. "The men who acted impulsively and beyond their authority have been reprimanded for their treatment of the dead and the dismantling of the equipment.

"As to the custody of Clonar, however, and our relationship with him—that remains an open question."

Ron nodded thoughtfully. "But don't you think, Sir, it would be better if we offered alien visitors a handshake first and shooting afterwards, if that becomes necessary? It's the code upon which our history was founded."

"Yes, I agree that it was. In late years, however, we've had some rather sad experiences in having our proffered hand seized while we were stabbed in the back. It has made us cautious."

"In Clonar's case, there is obviously no ability to stab us while we offer a hand," said Ron. "Assuming he might be the agent of our deadliest enemy, he has not come to us in a manner that demands that we stab him, first."

"Sometimes the most effective infiltration is the enemy's offer of his own hand. That has happened too, and within your own memory."

"A people who can cross a million light-years of space have no need to go to an elaborate ruse to crash a ship and put a cloak and dagger agent among us. In the light of their scientific achievements the whole thing is silly!"

"You make it very difficult," sighed Gillispie. "I can understand your desire for fair treatment of Clonar. It is only natural—when you have not seen so much of the tremendous deceit that exists between races and nations. On the other hand, I have seen so much of that deceit that it is virtually impossible for me to assume that Clonar is anything but an enemy. Somewhere between you and me, Ron, there ought to be a compromise position, don't you think?"

Ron watched the General's massive, angular face before answering. It was hard to comprehend what was behind his words because he was capable of understanding both sides of a question.

It was easier with men like Middleton and Hornsby. They saw only one side of a problem and never dreamed there could be any other. Ron felt that Gillispie had the ability to see a hundred sides of a question that others perhaps did not even dream were there. But that made it harder to know where the General himself stood. It made it necessary to be guided only by Gillispie's honesty and integrity.

And Ron had no way of knowing yet the quality of these in the General.

"We can try, sir," said Ron earnestly. "We can try to find some understanding and compromise in the matter. There's nothing I want more right now than to find a way by which Clonar can be evaluated properly and given a chance to find a place in our society, if he is our friend.

"If he is an enemy, no one is more desirous of finding it out than I am. How do you believe we can do that?"

"What we want most from Clonar is information. Information about his great ship and the science that lies behind it. We want to know about his home world, the culture and ambitions of his people, their motives in spaceflight. Most of all, we need the secrets of their engines that drive those ships.

"At the moment, we can't get any of that information at all. I have had a long talk with Middleton. He tells me that Clonar will speak freely to no one but you. You, apparently, are the only one who can get him to tell what we want to know.

"I am willing, therefore, to let you resume your association with Clonar, visit him any time you wish at the hospital and later at the Base, where he will be taken. I want only one thing in exchange. You will draw him into scientific discussion regarding the things we want to know. This will be taken down on tape records and analyzed by our technicians.

"As soon as we have this, and as soon as we can satisfy ourselves that Clonar's mission is not one of enemy intelligence, we will turn him loose and he will be as free as you are. I should think you would be as anxious as we are to reach this point."

"But it doesn't have to be done that way. Let him be free now. Get out of his ship; let him try to reach his own people. He'll give you what you want."

"You are forgetting one thing," said the General, "or else it was incorrectly reported to me. Homsby told me that Clonar was very anxious, at the time he showed the two of you through the ship, to determine that the power plant was completely destroyed. Hornsby says that he was very pleased when he saw that it was, obviously not wanting it to fall into our hands. Did you observe such a reaction?"

With a depressing accuracy Ron did recall that moment. He recalled his own agreement with Clonar's pleasure in that destruction. But was it possible that the reason Gillispie assigned to it was more accurate than his own assumption? Ron wondered.

"I see that you do remember," said Gillispie. "In view of that, do you suppose we could obtain the information that we want in a straightforward manner?"

"I don't know," said Ron reluctantly. "At the time I, too, was satisfied that Hornsby was not going to get at the power plant. I don't believe it was Clonar's intent that no Earthmen should have that information."

"But you don't know that for sure." "No."

"Then will you try what I suggested and see what comes of it?"

Ron considered silently. In the long run, if Clonar were in the clear, it would be harmless enough. If

Clonar were deceiving them, it had better be found out as soon as possible.

At that moment the door opened without warning and Anne walked in. The General rose and smiled easily.

"Hello, Anne," said Ron. "You've met General Gil-lispie, I understand."

"Yes, we've met," she said. There were disturbed fires in the depths of her eyes.

"How's Clonar this morning?" said Ron.

"He's able to be up, which is something."

"What got you so riled up?" said Ron. "Did Clonar do something?"

"Don't you know? Hasn't he told you?"

"Told me what?"

"About the story that Dan was going to write?" "No."

"You had better let me explain," said Gillispie. "I haven't reached that point yet. You see, I met your reporter friend and Anne at the hospital and I had to tell them that orders were already in Washington to kill any stories on this."

"You're suppressing news of the saucer and Clonar?" exclaimed Ron.

"We could hardly do less," said Gillispie. "It is unfortunate that you told so many people in the town, but the news will not be given out nationally until we officially release it."

"You won't even let the public make a judgment on this," said Ron slowly.

Tm sorry," said the General almost regretfully, "but I am subject to military orders."

He left shortly with Ron's promise to let him know about helping in the proposed plan.

When he was gone, Anne put the box of components from the ship on Ron's desk.

"What did Clonar say about these?" said Ron.

"Useless. He said he could never thank you enough for your attempt, but he must have sworn for ten solid minutes in his own language when he saw they had been torn apart. He said the essential secret is not in the components themselves but in their assembly and calibration. That is something that cannot be done without instruments available only on his home planet."

"What else did he have to say? Have they tried to pump him?"

"No. But, Ron, he cried while we were there. He broke down and sobbed like a little kid, and he is a kid. He's like us, trying to assume the attitude of being grown up but not quite pulling it off.

"He was as proud as the dickens because his father took him along on the trip. Imagine your father the captain of a great ocean liner and taking you into the crew. That's what it was like for Clonar."

Ron told her the plan Gillispie wanted him to take part in.

"It's mean," said Anne. "It's just plain mean."

He watched her, the dark eyes so friendly and forthright that she couldn't imagine anything of dishonesty in Clonar. He scanned the round, smooth curve of her

face and the shining black hair tumbling about her shoulders.

"Anne, do you feel sure we can trust Clonar?"

She looked startled, almost as if he had slapped her. "Trust Clonar! What in the world do you mean?"

Tm trying to see it the way Gillispie figures. He's no fool. He's a very brilliant man. He says that we can't know. And we can't. Not in the same way that Pete, for example, knows.

"Why can't people have instincts for understanding the way dogs do? And I was thinking a little while ago that kids have the same things. Why do we have to lose it when we grow up?"

"Well, I haven't lost it," snapped Anne. "And if there is any more of that kind of talk out of you, Ron Barron, you and I have come to a parting of the ways. But good!"

Chapter 12 ^ayo\

FTER Anne left, Ron went into the house and called U Dan Gibbons regarding the censorship on Clonar's story.

"Does Gillispie have the right to do that?" he said. "Isn't there anything we can do about it?"

"I've called my boss in Chicago," said Dan. "He's working on it to get the censorship lifted. But we just can't go ahead and print the story when the order is to kill it."

"What did you think about Clonar? How does he strike you?"

"Well, that's about like asking Columbus what he thought of America, or Balboa what he thought of the Pacific. It takes more than a day or two to get it into your head that you have seen and actually talked with a guy from the stars."

"Do you think he's on the level?"

"Sure.Why not? Has Gillispie been filling you full of gunk about monsters from Mars?" "Something like that."

"Don'tlisten to him, kid. Clonar's a good Joe."

"Ijust wanted to know how you felt," said Ron. "I'm sticking by him, but it's going to take more than me and Anne. The guy needs friends, and we're going to have to round him up some."

"Counton me. I'll let you know how this story deal comes out, and if I'm able to push through any release on it."

Rondebated with himself during the next hours of the afternoon. General Gillispie was on his way to the Air Base. When he got there Ron would call him. It was inevitable. He felt as if pressure he could not resist were forcing him against his will.

Whilehe waited, he tried almost frantically to think of another answer than the one the General wanted. He could not.

"I'vedecided to go along with you," he said as he finally put the call through. "I'll visit Clonar in the morning and do the best I can to obtain the information you want."

"Fine—Ihoped that would be your answer, Ron. I assure you that you will not regret giving your cooperation in this matter."

Inthe evening, he paced restlessly about the house, feeling irritable. All initiative had been taken from him in regard to helping Clonar, and he was figuratively bound hand and foot. He considered getting out the car and seeing if Anne wanted to go for a ride, then he remembered that she still had the car, having taken it back home because he hadn't felt like driving that afternoon.

While he thought of this, there was a sudden clamor on the front porch and the doorbell jangled persistently. He recognized the voices as he opened the door.

Anne was there with Stan and George and a couple of the girls, Agnes Williams and Paula Corwin.

"Thought we'd come over and cheer up the old crip," said Stan. "Anne tells me you have some records we haven't heard. Of course, you'll be delighted to watch the rest of us dance a bit while you sit on the side lines, no doubt."

Ron grinned. "Sure, come on in. You can find your way to the dungeon. I'll be along in a minute."

He limped out to the kitchen where Mrs. Barron was cleaning up the dinner dishes.

"Are there any sandwich makings, Mom?"

"Plenty. Send the girls in to help me later. Dad and I are going out for a ride. We'll bring some pop when we come back."

"O.K. Thanks, Mom."

Anne waited by the stairway to the basement play room. "Maybe I shouldn't have brought them over," she said as she saw his glum appearance. "If you want, I'll get them out early. I thought maybe you'd like a little company that speaks your language tonight."

"It's O.K., Anne. I'm glad you did. I've been wearing my chin on my chest all day. I called Gillispie and told him I'd proceed with his dirty work tomorrow. Want to come along?"

She nodded as they descended the stairs. Stan had the record player going and his arm around Agnes. George and Paula were going through the record cabinet.

Ron and Anne sat down on the sofa. Stan paused in front of them. "George got his Mercury engine for his rod today. He says he's really going to show you the back of his wheels."

Ron grinned with little humor. "He's welcome to try any time he thinks he can do it."

"You hear that, George?" said Stan. "Ron's offering you a race already."

"Next summer," said George. "It will take me the rest of the year to get that engine rebuilt."

"And you'll be in the Army before you get that thing running," said Ron.

"Ain't that the too-beautiful truth? If I can get in the Air Force I'm going to find out how to make a jet engine out of some stovepipe and secondhand plumbing and put one of them in my rod."

"Say, I wonder what they'll do with Clonar?" said Stan suddenly.

Anne snorted. "No use wondering." Then she told them the plan Gillispie had proposed, and the censorship on the news story. The others drew up chairs and sat near while the record player continued unnoticed.

"What would you guys have done?" said Ron. "Anne thinks I shouldn't have knuckled under." "I don't know about that," said Stan. "I'll bet ninetyfive percent of the people in the whole darn world would have done the same thing.

"Everybody knows the trouble is the greediness and selfishness of humanity. Everybody knows that people ought to let neighboring nations and families five in peace. Everybody knows its the lack of brotherly love, that's preached so much and lived so little.

"But nobody has tried to find out why men are greedy. Nobody has tried to discover why nations swallow littler nations. Nobody has explored the problem of why men have no love for other men.

"You can't take such problems to men like Gillispie, who is a military man and who is trained to think in military terms."

"Yeah, you're right," said George. "People have been saying the same things over and over for the last ten thousand years and still haven't found out why men are full of hate and greed."

Paula said, "All of you ought to take a class from the new biology prof, Mr. Pearson. He says the whole trouble is that the preachers have studied man as he ought to be, and the biologists have studied him as an animal. He says what we need is somebody to study man as he is, and why he is. Neither as an animal nor a little tin god in the rough. Just plain man.

"He says our generation can have all the thrill of jet flight at four thousand miles an hour, and the possibility of going to the Moon before we're grandmas and grandpas, but for a real thrill of exploration anybody ought to take up a study of what goes on inside the human skull. That's totally unexplored territory to date, he says. When we find out what goes on in there, we'll be able to use jet engines for going to the Moon instead of smashing each others' cities. I think he's right. He's almost convinced me to go into biology and philosophy and general semantics when I go to J.C. next year."

"That's all fine," said Ron. "I agree heartily with Mr. Pearson, and the rest of you. But what about Clonar? We've still got him on our hands."

"You're making too much of this situation, I think," said Stan. "You're not going to hurt Clonar. If he's on the up and up, it will be all right."

"That's the way I've been telling it to myself, but Anne doesn't agree. And I can see her point very well. As I read in a book somewhere: It's the principle of the thing.'"

"And as I read," said Paula, " let your conscience be your guide.'"

"But in order to preserve our future contacts with Clonar I have to compromise with my conscience."

He looked at the circle of faces as they talked some more, and he let his mind recede, scarcely hearing what they said. They didn't have an answer for him any more than he had for himself, he thought.

He wondered if all such problems were insoluble. He wondered just what the word "principle," used so glibly by teachers and visiting speakers, really meant.

At ten o'clock he heard his mother and father returning. Mrs. Barron came down the stairs with a couple of cartons of pop bottles in her hands.

"Isn't anybody hungry?" she exclaimed. "I thought you would have cleaned out the kitchen by now."

"We've been chewing the fat so hard we didn't get hungry," said George. "But now that you mention it—"

When they left at eleven, Stan arranged to drop Anne at her home. Ron promised to call for her early on the way to the hospital next morning.

His leg felt much better after another night's rest. As he backed the car out of the driveway in the morning, Pete jumped into the seat.

"Not today," said Ron. "We might be gone too long for you to sit out in the car."

Pete got out with apparent regret, as if somehow he understood that his guardianship over Clonar had been taken away.

The air was cool, for it had rained during the night, and the sky was mottled with wind-torn clouds. Ron breathed deeply of the fresh, moist air.

Anne was waiting in front of her house. She looked as fresh as the sky itself in her white tennis skirt and blue sweater, and with a ribbon holding back her hair. She seemed to have lost the dour unhappiness that yesterday's incident had caused.

"You look perky this morning," said Ron.

"That's the way I feel. How's the old wooden leg? Have you had Doc look at it again?"

"I'll have to see him sometime this afternoon. Clonar may take up most of the day. What's in the basket?"

"Fried chicken. He said they didn't give him food like he had at your house. I thought maybe he'd appreciate this."

They drove in silence most of the way, not trying to talk against the rush of wind past the cowling.

As they entered the hospital room, Clonar looked up with pleasure and excitement. He had been sitting up in a chair trying to puzzle over a magazine. His bandages were gone, with the exception of a small patch over his left eye.

"Ron! I thought they weren't going to let me see you any more."

"Not me. I beat them over the head until they let me come back. How have they been treating you?"

"All right, except for asking a lot of fool questions I wouldn't answer. That seemed to make them mad. I'd like to get back to your house."

"We're working on that. Maybe we can make it soon. I was sorry about the wave generator. Isn't there any way in which it can be rebuilt?"

"I am the one who should be sorry," said Clonar, "because of the danger and accident I caused you."

"My leg will be all right. The generator is the important thing—is it hopeless?"

"As far as I know. It's possible that if I could get back to the ship I might find instruments and instructions I never knew were there. But I think not. I was familiar enough with those things so that I would have known about it if they were there.

"Anyway, they evidently aren't going to let me back into the ship. I don't understand it, Ron."

"Well get back—somehow. I wish you could take me through it and tell me about it. I wish you could tell me something about the engines that were de

stroyed. You mentioned it wasn't the primitive kind of atomic power we use that drove them."

Looking at Anne's face, Ron felt as if struck by an electric shock. She understood that this was the opening of his effort to give Gillispie the information he wanted.

Clonar's face brightened with interest. "I can tell you a great deal about it," he said. "In training for the flight, we had to be able almost to take a ship apart with our bare hands and put it together in the dark. But I'm afraid we'll have to build up a greater technological vocabulary before we can get very far.

"From what you have told me, I understand your engines operate on what we term the first level effect. My own utilize a so-called third level effect. There is an intermediate stage which we use for the prime generators of power. This is done by causing wave packets to—"

"Stop it!" exclaimed Anne suddenly. "Stop it, Clonar! Don't say any more about it It's all a trick!"

Chapter 13 Escape

nLONAB stared at her as if he could not believe or understand what he heard. "What do you mean,

J

Anne?" Ron sat as if frozen. "I m sorry, Ron," murmured Anne. "I had to say it." Her face was lowered against her hands and she was close to tears.

As Ron started to speak hesitantly, the door burst open with a confusion of sound. A guard strode in. "Visiting hours are over," he said. "You'll have to go now." He stood stiffly behind them, waiting for them to arise. They got up slowly from the chairs and stood looking down at Clonar.

"HI explain what Anne meant next time I see you," said Ron.

Wide-eyed, Clonar's face was drained of color. "I think I understand now. I think I know what you meant, Anne."

Then they were gone, followed by the guard who bluntly closed the door behind them.

Down the hall, they were ushered into a carpeted office. General Gillispie was waiting for them there.

"I didn't expect you so soon," he said. "How did it go?"

"It didn't. It washed out."

"I told Clonar," said Anne. "I told him what you were trying to do."

"I see," said Gillispie slowly. "I see—"

"Anne did what I should have had guts enough to do myself," said Ron. "She pulled us out of the deal completely. That's all there is to be said."

"I'm afraid there's a great deal more that needs to be said. Perhaps the only part you'll be interested in is the fact that you will not be permitted to see Clonar again until this entire affair is settled one way or another.

"Clonar is to be regarded as an element of national security. He will be under complete military guard from now on, until disposition is made of his ship, and until we determine his own status.

"That is all. And may I say personally that, while your devotion to honesty and aboveboard transactions is commendable, your judgment needs a great deal of modification before it can be said to have approached maturity."

Ron hesitated at the door, trying to control the rage that surged within him, recognizing that this man stood between Clonar and freedom, and exercised much control over Ron s own life as well. He permitted himself a final statement.

"If you will pardon me, sir," he said, "that, too, is a matter of opinion."

As they got in the car and drove from the hospital, Anne s eyes were downcast and she was depressed.

"Did you mean what you said, Ron?" she said at last. "Did you mean you forgive me for what I did?"

He patted her hand. "I meant it, Anne. I would have done it myself if I'd had the guts. I'm proud of you. I don t know where we go from here, but it'll come out in the wash somehow, and when it does I'll be able to look Clonar in the eye, thanks to you."

Her face brightened as she turned toward him, and her eyes were glistening.

"I'm glad you feel that way—but I wonder what does happen next?"

"It's out of our hands. We've done all we could. We'll have to wait until Gillispie gets through with Clonar, but I hate to think of the third degree he's going to get."

"You should have seen him crying yesterday because he was lonely and homesick. They'll either break him down or make him so bitter toward Earthmen that he'll be twisted for the rest of his life."

"Not if he's the stuff we think he is. Well get him straightened out afterwards. Right now, our hope is Dad, and the pressure he hoped to be able to get through the Congressmen for civilian custody of Clonar and the ship. Maybe Dan has been able to get some pressure put on through the AP, too. We'll see. This has got to crack soon. It can't go on forever."

As they approached town, Anne said, "I almost forgot about your leg. I was going to suggest a game of tennis this afternoon. I guess a little crocheting is about your speed."

"Not so's you'd notice it. I'm going to work on the components I got from the ship. Gillispie must have forgotten them or he'd have made me turn them over to him. I want to check their electrical characteristics, as long as I've got my hands on them. Want to help?"

"We'd better stop at my house and let Mother know."

As they drove up, Anne's mother was on the porch. She came quickly toward the car. "Your father called and left a message, Ron," she said. "He wants you to come to his office as soon as possible. Senator Clausen is there."

"Good gosh! Let's go! Thanks, Mrs. Martin." "Wait—what about lunch?"

"We'll have some downtown. Maybe we'll take the Senator to lunch."

"Don't forget where you live!" Anne's mother called. "It's nice to see you at home once in a while."

"Sometime this afternoon," Anne called, as the car pulled away.

"This is the best news we've had yet," murmured Ron. "Senator Clausen is a pretty good Joe. We may get some action. Wonder what he's doing in Dad's office?"

Ron had met the Senator once before when he'd had dinner at their house, but Mr. Barron introduced Anne.

The Senator was surprisingly thin and the hair of his head was reduced to a few stray threads crossing his bare pate at intervals. As they sat down about the desk, the Senator spread his hands with a precise motion.

"Your father has given me the gist of this flying saucer thing," he said to Ron. "At first I was inclined to think it no more than those sensational magazine articles weVe been reading for some years. I could hardly credit my senses that George Barron would swallow a thing like that. Then just before I left Washington, I got wind that the Air Force had sent its top man in technical investigations, General Gillispie, to Crocker Base. It was too much to be coincidence, so I hurried home a week early."

"It's true enough, sir," said Ron. "General Gillispie can show you the ship and its crewman."

"Let me have your story," said the Senator.

Ron related in full detail the entire sequence of events. The Senator listened quietly and without interruption, but with growing astonishment unmasked in his eyes. His face was intensely sober when Ron finished.

"I'm sure there isn't much doubt about the truth of what you say," he said. "I certainly shall call upon General Gillispie. I understand your plea for protection of Clonar, but certainly the military has the right to question him, and to investigate this ship."

"It's not that. It's the manner in which it's done, imprisoning him, seizing his ship, treating him like an enemy alien. I can get all the information out of him that they want, but I can't do it as long as he's a prisoner.

"Clonar should be given the rights of any human being, as far as privacy and freedom are concerned. That is little enough to ask for."

"It sounds reasonable. I shall see what can be done," he promised.

They shook hands. Til see you at home, Ron," said Mr. Barron. "Thanks for coming by. You, too, Anne."

When they left the building they realized with a start that the afternoon was gone and evening was upon them,

"We still haven't had that lunch," said Ron. "How about Johnson's Cafe? We'll give your mother a call, and tell her we're still in town."

When they finally reached Anne's home it was dusk. They were surprised to see a familiar figure sitting on the porch beside Anne's father and kid brother. It was Dan.

He rushed out as they drove up. "Hi, lads. Have you heard the news?"

"None that's good. Do you know any?" said Ron.

"What would you say if I told you that Clonar had escaped?"

Ron felt a sudden cold sinking within him. "Escaped? You mean he ran away from the hospital? Where—how did he go?"

"Look, this is the way it is: When I was in the police station this afternoon, a very hush-hush telephone call came from the VA that one of the patients had escaped. It was said that he was wanted very badly. No name, just a very accurate description that fits Clonar to the last spare finger—only they did omit the six-finger business. They even mentioned that curious fuzzy hair of his. It couldn't be anybody else. Did you see him this morning? Did anything happen that would make him pull such a trick?"

"Yeah—yeah, we saw him." Ron told about their visit.

"That would be enough to do it," said Dan. "If he understood what Anne meant, it would knock the last props out from under him. He'd figure his only chance was to take off by himself!"

"Where in the world would he go?" said Anne. "What would he expect to do?"

"There are two places he could go," Dan said. "Undoubtedly, they're both covered."

"Where?" said Ron.

"Your house and the ship. You ought to stick close to home until he's found, just in case he tries to make contact."

"I don't think he will, not after what happened this morning. And he wouldn't try to go to the ship, surely. There's nothing there except possibly food supplies, and it'll be doubly guarded after what I did.

"He must have some other scheme—or else no scheme at all except a desire to get away to be free."

"The poor kid," murmured Anne.

"This would be a nice story, if you could print it."

Dan shook his head. "Nothing doing on that angle.

The boss wired that the story had to stay killed until the military gives a release on it."

"We've got to find Clonar," said Anne. "He just can't be left to roam. Maybe he's given up hope to the extent that he would simply go on until he dies of exposure. I don't think he has heart enough left in him to go on fighting,"

"That sure fixes things up good," muttered Ron. "This is all we needed."

"And I guess it makes it my fault," said Anne. "I should have let you go ahead this morning."

"No. You did the right thing. Even if it would have prevented this, what I was doing wouldn't have been right."

"Does the guy know how to use a telephone?" said Dan.

"I hope he doesn't try to strong-arm anybody to get some funds 1"

Anne got out of the car. "I'd almost like to ask your mother to put me up for the night, Ron, just in case Clonar does show up, but I guess the folks would draw the line there. Give me a call if anything comes up, won t your

"Sure will. And thanks a lot for—today—Anne. I won't forget it."

"Can I give you a lift, Dan?"

"No thanks. That's my car across the street. Promise you'll give me the word, too, if anything breaks. Some day this story is going to be off the ice, and I want to be the first to crack it with all the detail I can."

"I will. Thanks for the dope."

Ron drove off into the darkness, his headlights swinging through the familiar streets.

This was home, he thought. No matter how far he went or how long he was away, this would be home and he could always come back to it. He thought of Clonar, roaming these streets that were not home, and never would be home. He felt sick for the things that had been done to his friend.

He turned a corner and moved down his own street. As he did so, he noticed a headlight in his rear-view mirror, one that had come around the same comer. At the end of the block he made a quick turn. They were following him.

This made it certain that Dan's suspicions were correct. The authorities suspected he might have a rendezvous with Clonar. He wondered if he could shake them.

He cruised slowly and at random about a number of blocks, turning corners at each one. The sedan was following half a block behind. Near a corner, he speeded up gradually, widening the distance between him and the other car. Then, around the corner, he gunned the motor hard. He whipped the silver car into a dark alley halfway down the block and turned off the lights. In a moment the sedan sped past and he could see the outline of two uniformed figures. He grinned faintly to himself.

After a moment he backed from the alley and went down the street in the opposite direction and wound his way back to his own street and his own house. Passing the corners, he saw that the entire block was covered. At each intersection there was a car parked by the curb, with uniformed figures watching. Clonar wouldn't have a chance if he tried to reach the house.

His father was already home, reading the paper in the living room when Ron entered.

"I thought you'd beat me home."

"Anne and I had dinner in town, and we saw Dan on the way home."

"You made a good impression on the Senator. He liked the way you told your story. Something may come of it, although I'm afraid it's going to be a long haul. Even he feels pretty strongly that the military are justified in holding Clonar."

"Hadn't you heard? Clonar escaped from the hospital."

George Barron dropped the paper. "Escaped! No— I hadn't heard."

Ron told him what Dan had said, and about the spotters around the block.

"The crazy, darn fool!" said George Barron. "What did he have to do that for? Where can he expect to go?"

"I don't know, Dad, but something's got to be done to find him. He won't be able to survive long just running loose like that. It's like being turned loose in a jungle, to him."

George Barron was suddenly quiet and thoughtful. "Unless he does know very definitely what he's doing and where he's going—"

"What do you mean?"

"If our suspicions of his motives were correct, it

could be that he has a rendezvous with another of his own ships." "Dad! No!"

At that moment the phone rang in the hall. Mrs. Barron answered it, and then she came into the room.

"It's for you, Ron. I wasn't sure you had come in. It's General Gillispie. He wants to see you. Says it's very urgent."

Chapter 14 In Hiding

T was almost nine o'clock when Ron's mother answered the door and ushered General Gillispie into the living room, where Ron and his father were reading.

They rose as the General came in. "Have a chair," said Mr. Barron. "Do you wish to see Ron alone?"

"No, not at all. I shall be happy to have you and Mrs. Barron hear what I have to say, if you wish. And also to have you express your opinion."

He sat down and looked at Ron. "Since you deliberately evaded our men this evening, you are aware, I presume, of Clonar's escape. I want to ask you, point blank: Do you have Clonar, or know where he is?"

Ron shook his head. "I knew of his escape. It irritated me being trailed. But I don't know where he is. I would like him found just as much as you would."

"Good. Then we can count on your help?"

"What kind of help?"

"You are the only one who has any influence at all over Clonar. We would like you to go on a network radio broadcast and make a plea for him to return to you."

"He's not likely to after today. But does this mean that his story is to be released at last?"

"Not at all.Clonar will be addressed as if he were another human being and nothing will be indicated of his flying saucer or his alien origin. I will give you a little speech to deliver, making a plea for him to return. No one else will think anything but that we have a hospital patient who has run away."

Ron was shaking his head as the General finished. "I have made a break with all such deceptive plans. I want to keep it that way."

The General sighed. "All right, Ron. But you understand we will continue to search, and Clonar will eventually be found. But the longer he is loose, the more likely he is to get into trouble. If he attempts to steal for money or for food, he is likely to end up getting killed. Neither of us wants such a thing to happen."

"As far as I am concerned, there is no point in returning Clonar to the same conditions of imprisonment from which he escaped," Ron said slowly.

"And so—?"

Til help get him back if I can write my own speech in my own way. Til give the entire story. To get him to return, I'll promise him that he can come to the house and be unmolested by guards, that he will have access to his ship and your technicians will leave it alone except as he permits."

The General smiled faintly. "When you drive a bargain, you use a pile driver, don't you? You must have learned some of the court-room techniques of your father. But I am sorry that I am not yet in such a desperate position that I need to bargain on those terms."

"I am only asking what you or I would want if we were in the same position," said Ron.

General Gillispie turned to George Barron. "Have you no influence with this young man to persuade him to be a little more reasonable?"

"I'm sorry," said Mr. Barron. "I rather feel that he is not being unreasonable. I will admit, and I have discussed it with Ron, that I feel a definite fear of the possibility that Clonar's race means harm. But I don't know—none of us does. I feel that we should find out. But I am entirely out of sympathy with the manner in which you have handled this entire affair. I oppose the imprisonment of this person, and your custody is imprisonment, and I oppose the confiscation of his ship. Your department has acted contrary to all concepts of human right and dignity."

The General sat in silence a moment as if his thoughts had turned inward. His voice was low when he spoke. "That's quite an indictment, Mr. Barron. In all sincerity, I hope it is not true, and that someday I can persuade you it is not.

"There are times when I have to ask myself, however, if my behavior is the kind you accuse me of.

But I lived through the long years of the Battle of Britain and had a place in seeing that it was not lost. There are millions like me who lived with treachery so long that we can never forget it. We can never forget the depths of evil that can be in men who look, externally, no different from ourselves. Sometimes, I try to warn myself that there are other things to look for. Maybe I fail. My profession is to await treachery and crush it. If my zealousness sometimes treads upon justice, I hope I may be forgiven, for the pursuit we are in is too desperate to count each step. "Good night, gentlemen."

Ron lay awake for a long time that night wondering if he could have done any more. Wondering if his demands could have been any less. He knew they could not. He tried to understand the General's words, and they were frightening. He almost felt sorry for Gillispie, who lived in a world where no stranger could be trusted. But wasn't it the world they all lived in?

He could not—or dared not—find the answer to that at this moment.

There was no word of Clonar the following day or the next. The guards maintained their posts around the block containing the Barron home. Through Dan, Ron and Anne kept in touch with the progress being made by the police in their search. Alarms were spread nationwide on the chance that Clonar might have hiked by car or freight train to some other section.

It was almost a week before Ron heard from General Gillispie again. He called on the phone in the afternoon.

"You win," he said, and Ron detected a heavy note of weariness in the mans voice. "Clonar has not been found. If he is not dead, I think our last hope of finding him is an appeal from you. We can arrange radio time as soon as you are ready."

Ron could hardly believe his ears, but he kept his voice steady. "Thank you, General. Thank you very much. I know you have Clonar's welfare at heart."

He was given ten minutes out of a news broadcast on a national hookup. It was to be a five broadcast made from one of the local stations that same evening.

With Anne's help he spent the rest of the afternoon preparing the script. Dan received clearance so that his scoop was ready for release and the story could be on the streets within minutes after the broadcast. Ron gave him a copy of his script.

"You had better let me check it for libel," Mr. Barron said jokingly when Ron emerged from the lab with the completed script. "You may have let your enthusiasm run away with you."

He scanned it closely as Ron handed it over, and then nodded approvingly. "That's a good job, Ron. It says about everything that needs to be said."

Ron's mother wanted to go to the studio with him, but George Barron insisted that they stay behind, understanding Ron's reluctance to have anyone present except Anne.

As seven o'clock approached, he was in the studio alone with Anne. Through headphones, he heard Jack Sparkles, a world news reporter in Los Angeles, taking the first five minutes with his customary news. Waiting for his cue, Ron was thankful for the years of experience before his own microphone of his amateur radio station. Even so, he felt just a moment's uneasiness at the thought of the magnitude of the audience before him.

Then abruptly, the reporter was saying: "And now tonight I wish to turn my microphone over to a young man who has had a unique experience in history, who wishes to ask your help on a problem, the like of which has never been faced by anyone before. I give you Mr. Ronald Barron/*

Then Ron heard his own voice speaking: "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. The story of the flying saucers is true. I have seen one of these ships and walked through its corridors. I have seen the people of its crew. One, who survived the crash of this ship, has lived in my house."

In careful detail, he outlined the entire story, describing Clonar, and relating the treatment he had been given.

"I submit," he said, "that the reception we have given to a stranger out of space has been a disgrace to Earth. He came here accidentally and needed help in trying to contact his own people so that he could be rescued. Instead of being given help, he was prevented from using the equipment that might have contacted his companions.

"Now he has broken from the confinement in which he has been kept. I come to you tonight to ask your help in finding Clonar. Let him know that we are prepared to offer him friendship and freedom, which should have been his in the first place. And if you are listening, Clonar, I want you to know that you are free to come home. Ladies and gentlemen, in this land that boasts of freedom, let us demonstrate that we know how to receive a guest from the stars."

He laid the last sheet down and heard the final commercial. He took Anne's hand and left the studio.

In the lobby, Gillispie offered a hand. "You really laid it on the line, Ron. For both our sakes I hope it produces results."

"I hope so, too, sir, and I think you will find I am not wrong about Clonar."

Dan was there and was exuberant. "Boy, what a riot that will stir up, kid. I can just hear the editorial writers sitting down to their desks now. The radio commentators will have hot air enough to keep going for the next three weeks. I'll bet they have to put an extra man on your mail route."

Ron and Anne broke away as quickly as possible and drove toward home.

"So it's out now," said Ron. "I wonder if it will do any good. I wonder if the public will call for Clonar's scalp—and maybe mine, too, using the same reasoning that Gillispie and Middleton use. Or will they believe what I said?

"Above all, where is Clonar, tonight?"

There was no answer to these questions, and Anne attempted none.

"It was a good speech, Ron," she said.

He let her out at her house and drove home. His parents were there with the radio still on.

"Very nice," said George Barron. "You made a nice delivery."

"Thanks, Dad. I hope it produces the right effect and doesn't cause too much uproar."

They listened for a while longer. Within an hour, the results became apparent. Other commentators devoted large sections of their news time to a discussion of the flying saucer situation.

Some of them ignored everything that Ron had said and talked in wild language about the saucer menace out of space. Others, who had understood his message, added their own plea for consideration and tempered reaction to Clonar's presence.

And then Dan called on the phone. "Boy, oh boy, you ain't even seen nothin', yet. By morning there will be four hundred reporters in this town. Every jerkwater rag and fann journal is sending a man to get a first-hand report. You'd better hide."

Dan was right. The phone started ringing at five o'clock the next morning. At six, reporters began pounding on the door. Ron gave his story over and over again. They took pictures of him with Pete and the hot-rod. And Anne came over to take part in the interviews, also.

By midmorning the situation was obviously impossible. He took the phone off the hook, and put a note on the door that he would be available for interviews at scheduled periods.

His mother had long since abandoned the situation and gone to visit friends across town. Ron and Anne took Pete and got in the hot-rod after locking up the house.

"Now—where are we going?" said Ron. "Let's look for Clonar."

"That's what I call a real bright idea. Exactly where do you propose to look?"

"Well—I thought of something last night after you left."

"What?"

"Remember the first contact with Clonar?" She looked down at Pete resting between her feet. "Remember what Clonar said about his ability to contact the dog's thoughts with his own? Just suppose maybe it works the other way, too. What if it were possible that Pete knows right now where Clonar is?"

Ron looked dubiously at his dog. "It's the difference between knowing where somebody is because he's calling to you, and trying to find him when he's not. Clonar called to Pete, but I doubt that Pete can do that and make Clonar answer."

"Where's Clonar?" said Anne.

Immediately, the dog raised his head and barked gently. He put his paws on the car door, stretching his great, shaggy body across Anne.

"Pete," she said, "is Clonar in the ship?"

"That's nonsense," said Ron. "He couldn't be there. They've gone over that ship with a fine-toothed comb."

"I'll be willing to bet a nickel there are compartments that no one else could find without tearing the ship apart, sheet by sheet. And I'll further bet a nickel that Clonar is in one of them. Look at Pete!"

The dog had his head in the wind, and his nose pointed to the distant hills.

"It's an idea—a wholly fantastic and impossible one," said Ron, "but still an idea."

He braked to a stop in front of a drugstore and leaped out. "I'll call Gillispie and get permission to go through the ship."

In a few minutes he returned grinning broadly. "He says 'yes>* Anne. I've got a feeling that when this thing is over he's going to take a liking to me."

He ruffled Pete's ears and pointed to the hills. "Is Clonar up there?"

The dog barked.

"I still say it's impossible, but we'll try it."

By the time they had reached the site of the wreck, Gillispie had radioed to the guards that Ron was to be allowed admittance. He and Anne followed the now familiar trail, Pete loping eagerly ahead, then waiting impatiently while they caught up.

"We're giving him too much credit," Ron insisted. "He knows this is where we first found Clonar and thinks, because of that, we'll find him here again. It might be that Clonar could force ideas onto Pete, but Pete picking up Clonar's thinking by himself—uh-uhl"

"We'll see," said Anne confidently.

They climbed down the slope of the ravine and stepped onto the smooth surface of the ship. They checked with the guard, who passed them in.

Lights had been strung through many of the corridors of the ship since Ron had first seen it, but he borrowed a flashlight from one of the men since they could expect to go into some of the still darkened areas.

"O.K. Pete," Ron said. "Find Clonar."

Guards were scattered about, but the technicians had been pulled out in accord with Gillispie's agreement with Ron. They had stopped their analyzing and dismantling and were merely guarding the saucer against the curious.

Most of them recognized Ron and knew who he was. Their expressions varied as he encountered them. Some tried to follow along.

"Uh-uh. This is a private party. You guys remain as you were," he said. "Or do I have to get Gillispie to tell you that?"

Glowering, they remained behind and watched him and Anne and the dog disappear down the darkened corridors. In the light of the flash Pete strolled confidently onward as if following an old and familiar trail. Then he stopped abruptly before an utterly blank section of wall panel. He stood on his hind legs and scratched and barked softly.

Ron examined the wall closely. It appeared utterly seamless. He stood in dismay and disgust.

"You really made a bust that time, Pete! That's a blind wall. It looks like the outer rim of the ship."

Anne ignored him. She pounded gently on the wall and called out. "Clonar. Clonar, this is Anne and Ron. Can you hear us?"

She screamed suddenly then and jumped aside. Above their heads a section of the ceiling split and two halves of the panel dropped slowly on either side.

From the opening a face peered down at them. A familiar face, now wan and unkempt. Clutching the edge of the opening, a hand bore what was obviously a lethal weapon.

"I don't want to see you," said Clonar. "Go away now. Please go away."

Chapter 15 ••/ Can Go Home!"

nLONAB.1" exclaimed Ron. He backed slowly at the sight of the weapon. "You can't mean that, Clonar.

J

We want to talk to you. Let us come in and talk with you."

Clonar hesitated, then lowered the weapon and nodded. "You may as well, I guess. I should have known Pete would lead you here. I should have let him alone. I warn you that I understand you now. Nothing you say will change my mind."

The opening was a foot or so above Ron's head. He made a step for Anne with his hands and boosted her up, Clonar helping from above. Ron leaped for a grip on the edge of the opening and swung himself up. When they were in, Clonar turned a crank that slowly closed the opening.

Clonar had a light of some kind by which he led

the way down a metal ladder to some chamber opposite the wall at which Pete had barked.

"How did Pete know you were here?" said Ron. "Can he communicate at will with you?"

"No. I've been lonely. I talked with him. He's all I had."

In a world of human beings, Ron thought, Pete was all Clonar had! He felt chilled and uncomfortable by that indictment of his own kind.

He tried to find new ground for them to meet upon. "It's no wonder the searchers missed you. What are these compartments?"

"This is the double wall of the ship, built this way to prevent atmosphere leaks in case of accident in space," said Clonar. "I suppose your guards thought the individual sections were sealed because they have only emergency openings which are not obvious from inside the ship.

"I have managed very comfortably. I get food from the ship's stores at night. There was a little difficulty in getting through the ring of guards outside. But they are not of high intelligence."

"But you can't stay here forever!" exclaimed Anne. "What are you going to do?"

"This won't be forever. I came to see if there weren't some possible way of assembling a transmitter from what was left here. I found the lifeboats intact. They carry very tiny transmitters, but each has the same type of wave generator as the one that was destroyed. I have not succeeded in increasing their power, but

I believe I shall be able to do so by connecting several of them together.

"Whether I do or not, I need no further help from you. I will ask you to go if you will, please."

"Clonar," said Ron miserably, "isn't there anything we can do to make you understand that we did not betray you?"

He tried to explain the thing that Anne had meant by her outburst, the thing that Gillispie had wanted them to do. But Clonar shook his head in bewilderment.

"It is too much for me to try to understand the ways of men. Your race is not to be trusted to offer friendship. All I want now is a chance to reach my own fleet and leave your planet forever.

"I am sorry that this is so, Ron and Anne. I would like to have remained with you if I could have trusted you. As it is, if I fail to contact my own people—"

He left the remainder of the sentence unspoken, but glanced down at the weapon he had placed on the table near by.

"No!" cried Anne. "Not that—ever! We've got to make you understand our feelings and our thoughts, Clonar."

"You've tried," he said harshly, "and I want no more. Please go. I suppose you will feel it necessary to disclose my hiding place to your guards. I assure you it will be very difficult for them to find me in these hidden chambers. If they do—I'll defend myself. Make that plain to them when you tell them."

"We won t tell," said Ron soberly. "Well never tell.

But aren't we going to have any other word from you in case you do get a ship to come for you—or if you don't?"

"There have been too many words already. Please go.

A tone of anger crept into his voice and the muscles of his jaw and neck stood out tensely.

"All right," said Ron. "We'll go, and we won't tell. But, Clonar, we'll be back."

"You'd better not."

They went back to the hidden emergency entrance. Clonar pressed the spring release which lowered the doors. Ron jumped down and caught Anne. They watched Clonar's grimy face as he cranked the doors shut and hid himself from view.

"That does it," said Ron as they moved slowly down the corridor. "That does it up in a neat round package. What in Jupiter do we do next?"

Pete grumbled in dismal wonder as to why he had not been permitted to go to Clonar, and now had to leave without him.

They said nothing to the guards who spoke to them as they left the ship. They walked back to the car and sat in it without starting the motor.

"I hate to go back and meet that mob of reporters now," said Ron. "I feel like the thing is all over. There isn't a doggone thing we can do. If we told Gillispie, he'd just go in there and drag Clonar out and give him the third degree again, as long as Clonar doesn't want anything to do with me."

"Couldn't we just get Gillispie to maintain a close watch so that we'd know if he does come out and contact another of his ships?"

"I wouldn't trust Gillispie that far. Unless Clonar is right under my nose, Gillispie will find some way to get his paws on him again. He'll pick his brain if he has to do it with hypnosis or truth serum. No, we can't tell Gillispie. We can't tell anyone. We may never know for sure whether Clonar gets back home or whether he does what he threatened to do with that gun of his."

"I don't think he'll do that," said Anne. "A person has to be pushed a long way down for that to happen. I don't believe Clonar can be pushed that far."

"I hate to gamble on that."

They returned to town, and Ron gave his promised interviews to several dozen reporters that afternoon. He and Anne posed with Pete for more pictures. And they discovered the truth of Dan's prediction about the mail. There was almost half a bag of it in just one day.

The first letter Ron opened was a scathing denunciation of his friendship with the "enemy." He threw it on the pile with disgust. "They'll make a good fire, anyway," he said.

"Oh, they're not all like that," said Anne impatiently. "Here's one with a five-dollar check to help Clonar. We've got to go through them. I'll bet youU be surprised at the number offering help and favorable comment."

"There's one guy I'd like to tell about this, and see if he's got any bright ideas."

"Who?" "Dan."

"Can you trust him completely?"

"Probably not. He's out for a story. He'd like to break the finding of Clonar to his papers. I guess there's really nobody you can trust completely, any more."

"Oh, no! Look at these letters. In a dozen of them there are two checks and only one denunciation of you."

He scanned the miscellaneous sheets quickly, but their favorable comments didn't lift his spirits very high.

"Are you going to tell your father?"

Ron shook his head. "I don't want to. It would only be bothersome information for him. There's nothing he could do. There's nothing any of us can do—except wait, and we don't even know what we're waiting for."

"The only way we can make Clonar change his mind is offering him something he wants. What could we offer him that would induce him to come out of hiding?"

"A trip home. That's all the poor guy wants."

"He said something about power. Power for his transmitter. Maybe we could induce him to come out by making it possible for him to get the power. Not that I know exactly what he needs—"

Ron grasped her arm tightly, his face brightening. "By golly, Anne, that may be it! As I get the setup, the important element is the wave generators, but he lacks enough push to reach the fleet with the little lifeboat sets.

"Maybe a conventional transmitter of ours could help. I wonder. Gillispie is the only answer to that. The radio lab at the Air Base is the research center for the whole Air Force electronics division. They toss kilowatts around by the basketful. Maybe we could make a deal. But we don't know if it would really work, or if it would entice Clonar, anyway—

'"Let's stew about it. Tonight my ham schedule's right after dinner. How about sticking around and sitting in on it?"

"My mother—"

"I'll get Mom to call her. They can usually work a deal."

They did, and Anne remained.

At dinner, George Barron announced, "I had an interesting piece of news today. Gillispie called me."

"More trouble," said Ron.

"For him, not for us. It seems that our conversation with Senator Clausen backfired. He ended up in favor of more supervision of Clonar than Gillispie had already given.

"So now the Senator is extremely unhappy about your radio speech, and he is practically tearing his hair out—what's left of it—over Clonar's escape. He's blaming Gillispie for everything and anything, promises a full Senate investigation of the entire affair.

"The General is a very unhappy man tonight. You can be pretty sure he wishes he'd never heard of flying saucers or Clonar or Ron Barron or Senator Clausen."

Ron grinned broadly. "I sure can't work up much sympathy for him. But I'm glad the Senator didn't get his hooks into Gillispie before I was able to bargain on this deal."

His father nodded. "Clonar would have been in a strait-jacket if Clausen had had his way. I was very much surprised. I thought he was inclined our way for a while, but he made a complete switch when he saw the ship. I guess he didn't really believe it until then. Have you heard anything of Clonar today?"

"Not a word that anyone has told us."

"It's too bad. I'm afraid it's highly probable now that he will never be found."

After dinner, Ron and Anne went out to the lab and turned on the transmitter. Ron didn't feel much like working any schedules tonight, but they had to be kept if physically possible. There might be some items of traffic to be handled.

He had a seven-thirty schedule with a ham named Walt Grange, in Chicago. Walt had no traffic for him, but he had heard the news of Clonar and pumped questions at him one after another. This was the last thing in the world Ron wanted to talk about, but out of courtesy he answered the questions.

There was an eight o'clock schedule with a Denver ham that had to be handled by code instead of radiotelephone. There were a half dozen items of traffic to be handled, some messages to be delivered locally, and some to be relayed to the East Coast. This saved Ron from more questioning.

He looked at the clock as he signed off. "One more and we're through," he said to Anne.

He began retuning the receiver slightly for the new

station when suddenly a broad, sloppy wave burst all over the dial. It was full of distortion, but it bore his name.

He heard someone calling, "Ron Barron. Calling Ron Barron. Ron Barron."

For a moment the back of his neck prickled. Then Anne burst out, "That's Clonar! I'd know his voice anywhere!"

"Yes—but how in the world—!" He cut in his own mike. "Clonar, is that you? Can you hear me? This is Ron Barron. Come in, Clonar."

He flipped the switch and the voice came in again.

"Yes, Ron, this is Clonar, I am hearing you. I remembered you said you were broadcasting once a week. I hoped I had kept the days in order.

"Ron, if you meant what you said, you can prove it now and help me. I've got my generators working. But I haven't got the power.

"And Ron—tonight I heard them!"

"Who-oh-!"

"They're looking for me. I got a receiver in operation and heard an automatic signal they're sending out. They know the ship's missing, but they're at least ten light-years away in their search for it. I can never reach them with the little power I've got here. Can you help me? Will you help me?"

Through the ragged wave he was using to reach them, they could hear the break in his voice. For an instant they let themselves imagine his position, how it must be to hear the voice of home, and yet have it so far away and unattainable.

"What do you need?" said Ron.

"One of your own high-power transmitters could be adapted to the purpose, with my wave generators feeding the input. If you can get me access to such a transmitter, I'll know you meant what you said, Ron."

"The only thing I can think of right now is the lab at the Air Base. They've got some pretty big stuff there, up to a hundred kilowatts, I've heard. But we'll have to bargain with Gillispie. Suppose I tell him you'll exchange information about your generator in return for use of his facilities. Would you do that?"

"Yes—anything, almost—"

"I'll try to make a deal. But now will you come out of hiding and come here? I promise you'll not be molested again. Gillispie has promised to let you stay with me."

There was a long moment of silence except for the raw hissing of Clonar's unstable carrier wave, which he must have been producing with baling wire modifications of his own equipment.

At last he said, "I will come, Ron. I'll trust your offer of friendship once again. I want us to be friends— because soon, I am going home!"

Chapter 16 Deadline

ON canceled his remaining schedule and hurried into the house with Anne.

"Dad—Mother!" he called as he hurried into the living room. "We've found Clonar! We're going after him." "Where?" his parents exclaimed together. "On the ship. He just contacted us by radio." "But you can't drive way out there tonight," Mrs. Barron protested. "He can wait until morning."

"Oh, it will be all right," said Ron's father. "They can't leave Clonar there all night after discovering him. You go ahead, Ron. I'll take Anne home."

"I guess I'll have to go sometime," said Anne, "but I would like to see Clonar when he comes in."

"Your mother is going to be very put out with us for keeping you the way we have the past few days,"

said Mrs. Barron. "I'm sure it would be better if you saw Clonar in the morning."

Ron patted her arm. "I'll give you a call first thing in the morning."

He dashed out whistling for Pete, then ran back up the steps and called inside. "You'll fix up his room, huh, Mother? Get something for him to eat. The poor guy probably hasn't had a decent meal since he left here."

"We'll get things ready," she said.

He backed the silver torpedo out of the driveway at a pace for which he would have had to reprimand any other member of the Mercury Club had they been caught doing it. He turned down the quiet streets, and out onto the flats beyond town. He felt a strange exuberance, as if everything were going to proceed as it should for Clonar from now on.

He would have liked to have known Clonar through the years to come, but he hoped with all his heart that Clonar would be successful in building communication equipment that would reach his people.

His mother, too, Ron thought, was beginning to break down the icy prejudice that walled her off from Clonar. Tonight, when he had mentioned that he had been found, he was sure that her eyes had glowed with satisfaction, as if she had hoped all along that he would come back to them.

As he braked the car at the turn-off point on the mountain road, Pete jumped out and dashed through the underbrush, barking noisily. Then Ron realized that he had not arranged for this second visit. But it was too late for that. He would have to bluff it through or get them to call Gillispie on the radio.

He was challenged by the outer guard. "Ron Barron/' he said. "I have permission from Gillispie."

The guard hesitated. "That wasn't a blanket permission."

"Oh, yes, it was. Do I have to check with Gillispie on it again?"

"All right—I guess it's O.K. You've been in once—"

He hoped it would be as easy at the ship. It wasn't. The paunchy guard there blocked the hatchway like an immobile plug.

"Permission was for one entrance, kid. Not for any old time you pleased."

"Will you call the General," said Ron, "or do I have to go all the way back to town to get him on the phone?"

"I guess we can call him—if we can raise him. What shall I say you want to go in for?"

"Tell him I've come for Clonar."

"I want to get out of this uniform, kid, but not that way!"

"He's been hiding under your noses all the time. I can show you."

"Maybe I will tell that to Gillispie," the guard said slowly. "That would be about the best way I know to get you out of our hair for good."

Ron shrugged. "Go ahead."

He followed down into the interior of the ship, where a radio room had been set up for communication with the Air Base. It took a few minutes to get the General. But when the guard finally told him what Ron had said, an explosion shook the speaker until it rattled in the panel.

"But we know this isn't true!" the guard protested when quiet reigned again. "We've searched the ship—"

"You can be sure it's true if Ron Barron says so," said Gillispie evenly. "That boy happens to hold more in his skull than any twenty so-called top sergeants assigned to this base. Follow him and observe how careful the search of your men must have been in order to have overlooked what was probably a very obvious hiding place."

Red-faced, the guard turned away from the panel as Gillispie cut off.

"You heard, super-boy, let's go."

Ron suppressed a grin and followed Pete out the door and down the long corridors toward Clonar's hiding place. He pounded on the panel there and yelled.

"Clonar!Clonar—this is Ron."

Abruptly the door in the ceiling dropped and the guard stood with his mouth open as Clonar's face appeared above them.

Clonar looked startled and uncertain as he saw the guard.

"It's all right," said Ron. "Everything is O.K."

Clonar hesitated, glancing from one to the other. "You'll have to help me with my equipment, Ron. I'll bring it up here."

He disappeared and returned four times, lining the cases at the edge of the opening. Then he passed them down one by one to Ron and the guard. Lastly, he swung himself down. Pete gave a yelp of welcome and plastered his front paws against Clonar's shoulders.

For a moment Clonar bent down and pressed his face against the shaggy head. He rubbed Pete's neck and shoulders hard between his hands as if his hunger for friendship could be satisfied in the dog. When he looked up, Ron had the momentary impression that there was the glistening of moisture in his eyes.

The guard made no comment whatever except to eye the hidden panel opening in disgust. He took up his share of the cases and led the way down the corridor.

When they were outside the ship Ron stopped and gazed up the hillside.

"Would you mind letting a man help us to the car?" he said.

"I'll help," the guard grunted. "Come on, let's go."

In the car, Ron and Clonar sat a moment in silence. "It's good to have you back with us," said Ron.

"It's good to be back," Clonar breathed. But his eyes were upturned. "You'd never know the stars were so far away, would you?"

Ron started the car and drove down the hills to the town. On his own street, he glimpsed the house from a distance and saw that the light was on in Clonar's room and the windows were open to let in the cool night air.

George Barron met them as the car pulled up. "Welcome home, Clonar," he said. "It's good to see you again."

"Thank you, sir. It's like coming home—almost."

"We can leave your equipment in the car," said Ron. "It'll be locked up."

In the kitchen, Mrs. Barron looked up with a start as they came in. Watching her closely, Ron saw her stiffen—and then her frozen pattern of behavior toward the alien and unknowable melted before the despair and loneliness in Clonar's eyes.

"It's very good to have you back with us," she said.

Ron remembered the day when Clonar had said, "I hope someday your mother will like me." He caught Clonar's eye now and they smiled at each other, aware that the day had come.

She indicated the food she had prepared on the table and he sat down and turned hungrily to it.

"We'll be off to bed now," said George Barron. "See you in the morning, boys."

A moment later the telephone rang and Ron answered. It was Gilhspie.

"I just wanted to check if this story of Clonar's being found was on the level."

"It is. Want to talk to him?"

"No. I'll take your word for it. I want to offer my congratulations. When you get your 'greetings' you might remember the Air Force. We could use a man like you."

"Thanks, General. But there's more to this. I've got another deal on."

He told Gilhspie then about Clonar's need and the offer to exchange data on the faster-than-light wave generator. He heard Gillispie's breath suck in deeply.

"I'm in hot water already, you know," said Gilhspie.

"Where is this going to end? Am I going to get anything more out of Clonar? Do we get to examine his ship?"

"Clonar wants nothing more than to go home right now. He'll probably leave his ship without another thought if he gets a chance to get away. Beyond that, I'll get all the technical information he's willing to give me freely in the time left to him—and I'll pass it along if you'll let us have access to the radio lab."

"All right. It's a deal. When do you want to come out?"

"First thing in the morning."

By six o'clock the car was backing out the driveway as the sun topped the eastern hills. Ron and Clonar headed out of town and beyond the narrow valley to the broad plain beyond, where the Air Base was located.

Clonar breathed the sharp air with obvious enjoyment, and admired the mechanism of the car.

"How would you like to drive?" said Ron suddenly. "I'd like it very much."

Ron pulled over to the shoulder of the road and stopped. They exchanged places and Ron explained briefly the operation of the controls.

Clonar started off slowly, his hands relaxed and sure upon the steering wheel. In a few moments his skill seemed the equal of Ron's for all his experience in driving.

"Is there anything that you can't learn in ten seconds flat?" said Ron.

"We are trained to do things this way."

"How can you train to do something you don't even know you're going to be called upon to do?"

Clonar smiled. "It's like providing a workshop with every tool that may ever be needed instead of waiting until a given job comes along and then assembling the tools one by one. That is about the best analogy I can give.

"From what you have told me I gather that your school systems simply put into the mind a few elementary facts that will take care of most of the commonly met requirements. They make no attempt to train the mind to meet new requirements."

"That's about it," said Ron. "What a system yours must be! How I'd like to get me some of that!"

"We begin training when we are less than a year old—corresponding to your time. Our basic education consists of acquiring the tools with which to think and act, not the assembling of a few facts and the learning about tools and jobs."

Ron leaned back, speculating what the human mind might be able to accomplish if it were trained under such a system. He had the evidence at hand in Clonar— Clonar's learning in two days as much English as an Earthman would acquire in six months of heavy study, his driving the hot-rod with a skill as great as Ron's after a minute or two of learning.

The silver motes of jet ships appeared in the sky and there began to appear on the horizon the sprawling buildings of the base and the great radio towers looming at its edge.

Gillispie met them in the office he was using during his stay at the base. He rose to greet them and shook their hands.

"I'm glad to see you again, Clonar," he said.

"It's good to be out of prison," Clonar answered, not attempting to conceal his bitterness over his previous association with the General.

Gilhspie looked at him for a long time, his face solemn. "Some day I wish that you and I could understand each other, Clonar."

And then he turned swiftly and indicated chairs.

"Hornsby has been notified and a lab has been prepared for your use. You may use such transmitter facilities as you need in exchange for information on your communication system. Is that satisfactory?"

Clonar nodded. "I should like to begin work at once."

Gillispie led them out of the building and across the sandy stretch to the massive radio laboratory. There, Hornsby greeted them dourly.

"This is a little different from last time." Ron could not resist it. "This time we are using your equipment!"

Hornsby glowered and turned away toward the section that had been cleared for their use.

"Here's your working space," he said. "Meter equipment is in the storeroom. Transmitters will be shown you by the sergeant who will be assigned to help you. I trust the one you use will not be completely useless afterwards."

Ron chuckled. "Why not? Clonar s was when you got through with it."

He knew he shouldn't have done it, but the purpling of Hornsby's face was a delight to behold.

"I'll send the sergeant in." He stalked away.

Gillispie was grinning faintly. "You had better not try that too often. The man is liable to burst a blood vessel. He takes himself pretty seriously."

"Don't we all?" said Ron.

"No," Gillispie said cheerfully, "not all of us. We simply try to do our job the best way we know how. Someday you will understand that, Ron."

"Maybe I'm beginning to understand it a little bit now."

They spent the rest of the morning in the company of the sergeant who was assigned to them. He showed them the available equipment and the giant, experimental transmitters being tested there.

Clonar insisted on examining each of these in great detail. The process was slow because it was necessary for Ron to explain many of the technical terms with which Clonar was unfamiliar. But by noon he had made his choice. A giant, hundred kilowatt, high-frequency transmitter being designed for communication with Air Force bases throughout the world.

The sergeant whistled as Clonar made his selection. "You would take the prize baby on the base," he said. "I hope you don't expect to rebuild this in a couple of afternoons."

"I selected it because it will require the least modification of any of the sets you have."

After lunch, they brought the cases from the car into the laboratory. Then they began to settle into what looked like a long routine.

A correlation had to be set up between the power units and all electrical values of Clonar's system and Ron's so that they could be understood. For Ron this appeared to be a tremendous task, but Clonar's memory made it almost trivial for him. A thing once explained was forever understood.

As evening drew on Clonar seemed satisfied that he was reasonably well acquainted with the units used by Earthmen.

"We'll set up my generators now," he said, "and see what will be required to feed them into the transmitters. I'll set up my receiver for a check. You'll be able to hear the signal from my fleet."

Ron and the sergeant merely watched while Clonar's swift fingers began setting up the equipment. After a half-hour's work, he seemed satisfied and then prepared his receiver. This required a power modifying circuit, which he set up on a breadboard layout, before plugging into the wall outlet.

Without any warm-up time, there came a satisfying hiss from the speaker as if some powerful carrier wave were tuned in. Clonar adjusted the controls and waited a moment.

There burst from the speaker a swift, alien sound. Ron recognized it, for Clonar had given him demonstrations of his native tongue. For a moment he thought Clonar was going to cry as he stood listening.

The sergeant muttered under his breath. "That stuff's not coming from ten light-years away! You'll never make me believe that."

"But it is," Ron whispered. "You've got to take his word that it is."

Then he saw the paleness of terror fixed upon Clonar's face.

"What is it, Clonar? What's happened?"

"I must not have heard it all the first time." Clonar turned to him as if in a daze. "The message says now that the fleet is preparing to leave this sector and abandon the search. It says the watch will be maintained for only nine more days!

"I can't stop now. I've got to make them hear me. Ron, stay with me tonight and help me!"

Chapter 17 An Alien Forever

I

HEY worked until well past midnight, and were back again at six in the morning. Ron s mother protested, but when Clonar told her in his own words the message he'd heard, she caught the urgency of their task.

They worked eighteen hours a day for the next two days modifying the tuning circuits of the transmitter to accept the wave form of Clonar's generator.

Gillispie came around the second day and looked over the work they were doing. Ron told him what Clonar had heard from the fleet. He turned on the receiver to let Gillispie hear it himself.

"It's from ten light-years away," said Ron. "It's hard for the mind to get hold of that."

Gillispie glanced into the case of the instrument at the components that bore no resemblance to any Earthly mechanisms.

"I'm glad for Clonar's sake," he said. "But for my own sake, I had hoped that he would fail. We need such knowledge as his. We need to know this and a hundred thousand other things.

"I came over to talk to him about the possibilities of further commerce between his people and ours. Have you said anything along those lines to him?"

"Yes. I thought of it, too. Clonar said it's utterly impossible. In the first place, we are too far away, even by their standards of travel. There is no commerce that would be profitable to them to conduct at this distance. The purpose of their fleet in this area was purely exploratory, and their visits will not be repeated.

"As for giving up their technology to us, Clonar says no on that score, too. He points out that our technology is already so far ahead of our knowledge of the humanities that we are on the verge of disaster. He is willing to release the principles of his communication system and a few other gadgets, but such things as the power plant of the ship are out of the question. You could not force that out of him."

Gillispie's jaw muscles knotted hard. "I'm not convinced that we aren't fools for failing to try it."

"Our tragedy," said Ron, "is that they are a hundred million light-years away—and from this distance we have to envy them in their civilization that is a hundred thousand years ahead of us."

Although he was familiar with the basic principles of the huge transmitter, Ron had, of course, never worked on a piece of equipment this size before. With the assistance of the sergeant, he had to refer constantly to the massive volume of instructions and the intricate schematic diagrams. The details of this technical information had to be relayed to Clonar bit by bit as he added modifying components to the tuning circuits.

It was made increasingly difficult by the fact that Ron had no knowledge of exactly what Clonar was trying to do to the equipment. Clonar's urgency was too great for him to indulge in long explanations at this time. He asked for information in terms of voltages, currents, and electrical values of the existing components. Most of the actual reassembling he did himself, delegating only a fraction to Ron and the sergeant.

During their short pauses for lunch Clonar kept his receiver on, listening over and over again to the search message from his fleet. Day by day, the remaining time of search was shortened. It was like a drug, Ron thought, that kept Clonar charged to a fever pitch of activity.

He wondered, however, how much this hectic activity contributed to Clonar s efficiency. Increasingly, he detected slips and boners that were apparent even to him. He wished unhappily that he could carry more of the burden of the work. He tried to persuade Clonar that he could do it, but a few trials showed that it was slower in the long run.

Near midnight of the third day at the base, they reached the end of the first stage of the work. The modified transmitter was ready for its first check with the power on, and the wave generator replacing the conventional oscillator.

At Clonar's signal, the sergeant turned on the filament power and let the big tubes warm up for twenty minutes. Then, stage by stage, plate power was applied and the meters carefully checked. They reached the final power stage where six giant water-cooled tubes fed the antenna.

They watched meters swing over as the power came on. But the needles didn't stop at operating indexes.

Ron, watching behind the protective cage, saw the plates glowing, surging into brilliant cherry, then white.

"Shut it down! The plates are burning up!" he cried.

The sergeant leaped for the STOP button on the panel, but he was far too late. A sharp hissing burst from the power stage, and the tubes darkened and died.

The three of them stood staring after the power had been cut.

"The overload relay should pick now to conk out," muttered the sergeant. "Four of the bottles gone-fifteen hundred bucks apiece at Government contract price."

"That does it," said Ron. "We've been pushing too hard. When we check the relays, I'm willing to bet we'll find it's our own fault. We've got to quit, Clonar. Tomorrow there's no work at all for us. We'll botch the whole job if we push it like this."

"Ron, there's so little time—you don't understand."

"The bulk of the labor is done—if we don't wreck it by pushing too hard. It's only a matter of refinement from here out. We've got to have the gray matter perking for that. No work tomorrow."

"It makes sense," said Clonar. "But I can't stop. I can't forget that there are only five days left. I can't give up one of them."

"Half a day, then. Look, we'll come out tomorrow and clean up this mess and maybe run through the check on the set. Then we'll get the gang who've been wanting to meet you and have a swim at the lake and a party half the night."

Ron called Anne early and told her of his plan for a day's outing with the gang.

"Maybe I shouldn't drag Clonar away from the lab like this, but the guy's knocking himself out, and there isn't much I can do about it up there."

"It's what we should have done a long time ago," said Anne. "It would be horrible if it kept him from meeting his deadline—you'll have to be the judge of that—but if we can help him meet it by increasing his efficiency, we ought to do it."

"I think that's what it'll do. I'm willing to gamble on it.

"Who shall we get together?"

"Everybody.The usual crowd, at least those who can understand Clonar. Don't bring any fuzzy heads. Use your own judgment."

"We'll meet at the lake at two for swimming. O.K.?"

Clonar was already up, sleepy-eyed and groggy as he headed for the shower.

"You need another six hours' sleep," said Ron. "Why don't you take it?"

"No. A good shower will finish up what the sleep didn't do. If we don't get enough done on the transmitter this morning, I don't think I'll go swimming with you."

Maybe he should have made it a private affair between the two of them and Anne, but the three of them together would talk of nothing but their immediate problem. He wanted the rest of the gang to meet Clonar—and Clonar to meet them, so that he might know for sure that Earthmen could be trusted and made friends, before he left them forever. There was no other chance but this one.

Replacing the tubes in the transmitter and correcting the relays that had failed to protect it took far more time than they expected. They got the set on with power, but it failed utterly to handle the strange wave form of Clonar's generator in the manner he required.

He was almost trembling with the shock of defeat when they finally shut down the transmitter.

"I'll never make it in time, Ron I I can't even think, any more."

"We'll fix that. Come on. Anne will be waiting with the lunch now."

Clonar agreed apathetically. They picked up Anne at three, an hour late. She greeted them cheerily as if she had expected nothing else.

As she squeezed into the narrow seat, she lifted the lid of the lunch hamper.

"Smell, Clonarl Fried chicken. Does that look good to you?"

Her shining eyes seemed to bring him up out of the gloom that covered him. "I could ask for a worse fate than staying here and eating your fried chicken the rest of my lif e."

It took a half hour to reach the lake resort west of Longview. Clonar drove. Handling the car was one pleasure to which he always responded. The place was crowded as always on summer afternoons. Ron watched carefully for any signs of uneasiness in Clonar, but he saw none as they parked and carried their lunch to the reserved tables Anne had arranged for under the arbor.

"See you on the beach," Anne said as she separated from them in the direction of the bathhouses.

As they changed to swimming trunks, Ron scanned the figure of his friend to reassure himself that he was not leaving Clonar open to ridicule for his strangeness. There was nothing that would mark Clonar as being any different from the average well-developed sixteen-year-old boy. Only the head of hair which required a closer look than anybody was going to take today—and the six-fingered hands, which could not be hidden anywhere.

Suddenly Ron laughed aloud. "I forgot to ask you even, if you swim on your world. But surely you must."

They were approaching the water, and Clonar examined the motions of the swimmers splashing about. "We swim, of course, but we use a considerably different motion than any of those I see here."

"Well, come on and show me. I'd like to know what other kinds there are. I thought we had discovered them all."

He felt good inside. Clonar's face was alight with the pleasure of the sun and air on his skin, and the carefree sounds of the bathers filling the air. This was no mistake, he thought. Clonar would go back to the base and knock off the rest of the job in nothing flat.

Suddenly Ron spotted Anne, and was startled to see her in a new swim suit he had never seen before. He whistled long and loudly as he ran toward her.

She scowled disapprovingly. "For that I should have worn a potato sack!"

"I'm sorry," Ron laughed. "It really is the nicest suit on the nicest girl on the beach. Am I forgiven?"

"Provided you never do that again, bub."

"I promise. Come on over to the water. Clonar is going to show us some new strokes."

They waded out until they stood waist-deep in the clear water. "This is as good as any place," said Ron.

Abruptly, Clonar leveled out and then shot forward. For a moment he sped under water, and Ron had to strain his eyes to find exactly where he was. Then his head appeared and he continued moving forward.

Other bathers near Ron and Anne were staring, too. "The guy must have a jet motor hidden in his belt," said one of them. "Look at that boy go!"

Yards away, Clonar whirled in the water and waved to them. Then he returned swimming at the same phenomenal pace. The onlookers were increasing in numbers.

Clonar broke the water near them and stood up, breathing faster, but relaxed as if he could have gone for hours at that pace.

"What kind of stroke was that?" someone asked. "Show us how you do that!"

And suddenly Ron saw that Clonar was caught up in the warmth of their appreciation and companionship.

"Me first!" said Anne. "Teach me how to do that, Clonar."

"I'll show you the kick." He floated in the water, hands grasping the guard line. His legs began to flutter with a swift motion almost too rapid to follow.

Someone giggled. "It's like a fish!"

And someone gave a gasp. In a faint whisper Ron heard the words, "The fingers—look at his hands."

Like a flame, realization burst through the crowd. "It's the guy from Mars or wherever it was—the one that crashed in the flying saucer."

Ron felt a cold antagonism driving through him. Why couldn't they shut up and let him be one of them? But it had to be met now.

As Clonar stood up after the demonstration, Ron said, "Some of you have recognized us. I may as well introduce us to the rest of you. I'm Ron Barron, and this is Clonar. You've seen his story in the papers. Maybe some of you heard me tell it on the radio.

"You know he's had a bum deal so far. I hope this afternoon you'll let him know there are people on Earth who know how to treat a stranger. How about it, folks?"

There was a moment of awed silence. The crowd shifted uneasily and curiously, those in back coming closer as they would in the presence of a circus freak.

Then Ron's words sank in. Someone started a spontaneous handclap. It spread. And with it spread good feeling and the kind of welcome that Ron had hoped for in Clonar's behalf.

Ron breathed easier. "O.K., Clonar. How about doing it at slow speed and showing Anne how to begin to do such a stroke?"

Clonar gave him a look of thanks and understanding as if he fully comprehended the thing that Ron had just done. Then he lowered Anne to a floating position and moved her legs slowly in the intricate pattern of the kick stroke he had demonstrated.

She tried to follow his instructions, but there was something wrong with it, Ron thought. It almost looked like something that no one else but Clonar could do. And then with another cold burst Ron realized that was right.

Earthmen couldn't do it. They didn't have the muscles for it. Clonar's structure was that much different. He could perform those incredibly swift, fishlike motions with his legs, but Earthmen could never duplicate them.

Ron moved away from the crowd. The others would try and become irritated because they could not do it. That's the way it always was in the face of superior accomplishments. In a few minutes it would begin to sink in that Clonar could do something that none of the rest could. Their friendliness would weaken, and they would set him farther apart from them because of it.

Ron was thankful when Stan and a dozen others of the gang burst upon them from another section of the beach and began disorganizing things generally with their horseplay. One by one they were introduced to Clonar and treated him as one of their own.

It went smoother than Ron had hoped for after that. Clonar was enjoying himself. He splashed and played with a vigor that outdid them all in the hours of water volley that followed.

Ron told Anne about the swim stroke. She refused to believe it and doggedly practiced most of the time she was in the water.

At sundown they dressed, and ate under the arbor. For an hour or two afterwards, they rode the roller coaster and spent their change in the penny arcade and the shooting gallery.

When the orchestra in the dance pavilion began its first melody they began congregating slowly around the dance floor. Anne had not paired off the party. There were stags and extra girls as well as dated couples and the few who were considered steadies. But as they became aware of each other about the dance floor the realization seemed to strike the mind of everyone that Clonar was alone.

They were aware of him standing a little to one side of Ron and Anne. His figure struck a sudden thread of poignancy in each of them that seemed so unbearable that it could hardly be expressed.

Ron felt it. It was something about the music and the soft lights and the moving couples on the floor. There was something here that he could never offer Clonar.

Anne broke the unbearable pressure by turning to Clonar.

"Is this like any custom you have on your world?" she said.

"Something—we have something much like this." There seemed to be a hoarseness in his voice as if he, too, found it difficult to speak, as if he were reminded here of something of which he did not want to speak.

"You gave me a swimming lesson," said Anne. "Perhaps you would let me show you this."

His face changed as if this were beyond any kindness that he might have expected. "Thanks, Anne—thanks very much." He moved toward her.

Ron was not surprised to observe that Clonar's grasp of dance steps was just as quick as his learning to speak English or to drive a car. After three or four rounds of the floor he had lost almost all his awkwardness.

He brought Anne back to Ron as the music ended, his face glowing with a strange wistfulness that almost frightened Ron.

"That was very nice, Anne," he said. "I think your dancing is a beautiful custom."

"How about me for the next one?" said Ron. "Then Anne can show you another dance or two and you II be able to ask some of the other girls."

As they moved away, Ron whispered in Anne's ear. "That was nice of you to do that. Something seemed to come over the guy when everyone started dancing. I

couldn't figure out what it was. It almost made me afraid to watch him."

Anne looked up at him. "Don't you know what it was? This is something he can never have—even if he does live here the rest of his life. He felt it, and all the girls felt it. I felt so sorry for him I almost wanted to cry.

"What are you talking about?" said Ron. But he knew, he thought. The music and the fights and the moving couples told him the same thing that was in the minds of everyone.

"He can't be like us," said Anne. "Not like you and

me. He's too different. He could never marry an Earth

• i" girl.

Chapter 18 Attack!

HEN the dance ended and Ron and Anne returned to their place they found no sign of Clonar. They looked up and down the floor without seeing his tall figure. Ron turned to Mike Michaels who was stag, watching the dancers.

"Did you see Clonar leave, Mike? He was here a few minutes ago."

"Yes, he went off toward the other side of the floor somewhere. Looked like he might have been in a hurry, but I lost sight of him when he got there."

"Thanks." Ron grabbed Anne's hand and hurried her through the crowd. Clonar was nowhere in sight on the other side of the floor.

Outside the pavilion, George and Paula were sitting one out, on a bench under the trees.

"Did you see Clonar come this way?" Ron asked. George nodded his head toward the darkness. "He

went that way a little while ago. I asked where he was going, but I couldn't understand what he mumbled at me. I figured it was better to let the guy alone. Something wrong?"

"I'm afraid there is. Come along, will you? I may need your help."

The four of them hurried along the darkened pathways, Ron leading the way toward the parking area. He stopped at the point where he had left the car.

Anne gave a surprised gasp. "It's gonel The car's gone!"

"I was afraid of this," said Ron. "I guess this whole idea was a bust, after all. George, will you take us out there in your car? I've got to get to him quick."

"Out where? What are you talking about? Has Clo-nar got your car?"

"I think so. I've been teaching him to drive. He drove over here, and absent-mindedly—or purposely—put the keys in his pocket when we parked. Now I'm afraid he's gone out to the Air Base to work on the transmitter some more. How about it? Will you drive me out there? We can take the girls home, first."

"Like heck!" said Anne. "We'll go along. No use missing a ride like this on such a night."

But it wasn't a ride they were to enjoy, they soon discovered. There was the same uneasy tension in all of them as they passed through town and shot out along the highway, north.

"What do you suppose happened to Clonar?" said George. "Did the party upset him?"

"I think so. I was trying to get the guy's mind off his work. He's in such a shape he doesn't know which way is up." Ron explained the things they were doing, and the messages Clonar had heard from the ship.

"He's got to meet that deadline, or they'll go off and leave him. But he had worked to the point where he was muffing the job. What happens now is anybody's guess, if he's more upset than before—"

At last they saw Ron's car in the brilliant moonlight. It was parked beside the radio lab a quarter of a mile away. The lights of the building shown over the adjacent field.

"I don't suppose we could come in and take a look at things," said George.

"I'm afraid not. We're here only by Gillispie's indulgence. He would throw us out on our ears for the slightest infraction of rules—and this is restricted territory. How about you, Anne? Are you going back?"

"Not me. Gillispie and me are buddies. He won't throw me out!"

"Maybe not. Well, thanks, George, for bringing us out." They stepped from the car as it slowed beside the lab.

As they came into the building they encountered a hesitant and puzzled corporal.

"What is this," he demanded, "a parade? I didn't know you were going to work at all hours of the day or night. Or is it a party this time, maybe, huh?" He glanced at Anne. "She don't get in without a pass!"

"It's all right," said Ron. "I'll vouch for her. We're just going as far as our lab there. Please come along with us."

He got away with it, and the corporal followed unhappily.

In the lab, they saw Clonar sitting on a high stool beside his receiver. A mike and the remote controls of the big transmitter were in front of him. Ron glanced into the other room. It was dimly lit by the tubes of the set.

Clonar looked up as they approached, a hot light burning in his eyes.

"I think I've got it, Ron!" he exclaimed. "It came to me while I was back there with you. I'm sorry I ran off with your car, but I had to know if the idea would work, and it did! The transmitter is putting out my wave, and I think the fleet has got it!"

They moved back to the other side of the room and sat on stools there. Clonar bent over the mike, speaking in his own tongue the same words over and over. Even to them, the pleading in his voice was understandable, if the words were not.

He switched back and forth from the receiver, alternating his own call with the monotonously repeated signal from the fleet.

Then suddenly, that signal broke off in the middle and there was only the high hissing noise that was like the voice of the stars themselves. Clonar straightened, his whole body stiff as if under the power of an electric current.

The sound from the receiver changed sharply, and from it came the voice of someone speaking in Clonar's own tongue, not the mechanical voice of the automatic message, but someone answering his call to space.

Ron gripped Anne's hand hard in his own, straining to grasp some meaning out of those words, but he knew no more than a dozen or two words of Clonar's complex vocabulary.

"I'm glad," Anne murmured. "I'm glad for him. Now he can go home!"

Minutes passed while the conversation went on. At first Clonar's face had been joyous with the contact that he'd scarcely believed would be made. Now it seemed to grow dark as if some curtain of unbearable disappointment had been thrown about him.

For a full half-hour Clonar carried on the voluble conversation. Then at last he stopped and his hand cut the switch.

Ron got up and moved toward him as he rested his head on his fists.

"What is it, Clonar? Did you reach your ships? Did they say they were coming?"

Clonar raised his head and looked slowly from one to the other of them. He nodded almost imperceptibly. "Yes—yes, they're coming. They're coming to destroy your world!"

He gave way to a sob that he could no longer withhold, and dropped his head upon his arms. Ron had the sensation that somewhere near by a bomb of incredible force had exploded—but that actual memory of it had vanished. He was aware only of standing motionless, holding Anne's icy hand in his.

"They are coming to make war," said Clonar again.

The corporal was the first to respond. He choked

suddenly and blurted out in disbelief, "War? What do you mean, war?"

He looked stupidly from one to the other. "War— Gillispie ought to know about this."

He moved and was gone before the others realized the significance of his presence. His going roused Ron from the half-stupor he felt he had been in momentarily.

He shook Clonar's arm. "What is this all about?" he demanded. "Why is your fleet coming to make war? What have we done to them?"

"I didn't know these things," said Clonar as he raised his head wearily. "But it seems that my ship was attacked by an Earth ship. It was fired upon and destroyed by some kind of atomic missile."

"How could that be? We don't have planes that shoot atomic bullets—or do we? Or do they? How could they be sure of this? You said that no word of the happening got back to your fleet."

"That's what I thought," said Clonar. "But I was wrong. In the last minute of its plunge, the communicator succeeded in getting word of the attack to the fleet. But he did not have time to even indicate the solar system in which we were operating. The fleet has been searching for the possible solar system ever since.

"They were prepared to give up the whole search in only a few more days. They would never have found Earth if I had not led them here to destroy you."

"But why should they make war upon the whole Earth, because of what one plane belonging to a single nation might have done?" cried Anne. "The whole world is not to blame!"

"I understand how it could have been one belonging to your nation or to some other nation, but the fleet commander or the people generally have no concept of the division of a world into nations. To them a planet is a unit. Its people are as one. Since my ship was shot down by a ship of Earth, the blame rests upon the whole world."

"But this is crazy!" exclaimed Ron. "Your people are civilized far beyond us, yet to make war in retaliation for this ship is a primitive, childish act of vengeance.

"Surely they can understand that the act of shooting down your ship was either an accident or primitive savagery. Neither calls for retaliation in kind from a race as advanced as yours!"

"That is not their reasoning. It's hard to make you understand the real point that our commander has taken. I can understand it. It's wholly logical from a viewpoint outside your own race."

"Well, what is their reasoning?" demanded Anne. "I'd like to know how blowing up our Earth can be made logical!"

"My people have explored Earth extensively. We understand it is highly developed in the field of physical science. And it will be only a short time until you have spaceflight of your own.

"Yet the conflicts that rage among yourselves are like a disease and even when you get into space you will carry this disease with you and spread it perhaps.

The destruction of my ship is taken as a sample of this. Our commander reasons that it is his obligation to the community of worlds to keep this disease from spreading.

"Your world is viewed as a sick planet covered with some violent mold that ought to be burned and destroyed to keep it from spreading to other worlds!"

Anne gasped with the horror of this concept. But Ron's face grew bitter. "We could hardly blame your commander for such a view, if he has explored Earth well. But our own instinct for survival makes us highly unsympathetic with his proposed remedy."

Clonar looked up, genuine surprise in his face. "That's not true, Ron. There is no instinct for survival among your people. The instinct is toward death. It is evident in the history you have related to me, the way your people have murdered each other over all the centuries of your history."

"That could be argued," said Ron, "but now is not the time to do it. I say we want to survive. Is there nothing we can do to ward off this attack? Is there nothing at all that will appeal to your commander?"

"I have presented all the arguments I knew, all I have learned from the days I have spent with you. He would not listen."

There seemed nothing more to say, and this brought fresh panic of its own as their minds searched like lost children for escape they knew did not exist.

Their silence was broken by the sudden pounding of feet in the hallway outside. General Gillispie burst in, followed by the corporal and three MP's.

"Arrest that man!" He pointed to Clonar. "Don't let him touch a thing."

The MP's rushed forward, grasping Clonar's arms.

Ron whirled and faced Gillispie, eyes wide with rage. "Can't you see that Clonar is our only hope in this matter? There's no question that we will face weapons that can wipe mankind off the Earth. Clonar is the only preventive contact we have with that force. Do you have to destroy our one chance?

"Clonar must be a person of some importance, or at least his father as captain of the saucer was. The fleet would not have spent so much time in the search if this were not so.

"His chief value to us, now, is as a hostage. They may not be quite so anxious to blast us as long as he is in our possession.

"What do you expect to do? Extract a promise not to harm us and let Clonar go? Would you trust them any more then than you do now?"

Gillispie shook his head. "I would never trust them. Since the threat has been made, Clonar can never be freed until some other answer appears. That does not seem likely."

Clonar was smiling grimly. "You would be surprised, General, to know that I, too, find it difficult to see any other answer—although I am not so sure your holding me will keep them from attacking indefinitely. That is the thing you would be gambling on."

"I think not. A people as civilized as yours would not be likely to destroy one of their own in a senseless attack upon us."

"If you understood your own people as well," said Clonar, "you would be a great man among them." Gillispie flushed.

"At least I have understood the value of my high card."

"Yes. And you are quite right in saying that you cannot trust my commander. He would promise not to harm you and then burn every vestige of life from your planet the moment you released me."

Gillispie blinked. "Why do you tell me such a fact as this?"

"Because I am not merely interested in getting back to my home. Ron and Anne have been my friends."

Gillispie felt the knife-thrust. "Is there any other answer?" he challenged harshly.

"I think there is. There is one person whose word my commander would honor."

"And that is?"

"Mine. He would honor my word and accept any promise I might give him. Among us, we trust each other."

"What can you promise him that will make him relent?"

"Because I have found friends here who have taken risks for me, I will tell him that I will stay here voluntarily and suffer any destruction he wishes to administer to this planet. Or, rather—I would tell him that if I were free to act. As a prisoner, I can do nothing."

Ron suddenly forgot everything about Gillispie's rank, his rights, and the respect due him.

"This is your last chance," he charged furiously.

The General turned to face him, and Ron saw that his countenance was drawn with lines of fatigue and the beginnings of telltale marks of age.

"I'm going to try it your way once again," he said, "because you have convinced me that it is the best way. And someday I hope that you're in a command of mine, no matter how remote. When that day comes, I'll break you or make you great.

"Release the man." He gestured abruptly to the MP's.

"Now you are free," he said to Clonar. "Do what you will."

"I will present my ultimatum to my commander at our next schedule." "When is that?" "In the morning at ten." "How long will it take them to get here?" "Twelve days."

"You may tell them that if they come to destroy we will meet them with every force at our command. Now, we had better all get some sleep."

He strode from the room and left them.

There was little sleep for any of them that night. Ron lay in bed watching the moonlight against the window. He knew that Clonar in the next room was doing the same, and a few blocks away Anne was watching the same moon and minking the same thoughts.

He knew, too, that Gillispie had not gone to bed.

The General would be up the rest of the night phoning Washington, conferring with his superiors, setting the wheels in motion that would turn the comparatively puny defenses of Earth against the attacker. Ron wondered if they would attempt, or if there would be time to get international cooperation.

They had told no one, not even their parents, nor would they. It would be a useless burden to impose, and no adult, no parent could offer consolation or mediation.

And, in the end, Ron thought, there was nothing to tell. You couldn't go to your friends and neighbors and proclaim that the world may be destroyed with a single blow tomorrow. Prophets of a thousand dooms had done that in times past, and had been laughed at while the doom fell.

Men could comprehend a little destruction, a bombing here, a killing there—a lighted fuse of war on a distant island. But the wholesale burning of their own land was too great to be believed.

Ron wondered if the military Chiefs of Staff would believe Gillispie. Perhaps they wouldn't credit him enough to alert the planes.

It was a small matter whether they did or not, Ron felt. It would be useless to send up a few hundred fighter craft even if they were armed with atomic bullets. Their slow pace could scarcely bring them in range of the swiftly darting saucers. None would be so careless now to come within range as Clonar's ship had done.

He wondered what kind of weapons the saucers had available since they were not primarily warships. It mattered little. If the Earth were to be burned, there was little significance in the kind of match that ignited it.

It seemed that sunrise came abruptly, and he knew he had slept for a time. He heard Clonar moving about in the next room and dressed quickly. He had the curious feeling of somehow living in a day that would not be found upon the calendar—a day belonging to some unreal time that did not exist.

At breakfast, George Barron scanned their faces. He started to make a joke, then thought better of it.

"I don't believe I've ever seen two more sober faces than you fellows have this morning," he said.

"Just thinking," said Ron absently. "We're still out at the base chewing over a problem."

They picked up Anne at nine. There was no use going earlier. The trip was made in almost complete silence.

Gillispie was waiting for them when they came in. They knew at once that he had not gone to bed again during the night. His face had a burned-out look.

"I couldn't get the planes alerted," he said. "They wouldn't believe the story. They're sending out a couple of full generals to investigate me!"

While they waited for the giant transmitter tubes to warm up, Ron stood close to the General. He felt a strange affinity for the severe man who was caught between the world of flesh and the world of steel, for he knew that Gillispie was one of those men cursed with the gift of understanding an opponent even while he was forced to cut him down.

When the transmitter was ready, Clonar sat at the table and switched on the microphone. He began calling in his own language, and listened at intervals, switching back and forth between mike and receiver.

Suddenly the star hiss of the speaker was replaced with a booming alien voice. It was the same, Ron thought, that they had heard the evening before. And now Clonar was in conversation with the distant commander.

They tried to catch the import of the alien words by inflection and accent, but they understood only its menace and the mystery of its distant origin. They tried to grasp the decision that was being handed down by the tensing of Clonar's muscles, but he remained as still as stone.

Yet the conversation was brief. Clonar sagged and cut the switch on the final words and they knew it was over.

Gillispie was the first to rush forward. He grasped Clonar by the arm and shook him.

"What was the decision, boy? What did your commander say?"

Clonar raised his head. His face was bright as if through the relief of some tremendous grief.

"He agreed," Clonar said. "He agreed to pick me up and leave your world unharmed."

Chapter 19 Homeward

T was midafternoon when they returned to town. Clonar made arrangements to tape record the technical data on his faster-than-Iight wave generator and some other items he was willing to release to Gillispie.

In town, they dropped Anne at her home and went on to Ron's. As they drove up, they saw the curb lined with cars.

"Mom's bridge and gossip festival," said Ron. "I'd forgotten about this."

Suddenly the date seemed back on the calendar. The night and the morning belonged to a dream.

"We'd better sneak in quietly," Ron said. He knew the hall would be clear, so they entered through the front door and began moving up the stairs. Only a brief glimpse of them had been visible to some of the ladies seated about card tables in the living room.

Three steps up the stairs, they halted as a hoarse whisper filtered out from the room. Ron recognized the voice of Mrs. Newton, wife of one of Longview's bank presidents.

"I should think you'd be frightened/* she said, "to have that monster here in the house all the time/*

There was a humming murmur of assent. Ron turned, the blood rising to his face. He had the impulsive thought that he would burst into the room and tell them what they were, but Clonar caught his arm.

They were startled then to hear the voice of Mrs. Barron. The sharpness of it made it almost a shout.

"I should think you would be ashamed of yourselves," she said. "I know I am ashamed of the things I said and did the first days he was here. But now I have learned something tremendously important.

"Clonar has come to be as likable and human as my own son. The great thing I have learned is that it doesn't matter what a person's hair is like, how many fingers or toes he has, or the shape of his nose, or the color of his face.

"It's the things that he thinks and the friendship that he offers you that count. It's not the outside of the package. It's the contents."

Ron grinned broadly and whispered to Clonar, "Good old Mom! That's telling those harpies!"

They continued up the stairs while the buzz of indignation and apology mingled below.

The next days were spent as Ron wished, and there was nothing to mar them. Clonar spent much time preparing the data for Gillispie, and he gave additional material to Ron. But Ron knew he was withholding much and didn't press him for any more than he desired to leave.

They spent time fishing and hiking and swimming and just riding in the car under the stars. Clonar told Ron a thousand tales of the strange worlds he had seen, and left him dreams enough to last a lifetime.

On the final day, there was a sadness that neither of them tried to hide.

"Twenty-four hours," said Ron. "What would you like to do on the final day you have left here?"

Clonar considered a moment. "I think I'd like to go back to the lake again. I'd like to go swimming and dancing there. I'd like to dance again with Anne, if I may."

"That's a swell idea. Shall we invite some of the gang or go by ourselves?"

"Just you and Anne and I. I would like that best."

Anne was in favor of it. She spent almost all the afternoon making Clonar try to teach her his swimming technique, which she insisted she could learn. They gave up telling her she couldn't, and the fun of her attempts, and the being together under the hot summer sky bound them in a way that would withstand the separation of vast, cold light-years.

They stayed in the water until the music of the dance band began to be heard over the lake. They dressed then and ate the lunch they had brought, and afterwards moved over to the pavilion.

"I'll flip you for the first honor," said Ron. "No, I won't either. Since this is your going-away party you may have the first dance with my particular girl friend."

Clonar took her in his arms and moved away smoothly as if he had been dancing all his life. "Maybe you wondered why I wanted to do this," he said almost shyly. "It's because I think your dancing is a very lovely custom and I would like to take it back to my world. And I never told Ron, but back there I have a girl friend of my own whom I never expected to see again."

Ron gave them a friendly wave and sat down on the bench at the edge of the floor. What would it be like, he thought, when man grew up enough to span the starways and meet with races such as Clonar's? Would they ever mature enough to leave off war and conflict so that they could be accepted into the family of worlds that already possessed spaceflight?

As intergalactic worlds went, Earth was probably a sprawling youngster, unhappy and bloody in its youthful tragedies. It would grow up. It was not the way Clonar's commander had said.

Ron felt a warm glow when he thought of the way his own crowd had understood Clonar—and the others in Longview who had done the same. They had met the challenge. Someday they would be in the majority.

It didn't matter that Mrs. Newton would never understand. It didn't matter that GiDispie and his kind had to struggle hard against old values that would not fit the future. There were enough who could recognize the new values and not fight them. Even Gillispie could, in time, Ron thought. And millions like him.

It was a little difficult the next morning at breakfast. Clonar and all Ron's family sat together in the dinette. There was such a vast difference between this and the leave-taking of a friend whom they would see again.

"Is there no possibility whatever that we'll see you again?" said George Barron.

Clonar shook his head. "The resources of our entire people are called upon to promote such an expedition as this. Perhaps in time to come spaceflights will become less costly in resources, and such far journeys as this will become routine. But that is generations away."

"Perhaps radio communication—by the system you have given us."

But even as he said it he knew that it was a foolish and a sentimental answer. There was nothing they could exchange by this means, and when he said it he knew he was thinking only of the nostalgia of Clonar's departure.

"I have a confession to make," said Clonar to Mrs. Barron. "I should have told you before that we overheard the argument you had with your friends because of me. I'm sorry it occurred. I hope no permanent enmity was created."

Mrs. Barron flushed and laughed. "That dressing down did them good. I thought I did myself proud, didn't you? And we'll all be better because of you,

Clonar. I think we'll treat each other just a little better because you've been here."

Ron glanced at the clock. "It's almost time," he said. "Are you coming with us?"

His father shook his head. "I think not. We would prefer to say good-by here, Clonar. It has been very wonderful having you with us."

At the car, Pete was waiting dolefully as if with full understanding of what was taking place. Clonar rubbed the dog's ears.

"We don't have the custom of giving names to our pets, but when I get home I'm going to name mine Pete."

Anne was waiting for them. After picking her up, they turned the car into the hills again. The spot where Clonar had directed his commander to send the scout ship on its secret mission of picking him up was near the wreckage of the first vessel. It was across the highway and in a small, flat valley hidden from the road.

Cillispie and two aides were there when they arrived. Dan followed in his own car. They were all who were to witness the scene.

Clonar had taken a few personal items from the wreckage, and these he carried in a couple of bags. The remainder of the ship had been turned over to Gillispie after destruction of a few devices that Clonar believed should not be left.

Standing now in the clearing they seemed to have nothing to say to each other. The occasional click of Dan's camera was the only sound.

Occasionally they raised their eyes to scan the sky above. It was a clear, bright blue with ragged bubbles of cloud not far above the mountain tips. And then suddenly they caught sight of a gleaming spot of light.

"Is that it?" whispered Ron.

"I think so. It will be one of the little scouts."

They watched it drop like a discus hurled from the sky. Ron watched Gillispie's astonishment and wonder at the maneuverability of that ship against which he might have had to pit his own.

It hissed over the tops of the grass and settled to a halt fifty feet from them. Almost at once an upper hatch opened at the center of the disc, and a figure appeared. He waved greetings of obvious joy to Clonar.

Clonar leaped to the radial walkway and ran toward the pilot, embracing him warmly. For a moment the murmur of their words spilled out toward the watchers.

Ron passed up the bags and Clonar handed them in to the interior of the ship. Then Clonar jumped to the ground again. His hand clamped upon Ron's arm.

He looked into the eyes of Ron and Anne for a long moment. "Listen," he said quickly, "I don't have to leave you. Come with me, Ronl Come with me to my world. You and Anne. You would never be lonely there because there are two of you.

"You cannot imagine the things I could show you! We'll see ten thousand suns on the way home. There will be all the learning and mystery you have ever dreamed of. Come home with me!"

Anne looked up into Ron's face with a frightened quickening of her heart. She felt the fierce tightening of his arm about her waist. Sweat broke out upon his lip as he tried to form an answer.

"No! No—Ron!" Anne whispered.

In a moment his arm relaxed. The tension of that wild dream left his face. He smiled at Clonar and shook his head.

"No. It wouldn't work. We belong here. We have a job to do on our own world—it needs to be made better than it is, as you have seen.

"But more than that, man has no right to spaceflight until he can make it under his own power."

"I knew that would be your answer, of course," said Clonar. "I thought perhaps I could tempt you. But you are right. It's just that we three are luckier than any of the rest of our people."

For an instant his eyes turned in the direction of the ravine where his father and brother and the other crewmen were buried.

"I must go now," he said abruptly. "Good-by, Ron-Anne."

He raced over the curving surface of the disc. For a moment he stood in the open hatch and waved. And then it closed him from their sight forever.

Ron and Anne moved back quickly, but the ship rose straight up, not turning aside until it disappeared from their sight. They continued staring long after it was gone.

Then Anne put her hands upon Ron's shoulders and looked into his eyes. "You'll never be sorry, will you?"

His hands closed upon her wrists. "No. It was just that the vision of what we might have had almost overwhelmed me. It wouldn't have been right. It wouldn't even have been good for us."

Then his face turned upward again, searching the sky.

"But someday we'll make it—under our own power, and we'll have a right to it then."

Qlossary

AERODYNAMIC: referring to the science of the atmosphere in motion, particularly as it affects aircraft design.

BREADBOARD LAYOUT: a slang term used by engineers to describe a temporary arrangement of electrical parts. They are mounted on a flat board and wires can be readily changed from one terminal to another for testing purposes and to make circuit alterations.

CALIBRATED: compared with a standard. An electrical meter, after being manufactured, is calibrated by applying currents of known values and the dial marked to read these known values. Thereafter, the meter can be used to read unknown values.

COMPONENTS: parts, particularly of electronic equipment. The tubes, condensers, resistors, etc., of a radio set are its components.

GALAXY: a group of stars. The largest grouping made by astronomers. These are sometimes called "island universes" because they are composed of stars relatively close together, but enormous distances of millions of light-years separate the

galaxiesfrom each other. The Earth belongs to a lens-shaped galaxy, and looking out toward the edge of it we see the band of stars forming it. We call this the Milky Way. INTERGALACTIC SPACE: referringto the great distances between the galaxies.

METEORITE (METEOR): Particlesvarying in size from dust specks to chunks of rock a mile or two in diameter. They move through space between the planets and sometimes enter the Earth's atmosphere, when they are seen as "shooting stars." In the air they burn up because of the heat generated by their movement, and resulting compression of air in front of them.

OSCILLATOR: adevice for producing waves or vibrations, particularly radio waves.

RADIAL WALKWAY: Clonarsship was in the form of a disc with the corridors radiating from the center like the spokes of a wheel. These corridors are spoken of as "radial walkways" and are connected with one another by cross corridors in the form of concentric circles.

SCHEMATIC DIAGRAMS: aform of diagram in which electrical or mechanical parts are represented by symbols instead of pictures.

SEMANTICS: referringto the science of General Semantics originated by Count Korzybski. It is the study of the meanings found in all forms of communication and their effects upon man.

SOLAR SYSTEM: anysystem composed of one or more suns, and one or more planets revolving about the sun (or suns).

WAVE GENERATOR: thename given to Clonar s mechanism for producing the particular type of radio wave used in the communication system on his world.The corresponding Earth device is the oscillator.

WAVE PACKET: anenergy unit used in the atomic science of Clonar's people, but unknown to Earthmen.