The Automatons had the Bodies and Minds of Men—

but none of the Human Passions

The robots were so perfectly made they rebelled against their masters and took over the government. Then they made laws: no love, no sex, no childbirth. From now on the world would be repopulated by machine-made duplicates.

Man's future would end with the present generation —unless a way could be found to teach the robots to feel. But could even the most beautiful woman in the world arouse passion in a creature with no emotions?

Alien Earth

Included in this collection are stories by:

Isaac Asimov Robert Bloch Ray Bradbury Arthur C. Clarke Erie Stanley Gardner Edmond Hamiliton Andre Norton Cliöord D. Simak A. E. van Vogt

and other stories

Edited by Roger Elwood and Sam Moskowitz

MB

A MACFADDEN-BARTELL BOOK

THIS COLLECTION OF STORIES HAS NOT BEEN IN BOOK FORM BEFORE

A MACFADDEN BOOK .... 1969

MACFADDEN BOOKS are published by

Macfadden-Bartell Corporation A subsidiary of Bartell Media Corporation 205 East 42nd Street, New York, New York 10017

"Alien Earth", copyright, 1949, by Better Publications. Reprinted by permission of the author and his agent, Scott Meredith Literary Agency. "The Past Master", copyright, ©, 1954, by McCall Corporation. Originally published in Bluebook. Used by permission of Harry Altshuler, agent. "Rain Magic", copyright, 1928, by Erie Stanley Gardner, copyright renewed, ©, 1956, by Erie Stanley Gardner. Originally published in Argosy Magazine. Reprinted by permission of Collins-Knowlton-Wing, Inc. "Ultimate Melody", copyright, ©, 1956, by Quinn Publications. Reprinted by permission of the author and his agent, Scott Meredith Literary Agency. "The Loot of Time", copyright, 1938, by Better Publications. Copyright, renewed, ©, 1966, by Clifford D. Simak. Originally appeared in the December, 1938 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories. Reprinted by permission of the author's agent, Robert Mills. "Doodad", copyright, ©, 1965, by Ray Bradbury. Originally appeared in Astounding Science Fiction. Reprinted by permission of the Harold Matson Company, Inc. "Automaton", copyright, 1950, by Clark Publishers Co., for the September, 1950 issue of Other Worlds Science Stories. Reprinted by permission of the author. "The People of the Crater", copyright, 1947, by Fantasy Publishing Co., Inc. From Fantasy Book No. 1, 1947. Used by permission. "Franchise", copyright, ©, 1955, by Quinn Publishing Co., Inc. Originally published in the August, 1955 issue of If. Used by permission of the author. "Alien Earth and Other Stories", copyright, ©, 1969, by Macfadden-Bartell Corporation. All rights reserved. Printed in the U.SA.

Contents

ALIEN EARTH

Edmond Hamiliton                                                     9

THE PAST MASTER

Robert Block                                                              35

RAIN MAGIC

Erie Stanley Gardner                                               59

ULTIMATE MELODY

Arthur C. Clarke                                                        97

THE LOOT OF TIME

Clifford D. Simak                                                    103

DOODAD

Ray Bradbury                                                          131

AUTOMATON

A. E. van Vogt                                                          143

THE PEOPLE OF THE CRATER

Andre Norton                                                           155

FRANCHISE

Isaac Asimov                                                           193

Alien Earth and other stories

ALIEN EARTH

Edmond Hamiliton

Chapter I—Slowed-down Life

The dead man was standing in a little moonlit clearing in the jungle when Farris found him.

He was a small swart man in white cotton, a typical Laos tribesman of this Indo-China hinterland. He stood without support, eyes open, staring unwinkingly ahead, one foot slightly raised. And he was not breathing.

"But he can't be dead!" Farris exclaimed. "Dead men don't stand around in the jungle."

He was interrupted by Piang, his guide. That cocksure little Annamese had been losing his impudent self-sufficiency ever since they had wandered off the trail. And the motionless, standing dead man had completed his demoralization.

Ever since the two of them had stumbled into this grove of silk-cotton trees and almost run into the dead man, Piang had been goggling in a scared way at the still unmoving figure. Now he burst out volubly:

"The man is hunati! Don't touch him! We must leave here—we have strayed into a bad part of the jungle!"

Farris didn't budge. He had been a teak-hunter for too many years to be entirely skeptical of the superstitions of Southeast Asia. But, on the other hand, he felt a certain responsibility.

"If this man isn't really dead, then he's in bad shape somehow and needs help," he declared.

"No, no!" Piang insisted. "He is hunati! Let us leave here quickly!"

Pale with fright, he looked around the moonlit grove. They were on a low plateau where the jungle was monsoon-forest rather than rain-forest. The big silk-cotton and ficus trees were less choked with brush and creepers here, and they could see along dim forest aisles to gigantic distant banyans that loomed like dark lords of the silver silence.

Silence. There was too much of it to be quite natural. They

could faintly hear the usual clatter of birds and monkeys from down in the lowland thickets, and the cough of a tiger echoed from the Laos foothills. But the thick forest here on the plateau was hushed.

Farris went to the motionless, staring tribesman and gently touched his thin brown wrist. For a few moments, he felt no pulse. Then he caught its throb—an incredibly slow beating.

"About one beat every two minutes," Farris muttered. "How the devil can he keep living?"

He watched the man's bare chest. It rose—but so slowly that his eye could hardly detect the motion. It remained expanded for minutes. Then, as slowly, it fell again.

He took his pocket-light and flashed it into the tribesman's eyes.

There was no reaction to the light, not at first. Then, slowly, the eyelids crept down and closed, and stayed closed, and finally crept open again.

"A wink—but a hundred times slower than normal!" Farris exclaimed. "Pulse, respiration, reactions—they're all a hundred times slower. The man has either suffered a shock, or been drugged."

Then he noticed something that gave him a little chill. The tribesman's eyeballs seemed to be turning with infinite slowness toward him. And the man's raised foot was a little higher now. As though he were walking—but walking at a pace a hundred times slower than normal.

The thing was eery. There came something more eery. A sound—the sound of a small stick cracking.

Piang exhaled breath in a sound of pure fright, and pointed off into the grove. In the moonlight Farris saw.

There was another tribesman standing a hundred feet away. He, too, was motionless. But his body was bent forward in the attitude of a runner suddenly frozen. And beneath his foot, the stick had cracked.

"They worship the great ones, by the Change!" said the Annamese in a hoarse undertone. "We must not interfere!"

That decided Farris. He had, apparently, stumbled on some sort of weird jungle rite. And he had had too much experience with Asiatic natives to want to blunder into their private religious mysteries.

His business here in easternmost Indo-China was teak-hunting. It would be difficult enough back in this wild hinterland without antagonizing the tribes. These strangely deadalive men, whatever drug or compulsion they were suffering from, could not be in danger if others were near. "We'll go on," Farris said shortly.

Piang led hastily down the slope of the forested plateau. He went through the brush like a scared deer, till they hit the trail again.

"This is it—the path to the Government station," he said, in great relief. "We must have lost it back at the ravine. I have not been this far back in Laos many times."

Farris asked, "Piang, what is hunati? The Change that you were talking about?"

The guide became instantly less voluble. "It is a rite of worship." He added, with some return of his cocksureness, "These tribesmen are very ignorant. They have not been to mission school, as I have."

"Worship of what?" Farris asked. "The great ones, you said. Who are they?"

Piang shrugged and lied readily. "I do not know. In all the great forest, there are men who can become hunati, it is said. How, I do not know."

Farris pondered, as he tramped onward. There had been something uncanny about those tribesmen. It had been almost a suspension of animation—but not quite. Only an incredible slowing down.

What could have caused it? And what, possibly, could be the purpose of it?

"I should think," he said, "that a tiger or snake would make short work of a man in that frozen condition."

Piang shook his head vigorously. "No. A man who is hunati is safe—at least, from beasts. No beast would touch him."

Farris wondered. Was that because the extreme motionless-ness made the beasts ignore them? He supposed that it was some kind of fear-ridden nature-worship. Such animistic beliefs were common in this part of the world. And it was small wonder, Farris thought a little grimly. Nature, here in the tropical forest, wasn't the smiling goddess of temperate lands. It was something, not to be loved, but to be feared.

He ought to know! He had had two days of the Laos jungle since leaving the upper Mekong, when he had expected that one would take him to the French Government botanic survey station that was his goal.

He brushed stinging winged ants from his sweating neck, and wished that they had stopped at sunset. But the map had showed them but a few miles from the Station. He had not counted on Piang losing the trail. But he should have, for it was only a wretched track that wound along the forested slope of the plateau.

The hundred-foot ficus, dyewood and silk-cotton trees smothered the moonlight. The track twisted constantly to avoid impenetrable bamboo-hells or to ford small streams, and the tangle of creepers and vines had a devilish deftness at tripping one in the dark.

Farris wondered if they had lost their way again. And he wondered not for the first time, why he had ever left America to go into teak.

"That is the Station," said Piang suddenly, in obvious relief.

Just ahead of them on the jungled slope was a flat ledge. Light shone there, from the windows of a rambling bamboo bungalow.

Farris became conscious of all his accumulated weariness, as he went the last few yards. He wondered whether he could get a decent bed here, and what kind of chap this Berreau might be who had chosen to bury himself in such a Godforsaken post of the botanical survey.

The bamboo house was surrounded by tall, graceful dye-woods. But the moonlight showed a garden around it, enclosed by a low sappan hedge.

A voice from the dark veranda reached Farris and startled him. It startled him because it was a girl's voice, speaking in French.

"Please, Andre! Don't go again! It is madness!" A man's voice rapped harsh answer, "Lys, tais-toi! Je reviendrai—"

Farris coughed diplomatically and then said up to the darkness of the veranda, "Monsieur Berreau?"

There was a dead silence. Then the door of the house was swung open so that light spilled out on Farris and his guide.

By the light, Farris saw a man of thirty, bareheaded, in whites—a thin, rigid figure. The girl was only a white blur in the gloom.

He climbed the steps. "I suppose you don't get many visitors. My name is Hugh Farris. I have a letter for you, from the Bureau at Saigon."

There was a pause. Then, "If you will come inside, M'sieu Farris—"

In the lamplit, bamboo-walled living room, Farris glanced quickly at the two.

Berreau looked to his experienced eye like a man who had stayed too long in the tropics—his blond handsomeness tarnished by a corroding climate, his eyes too feverishly restless.

"My sister, Lys," he said, as he took the letter Farris handed.

Farris' surprise increased. A wife, he had supposed until now. Why should a girl under thirty bury herself in this wilderness?

He wasn't surprised that she looked unhappy. She might have been a decently pretty girl, he thought, if she didn't have that woebegone anxious look.

"Will you have a drink?" she asked him. And then, glancing with swift anxiety at her brother, "You'll not be going now, Andre?"

Berreau looked out at the moonlit forest, and a queer, hungry tautness showed his cheekbones in a way Farris didn't like. But the Frenchman turned back.

"No, Lys. And drinks, please. Then tell Ahra to care for his guide."

He read the letter swiftly, as Farris sank with a sigh into a rattan chair. He looked up from it with troubled eyes. "So you come for teak?"

Farris nodded. "Only to spot and girdle trees. They have to stand a few years then before cutting, you know."

Berreau said, "The Commissioner writes that I am to give you every assistance. He explains the necessity of opening up new teak cuttings."

He slowly folded the letter. It was obvious, Farris thought, that the man did not like it, but had to make the best of orders.

"I shall do everything possible to help," Berreau promised. "You'll want a native crew, I suppose. I can get one for you." Then a queer look filmed his eyes. "But there are some forests here that are impracticable for lumbering. I'll go into that later."

Farris, feeling every moment more exhausted by the long tramp, was grateful for the rum and soda Lys handed him.

"We have a small extra room—I think it will be comfortable," she murmured.

He thanked her. "I could sleep on a log, I'm so tired. My muscles are as stiff as though I were hunati myself."

Berreau's glass dropped with a sudden crash.

Chapter II—Sorcery of Science

Ignoring the shattered glass, the young Frenchman strode quickly toward Farris.

"What do you know of hunati?" he asked harshly.

Farris saw with astonishment that the man's hands were shaking.

"I don't know anything except what we saw in the forest. We came upon a man standing in the moonlight who looked dead, and wasn't. He just seemed incredibly slowed down. Piang said he was hunati."

A flash crossed Berreau's eyes. He exclaimed, "I knew the Rite would be called! And the others are there—"

He checked himself. It was as though the unaccustomedness of strangers had made him for a moment forget Farris' presence.

Lys' blonde head drooped. She looked away from Farris.

"You were saying?" the American prompted.

But Berreau had tightened up. He chose his words now. "The Laos tribes have some queer beliefs, M'sieu Farris. They're a little hard to understand."

Farris shrugged. "I've seen some queer Asian witchcraft, in my time. But this is unbelievable!"

"It is science, not witchcraft," Berreau corrected. "Primitive science, born long ago and transmitted by tradition. That man you saw in the forest was under the influence of a chemical not found in our pharmacopeia, but none the less potent."

"You mean that these tribesmen have a drug that can slow the life-process to that incredibly slow tempo?" Farris asked skeptically. "One that modern science doesn't know about?"

"Is that so strange? Remember, M'sieu Farris, that a century ago an old peasant woman in England was curing heart-disease with foxglove, before a physician studied her cure and discovered digitalis."

"But why on earth would even a Laos tribesman want to live so much slower?" Farris demanded.

"Because," Berreau answered, "they believe that in that state they can commune with something vastly greater than themselves."

Lys interrupted. "M'sieu Farris must be very weary. And his bed is ready."

Farris saw the nervous fear in her face, and realized that she wanted to end this conversation.

He wondered about Berreau, before he dropped off to sleep. There was something odd about the chap. He had been too excited about this hunati business.

Yet that was weird enough to upset anyone, that incredible and uncanny slowing-down of a human being's life-tempo. "To commune with something vastly greater than themselves," Berreau had said.

What gods were so strange that a man must live a hundred times slower than normal, to commune with them?

Next morning, he breakfasted with Lys on the broad veranda. The girl told him that her brother had already gone out.

"He will take you later today to the tribal village down in the valley, to arrange for your workers," she said.

Farris noted the faint unhappiness still in her face. She looked silently at the great, green ocean of forest that stretched away below this plateau on whose slope they were.

"You don't like the forest?" he ventured.

"I hate it," she said. "It smothers one, here."

Why, he asked, didn't she leave? The girl shrugged.

"I shall, soon. It is useless to stay. Andre will not go back with me."

She explained. "He has been here five years too long. When he didn't return to France, I came out to bring him. But he won't go. He has ties here now."

Again, she became abruptly silent. Farris discreetly refrained from asking her what ties she meant. There might be an Annamese woman in the background—though Berreau didn't look that type.

The day settled down to the job of being stickily tropical, i-d the hot still hours of the morning wore on. Farris, sprawling in a chair and getting a welcome rest, waited for Berreau to return.

He didn't return. And as the afternoon waned, Lys looked more and more worried.

An hour before sunset, she came out onto the veranda, dressed in slacks and jacket.

•"I am going down to the village—I'll be back soon," she told Farris.

She was a poor liar. Farris got to his feet. "You're going ii-.iT your brother. Where is he?"

Distress and doubt struggled in her face. She remained silent.

"Believe me, I want to be a friend," Farris said quietly. "Your brother is mixed up in something here, isn't he?"

She nodded, white-faced. "It's why he wouldn't go back to France with me. He can't bring himself to leave. It's like a horrible fascinating vice."

"What is?"

She shook her head. "I can't tell you. Please wait here." He watched her leave, and then realized she was not going down the slope but up it—up toward the top of the forested plateau.

He caught up to her in quick strides. "You can't go up into that forest alone, in a blind search for him."

"It's not a blind search. I think I know where he is," Lys whispered. "But you should not go there. The tribesmen wouldn't like it!"

Farris instantly understood. "That big grove up on top of the plateau, where we found the hunati natives?"

Her unhappy silence was answer enough. "Go back to the bungalow," he told her. "I'll find him."

She would not do that. Farris shrugged, and started forward. "Then we'll go together."

She hesitated, then came on. They went up the slope of the plateau, through the forest.

The westering sun sent spears and arrows of burning gold through chinks in the vast canopy of foliage under which they walked. The solid green of the forest breathed a rank, hot exhalation. Even the birds and monkeys were stifledly quiet at this hour.

"Is Berreau mixed up in that queer hunati rite?" Farris asked.

Lys looked up as though to utter a quick denial, but then dropped her eyes.

"Yes, in a way. His passion for botany got him interested in it. Now he's involved."

Farris was puzzled. "Why should botanical interest draw a man to that crazy drug-rite or whatever it is?"

She wouldn't answer that. She walked in silence until they reached the top of the forested plateau. Then she spoke in a whisper.

"We must be quiet now. It will be bad if we are seen here."

The grove that covered the plateau was pierced by horizontal bars of red sunset light. The great silk-cottons and ficus trees were pillars supporting a vast cathedral-nave of darkening green.

A little way ahead loomed up those huge, monster banyans he had glimpsed before in the moonlight. They dwarfed all the rest, towering bulks that were infinitely ancient and infinitely majestic.

Farris suddenly saw a Laos tribesman, a small brown figure, in the brush ten yards ahead of him. There were two others, farther in the distance. And they were all standing quite still, facing away from him.

They were hunati, he knew. In that queer state of slowed-down life, that incredible retardation of the vital processes.

Farris felt a chill. He muttered over his shoulder, "You had better go back down and wait."

"No," she whispered. "There is Andre."

He turned, startled. Then he too saw Berreau.

His blond head bare, his face set and white and masklike, standing frozenly beneath a big wild-fig a hundred feet to the right.

Hunati!

Farris had expected it, but that didn't make it less shocking. It wasn't that the tribesmen mattered less as human beings. It was just that he had talked with a normal Berreau only a few hours before. And now, to see him like this!

Berreau stood in a position ludicrously reminiscent of the old-time "living statues." One foot was slightly raised, his body bent a little forward, his arms raised a little.

Like the frozen tribesmen ahead, Berreau was facing toward the inner recesses of the grove, where the giant banyans loomed.

Farris touched his arm. "Berreau, you have to snap out of mis."

"It's no use to speak to him," whispered the girl. "He can't hear."

No, he couldn't hear. He was living at a te_mpo so slow that no ordinary sound could make sense to his ears. His face was a rigid mask, lips slightly parted to breathe, eyes fixed ahead. Slowly, slowly, the lids crept down and veiled those staring eyes and then crept open again in the infinitely slow wink. Slowly, slowly, his slightly raised left foot moved down toward the ground.

Movement, pulse, breathing—all a hundred times slower man normal. Living, but not in a human way—not in a human way at all.

Lys was not so stunned as Farris was. He realized later mat she must have seen her brother like this, before.

"We must take him back to the bungalow, somehow," she murmured. "I can't let him stay out here for many days and sights, again!"

Farris welcomed the small practical problem that took his thoughts for a moment away from this frozen, standing horror.

"We can rig a stretcher, from our jackets," he said. "I'll cut a couple of poles."

The two bamboos, through the sleeves of the two jackets, made a makeshift stretcher which they laid upon the ground.

Farris lifted Berreau. The man's body was rigid, muscles locked in an effort no less strong because it was infinitely slow.

He got the young Frenchman down on the stretcher, and then looked at the girl. "Can you help carry him? Or will you get a native?"

She shook her head. "The tribesmen mustn't know of this. Andre isn't heavy."

He wasn't. He was light as though wasted by fever, though the sickened Farris knew that it wasn't any fever that had done it.

Why should a civilized young botanist go out into the forest and partake of a filthy primitive drug of some kind that slowed him down to a frozen stupor? It didn't make sense.

Lys bore her share of their living burden through the gathering twilight, in stolid silence. Even when they put Berreau down at intervals to rest, she did not speak.

It was not until they reached the dark bungalow and had put him down on his bed, that the girl sank into a chair and buried her face in her hands.

Farris spoke with a rough encouragement he did not feel. "Don't get upset. He'll be all right now. I'll soon bring him out of this."

She shook her head. "No, you must not attempt that! He must come out of it by himself. And it will take many days."

The devil it would, Farris thought. He had teak to find, and he needed Berreau to arrange for workers.

Then the dejection of the girl's small figure got him. He patted her shoulder.

"All right, I'll help you take care of him. And together, we'll pound some sense into him and make him go back home. Now you see about dinner."

She lit a gasoline lamp, and went out. He heard her calling the servants.

He looked down at Berreau. He felt a little sick, again. The Frenchman lay, eyes staring toward the ceiling. He was living, breathing—and yet his retarded life-tempo cut him off from Farris as effectually as death would.

No, not quite. Slowly, so slowly that he could hardly detect the movement, Berreau's eyes turned toward Farris' figure.

Lys came back into the room. She was quiet, but he was getting to know her better, and he knew by her face that she was startled.

"The servants are gone! Ahra, and the girls—and your guide. They must have seen us bring Andre in."

Farris understood. 'They left because we brought back a man who's hunati?"

She nodded. "All the tradespeople fear the rite. It's said there's only a few who belong to it, but they're dreaded."

Farris spared a moment to curse softly the vanished An-namese. "Piang would bolt like a scared rabbit, from something like this. A sweet beginning for my job here."

"Perhaps you had better leave," Lys said uncertainly. Then she added contradictorily, "No, I can't be heroic about it! Please stay!"

"That's for sure," he told her. "I can't go back down river and report that I shirked my job because of-—"

He stopped, for she wasn't listening to him. She was looking past him, toward the bed.

Farris swung around. While they two had been talking, Berreau had been moving. Infinitely slowly—but moving.

His feet were on the floor now. He was getting up. His body straightened with a painful, dragging slowness, for many minutes.

Then his right foot began to rise almost imperceptibly from the floor. He was starting to walk, only a hundred times slower than normal.

He was starting to walk toward the door.

Lys' eyes had a yearning pity in them. "He is trying to go back up to the forest. He will try so long as he is hunati."

rris gently lifted Berreau back to the bed. He felt a cold dampness on his forehead.

What was there up there that drew worshippers in a strange trance of slowed-down life?

Chapter III—Unholy Lure

He turned to the girl and asked, "How long will he stay m this condition?"

"A long time," she answered heavily. "It may take weeks for the hunati to wear off."

Farris didn't like the prospect, but there was nothing he could do about it.

"All right, we'll take care of him. You and I."

Lys said, "One of us will have to watch him, all the time. He will keep trying to go back to the forest."

"You've had enough for a while," Farris told her. "I'll watch ■fan tonight."

Farris watched. Not only that night but for many nights. The days went into weeks, and the natives still shunned the house, and he saw nobody except the pale girl and the man who was living in a different way than other humans lived.

Berreau didn't change. He didn't seem to sleep, nor did he seem to need food or drink. His eyes never closed, except in that infinitely slow blinking.

He didn't sleep, and he did not quit moving. He was always moving, only it was in that weird, utterly slow-motion tempo that one could hardly see.

Lys had been right. Berreau wanted to go back to the forest. He might be living a hundred times slower than normal, but he was obviously still conscious in some weird way, and still trying to go back to the hushed, forbidden forest up there where they had found him.

Farris wearied of lifting the statue-like figure back into bed, and with the girl's permission tied Berreau's ankles. It did not make things much better. It was even more upsetting, in a way, to sit in the lamplit bedroom and watch Berreau's slow struggles for freedom.

The dragging slowness of each tiny movement made Farris nerves twitch to see. He wished he could give Berreau some sedative to keep him asleep, but he did not dare to do that.

He had found, on Berreau's forearm, a tiny incision stained with sticky green. There were scars of other, old incisions near it. Whatever crazy drug had been injected into the man to make him hunati was unknown. Farris did not dare try to counteract its effect.

Finally, Farris glanced up one night from his bored perusal of an old L'Illustration and then jumped to his feet.

Berreau still lay on the bed, but he had just winked. Had winked with normal quickness, and not that slow, dragging blink.

"Berreau!" Farris said quickly. "Are you all right now? Can you hear me?"

Berreau looked up at him with a level, unfriendly gaze. "I can hear you. May I ask why you meddled?"

It took Farris aback. He had been playing nurse so long that he had unconsciously come to think of the other as a sick man who would be grateful to him. He realized now that Berreau was coldly angry, not grateful.

The Frenchman was untying his ankles. His movements were shaky, his hands trembling, but he stood up normally.

"Well?" he asked.

Farris shrugged. "Your sister was going up there after you. I helped her bring you back. That's all."

Berreau looked a little startled. "Lys did that? But it's a breaking of the Rite! It can mean trouble for her!"

Resentment and raw nerves made Farris suddenly brutal. "Why should you worry about Lys now, when you've made ber wretched for months by your dabbling in native wizardries?"

Berreau didn't retort angrily, as he had expected. The young Frenchman answered heavily. "It's true. I've done that to Lys."

Farris exclaimed, "Berreau, why do you do it? Why this unholy business of going hunati, of living a hundred times slower? What can you gain by it?"

The other man looked at him with haggard eyes. "By doing it, I've entered an alien world. A world that exists around us all our lives, but that we never live in or understand at

"What world?"

'The world of green leaf and root and branch," Berreau answered. "The world of plant life, which we can never comprehend because of the difference between its life-tempo and our life-tempo."

Farris began dimly to understand. "You mean, this hunati change makes you live at the same tempo as plants?"

Berreau nodded. "Yes. And that simple difference in life-kanpo is the doorway into an unknown, incredible world."

-But how?"

The Frenchman pointed to the half-healed incision on his bare arm. "The drug does it. A native drug, that slows DOWN-metabolism, heart-action, respiration, nerve-messages, everything.

^Chlorophyll is its basis. The green blood of plant-life, the complex chemical that enables plants to take their energy ■ill 11 from sunlight. The natives prepare it directly from grasses, by some method of their own."

~I shouldn't think," Farris said incredulously, "that chlorophyll could have any effect on an animal organism."

"Your saying that," Berreau retorted, "shows that your hiochemical knowledge is out of date. Back in March of Nineteen Forty-Eight, two Chicago chemists engaged in mass production or extraction of chlorophyll, announced that their injection of it into dogs and rats seemed to prolong life greatly by altering the oxidation capacity of the cells.

"Prolong life greatly—yes! But it prolongs it, by slowing it down! A tree lives longer than a man, because it doesn't live so fast. You can make a man live as long—and as slowly —as a tree, by injecting the right chlorophyll compound into his blood."

Farris said, "That's what you meant, by saying that primitive peoples sometimes anticipate modern scientific discoveries?"

Berreau nodded. "This chlorophyll hunati solution may be an age-old secret. I believe it's always been known to a few among the primitive forest-folk of the world."

He looked somberly past the American. "Tree-worship is as old as the human race. The Sacred Tree of Sumeria, the groves of Dodona, the oaks of the Druids, the tree Ygdrasil of the Norse, even our own Christmas Tree—they all stem from primitive worship of that other, alien kind of life with which we share Earth.

"I think that a few secret worshippers have always known how to prepare the chlorophyll drug that enabled them to attain complete communion with that other kind of life, by living at the same slow rate for a time."

Farris stared. "But how did you get taken into this queer secret worship?"

The other man shrugged. "The worshippers were grateful to me, because I had saved the forests here from possible death."

He walked across to the corner of the room that was fitted as a botanical laboratory, and took down a test-tube. It was filled with dusty, tiny spores of a leprous, gray-green color.

"This is the Burmese Blight, that's withered whole great forests down south of the Mekong. A deadly thing, to tropical trees. It was starting to work up into this Laos country, but I showed the tribes how to stop it. The secret hunati sect made me one of them, in reward."

"But I still can't understand why an educated man like you would want to join such a crazy mumbo-jumbo," Farris said.

"Dieu, I'm trying to make you understand why! To show you that it was my curiosity as a botanist that made me join the Rite and take the drug!"

Berreau rushed on. "But you can't understand, any more than Lys could! You can't comprehend the wonder and strangeness and beauty of living that other kind of life!"

Something in Berreau's white, rapt face, in his haunted eyes, made Farris' skin crawl. His words seemed momentarily to lift a veil, to make the familiar vaguely strange and terrifying.

•'Berreau, listen! You've got to cut this and leave here at once."

The Frenchman smiled mirthlessly. "I know. Many times, I have told myself so. But I do not go. How can I leave something that is a botanist's heaven?"

Lys had come into the room, was looking wanly at her brother's face.

"Andre, won't you give it up and go home with me?" she appealed.

"Or are you too sunken in this uncanny habit to care whether your sister breaks her heart?" Farris demanded.

Berreau flared. "You're a smug pair! You treat me like a drag addict, without knowing the wonder of the experience Tve had! I've gone into another world, an alien Earth that is around us every day of our lives and that we can't even see. And I'm going back again, and again."

"Use that chlorophyll drug and go hunati again?" Farris said grimly.

Berreau nodded defiantly.

"No." said Farris. "You're not. For if you do, we'll just §p out there and bring you in again. You'll be quite helpless to prevent us, once you're hunati."

The other man raged. "There's a way I can stop you from doing that! Your threats are dangerous!"

"There's no way," Farris said flatly. "Once you've frozen yourself into that slower life-tempo, you're helpless against aormal people. And I'm not threatening. I'm trying to save your sanity, man!"

Berreau flung out of the room without answer. Lys looked at the American, with tears glimmering in her eyes.

"Don't worry about it," he reassured her. "He'll get over it, la time.

*T fear not," the girl whispered. "It has become a madness la his brain."

Inwardly, Farris agreed. Whatever the lure of the unknown world that Berreau had entered by that change in life-tempo, ■ had caught him beyond all redemption.

A chill swept Farris when he thought of it—men out there, Sving at the same tempo as plants, stepping clear out of the ■lane of animal life to a strangely different kind of life and world.

The bungalow was oppressively silent that day—the servants gone, Berreau sulking in his laboratory, Lys moving about with misery in her eyes.

But Berreau didn't try to go out, though Farris had been expecting that and had been prepared for a clash. And by evening, Berreau seemed to have got over his sulks. He helped prepare dinner.

He was almost gay, at the meal—a febrile good humor that Farris didn't quite like. By common consent, none of the three spoke of what was uppermost in their minds.

Berreau retired, and Farris told Lys, "Go to bed—you've lost so much sleep lately you're half asleep now. I'll keep watch."

In his own room, Farris found drowsiness assailing him too. He sank back in a chair, fighting the heaviness that weighed down his eyelids.

Then, suddenly, he understood. "Drugged!" he exclaimed, and found his voice little more than a whisper. "Something in the dinner!"

"Yes," said a remote voice. "Yes, Farris."

Berreau had come in. He loomed gigantic to Farris' blurred eyes. He came closer, and Farris saw in his hand a needle that dripped sticky green.

"I'm sorry, Farris." He was rolling up Farris' sleeve, and Farris could not resist. "I'm sorry to do this to you and Lys. But you would interfere. And this is the only way I can keep you from bringing me back."

Farris felt the sting of the needle. He felt nothing more, before drugged unconsciousness claimed him.

Chapter IV—Incredible World

Farris awoke, and for a dozed moment wondered what it was that so bewildered him. Then he realized.

It was the daylight. It came and went, every few minutes. There was the darkness of night in the bedroom, and then a sudden burst of dawn, a little period of brilliant sunlight, and the night again.

It came and went, as he watched numbly, like the slow, steady beating of a great pulse—a systole and diastole of light and darkness.

Days shortened to minutes? But how could that be? And then, as he awakened fully, he remembered.

"Hunati! He injected the chlorophyll drug into my bloodstream!"

Yes. He was hunati, now. Living at a tempo a hundred times slower than normal.

And that was why day and night seemed a hundred times faster than normal, to him. He had, already, lived through several days!

Farris stumbled to his feet. As he did so, he knocked his pipe from the arm of the chair.

It did not fall to the floor. It just disappeared instantly, and the next instant was lying on the floor.

•It fell. But it fell so fast I couldn't see it."

Farris felt his brain reel to the impact of the unearthly. He found that he was trembling violently.

He fought to get a grip on himself. This wasn't witchcraft, h »as a secret and devilish science, but it wasn't supernatural.

He. himself, felt as normal as ever. It was his surroundings, the swift rush of day and night especially, that alone told him he was changed.

He heard a scream, and stumbled out to the living-room at the bungalow. Lys came running toward him.

She still wore her jacket and slacks, having obviously been too worried about her brother to retire completely. And there was terror in her face.

"What's happened?" she cried. "The light—"

He took her by the shoulders. "Lys, don't lose your nerve. What's happened is that we're hunati now. Your brother did i—drugged us at dinner, then injected the chlorophyll compound into us."

"But why?" she cried.

"Don't you see? He was going hunati himself again, going hack up to the forest. And we could easily overtake and hrine him back, if we remained normal. So he changed us too. to prevent that."

Farris went into Berreau's room. It was as he had expected.

The Frenchman was gone.                                                          ,

"TO go after him," he said tightly. "He's got to come back, far be may have an antidote to that hellish stuff. You wait here."

Lys clung to him. "No! I'd go mad, here by myself, like

She was. he saw, on the brink of hysterics. He didn't won-a)a. The slow, pulsing beat of day and night alone was enough IB unseat one's reason.

He acceded. "All right. But wait till I get something."

He went back to Berreau's room and took a big bolo-knife he had seen leaning in a corner. Then he saw something else, something glittering in the pulsing light, on the botanist's laboratory-table.

Farris stuffed that into his pocket. If force couldn't bring Berreau back, the threat of this other thing might influence him."

He and Lys hurried out onto the veranda and down the j steps. And then they stopped, appalled.

The great forest that loomed before them was now a nightmare sight. It seethed and stirred with unearthly life— great branches clawing and whipping at each other as they fought for the light, vines writhing through them at incredible \ speed, a rustling uproar of tossing, living plant-life.

Lys shrank back. "The forest is alive now!"

"It's just the same as always," Farris reassured. "It's we who have changed—who are living so slowly now that the plants seem to live faster."

"And Andre is out in that!" Lys shuddered. Then courage came back into her pale face. "But I'm not afraid."

They started up through the forest toward the plateau of ] giant trees. And now there was an awful unreality about this incredible world.

Farris felt no difference in himself. There was no sensation j of slowing down. His own motions and perceptions appeared I normal. It was simply that all around him the vegetation had now a savage motility that was animal in its swiftness.

Grasses sprang up beneath his feet, tiny green spears climb-ing toward the light. Buds swelled, burst, spread their bright j petals on the air, breathed out their fragrance—and died, j

New leaves leaped joyously up from every twig, lived out their brief and vital moment, withered and fell. The forest 1 was a constantly shifting kaleidoscope of colors, from pale ! green to yellowed brown, that rippled as the swift tides of growth and death washed over it.

But it was not peaceful nor serene, that life of the forest. Before, it had seemed to Farris that the plants of the earth existed in a placid inertia utterly different from the beasts, who must constantly hunt or be hunted. Now he saw how mis-taken he had been.

Close by, a tropical nettle crawled up beside a giant fern. Octopus-like, its tendrils flashed around and through the plant. The fern writhed. Its fronds tossed wildly, its stalks j strove to be free. But the stinging death conquered it.

Lianas crawled like great serpents among the trees, en-circling the trunks, twining themselves swiftly along the branches, striking their hungry parasitic roots into the living bark.

And the trees fought them. Farris could see how the branches lashed and struck against the killer vines. It was like watching a man struggle against the crushing coils of the python.

Very likely. Because the trees, the plants, knew. In their own strange, alien fashion, they were as sentient as their swifter brothers.

Hunter and hunted. The strangling lianas, the deadly, beautiful orchid that was like a cancer eating a healthy trunk, the leprous, crawling fungi—they were the wolves and the jackals of this leafy world.

Even among the trees, Farris saw, existence was a grim and never-ending struggle. Silk-cotton and bamboo and ficus-tree—they too knew pain and fear and the dread of death.

He could hear them. Now, with his aural nerves slowed to an incredible receptivity, he heard the voice of the forest, the true voice that had nothing to do with the familiar sounds of wind in the branches.

The primal voice of birth and death that spoke before ever man appeared on Earth, and would continue to speak after he was gone.

I first he had been conscious only of that rustling uproar. Now he could distinguish separate sounds—the thin screams of grass blades and bamboo-shoots thrusting and surging out of the earth, the lash and groan of enmeshed and dying branches, the laughter of young leaves high in the sky, the Stealthy whisper of the coiling vines.

And almost, he could hear thoughts, speaking in his mind. The age-old thoughts of the trees.

Farris felt a freezing dread. He did not want to listen to the thoughts of the trees.

And the slow, steady pulsing of darkness and light went OB. Days and nights, rushing with terrible speed over the pbauft'.

Lys. stumbling along the trail beside him, uttered a little cry of terror. A snaky black vine had darted out of the brush at her with cobra swiftness, looping swiftly to encircle her body.

Farris swung his bolo, slashed through the vine. But it struck out again, growing with that appalling speed, its tip (roping for him.

He slashed again with sick horror, and pulled the girl onward, on up the side of the plateau.

"I am afraid!" she gasped. "I can hear the thoughts—the thoughts of the forest!"

"It's your own imagination!" he told her. "Don't listen!"

But he too could hear them! Very faintly, like sounds just below the threshold of hearing. It seemed to him that every minute—or every minute-long day—he was able to get more clearly the telepathic impulses of these organisms that lived an undreamed-of life of their own, side by side with man, yet forever barred from him, except when man was hunati.

It seemed to him that the temper of the forest had changed, that his slaying of the vine had made it aware of them. Like a crowd aroused to anger, the massed trees around them grew wrathful. A tossing and moaning rose among them.

Branches struck at Farris and the girl, lianas groped with blind heads and snake-like grace toward them. Brush and bramble clawed them spitefully, reaching out thorny arms to rake their flesh. The slender saplings lashed them like leafy whips, the swift-growing bamboo spears sought to block their path, canes clattering together as if in rage.

"It's only in our own minds!" he said to the girl. "Because the forest is living at the same rate as we, we imagine it's aware of us."

He had to believe that, he knew. He had to, because when he quit believing it there was only black madness.

"No!" cried Lys. "No! The forest knows we are here."

Panic fear threatened Farris' self-control, as the mad uproar of the forest increased. He ran, dragging the girl with him, sheltering her with his body from the lashing of the raging forest.

They ran on, deeper into the mighty grove upon the plateau, under the pulsing rush of day and darkness. And now the trees about them were brawling giants, great silk-cotton and ficus that struck crashing blows at each other as their branches fought for clear sky—contending and terrible leafy giants beneath which they two humans were pigmies.

But the lesser forest beneath them still tossed and surged with wrath, still plucked and tore at the two running humans. And still, and clearer, stronger, Farris' reeling mind caught the dim impact of unguessable telepathic impulses,

Then, drowning all those dim and raging thoughts, came vast and dominating impulses of greater majesty, thought-voices deep and strong and alien as the voice of primal Earth.

"Stop them!" they seemed to echo in Farris' mind. "Stop them! Slay them! For they are our enemies!"

Lys uttered a trembling cry. "Andre!"

Farris saw him, then. Saw Berreau ahead, standing in the shadow of the monster banyans there. His arms were upraised toward those looming colossi, as though in worship. Over him towered the leafy giants, dominating all the forest.

"Stop them! Slay them!"

They thundered, now, those majestic thought-voices that Farris' mind could barely hear. He was closer to them— closer—

He knew, then, even though his mind refused to admit the knowledge. Knew whence those mighty voices came, and ■ by Berreau worshipped the banyans.

And surely they were godlike, these green colossi who had Bred for ages, whose arms reached skyward and whose aerial loots drooped and stirred and groped like hundreds of hands!

Farris forced that thought violently away. He was a man, of the world of men, and he must not worship alien lords.

Berreau had turned toward them. The man's eyes were hot and raging, and Farris knew even before Berreau spoke that he was no longer altogether sane.

"Go. both of you!" he ordered. "You were fools, to come here after me! You killed as you came through the forest, and Ae forest knows!"

"Berreau, listen!" Farris appealed. "You've got to go back with us, forget this madness!"

Berreau laughed shrilly. "Is it madness that the Lords even ■ow voice their wrath against you? You hear it in your mind, hot you are afraid to listen! Be afraid, Farris! There is reason! You have slain trees for many years, as you have just datn here—and the forest knows you for a foe."

"Andre!" Lys was sobbing, her face half-buried in her r.'-ds.

Farris felt his mind cracking under the impact of the crazy Bene. The ceaseless, rushing pulse of light and darkness, the ■■ding uproar of the seething forest around them, the vines creeping snakelike and branches whipping at them and giant hawyans rocking angrily overhead.

"This is the world that man lives in all his life, and never sees or senses!" Berreau was shouting. "I've come into it, again and again. And each time, I've heard more clearly the voices mt the Great Ones!

"The oldest and mightiest creatures on our planet! Long ago, men knew that and worshipped them for the wisdom they could teach. Yes, worshipped them as Ygdrasil and the Druid

Oak and the Sacred Tree! But modern men have forgotten this other Earth. Except me, Farris—except me! Fve found wisdom in this world such as you never dreamed. And your stupid blindness is not going to drag me out of it!"

Farris realized then that it was too late to reason with Berreau. The man had come too often and too far into this other Earth that was as alien to humanity as though it lay across the universe.

It was because he had feared that, that he had brought the little thing in his jacket pocket. The one thing with which he might force Berreau to obey.

Farris took it out of his pocket. He held it up so that the other could see it.

"You know what it is, Berreau! And you know what I can do with it, if you force me to!"

Wild dread leaped into Berreau's eyes as he recognized that glittering little vial from his own laboratory.

"The Burmese Blight! You wouldn't, Farris! You wouldn't turn that loose here!"

"I will!" Farris said hoarsely. "I will, unless you come out of here with us, now!"

Raging hate and fear were in Berreau's eyes as he stared at that innocent corked glass vial of gray-green dust.

He said thickly, "For this, I will kill!"

Lys screamed. Black lianas had crept upon her as she stood with her face hidden in her hands. They had writhed around her legs like twining serpents, they were pulling her down.

The forest seemed to roar with triumph. Vine and branch and bramble and creeper surged toward them. Dimly thunderous throbbed the strange telepathic voices.

"Slay them!" said the trees.

Farris leaped into that coiling mass of vines, his bolo slashing. He cut lose the twining lianas that held the girl, sliced fiercely at the branches that whipped wildly at them.

Then, from behind, Berreau's savage blow on his elbow knocked the bolo from his hand.

"I told you not to kill, Farris! I told you!"

"Slay them!" pulsed the alien thought.

Berreau spoke, his eyes not leaving Farris. "Run, Lys. Leave the forest. This—murderer must die."

He lunged as he spoke, and there was death in his white face and clutching hands.

Farris was knocked back, against one of the giant banyan trunks. They rolled, grappling, and already the vines were sliding around them—looping and enmeshing them, tightening upon them!

It was then that the forest shrieked.

A cry telepathic and auditory at the same time—and dreadful. An utterance of alien agony beyond anything human.

Berreaus hands fell away from Farris. The Frenchman, enmeshed with him by the coiling vines, looked up in horror.

Then Farris saw what had happened. The little vial, the vial of the blight, had smashed against the banyan trunk as Berreau charged.

And that little splash of gray-green mould was rushing through the forest faster than flame! The blight, the gray-green killer from far away, propagating itself with appalling rapidity! "Dieu!" screamed Berreau. "Non—non—*'

Even normally, a blight seems to spread swiftly. And to Farris and the other two, bowed down as they were, this blight was a raging cold fire of death.

It flashed up trunks and limbs and aerial buds of the majestic banyans, eating leaf stems, spore and bud. It ran triumphantly across the ground, over vine and grass and shrub, bursting up other trees, leaping along the airy bridges of lianas.

And it leaped among the vines that enmeshed the two men! In mad death-agonies the creepers writhed and tightened.

Farris felt the musty mould in his mouth and nostrils, felt the construction as of steel cables crushing the life from him. The world seemed to darken—

Then a steel blade hissed and flashed, and the pressure loosened. Lys' voice was in his ears, Lys' hand trying to drag him from the dying, tightening creepers that she had partly slashed through. He wrenched free. "My brother!" she gasped.

With the bolo he sliced clumsily through the mass of dying writhing snake-vines that still enmeshed Berreau.

Berreau's face appeared, as he tore away the slashed creepers. It was dark purple, rigid, his eyes staring and dead. The tightening vines had caught him around the throat, strangling him.

Lys knelt beside him, crying wildly. But Farris dragged her to her feet.

"We have to get out of here! He's dead—but I'll carry his body!"

"No, leave it," she sobbed. "Leave it here, in the forest."

Dead eyes, looking up at the death of the alien world of life into which he had now crossed, forever! Yes, it was fitting.

Farris' heart quailed as he stumbled away with Lys through the forest that was rocking and raging in its death-throes.

Far away around them, the gray-green death was leaping on. And fainter, fainter, came the strange telepathic cries that he would never be sure he had really heard.

"We die, brothers! We die!"

And then, when it seemed to Farris that sanity must give way beneath the weight of alien agony, there came a sudden change.

The pulsing rush of alternate day and night lengthened in tempo. Each period of light and darkness was longer now, and longer—

Out of a period of dizzying semi-consciousness, Farris came back to awareness. They were standing unsteadily in the blighted forest, in bright sunlight.

And they were no longer hunati.

The chlorophyll drug had spent its force in their bodies, and they had come back to the normal tempo of human life.

Lys looked up dazedly, at the forest that now seemed static, peaceful, immobile—and in which the gray-green blight now crept so slowly they could not see it move.

"The same forest, and it's still writhing in death!" Farris said huskily. "But now that we're living at normal speed again, we can't see it!"

"Please, let us go!" choked the girl. "Away from here, at once!"

It took but an hour to return to the bungalow and pack what they could carry, before they took the trail toward the Mekong.

Sunset saw them out of the blighted area of the forest, well on their way toward the river.

"Will it kill all the forest?" whispered the girl.

"No. The forest will fight back, come back, conquer the blight, in time. A long time, by our reckoning-—years, decades. But to them, that fierce struggle is raging on even now."

And as they walked on, it seemed to Farris that still in his mind there pulsed faintly from far behind that alien, throbbing cry.

"We die, brothers!"

He did not look back. But he knew that he would not come to this or any other forest, and that his profession was , and that he would never kill a tree again.

THE PAST MASTER

Robert Bloch

Only two years ago, Robert Block was a regular contributor to AMAZING STORIES and FANTASTIC. Today, his position in the writing world has moved so giant a step forward, that only in the rerunning of fantasies from obscure sources is it economically feasible for his fiction to appear in science fiction anthologies.

The change came when Bloch's good friend, Samuel Peeples, an established and successful Hollywood writer, with a life-long interest in science fiction (See Preface Travelers of Space, Gnome Press, 1951), virtually subsidized his visit to the film and television capital of the nation and got him to try his hand at some scripts.

Even without any special break, Robert Bloch was clicking on talent alone, but when the moving picture Psycho, based on a novel of Bloch's, proved the second highest dollar earner in black and white motion picture history, it caused a far-from-subtle change in attitudes. Ever since, Bloch has been kept so busy at the typewriter, including many stories for Thriller and Alfred Hitchcock, that even a friendly letter to the family costs him several hundred dollars in writing time.

As far as science fiction circles are concerned, it couldn't happen to a nicer guy and if any one else wants the formula to Bloch's successful career it is simple: First, get born with loads of talent and then slug away for 25 years, selling a thousand pieces to several hundred diverse markets and if you're lucky, some friend will invite you to Hollywood where all you have to do is satisfy the whims of producers who don't know what they want until they see it.

Robert Bloch, born April 5, 1917, caught the writing bug when he struck up correspondence with H. P. Lovecraft in 1932. His first story, Lilies, a ghost tale, appeared in the Winter, 1934 issue of William Crawford's semi-professional magazine MARVEL TALES, repository of many off-trail stories of that period. Farnsworth Wright, editor of WEIRD TALES, actually

bought and paid for a story that same year, making Bloch a professional at the age of 17.

In his early years he used H. P. Lovecraft as a model and the best of the stories from that phase of his writing may be found in his first collection The Opener of the Way published by Arkham House in 1945. Trained in the writing of what were essentially weird fantasies, when Bloch enlarged his field of operations, he at first, tended to submit to allied publications such as STRANGE STORIES, but membership in the Milwaukee Fictioneers, a writing circle which included Raymond A. Palmer, resulted in sales to AMAZING STORIES. Unquestionably his most famous story in that magazine was The Strange Flight of Richard Clayton (AMAZING STORIES, March, 1939) which encouraged him to make science fiction a regular part of his writing pattern thereafter.

The Past Master represents one of Bloch's frequent forays outside of the fantasy field's magazines, but it is a science fiction story and unquestionably one of the finest he has written. Published in the Jan., 1955 issue of BLUEBOOK, a publication that used to represent a prestige sale for a fantasy writer, it has not been reprinted until now.

STATEMENT OF DOROTHY LARITZKY

Honestly, I could just die. The way George acts, you'd think it was my fault or something. You'd think he never even saw the guy. You'd think I stole his car. And he keeps asking me to explain everything to him. If I told him once, I told him a hundred times—and the cops too. Besides, what's there to tell him? He was there.

Of course it doesn't make sense. I already know that. Honest to Pete, I wish I'd stayed home Sunday. I wish I'd told George I had another date when he called up. I wish I'd made him take me to the show instead of that old beach. Him and his convertible! Besides, your legs stick to those leather seats in hot weather.

But you should of seen me Sunday when he called. You'd think he was taking me to Florida or someplace, the way I acted. I had this new slack suit I bought at Sterns, with the plaid top, sort of a halter, like. And I quick put on some more of that Restora Rinse. You know, George is the one down at the office who started everybody calling me "Blondie."

So anyhow he came around and picked me up about four, and it was still hot and he had the top down. I guess he just finished washing the car. It looked real snazzy, and he said, "Boy, it just matches your hair, don't it?"

First we drove along the Parkway and then out over the Drive. It was just packed, the cars, L mean. So he said how about it if we didn't go to the beach until after dinner.

That was all right by me, so we went to this Luigi's—it's a seafood place way south on the highway. It's real expensive and they got one of those big menus with all kinds of ozzy stuff like pompanos and terrapins. That's a turtle, like.

I had a sirloin and French fries, and George had—I can't remember, oh, yes I do—he had fried chicken. Before we ate we had a couple drinks, and after we just sat in the booth and had a couple more. We were sort of kidding back and forth, you know, about the beach and all, and waiting until after dark so we could go swimming on account of not bringing any suits.

Anyways, / was kidding. That George, he just as soon do anything. And don't think I didn't know why he was feeding me all those drinks. When we went out he stopped over at the bar and picked up a pint.

The moon was just coming up, almost full, and we started singing while we drove, and I felt like I was getting right with it. So when he said let's not go to the regular beach—he knew this little place way off somewhere.

It was like a bay, sort of, and you could park up on the bluff along this side road, and then walk down to the sand and see way out across the water.

Only that's not why George picked it. He wasn't interested in looking at water. First thing he did was to spread out this big beach blanket, and the second thing he did was open up his pint, and the third thing he did was to start monkeying around.

Nothing serious, you understand, just monkeying around, kind of. Well, he's not so bad-looking, even with that busted nose of his, and we kept working on that pint, and it was kind of romantic, with the moon and all.

It wasn't until he really began messing that I made him stop. And even then, I practically had to sock him one before he figured out I wasn't kidding.

"Cut it out," I said. "Now see what you've done! You tore my halter."

"Hell, I'll buy you a new one," he said. "Come on, baby." He tried to grab me again, and I gave him a good one, right on the side of his head. For a minute I thought he'd—you know—get tough about it. But he was pretty canned up, I guess. Anyhow, he just started blubbering. About how sorry he was, and that he knew I wasn't that kind, but it was just that he was so crazy about me.

I almost had to laugh, they're so funny when they get that way. But I figured it was smarter to put on an act, so I made out like I was real sore, like I'd never been so insulted in all my life.

Then he said we should have another drink and forget about it, only the pint was empty. So he said how about him taking a run up to the road and getting some more? Or we could both go to a tavern if I liked.

"With all these marks on my neck?" I told him. "I certainly will not! If you want more, you get it."

So he said he would, and he'd be back in five minutes. And he went.

Anyhow, that's how I was alone, when it happened. I was just sitting there on the blanket, looking out at the water, when I saw this thing sort of moving. At first it looked sort of like a log or something. But it kept coming closer, and then I could see it was somebody swimming, real fast.

So I kept on watching, and pretty soon I made out it was a man, and he was heading right for shore. Then he got close enough so's I could see him stand up and start wading in. He was real tall, real tall, like one of those basketball players, only not skinny or anything. And so help me he didn't have any trunks on or anything. Not a stitch!

Well, I mean, what could I do? I figured he didn't see me, and besides, you can't go running around screaming your head off. Not that there was anyone to hear me. I was all alone there. So I just sat and waited for him to come out of the water and go away up the beach or someplace.

Only he didn't go away. He came out and he walked right over to me. You can imagine—there I was sitting, and there he was, all dripping wet and with no clothes. But he gave me a big hello, just like nothing was wrong. He looked real dreamy when he smiled.

"Good evening," he said. "Might I inquire my whereabouts, Miss?"

Dig that "whereabouts" talk!

So I told him where he was, and he nodded, and then he saw how I was staring and he said, "Might I trouble you for the loan of that blanket?"

Well, what else could I do? I got up and gave it to him and he wrapped it around his waist. That's the first I noticed he was carrying this bag in his hand. It was some kind of plastic, and you couldn't tell what was inside it.

"What happened to your trunks?" I asked him.

•Trunks?" You'd of thought he never heard of such things the way he said it. Then he smiled again and said, "I'm sorry. They must have slipped off."

"Where'd you start from?" I asked. "You got a boat out there?" He was real tan, he looked like one of these guys that hang around the Yacht Basin all the time.

"Yes. How did you know?" he said.

"Well, where else would you come from?" I told him. "It just stands to reason." "It does, at that," he said.

I looked at the bag. "What you got in there?" I asked.

He opened his mouth to answer me, but he never got a chance. Because all of a sudden George came running down from the bluff. I never even seen his lights or heard the car stop. But there he was, just tearing down, with a bottle in his hand, all ready to swing. Character!

"What the hell's going on here?" he yelled.

"Nothing," I told him.

"Who the hell is this guy? Where'd he come from?" George shouted.

"Permit me to introduce myself," the guy said. "My name is John Smith and—"

"John Smith my foot!" yelled George, only he didn't say "foot." He was real mad. "All right, let's have it. What's the big idea, you two?"

"There isn't any big idea," I said. "This man was swimming and he lost his trunks, so he borrowed the blanket. He's got a boat out there and—"

"Where? Where's the boat? I don't see any boat." Neither did I, come to think of it. George wasn't waiting for any answers, though. "You there, gimme back that blanket and get the hell out of here."

"He can't," I told him. "He hasn't got any trunks on."

George stood there with his mouth open. Then he waved the bottle. "All right, then, fella. You're coming with us." He gave me a wise look. "Know what I think? I think this guy's a phony. He could even be one of those spies the Russians are sending over in submarines."

That's George for you. Ever since the papers got full of this war scare, he's been seeing Communists all over the place.

"Start talking," he said. "What's in that bag?"

The guy just looked at him and smiled.

"Okay, so you want to do it the hard way, it's okay by me. Get up that bluff, fella. We're gonna take a ride over to the police. Come on, before I let you have it." And he waved the bottle.

The guy sort of shrugged and then he looked at George. "You have an automobile?" he asked.

"Of course, what do I look like, Paul Revere or something?" George said.

"Paul Revere? Is he alive?" The guy was kidding, but George didn't know it.

"Shut up and get moving," he said. 'The car's right up there."

The guy looked up at the car. Then he nodded to himself and he looked at George.

That's all he did. So help me. He just looked at him.

He didn't make any of those funny passes with his hands, and he didn't say anything. He just looked, and he kept right on smiling. His face didn't change a bit.

But George—his face changed. It just sort of set, like it was frozen stiff. And so did everything. I mean, his hands got numb and the bottle fell and busted. George was like he couldn't move.

I opened my mouth but the guy kind of glanced over at me and I thought maybe I'd better not say anything. All of a sudden I felt cold all over, and I didn't know what would happen if he looked at me.

So I stood there, and then this guy went up to George and undressed him. Only it wasn't exactly undressing him, because George was just like one of those window dummies you see in the stores. Then the guy put all of George's clothes on himself, and he put the blanket around George. I could see he had this plastic bag in one hand and George's car keys in the other hand.

I was going to scream, only the guy looked at me again and I couldn't. I didn't feel stiff like George, or paralyzed, or anything like that. But I couldn't scream to save my neck And what good would it of done anyhow?

Because this guy just walked right up the side of the bluff d climbed in George's car and drove away. He never said a ord, he never looked back. He just went. Then I could scream, but good. I was still screaming when eorge came out of it, and I thought he'd have a hemorrhage something.

Well, we had to walk back all the way. It was over three iles to the highway patrol, and they made me tell the whole ing over and over again a dozen times. They got George's ense number and they're still looking for the car. And this rgeant, he thinks George is maybe right about this guy orking for the Communists.

Only he didn't see the way the guy looked at George, rery time I think about it, 1 could just die!

STATEMENT OF MILO FABIAN

I scarcely got the drapes pulled when he walked in. Of ferse, at first I thought he was delivering something. He ere a pair of those atrocious olive-drab slacks and a ready-ntde sports jacket, and he had on one of those caps that look Sttle like those worn by jockeys.

"Well, what is it?" I said. I'm afraid I was just a wee bit about it—truth to tell, I'd been in a perfectly filthy mood since Jerry told me he was running up to Cape Cod for exhibit. You'd think he might at least have considered feelings and invited me to go along. But no, I had to stay d and keep the gallery open. I actually had no excuse for being spiteful to this ~r. I mean, he was rather an attractive sort of person he took that idiotic cap off. He had black, curly hair and quite tall, really immense; I was almost afraid of him he smiled.

Warlock?" he asked, shook my head, lis 15 the Warlock Gallery, isn't it?" 'es. But Mr. Warlock is out of the city. I'm Mr. Fabian. I help you?" rather a delicate matter."

you have something to sell, I do the buying for the

nothing to sell. I want to purchase some paintings." "ell, in that case, won't you come right back with me,

ith," he said.

e started down the aisle together. "Could you tell me just what you had in mind?" I asked. "As you probably know, we tend to specialize in moderns. We have a very good Kandinsky now, and an early Mondrian—"

"You don't have the pictures I want here," he said. "I'm sure of it."

We were already in the gallery. I stopped. "Then what was it you wished?"

He stood there, swinging this perfectly enormous plastic pouch. "You mean what kind of paintings? Well, I want one or two good Rembrandts, a Vermeer, a Raphael, something by Titian, a van Gogh, a Tintoretto. Also Goya, an El Greco, a Breughel, a Hals, a Holbein, a Gaugin I don't suppose there's a way of getting The Last Supper—that was done as a fresco wasn't it?"

It was positively weird to hear the man. I'm afraid I was definitely piqued, and I showed it. "Please!" I said. "I happen to be busy this morning. I have no time to—"

"You don't understand," he answered. "You buy pictures, don't you? Well, I want you to buy me some. As my—my agent, that's the word, isn't it?"

"That's the word," I told him. "But surely you can't be serious. Have you any idea of the cost involved in acquiring such a collection? It would be simply fabulous."

"I've got money," he said. We were standing next to the deal table at the entrance, and he walked over to it and put his pouch down. Then he zipped it open.

I have never, but simply never, seen such a fantastic sight in my life. That pouch was full of bills, stack after stack of bills, and every single one was either a five- or a 10-thousand dollar denomination. I mean it; he had this huge pouch filled with five- and 10-thousand dollar bills. Why, I'd never seen one before!

If he'd been carrying twenties or hundreds, I might have suspected counterfeits, but nobody would have the audacity to dream of getting away with a stunt like this. They looked genuine, and they were. I know, because—but that's for later.

So there I stood, looking at this utterly mad heap of money lying there, and this Mr. Smith, as he called himself, said, "Well, do you think I have enough?"

I could have just passed out, thinking about it. Imagine, a perfect stranger, walking in off the street with 10 million dollars to buy paintings. And my share of the commission is five percent!

"I don't know," I said. "You're really serious about all this?"

"Here's the money. How soon can you get me what I want?"

"Please," I said. "This is all so unusual, I hardly know where to begin. Do you have a definite list of what you wish to acquire?"

"I can write the names down for you," he told me. "I remember most of them."

He knew what he wanted, I must say. Velasquez, Gorgione, Cezanne, Degas, Utrillo, Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec, Delacroix, Ryder, Pissaro—

Then he began writing titles. I'm afraid I gasped. "Really," I said. "You can't actually expect to buy the Mona Lisa!"

"Why not?" He looked perfectly serious.

"It's not for sale at any price, you know."

"I didn't know. Who owns it?"

"The Louvre. In Paris."

"I didn't know." He was serious, I'd swear he was. "But what about the rest?"

"I'm afraid many of these paintings are in the same category. They're not for sale. Most of them are in public galleries and museums here and abroad. And a number of the particular works you request are in the hands of private collectors who could never be persuaded to sell."

He stood up and began scooping the money back into his pouch. I took his arm.

"But we can certainly do our best," I said. "We have our sources, our connections. I'm sure we can at least procure some of the lesser, representative pieces by every one of the masters you list. It's merely a matter of time."

He shook his head. "Won't do. This is Tuesday, isn't it? I've got to have everything by Sunday night."

Did you ever hear of anything so ridiculous in all your life? The man was stark staring.

"Look," he said. "I'm beginning to understand how things are. These paintings I want, they're scattered all over the world. Owned by public museums and private parties who won't sell. And I suppose the same thing is true of manuscripts. Things like the Gutenberg Bible. Shakespeare first folios. The Declaration of Independence—"

Stark staring. I didn't trust myself to do anything but nod at him.

"How many of the things I want are here?" he asked. "Here, in this country?"

"A fair percentage, well over half."

"All right. Here's what you do. Sit down over there and make me up a list. I want you to write me down the names of the paintings I've noted, and just where they are. I'll give you $10,000 for the list."

Ten thousand dollars for a list he could have acquired free of charge at the public library! Ten thousand dollars for less than an hour's work!

I gave him his list. And he gave me the money and walked out with the list.

By this time I was just about frantic. I mean, it was all so shattering. He came and he went, and there I stood—not knowing his real name, or anything. Talk about your eccentric millionaires! He went, and there I stood with $10,000 in my hand.

Well, I'm not one to do anything rash. He hadn't been gone three minutes before I locked up and stepped over to the bank. I simply hopped all the way back to the gallery.

Then I said to myself, "What for?"

I didn't have to go back now, really. This was my money, not Jerry's. I'd earned it all by my little self. And as for him, he could stay up at the Cape and rot. I didn't need his precious job.

I went right down and bought a ticket to Paris. All this war-scare talk is simply a lot of fluff, if you ask me. Sheer fluff.

Of course Jerry is going to be utterly furious when he hears about it. Well, let him. All I have to say is, he can get himself another boy.

STATEMENT OF NICK KRAUSS

I was dead on my feet. I'd been on the job ever since Tuesday night and here it was Saturday. Talk about living on your nerves!

But I wasn't missing out on this deal, not me. Because this was the pay-off. The pay-off to the biggest caper that was ever rigged.

Sure, I heard of the Brink's job. I even got a pretty good idea who was in on it. But that was peanuts, and it took better'n a year to set up.

This deal topped 'em all. Figure it for yourself, once. Six million bucks, cash. In four days. Get that, now. I said six million bucks in four days. That's all, brother!

And who did it? Me, that's who.

Let me tell you one thing: I earned that dough. Every lousy cent of it. And don't think I didn't have to shell out plenty in splits. Right now I can't even remember just how many was in on it from beginning to end. But what with splits and expenses—I guess it cost pretty near a million and a half, just to swing it.

That left four and a half million. Four and a half million— and me going down to the yacht to collect.

I had the whole damn haul right in the truck. A hundred and forty pieces, some of 'em plenty heavy, too. But I wasn't letting nobody else horse around with unloading. This was dynamite. Only two miles from the warehouse where I got everything assembled. Longest two miles I ever drove.

Sure, I had a warehouse. What the hell, I bought the thing! Bought the yacht for him, too. Paid cash. When you got six million in cash to play with, you don't take no chances on something you can just as well buy without no trouble.

Plenty of chances the way it was. Had to take chances, working that fast. Beat me how I managed to get through the deal without a dozen leaks.

But the dough helped. You take a guy, he'll rat on you for two-three grand. Give him 20 or 30, and he's yours. I'm not just talking syndicate, either. Because there was plenty guys in on it that weren't even in no mob—guys that never been mugged except maybe for these here college annual books where they show pictures of all the professors. I paid off guards and I paid off coppers and I paid off a bunch of curators, too. Not characters, curators. Guys that run museums.

I still don't know what this joker wanted with all that stuff. Only thing I can figure is maybe he was one of these here Indian rajahs or something. But he didn't look like no Hindu— he was a big, tall, youngish guy. Didn't talk like one, either. But who else wants to lay out all that lettuce for a bunch of dizzy paintings and stuff?

Anyways, he showed up Tuesday night with this pouch of his. How he got to me, how he ever got by Lefty downstairs I never figured out.

But there he was. He asked me if it was true, what he heard about me, and he asked me if I wanted to do a job. Said his name was Smith. You know the kind of con you get when they want to stay dummied up on you.

I didn't care if he dummied up or not. Because, like the fella says, money talks. And it sure hollered Tuesday night. He opens this pouch of his and spills two million bucks on the table.

So help me, two million bucks! Cash!

"I've brought this along for expenses," he said. "There's four million more in it if you can cooperate."

Let's skip the rest of it. We made a deal, and I went to work. Wednesday I had him on that yacht, and he stayed there all the way through. Every night I went down and reported.

I went to Washington myself and handled the New York and Philadelphia end, too. Also Boston, on Friday. The rest was by phone, mostly. I kept flying guys out with orders and cash to Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis and the Coast. They had the lists and they knew what to look for. Every mob I contacted set up its own plans for the job. I paid whatever they asked, and that way nobody had any squawks coming. No good any of 'em holding out on me—where could they sell the stuff? Those things are too hot for anyone else to touch.

By the time Thursday come around, I was up to my damn neck in diagrams and room plans and getaway routes. There was six guys just checking on alarm systems and stuff in the joints I was suppose to cover. We had maybe 50 working in New York, not counting from the inside. You wouldn't believe it if I told you some of the guys who helped. Big professors and all, tipping us off on how to make a heist, or cutting wires and leaving doors unlocked. I hear a dozen up and lammed after it was over. That's what real dough can buy you.

Of course I run into trouble. Lots of it. We never did get a haul out of L.A. The fix wasn't in the way it was supposed to be, and they lost the whole load trying for a getaway at the airport. Lucky thing the cops shot up all four of the guys, the ones who made the haul. So they couldn't trace anything.

All told, must of been seven or eight cashed in; the four in L.A., two in Philly, one guy in Detroit and one in Chicago. But no leaks. I kept the wires open, and I had my people out there, sort of supervising. Every bit of the stuff we did get came in by private plane, over in Jersey. Went right to the warehouse.

And I had the whole works, 143 pieces, on the truck when I went down for the pay-off.

It took me three hours to cart that stuff onto the yacht. This guy, this Mr. Smith, he just sat quietly and watched the whole time.

When I was done I said, "That's the works. You satisfied now or do you want a receipt?"

He didn't smile or anything. Just shook his head. "You'll have to open them up," he said.

"Open 'em up? That'll take another couple hours," I told him.

"We've got time," he said.

"Hell we have! Mister, this stuff's hot and I'm hotter. There's maybe a hundred thousand honest Johns looking for the loot— ain't you read the papers or heard the radio? Whole damn country's in an uproar. Worse than the war crisis or whatever you call it. I want out of here, fast."

But he wanted them crates and boxes open, so I opened 'em. What the hell, for four million bucks, a little flunkey work don't hurt. Not even when you're dead for sleep. It was a tough job, though, because everything was packed nice. So as not to have any damage, that is.

Nothing was in frames. He had these canvasses and stuff all jver the floor, and he checked them off in a notebook, every me. And when I got the last damn picture out and hauled ill the wood and junk up on deck and put it over the side in the dark, Tcome back to find him in the forward cabin.

"What's the pitch?" I asked. "Where you going?"

"To transfer these to my ship," he told me. "After all, you didn't expect I'd merely sail off in this vessel, did you? And m need your assistance to get them on board. Don't worry, is only a short distance away."

He started the engines. I came right up behind him and Buck my Special in his ribs.

"Where's the bundle?" I asked.

"In the other cabin, on the table." He didn't even look ■round.

"You're not pulling anything, are you?"

"See for yourself."

I went to see. And he was leveling.

Four million bucks on the table. Five- and 10-thousand-iollar bills, and no phony geetus either. Wouldn't be too damn easy passing this stuff—the Feds would have the word out ut big bills—but then, I didn't count on sticking around ^ the loot. There's plenty countries where they like them bills and don't ask any questions. South America, such es. Tha,t part didn't worry me too much, as long as I w I'd get there.

And I figured on getting there all right. I went back to the Idler cabin and showed him my Special again. "Keep going,"

I said. "I'll help you, but the first time you get cute I'm set to remove your appendix with a slug."

He knew who I was. He knew I could just let him have it and skid out of there any time I wanted. But he never even blinked at me—just kept right on steering.

We must of gone about four miles. It was pitch dark and he didn't carry any spot, but he knew where he was going. Because all at once we stopped and he said, "Here we are."

I went up on deck with him and I couldn't see nothing. Just the lights off on shore and the water ah around. I sure as hell didn't see no boat anywheres.

"Where is it?" I asked him.

"Where is what?"

"Your boat?"

"Down there." He pointed over the side.

"What the hell you got, a submarine or something?"

"Something." He leaned over the side. His hands was empty, he didn't do anything but lean. And so help me, all of a sudden up comes this damn thing. Like a big round silver ball, sort of, with a lid on top.

I didn't even notice the lid until it opened up. And it floated alongside, so's he could run the gangplank out to rest on the lid.

"Come on," he said. "I'll help you. It won't take long this way."

"You think I'm gonna carry stuff across that lousy plank?" I asked him. "In the dark?"

"Don't worry, you can't fall. It's magnomeshed." "What the hell does that mean?" "I'll show you."

He walked across that plank and climbed right down into the thing before I thought to try and stop him. The plank never moved an inch.

Then he was back out. "Come on, there's nothing to be afraid of."

"Who's afraid?"

But I was scared, plenty. Because now I knew what he was. I'd been reading the papers a lot these days, and I didn't miss none of the war talk. Them Commies with all their new weapons and stuff—well, this was one of them. It is no wonder he was tossing around millions of bucks like that.

So I figured doing my patriotic duty. Sure, I'd haul his lousy pictures on board for him. I wanted to get a look inside that sub of his. But when I finished, I made up my mind he wasn't

gonna streak out for Russia or someplace. I'd get him first.

That's the way I played it. I helped him cart the whole mess down into the sub.

Then I changed my mind again. He wasn't no Russian. He wasn't anything I ever heard of except an inventor, maybe. Because that thing he had was crazy.

It was all hollow inside. All hollow, with just a thin wall around. I could tell there wasn't space for an engine or anything. Just enough room to stack the stuff and leave space for maybe two or three guys to stand.

There wasn't any electric light in the place either, but it was light. And daylight. I know what I'm talking about—I know about neon and fluorescent lights too. This was something else. Something new.

Instruments? Well, he had some kind of little slots on one part, but they was down on the floor. You had to lay down next to them to see how they'd work. And he kept watching me, so I didn't want to take a chance on acting too nosy.

I was scared because he wasn't scared.

I was scared because he wasn't no Russian.

I was scared because there ain't any round balls that float in water, or come up from under water when you just look at 'em. And because he come from nowhere with his cash and he was going nowhere with the pictures. Nothing made any sense any more, except one thing. I wanted out. I wanted out bad.

Maybe you think I'm nuts, but that's because you never was inside a shiny ball floating in water, only not bobbing around or even moving when the waves hit it, and all daylight with nothing to light it with. You never saw this Mr. Smith who wasn't named Smith and maybe not even Mr.

But if you had, you would of understood why I was so glad to get back on that yacht and go down in the cabin and pick up the dough.

"All right," I said. "Let's go back."

"Leave whenever you like," he said. "I'm going myself now."

"Going yourself? Then how the hell do I get back?" I yelled.

"Take the yacht," he told me. "It's yours." Just like that he said it.

"But I can't run no yacht, I don't know how." "It's very simple. Here, I'll explain—I picked it up myself in less than a minute. Come up to the cabin."

"Uh uh." I got the Special out. "You're taking me back to the dock right now."

"Sorry, there isn't time. I want to be on my way before—"

"You heard me," I said. "Get this boat moving. No more stalling or I use the gun."

"Please. You're making this difficult. I must leave now. I can't waste any more time."

"First you take me back. Then you go off to Mars or wherever it is."

"Mars? Who said anything about—"

He sort of smiled and shook his head. And then he looked at me.

He looked—right—at—me. He looked—into—me. His eyes were like two of those big round silver balls, rolling down into slots behind my eyeballs and crashing right into my skull. They came towards me real slow and real heavy, and I couldn't duck. I felt them coming, and I knew if they ever hit I'd be a goner. But I couldn't move.

I was out on my feet. Everything was numb. He just smiled and stared and sent his eyes out to get me. They rolled and rolled and I could feel them hit. Then I was—gone.

The last thing I remember was pulling the trigger.

STATEMENT OF ELIZABETH RAFFERTY, M.D.

At 9:30 Sunday morning, he rang the bell. I remember the time exactly, because I'd just finished breakfast and I was switching on the radio to get the war news. Apparently they'd found another Soviet boat, this one in Charleston Harbor, with an atomic device aboard. The Coast Guard and the Air Force were both on emergency, and it—

The bell rang, and I opened the door.

There he stood. He must have been 6-foot-4, at the very least. I had to look up at him to see his smile, but it was worth it.

"Is the doctor in?" he asked.

"I'm Dr. Rafferty."

"Good. I was hoping I'd be lucky enough to find you here. I just came along the street, taking a chance on locating a physician. You see, it's rather an emergency—"

"I gathered that." I stepped back. "Won't you come inside? I dislike having my patients bleed all over the front stoop."

He glanced down at his left arm. He was bleeding, all right. And from the hole in his coat, and the powder-marks, I knew why.

"In here," I said. We went into the office. "Now, if you'll let me help you with your coat and shirt, Mr.—" "Smith," he said.

"Of course. Up on the table. That's it. Now, easy—let me do it—there. Well! A nice neat perforation, upper triceps. In again, out again. It looks as if you were lucky, Mr. Smith. Hold still now. I'm going to probe. . . . This may hurt a bit.... Good! . . . We'll just sterilize, now—"

All the while I kept watching him. He had a gambler's face, but not the mannerisms. I couldn't make up my mind about him. He went through the whole procedure without a sound or a change of expression.

Finally I got him bandaged up. "Your arm will probably be stiff for several days. I wouldn't advise you to move around too much. How did it happen?"

"Accident."

"Come now, Mr. Smith." I got out the pen and looked for a form. "Let's not be children. You know as well as I do that a physician must make a full report on any gunshot wound."

"I didn't know." He swung off the table. "Who gets the report?"

"The police."

"No!"

"Please, Mr. Smith! I'm required by law to—" "Take this."

He fished something out of his pocket with his right hand and threw it on the desk. I stared at it. I'd never seen a 5,000-dollar bill before, and it was worth staring at.

"I'm going now," he said. "As a matter of fact, I've never really been here."

I shrugged. "As you will," I told him. "Just one thing more, though."

"What's that?"

I stooped, reached into the left-hand upper drawer of the desk, and showed him what I kept there.

"This is a .22, Mr. Smith," I said. "It's a lady's gun. I've never used it before, except on the target range. I would hate to use it now, but I warn you that if I do you're going to have trouble with your right arm. As a physician, my knowledge of anatomy combines with my ability as a marksman. Do you understand?"

"Yes, I do. But you don't. Look, you've got to let me go. It's important. I'm not a criminal!"

"Nobody said you were. But you will be, if you attempt to evade the law by neglecting to answer my questions for this report. It must be in the hands of the authorities within the next twenty-four hours."

He chuckled. "They'll never read it."

I sighed. "Let's not argue. And don't reach into your pocket, either."

He smiled at me. "I have no weapon. I was just going to increase your fee."

Another bill fluttered to the table. Ten thousand dollars. Five thousand plus 10 thousand makes 15. It added up.

"Sorry," I said. "This all looks very tempting to a struggling young doctor—but I happen to have old-fashioned ideas about such things. Besides, I doubt if I could get change from anyone, because of all this excitement in the newspapers over—"

I stopped, suddenly, as I remembered. Five-thousand and 10-thousand-dollar bills. They added up, all right. I smiled at him across the desk.

"Where are the paintings, Mr. Smith?" I asked.

It was his turn to sigh. "Please, don't question me. I don't want to hurt anyone. I just want to go, before it's too late. You were kind to me. I'm grateful. Take the money and forget it. This report is foolishness, believe me."

"Believe you? With the whole country in an uproar, looking for stolen art masterpieces, and Communists hiding under every bed? Maybe it's just feminine curiosity, but I'd like to know." I took careful aim. "This isn't conversation, Mr. Smith. Either you talk or I shoot."

"All right. But it won't do any good." He leaned forward. "You've got to believe that. It won't do any good. I could show you the paintings, yes. I could give them to you. And it wouldn't help a bit. Within twenty-four hours they'd be as useless as that report you wanted to fill out."

"Oh, yes, the report. We might as well get started with it," I said. "In spite of your rather pessimistic outlook. The way you talk, you'd think the bombs were going to fall here tomorrow."

"They will," he told me. "Here, and everywhere."

"Very interesting." I shifted the gun to my left hand and took up the fountain pen. "But now, to business. Your name, please. Your real name."

"Kim Logan."

"Date of birth?"

"November 25th, 2903."

I raised the gun. "The right arm," I said. "Medial head of the triceps. It will hurt, too."

"November 25th, 2903," he repeated. "I came here last Sunday at 10 P.M., your time. By the same chronology I leave tonight at nine. It's a 169-hour cycle."

"What are you talking about?"

"My instrument is out there in the bay. The paintings and manuscripts are there. I intended to remain submerged until the departure moment tonight, but a man shot me."

"You feel feverish?" I asked. "Does your head hurt?"

"No. I told you it was no use explaining things. You won't believe me, any more than you believed me about the bombs."

"Let's stick to facts," I suggested. "You admit you stole the paintings. Why?"

"Because of the bombs, of course. The war is coming, the big one. Before tomorrow morning your planes will be over the Russian border and their planes will retaliate. That's only the beginning. It will go on for months, years. In the end— shambles. But the masterpieces I take will be saved."

"How?"

"I told you. Tonight, at nine, I return to my own place in the time-continuum." He raised his hand. "Don't tell me it's not possible. According to your present-day concepts of physics it would be. Even according to our science, only forward movement is demonstrable. When I suggested my project to the Institute they were skeptical. But they built the instrument according to my specifications, nevertheless. They permitted me to use the money from the Historical Foundation at Fort Knox. And I received an ironic blessing prior to my departure. I rather imagine my actual vanishment caused raised eyebrows. But that will be nothing compared to the reaction upon my return. My triumphant return, with a cargo of art masterpieces presumably destroyed nearly a thousand years in the past!"

"Let me get this straight," I said. "According to your story, you came here because you knew war was going to break out and you wanted to salvage some old masters from destruction. Is that it?"

"Precisely. It was a wild gamble, but I had the currency. I've studied the era as closely as any man can from the records available. I knew about the linguistic peculiarities of the age— you've had no trouble understanding me, have you? And I managed to work out a plan. Of course I haven't been entirely successful, but I've managed a great deal in less than a week's time. Perhaps I can return again—earlier—maybe a year or so beforehand, and procure more." His eyes grew bright. "Why not? We could build more instruments, come in a body. We could get everything we wanted, then."

I shook my head. "For the sake of argument, let's say for a minute that I believe you, which I don't. You've stolen some paintings, you say. You're taking them back to 29-something-or-other with you, tonight. You hope. Is that the story?"

"That's the truth."

"Very well. Now you suggest that you might repeat the experiment on a larger scale. Come back to a point a year before this in time and collect more masterpieces. Again, let's say you do it. What will happen to the paintings you took with you?"

"I don't follow you."

"Those paintings will be in your era, according to you. But a year ago they hung in various galleries. Will they be there when you come back? Surely they can't co-exist."

He smiled. "A pretty paradox. I'm beginning to like you, Dr. Rafferty."

"Well, don't let the feeling grow on you. It's not reciprocal, I assure you. Even if you were telling the truth, I can't admire your motives."

"What's wrong with my motives?" He stood up, ignoring the gun. "Isn't it a worthwhile goal—to save immortal treasures from the senseless destruction of a tribal war? The world deserves the preservation of its artistic heritage. I've risked my existence for the sake of bringing beauty to my own time— where it can be properly appreciated and enjoyed by minds no longer obsessed with the greed and cruelty I find here."

"Big words," I said. "But the fact remains. You stole those paintings."

"Stole? I saved them! I tell you, before the year is out they'd be utterly destroyed. Your galleries, your museums, your libraries—everything will go. Is it stealing to carry precious articles from a burning temple?" He leaned over me. "Is that a crime?"

"Why not stop the fire, instead?" I countered. "You know —from historical records, I suppose—that war breaks out tonight or tomorrow. Why not take advantage of your foresight and try to prevent it?"

"I can't. The records are sketchy, incomplete. Events are jumbled. I've been unable to discover just how the war began

—or will begin, rather. Some trivial incident, unnamed. Nothing is clear on that point."

"But couldn't you warn the authorities?"

"And change history? Change the actual sequence of events, rather? Impossible!"

"Aren't you changing them by taking the paintings?"

"That's different."

"Is it?" I stared into his eyes. "I don't see how. But then, the whole thing is impossible. I've wasted too much time in arguing."

"Time!" He looked at the wall clock. "Almost noon. I've got nine hours left. And so much to do. The instrument must be adjusted."

"Where is this precious mechanism of yours?"

"Out in the bay. Submerged, of course. I had that in mind when it was constructed. You can conceive of the hazards of attempting to move through time and alight on a solid surface; the face of the lands alters. But the ocean is comparatively unchanging. I knew if I departed from a spot several miles offshore and arrived there, I'd eliminate most of the ordinary hazards. Besides, it offers a most excellent place of concealment. The principle, you see, is simple. By purely mechanical means I shall raise the instrument above the stratospheric level tonight and then intercalculate dimensionally when I am free of earth's orbit. The gantic-drive will be—"

No doubt about it. I didn't have to wait for the double-talk to know he was crazier than a codfish. A pity, too; he was really a handsome specimen.

"Sorry," I said. "Time's up. This is something I hate to do, but there's no other choice. No, don't move. I'm calling the police, and if you take one step I'll plug you."

"Stop! You mustn't call! I'll do anything, I'll even take you with me. That's it, I'll take you with me! Wouldn't you like to save your life? Wouldn't you like to escape?"

"No. Nobody escapes," I told him. "Especially not you. Now stand still, and no more funny business. I'm making that call."

He stopped. He stood still. J picked up the phone, with a sweet smile. He looked at me.

Something happened then.

There has been a great dispute about the clinical aspects of hypnotic therapy. I remember, in school, an attempt being made to hypnotize me. I was entirely immune. I concluded that a certain degree of cooperation or conditioned suggestibility is required of an individual in order to render him susceptible to hypnosis.

I was wrong.

I was wrong, because I couldn't move now. No light, no mirrors, no voices, no suggestion. It was just that I couldn't move. I sat there holding the gun. I sat there and watched him walk out, locking the door behind him. I could see and I could feel. I could even hear him say "Good-by."

But I couldn't move. I could function, but only as a paralytic functions. I could, for example, watch the clock.

I watched the clock from 12 noon until almost seven. Several patients came during the afternoon, couldn't get in, and went away. I watched the clock until its face was lost in darkness. I sat there and endured hysteric rigidity until— providentially—the phone rang.

That broke it. But it broke me. I couldn't answer that phone. I merely slumped over on the desk, my muscles tightening with pain as the gun fell from my numb fingers. I lay there, gasping and sobbing, for a long time. I tried to sit up. It was agony. I tried to walk. My limbs rejected sensation. It took me an hour to gain control again. And even then, it was merely a partial control—a physical control. My thoughts were another matter.

Seven hours of thinking. Seven hours of true or false? Seven hours of accepting and rejecting the impossibly possible.

It was after eight before I was on my feet again, and then I didn't know what to do.

Call the police? Yes—but what could I tell them? I had to be sure, I had to know.

And what did I know? He was out in the bay, and he'd leave at nine o'clock. There was an instrument which would rise above the stratosphere—

I got in the car and drove. The dock was deserted. I took the road over to the Point, where there's a good view. I had the binoculars. The stars were out, but no moon. Even so, I could see pretty clearly.

There was a small yacht bobbing on the water, but no lights shone. Could that be it?

No sense taking chances. I remembered the radio report about the Coast Guard patrols.

So I did it. I drove back to town and stopped at a drugstore and made my call. Just reported the presence of the yacht. Perhaps they'd investigate, because there were no lights. Yes, I'd stay there and wait for them if they wished.

I didn't stay, of course. I went back to the Point. I went back there and trained my binoculars on the yacht. It was almost nine when I saw the cutter come along, moving up behind the yacht with deadly swiftness.

It was exactly nine when they flashed their lights—and caught, for an incredible instant, the gleaming reflection of the silver globe that rose from the water, rose straight up toward the sky.

Then came the explosion and I saw the shattering before I heard the echo of the report. They had portable anti-aircraft, something of the sort.

One moment the globe soared upward. The next moment there was nothing. They blew it to bits.

And they blew me tos bits with it. Because if there was a globe, perhaps he was inside. With the masterpieces, ready to return to another time. The story was true, then, and if that was true, then—

I guess I fainted. My watch showed 10:30 when I came to and stood up. It was 11 before I made it to the Coast Guard Station and told my story.

Of course, nobody believed me. Even D. Halvorsen from emergency—he said he did, but he insisted on the injection and they took me here to the hospital.

It would have been too late, anyway. That globe did the trick. They must have contacted Washington immediately, with their story of a new secret Soviet weapon destroyed offshore. Coming on the heels of finding those bomb-laden ships, it was the final straw. Somebody gave orders and our planes took off. We've dropped bombs over there. And the alert has gone out, warning us of possible reprisals.

I keep thinking about the paradoxes of time-travel. This notion of carrying objects from the present to the future—and this other notion, about altering the past. I'd like to work out the theory, only there's no need. The old masters aren't going into the future. Any more than he, returning to our present, could stop the war.

What had he said? "I've been unable to discover just how the war began—or will begin, rather. Some trivial incident, unnamed."

Well, this was the trivial incident. His visit. If I hadn't made that phone call, if the globe hadn't risen—but there's no use thinking about it any more. All that buzzing and droning noise outside and the sirens sounding, too. If I had any doubts about the truth of his claims, they're gone.

I wish I'd believed him. I wish the others would believe me now. But there just isn't any time. . . .

RAIN MAGIC

Erie Stanley Gardner

Is "Rain Magic" fact or fiction? I wish I knew.

Some of it is fiction, I know, because I invented connecting incidents and wove them into the yarn. It's the rest of it that haunts me. At the time I thought it was just a wild lie of an old desert rat. And then I came to believe it was true.

Anyhow, here are the facts, and the reader can judge for himself.

About six months ago I went stale on Western stories. My characters became fuzzy in my mind; my descriptions lacked that intangible something that makes a story pack a punch. I knew I had to get out and gather new material.

So I got a camp wagon. It's a truck containing a complete living outfit—bed, bath, hot and cold water, radio, writing desk, closet, stove, et cetera. I struck out into the trackless desert, following old, abandoned roads, sometimes making my own roads. I was writing as I went, meeting old prospectors, putting them on paper, getting steeped in the desert environment.

February 13, found me at a little spring in the middle of barren desert. As far as I knew there wasn't a soul within miles.

Then I heard steps, the sound of a voice. I got up from my typewriter, went to the door. There was an old prospector getting water at the spring. But he wasn't the typical desert rat. I am always interested in character classification, and the man puzzled me. I came to the conclusion he'd been a sailor.

So I got out, shook hands, and passed the time of day. He was interested in my camp wagon, and I took him in, sat him down and smoked for a spell. Then I asked him if he hadn't been a sailor.

I can still see the queer pucker that came into his eyes as he nodded.

Now sailors are pretty much inclined to stay with the water. One doesn't often find a typical sailor in the desert. So I asked him why he'd come into the desert.

59

He explained that he had to get away from rain. When it rained he got the sleeping sickness.

That sounded like a story, so I made it a point to draw him out. It came, a bit at a time, starting with the Sahara dust that painted the rigging of the ship after the storm, and winding up with the sleeping sickness that came back whenever he smelled the damp of rain-soaked vegetation.

I thought it was one gosh-awful lie, but it was a gripping, entertaining lie, and I thought I could use it. I put it up to him as a business proposition, and within a few minutes held in my possession a document which read in part as follows:

For value received, I hereby sell to Erie Stanley Gardner the story rights covering my adventures in Africa, including the monkey-man, the unwritten language, the ants who watched the gold ledge, the bread that made me ill, the sleeping sickness which comes back every spring and leaves me with memories of my lost sweetheart, et cetera, et cetera.

After that I set about taking complete notes of his story. I still thought it was a lie, an awful lie.

Like all stories of real life in the raw it lacked certain connecting incidents. There was no balance to it. It seemed disconnected in places.

Because I intended to make a pure fiction story out of it, I didn't hesitate to fill in these connections. I tried to give it a sweep of unified action, and I took some liberties with the facts as he had given them to me. Yet, in the main, I kept his highlights, and I was faithful to the backgrounds as he had described them.

Because he had just recovered from a recurrence of the sleeping sickness, I started the story as it would have been told to a man who had stumbled onto the sleeping form in the desert. It was a story that "wrote itself." The words just poured from my fingertips to the typewriter. But I was writing it as fiction, and I considered it as such.

Not all of what he told me went into the story. There was some that dealt with intimate matters one doesn't print. There was some that dealt with tribal customs, markings of different tribes, et cetera, et cetera. In fact, I rather avoided some of these definite facts. Because I felt the whole thing was fiction, I was rather careful to keep from setting down definite data, using only such as seemed necessary.

Then, after the story had been written and mailed, after I

RAIN   MAGIC                                   61

had returned to headquarters, I chanced to get some books dealing with the locality covered in the story, telling of tribal characteristics, racial markings, et cetera.

To my surprise, I found that every fact given me by the old prospector was true. I became convinced that his story was, at least, founded on fact.

And, so I consider "Rain Magic" the most remarkable story I ever had anything to do with. I'm sorry I colored it up with fiction of my own invention. I wish I'd left it as it was, regardless of lack of connective incident and consistent motivation.

Somewhere in the shifting sands of the California desert is an old prospector, hiding from the rain, digging for gold, cherishing lost memories. His sun-puckered eyes have seen sights that few men have seen. His life has been a tragedy so weird, so bizarre that it challenges credulity. Yet of him it can be said, "He has lived."

—ERLE STANLEY GARDNER

Chapter 1—Through The Breakers

No, no—no more coffee. Thanks. Been asleep, eh? Well, don't look so worried about it. Mighty nice of you to wake me up. What day is it?

Thursday, eh? I've been asleep two days then—oh, it is? Then it's been nine days. That's more like it. It was the rain, you see. I tried to get back to my tent, but the storm came up too fast. It's the smell of the damp green things in a rain. The doctors tell me it's auto-hypnosis. They're wrong. M'Camba told me I'd always be that way when I smelled the jungle smell. It's the sleeping sickness in my veins. That's why I came to the desert. It doesn't rain out here more than once or twice a year.

When it does rain the jungle smells come back and the sleeping sickness gets me. Funny how my memory comes back after those long sleeps. It was the drugged bread, king-kee they called it; but the language ain't never been written down. Sort of a graduated monkey talk it was.

It's hot here, come over in the shadow of this Joshuay palm. That's better.

Ever been to sea? No? Then you won't understand.

It was down off the coast of Africa. Anything can happen off the coast of Africa. After the storms, the Sahara dust comes and paints the rigging white. Yes, sir, three hundred miles out to sea I've seen it. And for a hundred miles you can get the smell of the jungles. When the wind's right

It was an awful gale. You don't see 'em like it very often. We tried to let go the deckload of lumber, but the chains jammed. The Dutchmen took to the riggin' jabberin' prayers. They were a weak-kneed lot. It was the Irishman that stayed with it. He was a cursin' devil.

He got busy with an ax. The load had listed and we was heeled over to port. The Dutchmen in the riggin' prayin', an' the Irishman down on the lumber cursin'. A wave took him over and then another wave washed him back again. I see it with my own eyes. He didn't give up. He just cursed harder than ever. And he got the chains loose, too. The deck-load slid off and she righted.

But it was heavy weather and it got worse. The sky was just a mass of whirlin' wind and the water came over until she didn't get rid of one wave before the next bunch of green water was on top of her.

The rudder carried away. I thought everything was gone, but she lived through it. We got blown in, almost on top of the shore. When the gale died we could see it. There was a species of palm stickin' up against the sky, tall trees they were, and below 'em was a solid mass of green stuff, and it stunk. The whole thing was decayin' an' steamin' just like the inside of a rotten, damp log.

The old man was a bad one. It was a hell ship an' no mistake. I'd been shanghaied, an' I wanted back. Thirty pound I had in my pocket when I felt the drink rockin' my head. I knew then, but it was too late. The last I remembered was the grinnin' face of the tout smilin' at me through a blue haze.

The grub was rotten. The old man was a devil when he was sober, an' worse when he was drunk. The Irish mate cursed all the time, cursed and worked. Between 'em they drove the men, drove us like sheep.

The moon was half full. After the storm the waves were rollin' in on a good sea breeze. There wasn't any whitecaps. The wind just piled the water up until the breakers stood fourteen feet high before they curled an' raced up the beach.

But the breakers didn't look so bad from the deck of the ship. Not in the light of the half moon they didn't. We'd been at work on the rudder an' there was a raft over the side. I was on watch, an' the old man was drunk, awful drunk. I don't know when the idea came to me, but it seemed to have always been there. It just popped out in front when it got a chance.

I was halfway down the rope before I really knew what I was doin'. My bare feet hit the raft an' my sailor knife was workin' on the rope before I had a chance to even think things over.

But I had a chance on the road in, riding the breakers. I had a chance even as soon as the rope was cut. The old man came and stood on the rail, lookin' at the weather, too drunk to know what he was looking at, but cockin' his bleary eye at the sky outa habit.

He'd have seen me, drunk as he was, if he'd looked down, but he didn't. If he'd caught me then I'd have been flayed alive. He'd have sobered up just special for the occasion.

I drifted away from him. The moon was on the other side of the hull, leavin' it just a big, black blotch o' shadow, ripplin' on the water, heavin' up into the sky. Then I drifted out of the shadow and into golden water. The moon showed over the top of the boat, an' the sharks got busy.

I'd heard they never struck at a man while he was strugglin'. Maybe it's true. I kept movin', hands and feet goin'. The raft was only an inch or two outa water, an' it was narrow. The sharks cut through the water like hissin' shadows. I was afraid one of 'em would grab a hand or a foot an' drag me down, but they didn't. I could keep the rest of me outa the water, but not my hands an' feet. I had to paddle with 'em to get into shore before the wind and tide changed. I sure didn't want to be left floatin' around there with no sail, nor food; nothin' but sharks.

From the ship the breakers looked easy an' lazylike. When I got in closer I saw they were monsters. They'd rise up an' blot out all the land, even the tops of the high trees. Just before they'd break they'd send streamers of spray, high up in the heavens. Then they'd come down with a crash.

But I couldn't turn back. The sharks and the wind and the tide were all against me, and the old man would have killed me.

I rode in on a couple of breakers, and then the third one broke behind me. The raft an' me, an' maybe the sharks all got mixed up together. My feet struck the sand, but they wouldn't stay there.

The strong undertow was cuttin' the sand out from under me. I could feel it racin' along over my toes, an' then I started back an' down.

The undertow sucked me under another wave, somethin' alive brushed against my back, an' then tons o' water came down over me. That time I was on the bottom an' I rolled along with sand an' water bein' pumped into my innards. I thought it was the end, but there was a lull in the big ones, an' a couple o' littie ones came an' rolled me up on the beach.

I was more dead than alive. The water had made me groggy, an' I was sore from the pummelin' I'd got. I staggered up the strip of sand an' into the jungle.

A little ways back was a cave, an' into the cave I flopped. The water oozed out of my insides like from a soaked sponge. My lungs an' stomach an' ears were all full. I tried to get over a log an' let 'er drain out, but I was too weak. I felt everything turnin' black to me.

The next thing I knew it was gettin' dawn an' shadowy shapes were flittin' around. I thought they was black angels an' they were goin' to smother me. They stunk with a musty smell, an' they settled all over me.

Then I could feel the blood runnin' over my skin. It got a little lighter, an' I could see. I was in a bat cave an' the bats were comin' back. They'd found me an' were setdin' on me in clouds, suckin' blood.

I tried to fight 'em off, but it was like fightin' a fog. Sometimes I'd hit 'em, but they'd just sail through the air, an' I couldn't hurt 'em. All the time, they was flutterin' their wings an' lookin' for a chance to get more blood.

I'd got the weight of 'em off, though, an' I staggered out of the cave. They followed me for a ways; but when I got out to where it was gettin' light they went back in the cave. It gets light quick down there in the tropics, an' the light hurt their eyes.

I rolled into the sand an' went to sleep.

When I woke up I heard marchin' feet. It sounded like an army. They was comin' regular like, slow, unhurried, deliberate. It made the chills come up my spine just to hear the boom, boom, boom of those feet.

I crawled deeper into the sand under the shadows of the overhangin' green stuff. Naked men an' women filed out onto the beach.

I watched 'em.

Chocolate-colored they were, an' they talked a funny, squeaky talk. I found afterward some of the words was Fanti and some was a graduated monkey talk. Fanti ain't never been written down.

It's one of the Tshi languages. The Ashantis an' the Fantis an' one or two other tribes speak branches o' the same lingo. But these people spoke part Fanti an' part graduated monkey talk.

An' among 'em was a monkey-man. He was a funny guy. There was coarse hair all over him, an' he had a stub of a tail. His big toes weren't set like mine, but they was twisted like a foot thumb.

No, I didn't notice the toes at the time. I found that out later, while he was sittin' on a limb gettin' ready to shoot a poisoned arrow at me. I thought every minute was my last, an' then was when I noticed the way his foot thumbs wrapped around the limb. Funny how a man will notice litde things when he's near death.

Anyway, this tribe came down an' marched into the water, men, women, an' children. They washed themselves up to the hips, sort of formal, like it was a ceremony. The rest of them they didn't get water on at all. They came out an' rubbed sort of an oil on their arms, chests, an' faces.

Chapter 2—Life Or Death

Finally they all went away, all except a woman an' a little kid. The woman was lookin' for somethin' in the water— fish, maybe. The kid was on a rock about eight feet away, a little shaver he was, an' he had a funny pot-belly. I looked at him an' I looked at her.

I was sick an' I was hungry, an' I was bleedin' from the bats. The smell of the jungle was in my lungs, so I couldn't tell whether the air was full of jungle or whether I was breathin' in jungle stuff with just a little air. It's a queer sensation. Unless you've been through it you wouldn't understand.

Well, I felt it was everything or nothin'. The woman couldn't kill me, an' the kid couldn't. An' I had to make myself known an' get somethin' to eat.

I straightened out of the sand.

"Hello," said I.

The kid was squattin' on his haunches. He didn't seem to jump. He just flew through the air an' he sailed right onto his mother's back. His hands clung to her shoulders an' his head pressed tight against her skin, the eyes rollin' at me, but the head never movin'.

The mother made three jumps right up the sand, an' then she sailed into the air an' caught the branch of a tree. The green stuff was so thick that I lost sight of 'em both right there. I could hear a lot of jabberin' monkey talk in the trees, an' then I heard the squeaky voice of the woman talkin' back to the monkeys. I could tell the way she was goin' by the jabber of monkey talk.

No, I can't remember words of monkey talk. I never got so I could talk to the monkeys. But the people did. I am goin' to tell you about that. I'm explainin' about the sleepin' sickness, an' about how the memories come back to me after I've been asleep.

Maybe they're dreams, but maybe they ain't. If they're dreams, how comes it that when I got to Cape Coast Castle I couldn't remember where I'd been? They brought me in there on stretchers, an' nobody knows how far they'd brought me. They left me in the dead o' night. But the next mornin' there were the tracks, an' they were tracks like nobody there had ever seen before.

There's strange things in Africa, an' this was when I was a young blood, remember that. I was an upstandin' youngster, too. I'd tackle anything, even the west coast of Africa on a raft, an' the Fanti warriors; but I'm comin' to that directly.

Well, the woman ran away, an' the monkeys came. They stuck around on the trees an' jabbered monkey talk at me. I wished I'd been like the woman an' could have talked to 'em. But the monkeys ain't got so many words. There's a lot of it that's just tone stuff. It was the ants that could speak, but they rubbed feelers together.

Oh, yes, there was ants, great, woolly ants two inches long, ants that built houses out of sticks. They built 'em thirty feet high, an' some of the sticks was half an inch round an' six or eight inches long. They had the ants guardin' the gold ledge, an' nobody except Kk-Kk, the feeder, an' the goldsmith could come near there.

The goldsmith was nothin' but a slave, anyway. They'd captured him from a slaver that went ashore. The others died of the fever, but the natives gave the goldsmith some medicine that cured him. After that he couldn't get sick. They could have done the same by me, too, but the monkey-man was my enemy. He wanted Kk-Kk for himself.

Finally I heard the tramp of feet again, an' the warriors of the tribe came out. They had spears an' little bows with long arrows. The arrows were as thin as a pencil. They didn't look like they'd hurt anything, but there was a funny color on the points, a sort of shimmering something.

I found out afterward that was where they'd coated 'em with poison an' baked the poison into the wood. One scratch with an arrow like that an' a man or a beast would die. But it didn't hurt the flesh none for eatin'. Either of man or beast it didn't. They ate 'em both.

I saw it was up to me to make a speech. The men all looked serious an' dignified. That is, they all did except the monkey-man. He capered around on the outside. His balance didn't seem good on his two feet, so he'd stoop over an' use the backs of his knuckles to steady himself. He could hitch along over the ground like the wind. His arms were long, long an' hairy, an' the inside of his palms was all wrinkled, thick an' black.

Anyhow, I made a speech.

I told 'em that I was awful tough, an' that I was thin, an' maybe the bat bites had poisoned me, so I wouldn't advise 'em to cook me. I told 'em I was a friend an' I didn't come to bother 'em, but to get away from the big ship that was layin' offshore.

I thought they understood me, because some of 'em was lookin' at the ship. But I found out afterward they didn't. They'd seen the ship, an' they'd seen me, an' they saw the dried salt water on my clothes, an' they figgered it out for themselves.

I finished with my speech. I didn't expect 'em to clap their hands, because they had spears an' bows, but I thought maybe they'd smile. They was a funny bunch, all gathered around there in a circle, grave an' naked like. An' they all had three scars on each side of their cheek bones. It made 'em look tough.

Then the monkey-man gave a sort of a leap an' lit in the trees, an' the monkeys came around and jabbered, an' he jabbered, an' somehow I thought he was tellin' the monkeys about me. Maybe he was.

An' then from the jungle behind me I heard a girl's voice, an' it was speakin' good English.

"Be silent and I shall speak to my father," she said.

You can imagine how I felt hearin' an English voice from the jungle that way, an' knowin' it was a girl's voice. But I knew she wasn't a white woman. I could tell that by the sound of the voice, sort of the way the tongue didn't click against the roof of the mouth, but the lips made the speech soft like.

An' then there was a lot of squeaky talk from the jungles. There was silence after that talk, an' then I heard the girl's voice again.

"They've gone for the goldsmith. He'll talk to you."

I didn't see who had gone, an' I didn't know who the goldsmith was. I turned around an' tried to see into the jungle, but all I could see was leaves, trunks an' vine stems. There was a wispy blue vapor that settled all around an' overhead the air was white way way up, white with Sahara dust. But down low the jungle odor hung around the ground. Around me the circle stood naked an' silent. Not a man moved.

Who was the goldsmith?—I wondered. Who was the girl?

Then I heard steps behind me an' the jungle parted. I smelled somethin' burnin'. It wasn't tobacco, not the kind we have, but it was a sort of a tobacco flavor.

A man came out into the circle, smokin' a pipe.

"How are yuh?" he says, an' sticks forward a hand.

He was a white man, part white anyway, an' he had on some funny clothes. They were made of skins, but they were cut like a tailor would cut 'em. He even had a skin hat with a stiff brim. He'd made the stiff brim out of green skin with the hair rubbed off.

He was smokin' a clay pipe, an' there was a vacant look in his eyes, a blank somethin' like a man who didn't have feelin's any more, but was just a man-machine.

I shook hands with him.

"Are they goin' to eat me?" I asks.

He smoked awhile before he spoke, an' then he takes the pipe out of his mouth an' nods his head. "Sure," he says. It wasn't encouragin'.

"Have hope," came the voice from the jungle, the voice of the girl. She seemed to be standin' close, close an' keepin' in one place, but I couldn't see her.

I talked to the man with the pipe. I made him a speech He turned around and talked to the circle of men, an' they didn't say anything.

Finally an old man grunted, an' like the grunt was an order they all squatted down on their haunches, all of 'em facin' me.

Then the girl in the jungle made squeaky noises. The old man seemed to be listenin' to her. The others didn't listen to anything. They were just starin' at me, an' the expression on all of the faces was the same. It was sort of a curiosity, but it wasn't a curiosity to see what I looked like. I felt it was a curiosity to see what I'd taste like.

Then the goldsmith rubbed some more brown leaf into the pipe, right on top of the coals of the other pipeful.

"The girl is claimin' you as a slave," he says.

"Who is the girl?" I asked him.

"Kk-Kk," he says, an' I didn't know whether he was givin' me a name or warning' me to keep quiet.

Well, I figured I'd rather be a slave than a meal, so I kept quiet.

Then the monkey-man in the tree began to jabber.

They didn't look up at him, but I could see they were listenin'. When he got done the girl squeaked some more words.

Then the monkey-man made some more talk, and the girl talked. The fellow with the pipe smoked an' blew the smoke out of his nose. His eyes were weary an' puckered. He was an odd fellow.

Finally the old man that had grunted an' made 'em squat, gave another grunt. They all stood up.

This is the show-down, I says to myself. It's either bein' a white slave or bein' a meat loaf.

The old man looked at me an' blinked. Then he sucked his lips into his mouth until his face was all puckered into wrinkles. He blinked his lidless eyes some more an' then grunted twice. Then all the men marched off. I could hear their feet boomin' along the hard ground in the jungle, on a path that had been beaten down hard by millions of bare feet. I found out afterward that same path had been used for over a hundred years, an' the king made a law it had to be traveled every day. That was the only way they could keep the ground hard.

I guess I'm a meal, I thought to myself. I figgered the goldsmith would have told me if I had been goin' to be a slave. But he'd moved off with the rest, an' he hadn't said a word.

The monkey-man kept talkin' to the bunch. He didn't walk along the path, but he moved through the trees, keepin' up in the branches, right over the heads of the others, an' talkin' all the time, an' his words didn't seem happy words. I sort of felt he was scoldin' like a monkey that's watchin' yuh eat a coconut

But the old man grunted at him, an' he shut up like a clam. He was mad, though. I could tell that because he set off through the trees, tearin' after a couple of monkeys. An' he pretty nearly caught 'em. They sounded like a whirlwind, tearin' through the branches. Then the sounds got fainter, an' finally eveiything was still.

I looked around. There was nobody in sight I was there, on the fringe of beach, right near the edge of the jungle, and everything was still an' silent

Then there came a rustiin' of the jungle stuff an' she came out.

She had on a skirt of grass stuff, an' her eyes were funny, a liquid expression. Her eyes were like that.

"I'm Kk-Kk the daughter of Yik-Yik, and the keeper of the gold ledge," she said. "I have learned to speak the language of the goldsmith. You, too, speak the same language. You are my slave."

"Thank God I ain't a meal," I said. That was before the doctor guys discovered these here calories in food; but right then I didn't feel like a half a good-sized calory, much less a fit meal for a native warrior.

"You will be my slave," she said, "but if you pay skins to my father you can buy your freedom, and then you will be a warrior."

"I ain't never been a slave to a woman," I told her, me bein' one of the kind that had always kept from being led to the altar, "but I'd rather be a slave to you than to that old man on the boat out yonder."

There was something half shy about her, and yet something proud and dignified.

"I have promised my father my share of the next hunt in order to purchase you from the tribe," she went on.

"Thanks," I told her, knowin' it was up to me to say somethin', but sort of wonderin' whether a free, white man should thank a woman who had made a slave outa him.

"Come," she said, an' turned away.

I had more of a chance to study her back. She was lithe, graceful, and she was a well-turned lass. There was a set to her head, a funny little twist of her shoulders when she walked that showed she was royalty and knowed it. Funny how people get that little touch of class no matter where they are or what stock. Just as soon as they get royal blood in 'em they get it. I've seen 'em everywhere.

I followed her into the jungle, down under the branches where there wasn't sunlight any more; but the day was just filled with green light.

Finally we came through the jungle an' into a big clearin'. There were huts around the clearin' an' a big fire. The people of the tribe were here, goin' about their business in knots of two an' three just like nothin' had happened. I was a member of the tribe now, the slave of Kk-Kk.

Most of the women stared, an' the kids scampered away when they seen me look toward 'em; but that was all. The men took me for granted.

Chapter 3—Guardians Of Gold

The girl took me to a hut. In one corner was a frame of wood with animal skins stretched over it. There were all kinds of skins. Some of 'em I knew, more of 'em I didn't.

She squeaked out some words an' then there was some more jabberin' in a quaverin' voice, an' an old woman came an' brought me fruits.

I squatted down on my heels the way the natives did, an' tried to eat the fruit. My stomach was still pretty full of salt water an' sand, but the fruit tasted good. Then they gave me a half a coconut shell filled with some sort of creamy liquid that had bubbles comin' up in it. It tasted sort of sour, but it had a lot of authority. Ten minutes after I drank it I felt my neck snap back. It was the delayed kick, an' it was like the hind leg of a mule.

"Come," says the jane, an' led the way again out into the openin'.

I followed her, across the openin' into the jungle, along a path, past the shore of a lagoon, and up into a little canon. Here the trees were thicker than ever except on the walls of the canon itself. There'd been a few dirt slides in that canon, an' in one or two places the rock had been stripped bare. After a ways it was all rock.

An' then we came to somethin' that made my eyes stick out. There was a ledge o' rock an' a vein o' quartz in it. The vein was just shot with gold, an' in the center it was almost pure gold. The quartz was crumbly, an' there were pieces of it scattered around on the ground. The foliage had been cleared away, an' the ground was hard. There was a fire goin' near the ledge an' some clay crucibles were there. Then there was a great bellows affair made out of thick, oiled leather. It was a big thing, but all the air came out of a little piece of hollow wood in the front.

I picked up one of the pieces of quartz. The rock could be crumbled between the fingers, an' it left the gold in my hand. The gold was just like it showed in the rock, spreadin' out to form sort of a tree. There must have been fifty dollars' worth in the piece o' rock that I crumbled up in my fingers.

I moved my hands around fast an' managed to slip the gold in my torn shirt. The girl was watchin' me with those funny, liquid eyes of hers, but she didn't say a word.

There was a great big pile of small sticks between me an' the ledge of gold. I figured it was kindlin' wood that they kept for the fire. But finally my eyes got loose from the ledge of gold an' what should I see but the sticks movin'. I looked again, an' then I saw somethin' else.

It was a big ant heap made outa sticks an' sawdust. Some of those sticks were eight or ten inches long and half an inch around. And the whole place was swarming with ants. They had their heads stickin' out of the little holes between the sticks.

They must be big ants, I thought; but I was interested in that gold ledge. There must have been millions of dollars in it. I took a couple of steps toward it, an' then the ant heap just swarmed with life.

They were big ants covered with sort of a white wool and they came out of there like somebody had given 'em an order.

The girl shrieked somethin' in a high-pitched voice, but I didn't know whether it was at me or the ants.

The ants swarmed into two columns of maybe eight or ten abreast in each column, an' they started for me, swingin' out in a big circle as though one was goin' to come on one side, an' one on the other.

An' then they stopped. The girl ran forward an' put her arms on my shoulders an' started caressin' me, pattin' my hair, cooin' soft noises in my ears.

I thought maybe she'd gone cuckoo, an' I looked into her eyes, but they weren't lookin' at me, they were lookin' at the ants, an' they were wide with fear.

An' the ants were lookin' at her. I could see their big eyes gazin' steadylike at her. Then somethin' else must have been said to 'em, although I did not hear anything. But all at once, just like an army presentin' arms in response to an order, they threw up their long feelers an' waved 'em gently back an' forth. Then the girl took me by the arm an' moved me away.

"I should have told you," she said, "never to go past the line of that path. The ants guard the yellow metal, and when one comes nearer than that they attack. There is no escape from those ants. I took you to them so now you can help me feed them."

That all sounded sorta cuckoo to me, but the whole business was cuckoo anyway.

"Look here," I tells this jane. "I'm willin' to be the slave of a chiefs daughter—for awhile. But I ain't goin' to be slave to no ant hill."

"That is not expected," she said. "It is an honor to assist in feeding the ants, a sacred right. You only assist me. Never again must you come so near to the ants."

I did a lot of thinkin'. I wasn't hankerin' to come into an argument with those ants, but I was figurin' to take a closer slant at that gold ledge.

She took me away into the jungle where there was a pile of fruit dryin' in the sun. It was a funny sort of fruit, an' smelled sweet, like orange blossoms, only there was more of a honey smell to it.

"Take your arms full," she said.

Well, it was my first experience bein' a slave, but I couldn't see as it was much different from bein' a sailor, only the work was easier.

I scooped up both arms full of the stuff. The smell made me a little dizzy at first, but I soon got used to it. The girl picked up some, too, an' she led the way back to the ant pile.

She had me put my load down an' showed me how to arrange it in a long semicircle. I could see the ants watchin' from out of the holes in the ant pile, but they did not do anything except watch.

Finally the girl made a queer clicking sound with her tongue an' teeth an' the ants commenced to boil out again. This time they made for the fruit, an' they went in order, just like a bunch of swell passengers on one of the big ocean liners. Some of 'em seemed to hold first meal ticket while the others remained on guard. Then there must have been some signal from the ants, because the girl didn't say a word, but all of the first bunch of ants fell back an' stood guard, an' the second bunch of ants moved forward.

They repeated that a couple of times. I watched 'em, too fascinated to say a word.

After awhile I heard steps, an' the old goldsmith came along, puffin' his pipe regular, a puff for every two steps. He reminded me of a freight engine, boilin' along on a down grade, hittin' her up regular.

He didn't say a word to me, nor to the ants, but the ants heard him comin' an' they all formed into two lanes with their feelers wavin', an' the goldsmith walked down between those lanes an' up to the gold ledge. There he stuck some more wood on the fire, raked away some ashes an' pawed out a bed of coals.

Then I saw he had a hammer an' a piece of metal that looked like a reddish iron. He pulled a skin away an' I saw lots of lumps an' stringers of pure gold. It was a yellow, frosty lookin' sort of gold, and it was so pure it glistened.

He picked up some of the pieces an' commenced to hammer 'em into ornaments.

"What do yuh do with that stuff?" I asked the girl, wavin' my hand careless like so she wouldn't think I was much interested.

"We trade it to the Fanti tribes," she said. "It is of no use, too soft to make weapons, too heavy for arrow points; but they use it to wear around their fingers and ankles. They give us many skins for it, and sometimes they try to capture our territory and take the entire ledge. If I had my way we would stop making the ornaments. Our people do not like the metal, and never use it. Having it here just makes trouble for us, and the Fantis are fierce people. They are killing off our entire tribe."

I nodded as wise as a dozen owls on a limb.

"Yeah," I told her, "the stuff always makes trouble. Seems to me it'd be better to get rid of it."

The old goldsmith raised his head, twisted his pipe in his mouth and screwed his rheumy eyes at me. For a minute or two he acted like he was goin' to say somethin', an' then he went back to his work.

It was a close call. Right then I knew I'd been goin' too fast. But I had my eye on that ledge o' gold.

I guess it was a Fanti that saved my life; if it hadn't been for seein' him, the ants would have got me sure. Those ants looked pretty fierce when I saw 'em boilin' out in military formation, but by the time it came dark they didn't seem so much.

I got to thinkin' things over. Bein' a slave wasn't near so bad as it might me, an' one of these days I was goin' to get away in the jungle an' work down to a port. All I needed was to have about ninety pounds o' pure gold on my back when I went out an' I wouldn't be workin' as a sailor no more.

Sittin' there in the warm night, while the other folks had all rolled into their huts, I got to thinkin' things over. As a slave, I wasn't given a hut. I could sleep out. If the animals got bad I could either build up the fire or climb a tree. But there was fifty or sixty other slaves, mosdy captured warriors of other tribes, an' it wasn't so bad.

There was a place in the jungle where the hills formed a bottle neck, an' there the tribe kept sentries so the Fantis couldn't get in, an' so the slaves couldn't get out. Gettin' through the jungle where there wasn't a trail was plain impossible.

I picked up a lot of this from the girl, an' a lot from usin' my eyes.

Night time the ants didn't seem so much, an' the gold seemed a lot more. I wondered how I could work it, an' then a scheme hit me. I'd go out an' make a quick run for the ledge, chop off a few chunks o' quartz an' then beat it back quick. I'd be in an' out before the ants could come boilin' out of their thirty-foot ant hill. It seemed a cinch.

I sneaked away an' managed to find my way down the trail to the gold ledge. It was dark in the jungle. The stars were all misty, an' a squall was workin' somewheres out to sea. I could hear the thunder of the surf an' smell the smells of the jungle. There wasn't any noise outside of the poundin' surf.

I'd taken my shoes off when I dropped onto the raft, an' they'd got lost while I was rollin' around in the water, so I was barefoot. The ground had been beaten hard by millions of bare feet, an' so I made no noise. The hard part was tellin' just when I got to the gold ledge, because I didn't want to steer a wrong course an' fetch up against the ant heap.

I needn't have worried. I smelled the faint smell o' smoke, an' then a pile o' coals gleamed red against the black of the jungle night. It was the coals of the goldsmith's fire. I chuckled to myself. What a simple bunch o' people this tribe was!

An' then, all of a sudden, I knew someone else was there in the jungle. It was that funny feelin' that a man can't describe. It wasn't a sound, because there wasn't any sound. It wasn't anything I could see, because it was as dark as the inside of a pocket. But it was somethin' that just made my hair bristle.

I slipped back from the path and into the dark of the jungle. Six feet from the trail an' I was hidden as well as though I'd been buried

I got my eye up against a crack in the leaves an' watched the coals of the camp fire, tryin' to see if anything moved.

All of a sudden those coals just blotted out. I thought maybe a leaf or a vine had got in front of my eyes, but there wasn't. It was just somethin' movin' between me an' the fire. An' then it stepped to one side, an' I saw it, a black man, naked, rushin' into the cliff of gold. He worked fast, that boy. The light from the coals showed me just a blur of black motion as he chipped rocks from the ledge.

Then he turned and sprinted out.

I chuckled to myself. The boy had got my system. It was a cinch, nothin' to it.

An' then there came a yell of pain. The black man began to do a devil's dance, wavin' his hands and legs. He'd got right in front of me, within ten feet he was, an' I could just make him out when he moved.

From the ground there came a faint whisperin' noise, an' then I could sense things crawlin'. I felt my blood turn to lukewarm water as I thought of the danger I was in. If those ants found me there—

I was afraid to move, an' I was afraid to stand still.

But the black boy solved the problem for me. He made for a tree, climbin' up a creeper like a monkey. Up in the tree, I could hear his hands goin' as he tried to brush the ants off. And he kept up a low, moanin' noise, sort of a chatter of agony.

I couldn't tell whether the ants were leavin' him alone or whether they were watchin' the bottom of the tree, waitin' for him.

But the creeper that he'd climbed up stretched against the starlit sky almost in front of my nose. I could see it faintly outlined against the stars. And then I noticed that it was rip-plin' an' swayin'. For a minute I couldn't make it out. Then I saw that those ants were swarmin' up the tree.

That was the end. The moanin' became a yellin', an' then things began to thud to the ground. That must be the gold rock the fellow had packed away with him, probably in a skin bag slung over his shoulder.

Then the sounds quit. Everything was silent. But I sensed the jungle was full of activity, a horrid activity that made me want to vomit. I could smell somethin' that must have been blood, an' there was a drip-drip from the tree branches.

Then the coals flickered up an' I could see a little more. The ground was black, swarmin'. The ants were goin' back and forth, up an' down the creepers, up into the tree.

Finally somethin' fell to the ground. It couldn't have been a man, because it was too small, hardly bigger than a hunk o' deer meat; but the firelight flickered on it, an' I could see that the heap was all of a quiver. An' it kept gettin' smaller an' smaller. Then I knew. The ants were finishin' their work.

I held my hands to my eyes, but I couldn't shut out the sight. If I'd moved I was afraid the ants would turn to me. I hadn't been across the dead line, but would the ants know it? I shuddered and turned sick.

After awhile I looked out again. The ground was bare. All of the ants were back in their pile of sticks. The last of the firelight flickered on a bunch o' white bones. Near by was the gleam of yellow metal—gold from the rocks the Fanti had stolen.

Sick, I went back along the trail, back to the camp, not tellin' anybody where I'd been or what I'd seen. I still wanted that gold, but I didn't want it the way I'd figured I did.

I didn't sleep much. They gave me a tanned skin for a bed and that was all. It was up to me to make myself comfortable on the ground. The ground was hard, but my bunk on the ship had been hard. It was the memory of that little black heap that kept gettin' smaller an' smaller that tortured my mind.

I lived through the night, an' I lived through the days that followed; but I saw a lot that a white man shouldn't see. After all, I guess we think too much of life. Life didn't mean so much to those people, an' they didn't feel it was so blamed precious.

And I worked out a cinch scheme for the gold ledge. As the slave of Kk-Kk I had to assist her in feedin' the ants. Every night I had to bring up some of the fruit. Kk-Kk wouldn't let me feed it to 'em. It was the custom of the tribe that only the daughter of the chief could feed the ants. But I got close enough to find out a lot.

Those ants were trained. Kk-Kk could walk among 'em an' they took no notice of her. She was the one who fed 'em. The old goldsmith could walk through 'em whenever he wanted to, an' they didn't pay any attention to him. They'd been trained that way. But nobody else could cross the deadline. Let any one else come closer than that an' they'd swarm out an' get started with their sickenin' business. Once they'd started there was no gettin' away.

I saw 'em at work a couple of times in the next week. They always managed to get behind the man at the gold ledge. Then they closed in on him. No matter how fast he ran they'd swarm up his legs as he went through 'em. Enough would get on him so he couldn't go far, an' there was always a solid formation of two-inch ants swarmin' behind, ready to finish the work.

But they fed 'em only one meal a day, in the afternoon. I got to figgerin' what would happen if there should be two feeders. They couldn't tell which was the official feeder, an' they'd been trained to let the official feeder go to the gold ledge.

I knew where they kept the pile of dried fruits that the ants liked so well. An' I started goin' out to the ant pile just before daybreak an' givin' 'em a breakfast. I'd take out a little of the fruit so there wouldn't be any crumbs left by the time the goldsmith came to work.

At first I could see the ants were suspicious, but they ate the fruit. There was one long, woolly fellow that seemed to be the big boss, an' he reported to a glossy-backed ant that was a king or queen or somethin'. I got to be good friends with the boss. He'd come an' eat outa my hand. Then he'd go back an' wave his feelers at the king or queen, whichever it was, an' finally, the old boy, or old girl, got so it was all right. There was nothin' to it. I was jake a million, one of the regular guys. I could tell by a hundred little things, the way they waved their feelers, the way they came for the food. Oh, I got to know 'em pretty well.

All of this time Kk-Kk was teachin' me things about the life an' customs of the tribe. I could see she was friendly. She'd had to learn the language of the goldsmith, so that if anything should happen to him she could educate another one as soon as the tribe captured him.

For the tribe I didn't have no particular love. You should have seen 'em in some of their devil-devil dances, or seen 'em in the full moon when they gave a banquet to their cousins, the monkeys. Nope, I figured that anything I could do to the tribe was somethin' well done. But for Kk-Kk I had different feelin's, an' I could see that she had different feelin's for me.

An' all this time the monkey-man was jealous. He was in love with Kk-Kk, an' he wanted to buy her. In that country the woman didn't have anything to say about who she mar-ried, or whether she was wife No. 1 or No. 50. A man got his wives by buyin' 'em, and he could have as many as he could buy an' keep.

After a coupla weeks I commenced taking the gold. At first I just got closer an' closer to the dead line. I can yet feel the cold sweat there was on me the first time I crossed it. But the ants figgered I was a regular guy, part of the gang. They never said a word. Finally, I walked right up to the ledge, watchin' the ground behind me like a hawk. Then I scooped out some o' the crumbly quartz and worked the gold out of it. After that it was easy.

I didn't take much at any one time, because I didn't want the goldsmith to miss anything. I wasn't any hog. Ninety pounds I wanted, an' ninety pounds was all I was goin' to take, but I wasn't a fool. I was goin' to take it a little at a time.

Chapter 4—A Fanti Raid

Then came the night of the big fight.

I was asleep, wrapped up in my skin robes, not because of the cold, because the nights are warm an' steamy down there, but to keep out as much of the damp as I could, an' to shut out the night insects.

There came a yell from a sentry up the pass, an' then a lot o' whoopin' an' then all hell broke loose.

There was a little moon, an' by the light o' that moon I could see things happenin'.

Our warriors came boilin' outa their huts. One thing, they didn't have to dress. All a guy had to do was grab a spear an' shield, or climb up a tree with a bow an' arrow, an' that was all there was to it. He was dressed an' ready for business.

They evidently had the thing all rehearsed, 'cause some of 'em guarded the trail with spears, an' used thick shields to ward off the poisoned arrows, an' others swarmed up in the trees an' shot little, poisoned arrows into the thick of the mass of men that were runnin' down the trail.

It was a funny fight. There wasn't any bangin' of firearms, but there was a lot o' yellin', an' in between yells could be heard the whispers of the arrows as they flitted through the night.

After awhile I could see that our men were gettin' the worst of it. I was just a slave, an' when a fight started the women watched the slaves to see they didn't make a break for liberty, or start attackin' our boys from the rear.

Maybe I'd like to escape plenty, but I wanted to do it my own way, an' stickin' a spear in the back o' one of our boys didn't seem the way to do it. Then again, I wouldn't be any better off after I had escaped. My white skin would make trouble for me with the others. I wasn't the same as the other slaves, most of whom were Fantis anyway. They could make a break an' be among friends. If I made a hop I'd be outa the fryin' pan an' in the fire.

But I wasn't used to bein' a spectator on the side lines when there was fight goin' on. So I took a look at the situation.

When the alarm came in, the fire watchers had piled a lot of fagots on the big blaze, an' all the fight was goin' on by what light came from the fire. The fagots had burned off in the center an' there was a lot of flaming ends, fire on one side, stick on the other.

I whispers a few words to Kk-Kk, an' then we charged the fire, pickin' out the sticks, whirlin' 'em an' throwin' 'em into the mass o' savages that was borin' into our men.

She'd said somethin' to the slaves, an' they was all lined up, throwin' sticks too. They wasn't throwin' as wholeheartedly as Kk-Kk an' me was; but they was throwin' 'em, an' together we managed to keep the air full of brands.

It was a weird sight, those burnin' embers whirlin' an' spiralin' through the air, over the heads of ours boys, an' plumb into the middle o' the Fanti outfit.

I seen that I'd missed a bet at that, though, because we was really tearin' the fire to pieces, an' it was goin' to get dark in a few minutes with the blaze all bein' thrown into the air that way.

One of our warriors had collected himself a poisoned arrow, an' he was sprawled out, shield an' spear lyin' aside of him. The arrows were whisperin' around pretty lively, an' I seen a couple of our slave fellows crumple up in a heap. That shield looked good to me, an' while I was reachin' for it, I got to wonderin' why not take the spear too. There wasn't anybody to tell me not to, so I grabbed 'em both, an' then I charged into the mêlée.

Them savages fought more or less silent after the first rush. There was plenty of yells, but they were individual, isolated yells, not no steady war cries. I'd picked a good time to strut my stuff, because there was more or less of a lull when I started my charge.

My clothes had been torn off my back. What few rags remained I'd thrown away, wantin' to get like the natives as fast as possible. My skin was still white, although it had tanned up a bit, but there wasn't any mistakin' me.

Our boys had got accustomed to the idea of a white man bein' a slave, an' they hadn't run into the white men like the Fanti outfit had. Those Fantis had probably had a little white meat on their bill o' fare for a change o' diet; an' some expedition or other had come along an' mopped up on 'em. Anyhow, the idea of a white man as a fightin' machine had registered good an' strong with 'em.

So when they heard one awful yell, an' seen a naked white man charging down on 'em with spear an' shield, yellin' like a maniac, an' with all the whirlin' firebrands sailin' through the air, they thought it was time to quit.

They wavered for a second, then gave a lot of yells on their own an' started pell-mell down the trail, each one tryin' to walk all over the heels of the boy in front.

Funny thing about a bunch of men once turnin' tail to a fight. When they do it they get into a panic. It ain't fear like one man or two men would feel fear. It's a panic, a blind somethin' that keeps 'em from thinkin' or feelin'. All they want to do is to run. There ain't any fight left in 'em.

It was awful what our crowd done to those boys. As soon as they started to run, the laddies with the spears started making corpses. An' I was right in the lead o' our bunch. Don't ask me how I got there. I don't know. I only know I was yellin' an' chargin', when the whole Fanti outfit turned tail, an' there I was, playin' pig-stickin' with the backs of a lot o' running' Fanti warriors for targets.

We gave up the chase after awhile. We'd done enough damage, an' there was a chance o' trouble runnin' too far into the jungle. The crowd ahead might organize an' turn on us, an' we'd got pretty well strung out along the jungle trail.

I herded the boys back, an' there was a regular road o' Fanti dead between us an' where the main part o' the battle had taken place.

Well, they called a big powwow around the camp fire after that. I seen Kk-Kk talkin' to her old man, Yik-Yik, an' I guess she was pretty proud of her slave. Anyhow, Yik-Yik sucked his lips into his mouth like he did when he was thinkin', an' then he called to me.

He got me in a ring o' warriors before the fire, an' he made a great speech. Then he handed me a bloody spear and shield, an' daubed my chest with some sort of paint, an' painted a coupla rings around my eyes, an' put three stripes o' paint

on my cheeks.

Then all the warriors started jumpin' around the fire, stampin' their feet, wailin' some sort of a weird chant Every few steps they'd all slam their feet down on the hard ground in unison, an' the leaves on the trees rattied with their stamping. It was a wild night

Kk-Kk was interpreter. She told me they were givin' me my liberty an' adoptin' me into the tribe as a great warrior. It was not right that such a mighty fighter should be the slave of a woman, she told me.

Well, there's somethin' funny about women the world over. They all talk peace ah' cooin' dove stuff, but they all like to see a son-of-a-gun of a good scrap. Kk-Kk's eyes were soft an' glowin' with pride, an' I could see she was as proud of me as though she'd been my mother or sweetheart or somethin'.

An' seein' that look in her eyes did somethin' to me. I'd been gettin' sorta sweet on Kk-Kk without knowin' it She was a pretty enough lass for all her chocolate color. An' she was a square shooter. She'd stuck up for me from the first, an' if it hadn't been for her I'd have been a meal instead of a slave. It was only natural that I should get to like her more an' more. Then, when I'd got used to the native ideas an' all that, she got to lookin' pretty good to me.

Anyhow, there I was in love with her—yes, an' I'm still in love with her. Maybe I did go native. What of it? There's worse things, an' Kk-Kk was a square shooter.

Oh, I know I'm an old man now. Kk-Kk is awful old now if she's livin', because those natives get old quickly, an' I ain't no spring chicken myself. But I love her just the same.

Well, a white man is funny about his women. He ain't got no patience. When he falls in love he falls strong, an' he wants his girl. I didn't have patience like the monkey-man had. I couldn't wait around. I went to Kk-Kk the next day an' told her about it.

It was at the ant meal time when we was packin' fruit to 'em. I was still helpin' her even if I wasn't a slave any more. I did it because I wanted to.

Well, I told her; her eyes got all shiny, an' she dropped the dried fruit in a heap an' threw her arms around my neck, an' she cried a bit, an' made soft noises in the graduated monkey talk that is the real language of the tribe. Bein' all excited that way, she forgot the language of the goldsmith an' went back to the talk of her folks.

The ants came an' got the fruit, an' they crawled all over our feet eatin' it. If she hadn't been so happy, an' if I hadn't been so much in love we'd both have realized what it meant, the ants crawlin' over us that way an' not offerin' to bite me, or actin' hostile at all. It showed that I'd been makin' friends with 'em on the side.

Well, after awhile she broke away, an' then she did some more cryin' an' explained that she was the daughter of the chief. The man that married her would be the chief of the tribe some day. That is, he'd be the husband of the tribe's queen.

Now in that tribe the men bought their wives. The man who married Kk-Kk was the man who'd buy her hand from her old man. But, bein' as she was the daughter of the chief, an' the future queen of the tribe, it'd take more wealth to buy her hand than any single man in the tribe could muster.

She told me how many skins an' how many hogs an' how much dried meat an' how many bows an' arrows an' spears, an' how many pounds of the native tobacco an' all that would be required.

I didn't pay much attention to the long list of stuff she rattled off. I had over sixty pounds of pure gold cached then, an' I felt like a millionaire.

After all, what was all this native stuff compared with what I had? I was a rich man for a common, ordinary sailor boy. I could take that gold right then an' walk into any of the world's market places an' buy what I wanted. Yes, an' there's even been cases of women of the higher muck-a-mucks sellin' themselves or their daughters in marriage for less than sixty pounds of pure gold.

Well, I laughed at Kk-Kk an' told her not to worry. I'd buy her hand from the old man. I didn't worry about the price. I was a sailor lad, an' I had the hot blood of youth in my veins, an' I was in love with Kk-Kk, an' she was standin' there with her eyes all limpid an' misty an' her arms around my neck, an' I had sixty pounds of pure gold. What more could a man want?

An' then I heard a noise an' looked up.

There was the monkey-man, squattin' on the branch of a tree an' lookin' at us, and his lips were workin' back an' forth from his teeth. He wasn't sayin' a word, but his lips worked up an' down, an' every time they'd work, his teeth showed through.

I stiffened a bit, although it wasn't that I was afraid. Right then I felt that I could lick all the monkey-men in the world, either one at a time or all together.

Kk-Kk was frightened. I could feel the shivers runnin' up an' down her arms, an' she made little scared noises with her lips.

But the monkey-man didn't say anything. When he saw that we knew he was watchin', he reached up his great arms, caught the branch of a tree above him, swung off into space, caught another limb with his great feet, an' swirled off into the forest. All that was left was the twilight an' the chatterin' of a bunch of monkeys, an' the whimperin' noises Kk-Kk was makin'.

I patted the girl on the shoulder. Let the monkey-man storm around through the treetops. A lot of good that would do him. He wasn't in a position to buy the hand of Kk-Kk, an' he wasn't likely to be in the position. I had a big chunk of pure gold stored up. I didn't think it'd be any trick at all to complete the purchase.

By next day, though, I knew I was up against a funny problem. I had all the gold I could carry, but gold wasn't any good. I had enough of it to purchase a whole tannery full of choice skins, but I couldn't trade the gold for skins. The tribe I was with didn't care anything for the gold except as somethin' to trade to the Fanti boys. An' all the tradin' was done by the chief. The tribal custom prohibited the others from doin' any tradin', even from havin' any of the gold.

I commenced to see it wasn't as simple as I'd thought it was goin' to be.

An' all the while I got more an' more in love with Kk-Kk. She was just the sort of a woman a real adventurin' man wants. I'm tellin' you she was strong as an ox an' as graceful as a panther. A woman like that'd do with a man anywhere. An' she was sweet an' tender. When she thought I was blue for the white race an' home an' all that, she'd draw my head down against her breast an' croon to me as soft an' low as the wind sighin' through the tops of the jungle trees.

I wanted to take her away with me. Any one could see the tribe was doomed. The very gold that gave them their tradin' power was their curse. The Fantis desired that gold. They might get beat in one battle, might get beat in a thousand, but as long as the ledge was there, there'd be invaders fightin' to get possession of it.

It'd be only a question of time until the tribe was wiped out, defeated, captured, an' the women turned into slaves. They couldn't stand the climate in the interior. Four or five miles back from the ocean was their limit. The Fantis wanted that gold ledge. Every so often there'd be a battie, an' when it was over there'd be dead an' wounded. There was always plenty more of the enemy, but there was a few less of our boys after every fight.

If I could get away an' take Kk-Kk with me, an' a pack load of gold, what I could carry an' what Kk-Kk could carry, we'd be fixed for life. We could go out into the cities an' hold up our heads with any of 'em.

But I knew I was goin' to have trouble gettin' Kk-Kk to see things that way. I might get her to leave with me, but she'd been brought up with the idea that her obligation to the tribe was sacred. She wouldn't take any of the gold. You see she hadn't ever had to deal with money, an' she did what she thought was right, not what she thought would make the most money for her.

While I was thinkin' things over, the monkey-man comes swingin' into the council an' tells 'em he's goin' to buy the hand of Kk-Kk at the next full moon. That was all he said. He wouldn't tell 'em where he was goin' to get the stuff or anything.

But it was enough to get me worried. An' it bothered Kk-Kk.

There was lots o' wild rumors goin' along in those days. There was a report that the Ashantis an' the Fantis were gettin' together for a joint attack. They was determined to get that gold ledge.

I tried to get Kk-Kk to advise the tribe to leave the thing. Without that gold they'd be safe from attack, an' the gold didn't mean so much to 'em anyhow.

But they were just like the rest of the nations, if a man could compare a savage tribe with a nation. They wanted their gold, even when it wasn't doin' the rank an' file of 'em any good. They were goin' to fight for it, lay down their lives for it if they had to, an' all the time only the ruler had any right to use the gold to trade with.

They knew they could have peace by goin' away. They must have seen they couldn't last long stayin' there. Every battle left 'em a little weaker. But no, they must stay an' die for their ledge of gold, an' they didn't even know the value of it. It's funny about gold that way.

There was another rumor goin' around that made me do a lot of thinkin', an' that was of a white man that was camped a couple of days march away. He had a big outfit with him, an' he was shootin' big game an' prospectin' around in general.

A wild idea got into my head that if I could sneak away an' get to him with fifty or sixty pounds of gold I could trade it for mirrors, guns, blankets an' what not that would look like a million dollars to the old chief. Then I could buy Kk-Kk an' maybe I could talk her into goin' away with me.

I really had enough gold, but I was gettin' a little hoggish. I wanted more. The love of a woman like Kk-Kk had ought to make a man richer than the richest king in the world, but I was a white man, an' I'd been taught to worship gold along with God.

In fact, I'd only had that God worship idea taught me on Sundays when I was a kid. On week days the god was gold. My folks had been rated as bein' pretty religious as common folks go. But even they hadn't tried to carry religion past Sunday. Gold was the god six days of the week, an' I'd been brought up with the white man's idea.

So I had to get me a little more gold. I wanted it so I could go to the white man's camp with all the gold I could carry an' still have as much left behind, hidden in the ground, waitin' for me to come back.

The next mornin' I decided to take a chance an' scoop out a big lot o' quartz. I got out with the food for the ants all right; I hadn't even thought about trouble with them for a long while. They'd quit bein' one of my worries. I walked over to the ledge and dug into the quartz.

An' then somethin' funny struck me. It was a feelin' like somethin' was borin' into my back. I whirled around an' there was the monkey-man sittin' on a limb, watchin' me.

He was up in a tree, squatted on the limb, his hands holdin' a bow with one of them poison arrows on the string an' it was then I noticed the way his toes came around the under side of the limb an' held him firm. Funny how a fellow '11 notice things like that when he's figurin' he has an appointment in eternity right away.

Chapter 5—The Monkey-Man

I stared into the monkey-man's eyes, an' he stared back. I'd read somewhere that a white man always has the advantage over the other races because there's some kind of a racial inferiority that the other fellows develop in a pinch.

Maybe it's true, an' maybe it ain't. I only know I stared at the monkey-man, an' he fidgeted his fingers around on the bow string.

I was caught red-handed. One of those poison arrows would almost drop me in my tracks. I wouldn't have a chance to get outside of the dead line.

It looked like curtains for me. Then a funny thing happened. I thought at the time it was because of my starin' eyes an' the racial inferiority an' what not. Now I know the real reason. But the monkey-man lowered the bow, blinked his eyes a couple of times, just like a monkey puzzlin' over a new idea, an' then he reached up one of those long paws, grabbed a branch overhead, swung up into the higher trees an' was off.

It looked like he'd gone to get some witnesses, an' it was up to me to bury my gold an' be snappy about it. I could see the ants were finishin' up the last of the feed I'd given 'em, an' I wouldn't have to be afraid of some of that bein' left.

I took the gold an' sprinted for the place where I kept it hid. I buried the new batch with the other, an' then strolled back to the clearin', tryin' to look innocent.

I felt a big weight on my chest. Somehow I felt the monkey-man was goin' to get me. If he could make his charges stick I was sure due to be a meal before night.

But the funny part of it was he didn't make any charges. He even wasn't there at all. Funny. I walked around an' passed the few words of the language I'd picked up with some of the warriors, an' then I saw Kk-Kk.

It was sort of a lazy life, livin' there that way. The tradin* power of the gold ornaments gave the tribe the bulge on things. They didn't have to work so awful hard. Funny, too, they didn't sawy rightly about the gold. They thought it wasn't the metal, but the way the goldsmith worked it up into rings an' bracelets an' such like that made it valuable. Gold as such they couldn't understand.

Anyhow, the warriors didn't have anything to do except a little huntin' once in awhile. The women did all of the real work, an' there wasn't much of that.

Kk-Kk an' me walked down to the beach an' I watched the green surf thunderin' in. Her arm was nestled around me an' her head was up against my shoulder. I felt a possessory sort of feelin' like I owned the whole world. I patted her head an' told her there wasn't anything to be afraid of, that I was goin' to make good on buyin' her an' that I'd boost any price the monkey-man was able to raise.

She felt curious, but when she seen I didn't want to answer questions she let things go without talkin'. She was wonderful.

I broke away from her when the sun was well up. I knew she'd go down to the ocean with the tribe for her bath.

That was my chance. I raced into the jungle to the place where I'd left my gold.

All that a man could pack away was gone. There wasn't over twenty pounds left. The ground had been dug up an' the gold rooted up. It was there in the sun, glistenin' soft an' yellow against the green of the jungle an' the rich brown of the earth.

For a minute my heart made a flip-flop, an' then I knew. The monkey-man hadn't given the alarm at all. He'd come to know somethin' of the power of the gold, an' when he saw me feedin' the ants an' helpin' myself at the gold ledge he realized I must have a bunch of it cached away. That had been why he hadn't shot me with a poisoned arrow. He'd swung up out of sight in the high trees an' waited for me to lead him to the place where I'd buried the gold. With his trainin' in slippin' through the branches of the trees there hadn't been anything to it. He followed me as easy as a bird could flit through the branches.

Now he'd taken all the gold he could carry. He'd been in a hurry. He hadn't stopped to bury the rest some place else, even, or to cover it over with earth. Why? There was only one answer. He'd made a bluff about buyin' Kk-Kk from her old man, an' he wanted to make good. He'd heard about the white man an' his camp, an' he'd got the same idea I'd had, an' he'd got a head start on me.

I had a skin pouch with a couple of straps goin' over the shoulders. I loaded the gold that was left in it an' made my start. I knew there'd be trouble gettin' past the sentries at the bottleneck, but I couldn't wait for night. The monkey-man could slip through in the trees. I'd have to rely on bluff and nerve.

It wasn't gettin' past 'em that was the hard part. It was carryin' the gold out. As a warrior, I was entitled to go out in the jungle to hunt, to come an' go as I pleased. It was what was in that skin pouch that would make the trouble.

Then I got another idea. There'd been a kill the day before of some litde sort of an antelope that ran around the jungle. I knew where some of the meat was. The gold didn't amount to much in size, an' I raced over an' stuffed some animal meat on the top of it. It was sink or swim, an' I couldn't wait to fix up a plan.

I grabbed a spear an' a shield an' started down the path. The sentries flashed their white teeth at me an' blinked their round eyes. Then one of 'em noticed the pack on my back an' he flopped his spear down while he came over to investigate.

I didn't act like I was the least bit frightened. I even opened the sack myself, an' I made a lot of motions. I pointed to the sun, an' I swung my hand up an' down four times tellin' 'em that I'd be away four days. Then I pointed to the meat an' to my mouth, explainin' that it was for food.

It was a cinch. I was on my way, headin' into hostile, territory, knowin' that the Fantis were in the country an' that I'd be a fine meal for 'em.

After I got into the country where the white men went, the color of my skin would protect me from the tribes. The white man gets respect from the blacks. He kills a lot of blacks to do it, but he gets results.

It was the first few miles that had me worried. I had to go through the Eso country an' into the Nitchwa country, an' I was in a hurry. I couldn't go slow an' cautious like, an' I couldn't take to the trees like the monkey-man could.

The first day I almost got caught. A bunch of Fanti warriors came down the trail. I swung off to one side, workin' my way into the thickest of the jungle, an' hidin' in the shadows. I thought sure I was caught, because those boys have eyes that can see in the dark. But I got by.

The second day I didn't see a soul. I was gettin' in a more open, rollin' country, an' I only had a general idea where I was goin'. There was a hill that stood up pretty well over the rest of the country, an' I got up on that an' climbed a tree.

Just at dusk I see 'em, hundreds of fires twinklin' through the dusk like little stars. I figgered that'd be the camp of the white man.

It ain't healthy to go through the jungle at night. There are too many animals who have picked up the habits of man an' rigger that turn-about is fair play. They relish the flesh of a man, more particularly a white man.

For two hours I worked through the country with eyes glarin' out of the jungle all around, an' soft steps fallin' into the trail behind me. They were animals, stalkin' along behind, a little afraid of the white man smell, hesitatin' a bit about closin' the gap an' makin' a supper outa me, but feelin' their mouths water at the thought.

Finally I came to the camp of the white man. I could see him sittin' there, all bearded an' tanned. He was wearin' white clothes an' sittin' before a fire with a lot o' native servants waitin' around with food an' drink an' what not.

I walked up to him, pretty well all in, an' motioned to my mouth. I'd been so used to talkin' to the natives that way that for a moment I forgot that this man talked my language.

Then I told him. "I come to trade," I says, an' dumped out the gold on the ground.

He went up outa the canvas chair like he'd been shot.

"Another one!" he yelled. "An' this one's white!"

Then he clapped his hands, an' black men came runnin' up an' grabbed me.

"Where did yuh get it? Where is it? Is there any more? How long will it take to get there?" he yells at me, his face all purple, with the veins standin' out an' the eyes bulgin'.

I'd forgotten how excited white men got at the sight of gold.

"Gold! Gold!" he goes on. "The country must be lousy with gold! There was a big ape hanging around camp this morning. He seemed a higher species of ape, almost human. I stalked him and shot him for a specimen. Can you imagine my surprise when I found that he was carrying a skin filled with gold?

"And this is the same gold. I'd recognize it anywhere. Come, my good man, come and tell me if you have ever seen a similar creature to this great ape. I have preserved him in alcohol and intend to carry him intact to the British Museum."

I could feel myself turnin' sorta sick at the idea, but there was nothin' for it. He was draggin' me along to a big vat. There was the monkey-man, a bullet hole in his back—in his back, mind you. He hadn't even shot him from the front, but had sneaked around to the rear. The "specimen" was floatin' around in the alcohol.

I turned away in disgust.

"Tell me, tell me," pleads the guy, "do you know him? Your gold comes from the same source. Perhaps you have seen others of the same species.

"After I shot him I was overcome with remorse because he might have showed me the way to the gold deposit if I had merely captured him. But I shot before I knew of the gold."

I did some rapid thinkin'. If this bird thought I knew where the gold came from he'd force me to show him, or perhaps he'd kill me an' stick me in alcohol. So I looked sad.

"No, I don't know," I tells him. "I saw this man-monkey carryin' a skin full of somethin' heavy. I followed along until he sat down the sack an' went to sleep. Then I sneaked up, seen it was gold, an' figgered a monkey-man didn't have no use for gold."

He nods his head. "Quite right, my friend. Quite right. A monkey can have no use for gold. And how about yourself? You possibly have no use for it. At any rate you admit it was part of the gold that belonged to the monkey, so you should restore it to the original pile, and I will take charge of it."

I seen this bird was one of the kind that want everything for nothin' an' insist that a guy must not hold out on 'em.

I told him that I'm only too glad to oblige, but I want some calicos an' some mirrors an' blankets an' a gun an' some ammunition, an' some huntin' knives an' beads. After that he can have the gold.

We dickered for awhile, an' finally I dusted out, takin' two porters with me, frightened to death but loaded down with junk. I was carryin' the rifle, an' I was watchin' my back trail. The old boy might figure I was a specimen.

I got back all right. We had one brush with the Fanti outfit, but the roar of the gun made 'em take to the tall timber. I had the porters lay the junk down about two miles from the place where our tribe was camped, an' I sneaked it up to the botfleneck myself, carryin' three loads of it. Then I came on up to the sentries, shook hands, walked past an' got a couple of warriors to help me with the plunder.

Kk-Kk was there, all dolled up in all her finery, paradin' around the village. That's a custom they got from the Fantis. When a girl's offered for sale in marriage she decks herself out with everything the family's got an' parades around the village. That's a notice to bidders.

I knew Kk-Kk was doin' it for me. She had to comply with the customs of the tribe, but she figgered I was the only bird that could make the grade an' she trusted to my resourcefulness to bring home the bacon.

Chapter 6—African Justice

My stuff was a riot. When I had the fellows spread it out on the ground the boys' eyes stuck out until their foreheads bulged. Most of 'em had never seen the trade goods of the white man. They'd been kept pretty well isolated with the hostile Fanti outfit hemmin' 'em in by land an' the open ocean thunderin' on the beach.

The knives made the hit. The warriors were hunters enough to appreciate a keen-edged bit of shiny steel. The blankets didn't take very well, neither did the calico, but the knives, the mirrors an' the beads were drawin' cards that couldn't be beat.

Old Yik-Yik screwed up his eyes an' sucked in his mouth, the way he had when he was thinkin', an' then he jabbers out a bunch of graduated monkey talk. The goldsmith was there an' he blinks his rheumy eyes an' sticks but his hand.

"The old bird says you've bought the girl," he tells me.

I could feel my heart do a flip-flop. It was all matter-of-fact to them, the buyin' of a wife, even if she did happen to be the future queen of the tribe. But to me there was only one Kk-Kk in the world, an' now she was to be mine. The only man that knew my secret was the monkey-man, an' he was floatin' around in a vat of alcohol. I could settle down in the tribe an' be happy the rest of my life.

But, in spite of it all, I was feelin' off color. My head felt light. When I'd turn it quick it seemed to keep right on goin' for a couple of revolutions. An' my feet felt funny, as though they wasn't settin' firm on the ground.

But what of it? Wasn't I goin' to marry Kk-Kk? What was a little biliousness more or less?

An' then there was a bunch o' yellin'. I looked up an' seen a couple of the sentries bringin' in a captive. Another meal, I thought to mj'self, wonderin' if maybe he'd be in time to furnish the spread at the weddin' feast.

I looked again, an' then my mouth got all dry an' fuzzy.

It was one of the porters that had carried out my stuff. Probably he had sneaked back to try an' find the gold, or else some of the hunters had caught him. In either event my hash was cooked. When he told 'em what I'd traded to the white man—■

I strained my ears. Some of our crowd talked Fanti, an' maybe the porter talked it. He did. I heard 'em jabberin' away, an' the porter pointed at me an' at the stuff on the ground.

I stole a look at Yik-Yik. His eyes was as hard as a couple of glass beads, an' his lips was all sucked in until his mouth was just a network of puckered wrinkles.

He spits out some words an' a circle forms around me. The goldsmith was still there an' he kept right on actin' as interpreter, but I didn't need to follow half what he said.

An' then, all of a sudden, I stiffened up to real attention. It seemed the old man was accusin' Kk-Kk o' betrayin' the tribe.

For a minute or two I thought he'd gone clean cuckoo, an' then I seen just how it looked to him. Kk-Kk was in love with me. The monkey-man, who she didn't like, had threatened to buy her. There was a white man in the country. What was more likely than that she'd slipped me out a bunch of gold?

I tried to tell 'em, but they would not listen. Kk-Kk looked all white around the gills for a minute, an' then she walked over to my side.

"We shall meet death together," she said, dignified as a queen had ought to be. But I wasn't goin' to stand for it.

I tried to tell 'em about how I had the ants trained. I volunteered to show 'em. I tried to get 'em to feed me to the ants. But they wouldn't listen to me. Kk-Kk was the only one they'd listen to, an' she wouldn't say a word. She wanted to die with me.

Then was when I knew I was sick. The whole ground started reelin' around, an' I felt so drowsy I could hardly hold my eyes open. My head was burnin' an' throbbin' an* it seemed as though the damp odors of the jungle was soaked all through my blood an' was smotherin' me under a blanket of jungle mist.

Their voices sounded farther an' farther away.

I heard the goldsmith tellin' me the sentence the chief was pronouncin'. He had to lean up against my ear an' shout to make me understand.

It seemed they had a funny bread made out of some berries an' roots. When a fellow ate it he lost his memory.

The old king had decided not to kill us, but to feed us his bread an' banish us from the tribe.

Since we'd committed the crime against the tribe because we wanted to marry, it seemed like proper justice for the old boy to feed us king-kee, the bread of forgetfulness, so we wouldn't ever remember about the other.

It was a horrible punishment. If I hadn't been comin' down sick I'd have made a break an' forced 'em to kill me, or turned loose with the rifle an' seen if I couldn't have escaped with Kk-Kk.

But I was a sick man. I felt 'em stuffin' somethin' in my mouth, an' I swallowed mechanically an' cried for water.

Then I remember seein' Kk-Kk's eyes, all misty an' floatin' with tears, bendin' over me. Then I sank into a sleep or stupor.

Lord knows how much later I began to come to. I was in Cape Coast Castle. They told me some natives had brought me on a stretcher, sat me down before the door of the buildin' where they kept the medicines, an' gone away. It had been done at night. They found me there the next mornin' sick with the sleepin' sickness.

When I woke up I couldn't tell 'em who I was, where I'd been, or how I got there. I only knew I wanted somethin' an' couldn't tell what it was.

A boat came in, an' they slipped me on her. The surgeon aboard got interested in my case. Every time it rained I'd sleep. There was somethin' in the smell of dampness in the air.

He treated me like I'd been a king, an' took me to Boston. There was some German doctor there that had specialized on tropical fevers. They had me there for six months studyin' my case.

The doctor told me I was victim of what he called auto-hypnosis. He said I went to sleep when it rained because I thought of sleep when it rained.

I told him it was the fever in my blood comin' out when it got damp, but he just shook his head an' said auto-hypnosis, whatever that might mean.

He tried for six months to get me over it, an' then he gave it up as a bad job.

He said for me to come to California or Arizona an' get out in the desert, where it only rained once or twice a year, an' to always be in my tent when it rained.

I followed his advice. For fifty years now I've been livin' out here in the desert.

Every time it rains an' I smell the damp air, it acts on me like the jungle smells when I had the sleepin' sickness, an' I got to sleep. Sometimes I fall asleep and don't waken for two weeks at a stretch.

But it's funny about me. Now that I'm gettin' old, my memory's comin' back to me. Particularly after I wake up, I can recall everything like I've just told it to you.

Of course I'm an old man now, nothin' but a bum of a desert rat, out here scratchin' around in the sand an' sagebrush for a few colors of gold. I got me a placer staked out over there at the base of that hill.

Ain't it funny that I have to spend my life lookin' for gold, when it was grabbin' the gold in big chunks that made all my troubles? Oh, well, it's all in a lifetime.

Of course I'm too old to be thinkin' of such things now. But I get awful lonesome for Kk-Kk. I can see her round, liquid eyes shinin' at me whenever I wake up from one of these long sleeps. I wonder if she's got her memory comin' back, now that she's gettin' old—an' I wonder if she ever thinks of me—

Yes, sir. Thankee, sir. Another cup of that coffee will go kinda good. When a man's been asleep for eight or nine days he wakes up sorta slow. I'll drink this coffee an' then I'll be headin' over toward my placer claim.

I'm sorry I bothered you folks, but that rain came up mighty sudden, an' the first thing I knew I was soakin' wet an' sleepy, smellin' the damp smell of the earth an' the desert stuff. I crawled in this bunch of Joshuay palms, an' that's the last I remember until you came along an' poured the hot coffee down me.

No, thanks, I don't believe I'll stay any longer.

My tent's fixed up mighty comfortable over there, an' when I I wake up this way it seems like I've been with Kk-Kk in a dream world. I like to think about my lost sweetheart.

So long, boys. Thanks for the coffee.

ULTIMATE MELODY

Arthur C. Clarke

"Charlie," Harry Purvis began, quietly enough. "That darn tune you're whistling is driving me mad. I've heard it every time I've switched on the radio for the last week."

There was a sniff from John Christopher.

"You ought to stay tuned to the Third Programme. Then you'd be safe."

"Some of us," retorted Harry, "don't care for an exclusive diet of Elizabethan madrigals. But don't let's quarrel about that, for heaven's sake. Has it ever occurred to you that there's something rather—fundamental—about hit tunes?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, they come along out of nowhere, and then for weeks everybody's humming them, just as Charlie did then. The good ones grab hold of you so thoroughly that you just can't get them out of your head—they go round and round for days. And then, suddenly, they've vanished again."

"I know what you mean," said Art Vincent. "There are some melodies that you can take or leave, but others that stick like treacle, whether you want them or not."

"Precisely. I got saddled that way for a whole week with the big theme from the finale of Sibelius Two—even went to sleep with it running round inside my head. Then there's that "Third Man" piece—da di da di daa, di da, di daa . . . look what that did to everybody."

Harry had to pause for a moment until his audience had stopped zithering. When the last "Plonk!" had died away he continued:

"Precisely! You all felt the same way. Now what is there about these tunes that has this effect? Some of them are great music—others just banal, but they've obviously got something in common."

"Go on," said Charlie. "We're waiting."

"I don't know what the answer is," replied Harry. "And what's more, I don't want to. For I know a man who found out."     ,

Automatically, someone handed him a beer, so that the tenor of his tale would not be disturbed. It always annoyed a lot of people when he had to stop in mid-flight for a refill.

"I don't know why it is," said Harry Purvis, "that most scientists are interested in music, but it's an undeniable fact. I've known several large labs that had their own amateur symphony orchestras—some of them quite good, too. As far as the mathematicians are concerned, one can think of obvious reasons for this fondness: music, particularly classical music, has a form which is almost mathematical. And then, of course, there's the underlying theory—harmonic relations, wave analysis, frequency distribution, and so on. It's a fascinating study in itself, and one that appeals strongly to the scientific mind. Moreover, it doesn't—as some people might think—preclude a purely aesthetic appreciation of music for its own sake.

"However, I must confess that Gilbert Lister's interest in music was purely cerebral. He was, primarily, a physiologist, specializing in the study of the brain. So when I said that his interest was cerebral, I meant it quite literally. Alexander's Ragtime Band and the Choral Symphony were all the same to him. He wasn't concerned with the sounds themselves, but only what happened when they got past the ears and started doing things to the brain.

"In an audience as well educated as this:" said Harry, with an emphasis that made it sound positively insulting, "there will be no-one who's unaware of the fact that much of the brain's activity is electrical. There are, in fact, steady pulsing rhythms going on all the time, and they can be detected and analysed by modern instruments. This was Gilbert Lister's territory. He could stick electrodes on your scalp and his amplifiers would draw your brain waves on yards of tape. Then he could examine them and tell you all sorts of interesting things about yourself. Ultimately, he claimed, it would be possible to identify anyone from their encephalogram— to use the correct term—more positively than by fingerprints. A man might get a surgeon to change his skin, but if we ever got to the stage when surgery could change your brain— well, you'd have turned into somebody else, anyway, so the system still wouldn't have failed.

"It was while he was studying the alpha, beta and other rhythms in the brain that Gilbert got interested in music. He was sure that there must be some connection between musical and mental rhythms. He'd play music at various tempos to his subjects and see what effect it had on their normal brain frequencies. As you might expect, it had a lot, and the discoveries he made led Gilbert on into more philosophical fields.

"I only had one good talk with him about his theories. It was not that he was at all secretive—I've never met a scientist who was, come to think of it—but he didn't like to talk about his work until he knew where it was leading. However, what he told me was enough to prove that he'd opened up a very interesting line, and thereafter I made rather a point of cultivating him. My firm supplied some of his equipment, but I wasn't averse to picking up a little profit on the side. It occurred to me that if Gilbert's ideas worked out, he'd need a business manager before you could whistle the opening bar of the Fifth Symphony . . .

"For what Gilbert was trying to do was to lay a scientific foundation for the theory of hit tunes. Of course, he didn't think of it that way: he regarded it as a pure research project, and didn't look any further ahead than a paper in the Proceedings of the Physical Society. But I spotted its financial implications at once. They were quite breath-taking.

"Gilbert was sure that a great melody, or a hit tune, made its impression on the mind because in some way it fitted in with the fundamental electrical rhythms going on in the brain. One analogy he used was: 'It's like a Yale key going into a lock—the two patterns have got to fit before anything happens.'

"He tackled the problem from two angles. In the first place, he took hundreds of the really famous tunes in classical and popular music and analysed their structure—their morphology, as he put it. This was done automatically, in a big harmonic analyser that sorted out all the frequencies. Of course, there was a lot more to it than this, but I'm sure you've got the basic idea.

"At the same time, he tried to see how the resulting patterns of waves agreed with the natural electrical vibrations of the brain. Because it was Gilbert's theory—and this is where we get into rather deep philosophical waters—that all existing tunes were merely crude approximations to one fundamental melody. Musicians had been groping for it down the centuries, but they didn't know what they were doing, because they were ignorant of the relation between music and mind. Now that this had been unravelled, it should be possible to discover the Ultimate Melody."

"Huh!" said John Christopher. "It's only a rehash of Plato's theory of ideals. You know—all the objects of our material world are merely crude copies of the ideal chair or table or what-have-you. So your friend was after the ideal melody. And did he find it?"

"I'll tell you," continued Harry imperturbably. "It took Gilbert about a year to complete his analysis, and then he started on the synthesis. To put it crudely, he built a machine that would automatically construct patterns of sound according to the laws that he'd uncovered. He had banks of oscillators and mixers—in fact, he modified an ordinary electronic organ for this part of the apparatus—which were controlled by his composing machine. In the rather childish way that scientists like to name their offspring, Gilbert had called this device Ludwig.

"Maybe it helps to understand how Ludwig operated if you think of him as a kind of kaleidoscope, working with sound rather than light. But he was a kaleidoscope set to obey certain laws, and those laws—so Gilbert believed—were based on the fundamental structure of the human mind. If he could get the adjustments correct, Ludwig would be bound, sooner or later, to arrive at the Ultimate Melody as he searched through all the possible patterns of music.

"I had one opportunity of hearing Ludwig at work, and it was uncanny. The equipment was the usual nondescript mess of electronics which one meets in any lab: it might have been a mock-up of a new computer, a radar gun-sight, a traffic control system, or a ham radio. It was very hard to believe that, if it worked, it would put every composer in the world out of business. Or would it? Perhaps not: Ludwig might be able to deliver the raw material, but surely it would still have to be orchestrated.

"Then the sound started to come from the speaker. At first it seemed to me that I was listening to the five-finger exercises of an accurate but completely uninspired pupil. Most of the themes were quite banal: the machine would play one, then ring the changes on it bar after bar until it had exhausted all the possibilities before going on to the next. Occasionally a quite striking phrase would come up, but on the whole I was not at all impressed.

"However, Gilbert explained that this was only a trial run and that the main circuits had not yet been set up. When they were, Ludwig would be far more selective: at the moment, he was playing everything that came along—he had no sense of discrimination. When he had acquired that, then the possibilities were limitless.

"That was the last time I ever saw Gilbert Lister. I had

arranged to meet him at the lab about a week later, when he expected to have made substantial progress. As it happened, I was about an hour late for my appointment. And that was very lucky for me . ..

"When I got there, they had just taken Gilbert away. His lab assistant, an old man who'd been with him for years, was sitting distraught and disconsolate among the tangled wiring of Ludwig. It took me a long time to discover what had happened, and longer still to work out the explanation.

"There was no doubt of one thing. Ludwig had finally worked. The assistant had gone off to lunch while Gilbert was making the final adjustments, and when he came back an hour later the laboratory was pulsing with one long and very complex melodic phrase. Either the machine had stopped automatically at that point, or Gilbert had switched it over to REPEAT. At any rate, he had been listening, for several hundred times at least, to that same melody. When his assistant found him, he seemed to be in a trance. His eyes were open yet unseeing, his limbs rigid. Even when Ludwig was switched off, it made no difference. Gilbert was beyond help.

"What had happened? Well, I suppose we should have thought of it, but it's so easy to be wise after the event. It's just as I said at the beginning. If a composer, working merely by rule of thumb, can produce a melody which can dominate your mind for days on end, imagine the effect of the Ultimate Melody for which Gilbert was searching! Supposing it existed —and I'm not admitting that it does—it would form an endless ring in the memory circuits of the mind. It would go round and round forever, obliterating all other thoughts. All the cloying melodies of the past would be mere ephemerae compared to it.

"They've tried shock therapy—everything. But it's no good; the pattern has been set, and it can't be broken. He's lost all consciousness of the outer world, and has to be fed intravenously. He never moves or reacts to external stimuli, but sometimes, they tell me, he twitches in a peculiar way as if he is beating time . . .

"I'm afraid there's no hope for him. Yet I'm not sure if his fate is a horrible one, or whether he should be envied. Perhaps, in a sense, he's found the ultimate reality that philosophers like Plato are always talking about. I really don't know. And sometimes I find myself wondering just what that infernal melody was like, and almost wishing that I'd been able to hear it perhaps once. But there'll never be a chance now, of course."

"I was waiting for this," said Charles Willis nastily. "I suppose the apparatus blew up, or something, so that as usual there's no way of checking your story."

Harry gave him his best more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger look.

"What happened next was one of those completely maddening things for which I shall never stop blaming myself. You see, I'd been too interested in Gilbert's experiment to look after my firm's business in the way that I should. I'm afraid he'd fallen badly behind with his payments, and when the Accounts Department discovered what had happened to him they acted quickly. I was only off for a couple of days on another job, and when I got back, do you know what had happened? They'd pushed through a court order, and had seized all their property. Of course that had meant dismantling Ludwig: when I saw him next he was just a pile of useless junk. It made me weep."

"I'm sure of it," said Eric Maine. "But you've forgotten Loose End Number Two. What about Gilbert's assistant? He went into the lab while the gadget was going full blast. Why didn't it get him, too?"

H. Purvis, Esquire, paused to drain the last drops from his glass and to hand it across to Drew.

"Really!" he said. "Is this a cross-examination? I didn't mention the point because it was rather trivial. You see, Gilbert's assistant was a first-rate lab technician, but he'd never been able to help much with the adjustments to Ludwig. For he was one of those people who are completely tone-deaf. To him, the Ultimate Melody meant no more than a couple of cats on a garden wall."

THE LOOT OF TIME

Clifford D. Simak

Chapter I—The Time Tractor

Hugh Cameron rose from his knees and dusted his hands. He looked at Jack Cabot and Conrad Yancey and the two of them stared back at him, questioningly.

"We're ready to go," Cameron announced. "I've checked everything."

"You give me the willies." Yancey spoke flatly. "Checking and rechecking."

"Got to make sure," Cameron told him. "Can't take any chances, not on a trip like this."

Cabot shoved up his hat and scratched his head.

"Are you sure that the theory and the mechanism are all right, Hugh?" he asked anxiously. "I still have a feeling we're all crazy."

Cameron nodded.

"Near as I can make out, Jack, it will work. I've gone over it step by step. Pascal has something here that's unique. A theory that has no precedent. Treating time as something abstract, but using that very basis for time-travel."

"It would take a guy who got kicked out of Oxford for saying Einstein's relativity theory was all haywire to make something like this," observed Yancey.

Cameron pointed at a crystal globe atop a mass of intricate machinery.

"The whole answer is in that time-brain," he said. "That's the one thing I can't figure out. How he made it I don't know. But it works. I have proof of that. The rest all checks out.

"Pascal has taken the position that time is purely subjective. That it has no existence in fact. That it is only a mental concept, but something that is entirely necessary for orientation."

"That's the part I can't get my teeth into," protested Cabot. "It seems to me that if a man were going to travel in time there'd have to be existent time to travel in. Time would have to be an actual factor. Otherwise it would not obey

mechanical rules. There'd be no theater for mechanical operation. In other words, just how in hell are we going to travel through something that doesn't exist?"

Cameron lit a cigarette and tried to explain.

"Your mind sticks on the mechanical part," he said. "Pascal's theory isn't all mechanics or all mathematics, although there's plenty of both. There're a lot of psychological concepts and that's one place where they come in. He figures that even if time is non-existent, even if it has no factual identity, that the human brain has a well-developed time-sense. Time seems entirely natural to us. Viewed from the commonplace point of view, there is absolutely no mystery about it. It is firmly embedded in the human consciousness.

"Pascal figured that if you constructed a mechanical brain you could construct it in such a manner that its time-sense would be enormously magnified. Maybe ten thousand times that of a human mind. Maybe more. There's no way to tell. So Pascal not only constructed the mechanical counterpart of a human brain, but he constructed it with an. exaggerated time-sense. That brain over there knows more about time right now than the human race will ever know. Nobody else on Earth could have done it. No twentieth-century man. Pascal's a wizard. That's what he is."

"Listen, Hugh," said Cabot, "I want to be sure. I sent over to America, had you come out to London because I knew that if any man could tell me anything about this pipe-dream it would be you. I want you to feel absolutely certain. I can't understand it myself. I figure you can. If you have any doubt, say so now. I don't want to get stuck halfway back in time."

Cameron puffed away at his smoke.

"It isn't a pipe-dream, Jack. It's the goods. The time-sense in the brain is developed to a point where it has an ability to assume mastery over time. It can move through time. What's more, it can move the time-tractor through time— with all of us inside the tractor. Not hypnotism, because in hypnotism you only think you're some place or doing something that isn't so.

"The brain actually can move back and forth in time and it can move us back and forth in time. It develops some sort of a force. Not electricity. Pascal thought it was that at first. But it isn't, although it's related to electricity. For want of a better term we might call it a time-force. That describes it well enough. It develops this force in sufficient amount to operate the control mechanism that guides the brain's movement through time."

He flipped his hands helplessly.

"That's all I can tell you. The rest of it is mathematics that would be pure Greek to you and mechanics that you'd have to take eight years of college to understand."

He looked at Cabot.

"You have to take my word for it, Jack, that the damn thing will run." Cabot smiled.

'That's good enough for me, Hugh," he said.

A shadow blotted out the sunlight on the floor. The three looked toward the door.

Dr. Thomas Pascal stood there, a white-haired man with a face that was almost childish in its simplicity. He was one of 1940's scientific wizards.

"All ready to, start?" he asked cheerfully.

Cameron nodded.

"Everything seems all right, Doctor," he said. "I've checked every cable, every cog, every contact. They're all in perfect order."

"All right, then," growled Yancey. "What are we waiting for? I'm all set to slaughter me a saber-tooth."

"You'll find plenty of them," Pascal told him. "I told you I'd take you to a virgin game field. A place where a rifle shot had never been fired. That's what I'm going to do."

Cameron laughed.

"Doctor," he asked, "how did you ever get the idea of selling these two mad hunters on this proposition? A hunting trip back into time. That's one for the records."

"I needed money to finish the tractor," Pascal told him, "so I cast around for someone who might be interested, but interested in such a way that my invention would not be used for base ends. Then I heard of Mr. Cabot and Mr. Yancey. Plenty of money. Famous hunters. What could be more appealing to them than a hunting trip back into the past? But they weren't easy to convince. They listened only when I consented to let you check the entire machine."

Cabot shook his head stubbornly.

"Doctor, you still have to show me those game fields back in the Riss-Wurm interglacial period. It's fifty-thousand years or more back there. A long ways to go."

"You'll eat mammoth steak for dinner tonight," Pascal told him.

"If you're going to make good on that promise," Cameron suggested, "we had better get started. All our supplies are stored, the machinery is checked. We're ready."

"All right," agreed Pascal. "Will someone shut the door and make sure the ports are closed?"

Yancey walked to the doorway, reached out to pull the door shut and lock it. For a moment he stood still, staring out over the green hills. There, only a few miles away, lay the village of Aylesford. And beyond lay the valley of the Thames. A country steeped in legend and history. In a few minutes they would be moving back, through and beyond the days which had given rise to that legend and history. Two American hunters on the maddest hunting trip the world had ever known.

Yancey closed the door, chuckling.

"Wonder how much lead it takes to stop a saber-tooth?" he mused.

Turning back to the interior of the great tractor, he saw that the time-brain was glowing greenly. Dr. Pascal, standing before it, seemed like a tiny, misshapen gnome, working before a fiery furnace.

"Door closed and locked," Yancey reported.

"Ports all tight," said Cabot.

"Okay," replied Pascal.

Machinery hummed faintly, nothing more than a whisper of a sound.

There was nothing to indicate they had left the present, were moving backward through time, but when Yancey looked through a port, he choked back an exclamation.

There was nothing outside the port. Just a blank, flat, gray plane of nothingness, with now and then shadows that flitted and were gone.

Pascal sucked in his breath as the tractor rocked and bumped. The gray outside the port became less dense. Objects became faintly discernible.

"We're going too fast," Pascal explained. "Ground seems to be rising. Have to take it slower. We might hit something. Most things wouldn't stop us, but there's no use taking chances."

"Sure the ground is rising," Cameron told him. "Maybe by this time there isn't any English Channel. Back in the Riss-Wurm period the British Isles were connected with the continent. The Thames flowed north through the North Sea basin to reach the North Sea."

The gray outside the ports thinned even more. The tractor rocked like a boat in a gentle swell. Then the grayness turned to white, a dazzling white that blinded Yancey. The tractor moved sharply upward, seemed to be riding a huge wave, then dropped, but more slowly.

"We just passed the Wurm glacier," Pascal told them. "We're in the Riss-Wurm now."

"Take it just a little easier," Cameron warned him. "That last bump busted a tube in the field radio. We can fix that, but we may need that radio. We don't want to smash it entirely."

Outside the port now Yancey could make out objects. A tree became clearer, was sharply defined and beyond it Yancey saw solid landscape, bathed in a rising sun.

He heard Pascal's voice.

"Seventy thousand years, approximately," he said. "We should be where we intended to go."

But Yancey was intent on the scene outside. The tractor stood on the top of a high knoll. Below unfolded a panorama of wild beauty. Rolling hills fell away to a wide valley, green with lush grass, while in the distance a stream caught the sunlight of early dawn and glinted like a ribbon of silver. And on the hills and in the valley below were black dots, feeding game herds, some so close he could make out individual animals. Others mere black spots.

Yancey whistled soundlessly.

He wheeled from the port.

"Jack," he began breathlessly, "there are thousands of herds out there—"

But Cabot, he saw, had already unlocked the door.

The four of them stood grouped in the doorway and stared out. Pascal smiled.

"You see," he reminded them, "that I told you the truth." Cabot drew in his breath sharply.

"You sure did," he admitted. "I doubt if Africa in its prime was better than this."

"An overlapping of fauna," said Pascal. "The old Stone Age merging with the modern. One type dying out, another coming in. The most diversified and plentiful game herds that ever existed on the face of the earth before or since. The cave bear, the saber-tooth, the cave hyena, the mammoth and woolly rhinoceros living coincidentally with vast herds of wild ox, reindeer, Irish elk and other animals of more recent times."

"Some hunting!" said Yancey.

Cabot nodded in agreement. He stepped down from the door onto the ground.

"Let's stretch our legs," he suggested.

"Can't right now," said Cameron. "Have to check the machinery over. I want to be sure everything's all right."

Yancey jumped to the ground.

"You fellows had better take your rifles," warned Cameron, Cabot laughed.

"We have our revolvers," he said. "We aren't going far away."

The two hunters walked slowly, wonderingly, away from the tractor. The ground beneath their feet was soft to the tread with thick grass. Head-high thickets spotted the hillsides that sloped away toward the river. On some of the hills reared great, grotesque rock formations. And everywhere was game.

Yancey halted and lifted a pair of binoculars to his eyes. For several minutes he stood, studying the landscape. Then he lowered the glasses and slipped the thong from his neck. He handed them to Cabot.

"Take a look, Jack," he invited.

"You won't believe it until you see it with your own eyes. There's a herd of mammoth down by the river. That dark spot just this side of the big grove. And there's another big bunch up the river a bit. I picked up a few woolly rhinos. And bison, something like the old American buffalo."

"Bos priscus," said Cabot. "I read up some on Stone Age animals the last few weeks. Primitive form of bison. Maybe we'll be able to get a few Bos latifrons. Big brutes with a horn spread of ten feet. But maybe they're extinct. They're the grandpappies of those fellows out there."

"What's that big bunch across the river?" Yancey asked.

Cabot trained the glasses in the'direction of Yancey's pointing finger.

"Irish elk," he pronounced.

A coughing roar brought the two men halfway around. What they saw held them petrified for a moment.

Less than a hundred feet away, at the edge of a thicket, through which he must have come without a sound, stood a massive bear. A huge beast, six feet at the shoulders. He was dark brown in color and he was angry. He rocked gently from side to side and champed his jaws. From his chest rumbled a growl that seemed to shake the earth.

"For God's sake," hissed Cabot, "don't move fast! Edge over toward the tractor easy. That boy is ready to charge!"

Yancey's hand dropped to his gun butt. Out of the tail of his eye Cabot caught the motion.

"Yancey, you damn fool," he whispered huskily, "keep your hand away from that. A forty-five slug wouldn't more than tickle him."

Slowly the two men backed away from the bear, back toward the towering gray form of the time-tractor, their eyes never leaving the monstrous beast that stood swaying before them. The bear was working himself into a rage. His chest rumbling was almost continuous now, like a train crossing a long trestle. He snarled and the snarl was a sound of raw fury that sent cold shivers up Cabot's spine.

Tensely they paced their slow backward march. Yancey's heel caught in a root and he stumbled, but righted himself quickly. The bear growled thunderously and shook his head. Foam from his drooling jaws flecked the massive brown shoulders.

Then the bear charged. With no apparent preliminary move he launched into full motion, with the speed of an avalanche.

"Run," shrieked Cabot, but his cry was drowned out by a blasting report. The charging bear lurched forward, struck head and shoulders on the ground and somersaulted.

Cabot, racing toward the time-tractor, saw Cameron and Pascal framed in the doorway, heavy elephant guns at their shoulders.

"Wait," roared Cabot. "Make that second shot count!" In three leaps he was beside the tractor door. Pascal shoved the gun at him. "Never shot one before in my life," he told Cabot, Cabot spun about, gun in hand.

The bear was on its feet, swaying heavily from side to side. Its small pig eyes gleamed balefully and red foam flecked its jaws and shoulders.

Deliberately Cabot brought the gun barrel up, centered the sights squarely between the two eyes and squeezed the trigger. The bear coughed gently and rolled over.

Yancey wiped his brow with the back of his hand.

"Closest shave I've ever had," he confessed.

"Cave bear," said Pascal. "Just one of the big life-forms you will find here."

Cameron stepped down from the tractor.

"You'll find out these animals aren't the gun-shy brutes you two have been hunting," he stated. "These babies don't fear man. They figure man isn't dangerous, if in fact they've ever seen a man. The Neanderthalers that are living somewhere in this country right now are no match for a brute like that."

Yancey wiped his brow again.

"This is the damnest place I ever saw," he declared. "Jack and me just step out for a smoke and a look-around. We aren't gone five minutes and a bear jumps us."

Cameron guffawed.

"Picked you out for breakfast," he said.

Yancey grimaced, but made no reply.

Suddenly Cabot hunched forward, finger pointing to a patch of tall grass beyond the dead bear.

"There's something in there!" he whispered harshly.

A tawny shape raced from the grass, landed on top of the bear's brown body. With glinting claws and powerful teeth it laid back the hide on the great shoulder. Then, seeing the men, it backed away, its face twisted into a blood stained snarl.

Yancey's .45 leaped out of its holster and exploded almost as it cleared. One explosion blending with another, the gun set up a roll of thunder that beat against the ears of the four men.

Still snarling, the tawny beast jerked to the impact of the heavy slugs. Then it sprawled and tumbled as Yancey's gun clicked on an empty cartridge.

But it was not dead. Snarling and spitting, it regained its feet, slunk low in a deadly slouch, razor-sharp, foot-long fangs bared in a murderous sneer.

Cabot whipped out his revolver as Yancey rapidly clicked new cartridges into the cylinder. Cameron snapped the elephant gun to his shoulder. The rifle bellowed and the cat rolled over. Cabot slid his gun back into the holster.

"Saber-tooth," said Pascal coolly.

"He sure carries lead," Yancey commented, breathing hard. Cameron cradled the rifle in his arm and stared at the two animals.

"Hunting," he said. "Hell, this isn't hunting. This is an eternal Custer's last stand—a continuous battle in self-defense." 'Those critters sure are blood-thirsty," agreed Yancey. "And," he added, "not afraid of us." Cameron blew smoke through the gun barrel. "Wonder how cave bear steaks taste," he mused. Yancey looked the huge animal over. "Probably tougher than hell," he said appraisingly.

Chapter II—The Centaurians

From the office of Time Travel, Inc., on the 600th story of the Berkley stratosphere building, New York lay stretched below, a fairy city. Under the soft glow of millions of lights it took on an unearthly beauty. It was a city of slender pinnacles of pure white beauty, looping arches of rainbow hues, formal gardens and parks, gleaming towers of argent, black domes.

Steve Clark liked the view. He often came here at night to sit and talk with his friend, Andy Smith, one of the ace pilots of the Time Travel service.

Smith was reading the last edition of the Daily Rocket. Steve Clark had brought it in only a moment before, fresh from the press, and thrown it on the desk. Smith had it spread in the white circle thrown by the lone light. The rest of the office was in darkness. Beyond the desk lockers, other desks and record files loomed darkly. The time-machines themselves were in an adjoining room, ready for launching from the face of the building.

"How's business?" asked Clark, with his feet fixed firmly on top of the desk.

Andy Smith grunted.

"Not so good. It's the fifty-sixth century, time-travel isn't a novelty any more and our rates are too high. Didn't have more than a dozen or two trips all week." He jabbed his finger at the purple headlines. "Times seem to be all right for you newspaper fellows," he said. "Lots of big news this afternoon."

"Yeah," Steve Clark agreed. "The Centaurians again. They're always good for a banner-line any day. Made a real haul this time."

"I should say so," Smith said. "Martian bongo stones, eh? Fourteen of them. Largest and most perfect collection in the entire Solar System."

"That's it," said Clark. "The old man almost busted a blood vessel when that story came in an hour ago. Wanted to scoop the city."

Clark chuckled.

"We did," he said.

Andy Smith folded the paper carefully. "Steve," he said, "what are the Centaurians? Nobody seems to know."

"They're super-crooks for one thing," Clark said, "and when you've said that, you've said about all that anyone knows about them for sure. They've laughed at the best brains in the police business for the last five hundred years. And I figure they'll still be laughing five hundred years from now if they live that long and there's no reason to think they won't. Unless they're keeping it a secret, the flatfeet don't even know where their hideout is located. They've made monkeys out of everyone. Hell, didn't they steal a gold shipment out from under the nose of the Interplanetary Police, and keep it, too, in spite of the fact that every damn IP man in the System was turned loose on the case?"

"You figure, then," asked Smith, "that the Centaurians are real? That they are something that isn't human. A super-gang of unearthly bandits?"

"You know," Clark replied, "a newspaperman doesn't take to fables very easy. He breaks more myths than any other kind of critter I know. But, as a newspaperman, I'm telling you that these Centaurians aren't human. Probably a lot of jobs have been blamed on them that they never had a thing to do with. But there are cases on record of eye-witnesses who saw them. Only two or three such instances in the last five hundred years, but they check up well.

"All agree on vital points. They got tails and they're covered with scales and instead of feet they have hoofs. Whatever they are, they don't go in for penny-ante stuff. When they make a haul, it's one that's worthwhile. Those bongo stones. They were worth ten billion if they were worth a dime. And the shipload of IP gold."

Smith whistled.

"Then you figure they came from Alpha Centauri?" he asked.

"Either Alpha Centauri or some other place outside the System. Nothing like them been found on any of the planets here. I always sort of figured they were fugitives from their own System. Maybe things got too hot for them, wherever they were, and they had to take it on the lam. Whatever they are or wherever they come from they sure have easy pickings here. They walk off with just about whatever they want to and nobody's even come close to catching up with them.

"I read some place, long time ago, that it is believed they came to Earth in some sort of a crazy space ship. Wrecked when it struck. The ship was smashed up and two or three of its occupants were killed—but I guess they never did find out much about them from that. The ship was all in pieces and the things in it were crushed to pulp. Maybe it was something or somebody else, not the Centaurians at all."

Steve Clark lighted a Venus-weed cigar and puffed.

"Whatever they are," he said, "they make damn good news copy."

Smith glanced at his watch.

"I'll be off in a few minutes," he said. "What say we hop over to Paris and buy us a round of drinks?" "Sounds all right," agreed Clark.

Smith rose from his chair, stuffing the paper into his pocket. And standing there, beside the desk, he froze in astonishment.

The office door was open and inside it stood a group of black-shrouded figures that seemed to blend with the darkness. Something gleamed in the light reflected from the polished table-top.

A voice spoke out of the darkness, a voice that spoke the English tongue with slurred accent.

"You will please resume your seat," it suggested.

Smith sat down again and Clark, dropping his feet from the desk, jerked his chair around.

"You also, sir," said the voice.

Clark obeyed. There was some metallic menace in those short, clipped, incredibly accented words which held a definite note of threat.

Slowly, majestically, one of the black-shrouded figures strode forward, leaving his companions by the door. He stopped before the desk, still in the darkness, but better defined now in the reflections from the desk-top. The man wore dark glasses and he was shrouded in a dark cape, the edge of which trailed to the floor, covering his feet. A black cowl, a part of the cape, covered his head and draped over his face, hiding most of his features.

Steve Clark felt the hair crawl at the back of his neck as he studied the visitor.

Smith made his voice pleasant.

"Anything I can do for you?" he asked.

"Yes, there is," said the strange, black-draped figure and in the faint light Smith saw the quick, smooth flash of white teeth in the shadowed face. He couldn't make out the face. Couldn't see anything, in fact, except the flash of teeth when he spoke and the occasional dull shine of reflected light from the man's eyes.

The teeth flashed again.

"I want a time-condensor," he said.

Andy Smith managed to choke back a gasp of astonishment, but his face was blank when he answered. "We don't sell parts," he said.

"No," said the black-robed one, and the single word sounded more like a challenge than a question.

'There is no call for them," Smith explained. "Time Travel has the only time-machines in existence. They operate under strict governmental supervision. No one else owns a time-machine. Naturally, the only ones who would have use for spare parts would be our own company."

"But you have an extra condensor?"

"Several of them," Smith admitted. "We have need of replacements frequently. It's dangerous to go into time with a faulty condensor."

"I know that," the other replied. "Contrary to what you may believe, there is at least one time-machine in existence other than the ones you own. I have one."

Something like a chuckle sounded from his lips.

"Strangely enough I obtained it from your company. Many years ago. I came here to get a condensor," said the man. The ugly muzzle of some sort of a weapon poked from the folds of his cape. "I can take it by force if need be. I would prefer not to. On the other hand, if you would cooperate, I would be willing to pay."

He leaned closer to the desk. A hand flashed out of the cape, was visible for only an instant and then disappeared inside the cape again. But the hand had tossed several small round objects on the desk-top, objects that seemed to spin in a blaze of color under the lamp-light.

"Bongo stones," said the white teeth. "Not the ones stolen this afternoon. No way to identify them. But bongo stones. Worth a fortune."

Steve Clark stared at the stones, his mind spinning.

Bongo stones! He counted them. Ten of them! In a flash he knew who this visitor was, knew that the myth of the Centaurians was true. For he had glimpsed that hand during the swift instant it had tossed the stones on the desk-top. A scaly hand, like the paw of a reptile. And the clicking of the thing's feet when it walked was like the sound of cloven hoofs.

Through his buzzing mind came the voice. "And now suppose I take a condensor under my arm and walk out. Leaving the stones behind." Smith hesitated.

The muzzle of the weapon gestured imperiously, impatiently.

"Otherwise," said the cold voice, "I shall kill you and take the condensor in any event."

Smith rose and walked mechanically to a locker. Steve Clark heard the rasp of a key as his friend opened the door to take out a condensor.

But he still stared at the bongo stones.

Now he knew why the police had never found the Cen-taurians' hiding place. They had no hiding place! They were bandits in time! The whole scope of space and time for their operations! They could sack the Queen of Sheba's mines one day and the next day move on to snatch treasures out of the remote future, treasures yet undreamed of!

"Clever," he said. "Damn clever."

Andy Smith was standing beside him, looking at the stones. They were alone in the room.

"You gave them the condensor?" Clark asked.

Smith nodded, dry-lipped.

"There wasn't anything else I could do, Steve."

Clark motioned toward the stones.

"What about these, Andy?"

"I was thinking," Smith said. "We couldn't sell them here —or anywhere else. They'd ask us how we got them. They'd lock us up. Probably before they got through with it, they'd prove we stole them and send us to the Moon-mines."

"There's a way," Clark suggested. He nodded toward the hangar where the time-machines were ranged.

Smith wet his lips.

"I thought of that," he said. "After all, those fellows stole a time-machine from the company once. Probably the company never reported the loss. Afraid of what the government might do."

Silence hung like a breathing menace over the room. "Those were the Centaurians, weren't they?" Andy Smith asked.

Clark nodded. Then waited.

"The company will throw me out for this," said Smith bitterly. "After ten years of working with them."

Pounding feet sounded in the corridor outside.

Clark's hand shot out and scooped up the stones.

"Can't let anyone find us with these on us," he whispered huskily. "Let's duck into the hangar."

Swiftly the two leaped through the doorway into the darkened room. Crouched under the wing of one of the timefliers they saw figures come into the room they had just quitted. Figures in police uniforms.

The police stood stock-still in the center of the room, staring.

"What's going on here?" shouted one of them. Silence fell more heavily.

"What do you think that fellow meant, telling us he saw some funny looking birds coming out of here?" one of them asked the other two.

"Let's look in the hangar," one of the policemen said. He leveled a flash and a spear of light cut the deep gloom, just missing the two men crouched under the wing of the time-flier.

Clark felt Smith tugging at him.

"We got to get out of here," Smith hissed in his ear.

Clark nodded in the darkness. And he knew there was only one way to get out of there.

Together they tumbled through the door of the time-flier.

"Here we go," said Smith. "We're criminals now, Steve."

The machine lurched out through the suddenly opened lock.

The time mechanism hummed and two men, one with ten bongo stones in his pocket, fled through time.

Chapter III—Anachronic Treasure

Old One-Eye was fighting his last battle. His great stone-ax lay out of reach, its handle broken, swept from his hand by a blow aimed at him by the mighty cat. His body was mauled and across one shoulder was a deep wound from which a stream of crimson trickled down his hairy chest.

To flee was useless. One-Eye knew that he could not outdistance Saber-Tooth. There was only one thing to do— Stand and fight. So with shoulders hunched, with his hands poised and ready for action, with his one eye gleaming bale-fully, the Neanderthal man faced the cat.

The animal snarled and spat, its tail twitching, crouched for a leap. Its long, curved fangs slashed angrily at the air.

One-Eye had no delusions about what was going to happen. He had killed many saber-tooths in his life. In company with others of his kind, he had faced the charge of the great cave-bear. He had trailed and brought down the mighty mammoth. In his day One-Eye had been a great hunter, an invincible warrior. But now he had reached the end of life. A man's two hands were no weapon against the tooth and claw of a saber-toothed tiger. One-Eye knew he was going to be killed.

Dry brush crackled back of the cat and the saber-tooth pivoted swiftly at this threat of new danger from the rear. One-Eye straightened and froze in his tracks.

Conrad Yancey, standing at the edge of the brush, slowly raised his rifle.

"I reckon this has gone about far enough," he said. "A man's got to stick by his own kind."

Startled, the great cat's snarls rose into a siren of hate and fear.

Yancey lined the sights on the ugly head and squeezed the trigger. The saber-tooth leaped into the air, screaming in rage and terror. Again the rifle blazed and the cat straightened, reared on its hind legs, fell backward to the ground, coughing great streams of blood.

Across the body of the beast One-Eye and Yancey exchanged glances.

"You put up a swell battle," Yancey told the Neanderthaler. "I watched you for quite a spell. Glad I was around to help."

Petrified by terror, One-Eye stood stock-still, staring. His nostrils twitched as he sniffed the strange smells which had come with the stranger and his shining spear. The spear, when it spoke in a voice of thunder, had a smell all its own, a smell that stung One-Eye's sensitive nostrils and his throat and made him want to cough.

Yancey took a slow, tentative step toward the Neanderthaler. But when the sub-man stirred as if to flee, he stopped short and stood almost breathless.

Yancey saw that the Neanderthaler's left eye at some time had been scooped out of his head by the vicious blow of a cruelly taloned paw. Deep scratches and a tortuous malformation of the region above the cheek-bone told a story of some terrible battle of the wilderness.

Short of stature and slightly stooping of posture, the Neanderthaler was a model of awkward power. His head was thrust forward at an angle between his shoulders. His neck was thick as a tree boll. The long arms hung almost to the knees of the bowed legs and the body was completely covered with hair. The heavy bristle of hair on his enormously projecting eyebrows was snowy white and throughout the heavy coat of hair which covered the man were other streaks and sprinklings of gray and white.

"An old buck," said Yancey, half to himself. "Slowing down. Someday he won't move quite fast enough and a cat will have him."

Conrad Yancey took another slow step forward and this time the Neanderthaler, bristling with terror, wheeled about with a strange, strangled cry of fear and ran, shuffling awkwardly, down the hill to plunge straight into a dense thicket.

Back at the time-tractor camp Yancey told the story of the battle between the caveman and the cat, of how he watched and had finally stepped in to save the man's life.

But the others had stories, too. Cabot and Cameron, hunting together a few miles to the east, had been charged by an angry mammoth bull, had stopped him only after they had placed four well aimed heavy-caliber bullets into him. Pascal, remaining at the tractor, had scared off a cave bear and reported that a pack of five vicious, slinking wolves had patrolled the camp throughout the afternoon. He had shot two of them and then the rest had scattered.

For here was a land that was teeming with game; a land where the law of claw and fang ruled and was the only law; where big animals preyed on smaller animals and in turn were preyed upon by still bigger ones. Here was a land without human habitation, with the few Neanderthalers who did live here hiding in dark, dank caves. Here was a land that had no human tenets, no softening hand of civilization.

But here, in this primeval wilderness of what later was to become the British Isles, was the greatest hunting ground Cabot and Yancey had ever seen. They shot in self-defense as often as they shot to bring down marked game. They found that a cave bear would carry more lead than a elephant, that the saber-tooth was not so hard to kill as might be thought, that only superb marksmanship and the heaviest bullets would bring the mammoth to his knees.

The flickering campfire, lighting up the gray, shadowy bulk of the time-tractor, was the only evidence of civilized life upon the darkening world as a blood-red moon climbed over the eastern horizon and lighted a land that growled and snarled, shivered and whimpered, hunted and was hunted.

Yancey saw Old One-Eye lurking on the edge of the camp when he arose in the morning. He had just a glimpse of the old fellow, squatting in a clump of bushes, looking over the camp with his one good eye. He disappeared so quickly, so soundlessly that Yancey blinked and rubbed his eyes, hardly believing he had left

In the field that day Yancey and Cabot caught sight of him several times, lurking in their wake, spying upon them.

"Maybe," Cabot suggested, "he is trying to get up enough courage to thank you for saving his life."

Yancey grunted.

"Hell, I had to do that, Jack," he said. "He isn't more than an ainimal, but he's still a man. We got to play along with our own kind in a place like this. He was such a brave old cuss. Standing there, ready to go to bat with that cat with his bare hands."

Back at the camp, Pascal looked at it in a scientific light.

"Just natural curiosity," he said. "The first glimmering of intelligence. Trying to figure things out. With what limited brain power he has that old fellow is doing some heavy thinking right now."

"Maybe he recognizes you as one of his descendants. Great-grandson to the hundredth generation, maybe," Cameron jibed at Yancey.

"The Neanderthal race is not the ancestor of man," Pascal protested. "They died out or were killed off by the Cro-Magnons, who'll be moving in within another ten or twenty thousand years. The Neanderthaloids were just a sort of blind alley. An experiment that didn't go quite right."

"Seems damn human, though," protested Yancey.

One-Eye became a camp fixture. He lurked around the tractor, trailed Yancey when he went afield. Degree by degree he became bolder. Meat was left where he could find it and he carried it off into the brush. Later he didn't bother to drag it off. In plain view of the hunters he squatted on his haunches, ripping and rending it, snarling softly, gulping great, bloody mouthfuls of raw flesh.

He haunted the campfire like a dog, apparently pleased with the easy living he had found. He came farther away from the encircling brush, squatted and jabbered just outside the circle of firelight, waiting for the bits of food tossed to him.

At last, seemingly convinced he had nothing to fear from these strange creatures, he joined the campfire circle, sat with the men, blinking at the campfire, jabbering away excitedly.

"Maybe he has a language," said Pascal, "but if he has it's very primitive. Not more than a dozen words at most."

He liked to have his back scratched, grunting like a contented hog. He begged for cubes of sugar.

"Makes a nice pet," Cameron declared.

But Yancey shook his head.

"Something more than a pet, Hugh," he said.

For between Yancey and the old Neanderthaler something akin to comradeship had developed. It was by Yancey that the old one-eyed savage sat when he came into the ring of firelight. It was at Yancey that he directed his chatter. During the day he haunted Yancey's footsteps like a shadow, at times coming out openly to join him, ambling along with his awkward gait.

One night Yancey gave him a knife, half wondering if One-Eye would know what it was. But One-Eye recognized in this wondrous piece of polished metal something akin to the fist ax that he and his people used to flay the pelts from the animals they killed.

Turning the knife over and over, One-Eye slobbered in delirious glee. He jabbered excitedly at Yancey, clawed at the man's shoulder with caressing paw. Then he leaped from his place by the campfire and slithered away into the darkness. Not so much as a breaking twig heralded his plunge into the night.

Yancey rubbed his eyes.

"I wonder what the damn old fool is up to now?" he asked.

"Went off to try his new knife," suggested Cabot. "Something like that calls for a little throat-slitting."

Yancey listened to the moaning of a saber-tooth in the brush only a short distance away, heard the bellow of a mammoth down by the river.

He shook his head dolefully.

"I sure hope he watches his step," he said. "He's slowing up. Getting old. That saber-tooth out there might get him."

But in fifteen minutes One-Eye was back again. He waddled into the circle of firelight so silently that the men did not hear his approach.

Looking over his shoulder, Yancey saw him standing back of him. One-Eye was holding out a clenched fist, but within the fist was something that glinted in the flare of the campfire.

Pascal caught his breath.

"He's brought you something," he told Yancey. "Something in exchange for the knife. I would never have believed it. The barter principle."

Yancey rose and held out his hand. One-Eye dropped the shiny thing into it. Living flame lanced from it, striking Yancey's eyeballs.

It was a stone. Yancey rotated it slowly with his fingers and saw that within its center dwelt a heart of icy blue flame, while from its many facets swarmed arcing colors of breathtaking beauty.

Cabot was at his elbow, staring.

"What is it, Yancey?" he gasped.

Yancey almost sobbed.

"It's a diamond," he said. "A diamond as big as my fist!"

"But it's cut," protested Cabot. "That's not a stone out of the rough. A master jeweler cut that stone!" Yancey nodded.

"Just what would a cut diamond be doing in the old Stone Age?" he asked.

Chapter IV—The Broadcast in Time

One-Eye pointed down into the throat of a cave and jabbered violently at Yancey. The hunter patted the hoary shoulders and One-Eye danced with glee.

"This must be it," Yancey said.

"I hope so," said Cameron. "It's taken plenty of time to make him understand what we wanted. I still can't understand how we did it."

Cabot wagged his head.

"I can't understand any of it," he confessed. "A Neanderthaler lugging around cut diamonds. Diamonds as big as a man's fist."

"Well, let's go down and see for ourselves," suggested Yancey.

One-Eye led the way down the steep, slippery mouth of the cave and into a dimly lit cavern, filled with a sort of half-light that filtered in from the mouth of the cave on the ground above.

Cabot switched on a flashlight and cried out excitedly.

In cascading piles upon the floor of the cavern, stacked high against its rocky sides, were piles of jewels that flashed and glittered, scintillating in the beams of the torch.

"This is it!" yelled Cameron.

Pascal, down on his knees in front of a pile of jewels, dipped his hands into them, lifted a fistful and let them trickle back. They filled the cavern with little murmurings as they fell.

Cabot swept the cave with the light. They saw piles of jewels; neat stacks of gold ingots, apparently freshly smelted; bars of silver-white iridium; of argent platinum; chests of hammered bronze and copper; buckskin bags spilling native golden nuggets.

Yancey reached out a hand and leaned weakly against the wall.

"My God," he stammered. "The price of empires!"

"But," said Pascal, slowly, calmly, although his face, as Cabot's torch suddenly lighted it, was twisted in an agony of disbelief, "how did this all come here? This is a primitive world. The art of the goldsmith and the jewel-cutter is unknown here."

Cameron's voice cut coolly out of the darkness.

"There must be an explanation. Some reason. Some previous civilization. A treasure cache of that civilization."

"No," Pascal told him, "not that. Look at those gold bars. New. Freshly smelted. No sign of age. And platinum—that's a comparatively recent discovery. Iridium even more recent."

Cabot's voice held an edge of steel command.

"We can argue about how it got here after we have it stowed away," he said. "Pascal, you and Hugh go down and bring up the tractor. Yancey and I will start carrying this stuff up to the surface right away."

Yancey toiled up the throat of the cave. Reaching the surface he slid the sack of jewels from his shoulder and wiped his brow.

"Tough work," he told Cameron.

Cameron nodded.

"But it's almost over now," he comforted. "Just a few more hours and we'll have the last of the stuff in the tractor. Then we get out of here."

Yancey nodded.

"I don't feel too safe," he admitted. "Somebody hid all this junk in the cave. How they did it, I don't have the faintest idea. But I have a queer feeling it wouldn't go easy with us if they caught us."

Pascal staggered out of the cave and slid a gold bar from his shoulder.

He mopped his brow with a shirt sleeve.

"I'm going down to the tractor and get a drink of water before I pack that a foot farther," he announced.

Yancey stooped to pick up his gunny sack. Pascal's scream echoed.

The hillside below the tractor before had been empty of everything except a few scattered boulders and trees. Now a machine rested there, a grotesque machine of black metal, streamlined, with stubby wings, suggestive of a plane. As Yancey caught his first sight of it, it was indistinct, blurred, as if he saw it through a shimmering haze. Then it became clear, sharp-cut.

Like a slap in the face came the knowledge that here was the answer to those vague fears he had felt. Here must be the owners of the treasure cache.

His hand slapped down to his thigh and his gun whispered out of its holster.

A door in the strange machine snapped open and out of it stepped a man—but hardly a man. The creature sported a long tail, and it was covered with scales. Twin horns, three inches or so in height, sprouted from its forehead.

The newcomer carried something that looked like a gun in his hand, but no gun such as Yancey had ever seen. He saw the weapon tilt up toward him and his .45 exploded in his fist. Even as flame blossomed from his gun, he saw a .45 come up in Cameron's hand, in the second after the blast of his own gun, then heard the deadly click of a cocking hammer.

The first of the scaly men was down. But others were tumbling out of the strange mechanism.

Cameron's gun barked and once again Yancey felt the comforting kick of the .45 against the heel of his palm, hardly knowing he had squeezed the trigger.

From one of the guns carried by the scaly men whipped out a pencil of purple flame. Yancey felt its hot breath clip past his cheek.

Before the time-tractor lay Pascal, stretched out, inert, like an empty sack. Over him stood Cabot, gun flaming. Another one of those purple flames reached out, hit a boulder beside Yancey. The boulder glowed with sudden heat, started to chip and crack.

With mighty leaps, Yancey skidded down the slope, landing in a crouch beside Pascal. He grasped the old scientist by the shoulder and lifted him. As he straightened, he glanced at the strange machine in which the scaly men had come. Through the open door he could see a mass of machinery, with banks of glowing tubes.

Then the machinery erupted in a thunderous explosion. The roar seemed to blot out the world. For one split second he glanced up and saw on Cabot's face a baleful grin of triumph, knew that he had fired a shot which had wrecked the scaly men's machine.

The ground seemed to be weaving under Yancey's feet. With superhuman effort he plodded toward the door of the time-tractor, dragging Pascal. Hands reached out to help him, hauling him inside.

Slowly his brain cleared. He was sitting on the floor of the tractor. Beside him lay Pascal and he saw now that the scientist was dead. His chest had been burned away by one of the pencils of purple flame.

Cabot swung down on the door-locking mechanism and stepped back into the room.

"What are they, Jack?" Yancey asked, his mind still fuzzy.

Cabot shook his head wearily.

"Don't you recognize them?" asked Cameron. "Horns, hoofs, tails. Today we've seen the devil in person. Those are the people who gave rise to the ancient legend of the devil."

Yancey got to his feet and looked down at Pascal. "Feel bad about that," he whispered. "He was a regular guy."

Cameron nodded, stiff-lipped. From a port Cabot spoke.

"Those devil-men are up to something," he announced. "They'll probably make it hot for us now." He wheeled on Cameron. "Can you get us out of here, Hugh?" Cameron considered the question.

"Probably could," he said, "but I would rather not try it right now. I think we're safe here for a little while. That time brain is a tricky outfit. Know its principle and given time I could figure it out so I could take a try at it. If worse comes to worse, I'll do it. Take a chance."

He walked to the time-brain apparatus and snapped the switch. The brain glowed with a weird green light.

"That must be a time-machine out there," said Yancey. "Another machine would explain the treasure cache. I'll bet those birds are robbing stuff through time and bringing it back here to cache it. Damn clever."

"And they landed up ahead to cache some stuff and found some of it missing. Then they came back through time to find out what was wrong," supplied Cabot.

Cameron smote his thigh.

"Listen," he said. "If that's right it means time-travel is well established up ahead in the future. We might be able to reach help there. Those fellows out there must be outlaws. If so, we'd rate some help."

"But how will we reach the future?" demanded Cabot. "How will they know we need help?"

"It's just a chance," said Cameron. "A bare chance. If it doesn't work I can always try to get us back to the twentieth century, although the chances are nine out of ten I'll kill all of us trying it"

"But how?" persisted Cabot.

"Pascal said the 'time force' or whatever the brain generates, is similar to electricity. But with differences. It is important just what those differences are. I don't know, not enough anyhow. The time mechanism is run by the force generated by the brain, but we have regular electricity for the tractor operation."

Cameron pondered.

"I wonder," he mused, "if the time force would be sufficiently like electricity to operate the radio?"

"What difference would that make?" snapped Yancey.

"Maybe we could broadcast in time," Cameron suggested.

"But that brain generates very little power," protested Yancey.

"We might not need much power," Cameron told him. "It's just a blind shot in the dark. A gamble—"

"Sounds plausible," Yancey asserted, "let's take a long shot."

Cameron switched off the brain mechanism and with lengths of wire connected the radio to the mechanism. Then he switched the brain back on again. The sending set hummed with power.

"Better start gambling," said Cabot. "Those boys out there are beginning to ray us. Playing that purple flame on the tractor."

Cameron's voice boomed out, speaking into the microphone.

"SOS . . . SOS . . . party of time travelers stranded in the Thames valley, near the village of Aylesford, approximately seventy thousand years before the twentieth century. Attacked by beings resembling the devils of mythology. SOS . . . SOS ... party of time travelers stranded in the Thames valley...."

Cameron's voice boomed on and on.

Yancey and Cabot stared out of the ports.

The devil-men were ringed around the tractor, playing the purple beams on the machine. They stood stolidly, like statues, without a trace of emotion in their features.

The tractor was beginning to heat up. The air was becoming hot and the metal was warm to the touch.

The interior of the tractor suddenly flashed with a green burst of flame.

Yancey and Cabot wheeled about.

The brain mechanism was a mass of twisted wreckage.

"Blew up," said Cabot. "Something in the purple rays. This is the end of us now if our time-casting didn't work. We can't even operate the time-mechanism without the brain."

"Look here!" cried Cabot from a port.

Cameron and Yancey rushed to his side.

Swooping down toward the tractor was a black ship, an exact duplicate of the time machine of the devil-men.

Like an avenging meteor the black craft tore downward. From its nose flashes of green fire stabbed out viciously and living lightning bolts crashed among the devil-men.

Terrified, the devil-men tried to scurry out of reach, but the lightning bolts sought them out, caught them, burned them into cinders.

"A ship out of the future!" gasped Yancey. "Our radio worked!"

Chapter V—The Thrill-Hunters Andy Smith spoke earnestly.

"There's just one thing," he said. "We can't go back to the fifty-sixth century. Steve and I stole this time-machine. Lucky for you fellows we did, because apparently no one else caught your radio message. But if we're caught back there it means a life stretch on Mercury for us. Our machine is the second one ever stolen. The first one is over there."

He nodded toward the devil-men's machine, blasted on the hillside.

"Hell," said Yancey, "what are we blabbering around about? We have a machine that will take us through time and space. Any place we want to go. There's plenty of room for all of us. The ship's loaded with treasure. Do we have to decide where to go? Why can't we just skip around and stop wherever things look good to us? Like those Centaurians. Me, I don't care whether 1 ever go back to the twentieth century. I didn't leave anybody back there."

"Just an old maid aunt," Cabot spoke for himself. "And she didn't approve of me. Figured I should have settled down and made more money—added to the family fortune. Thought hunting was silly."

The four of them looked at Cameron. He grinned.

"I'd like to find out something about what the next couple, three hundred thousand years have done in the way of science," he admitted. "Maybe could pick up a few tricks. Skim the cream of the world's science. Probably lots of ideas we could incorporate in the time-flier."

"Wish we knew more about that time-brain," mourned Smith. "But I can't understand it. The fifty-sixth hasn't anything like it. Our machines are run on an entirely different basis. Warping of world lines principle."

They sat in silence for a moment. From the river came the roaring bellow of a mammoth bull.

"Say," asked Yancey, "has anyone seen anything of One-Eye?"

"No," said Cameron. "He must have hit for high timber when all the fireworks broke out."

"By the way," asked Steve Clark, "what are you going to do with Pascal's body?"

"Leave it here," suggested Yancey. "In the tractor. If we worked a million years we couldn't erect a more suitable burial site. Shut the door and leave him there. With his time brain. No one else will ever build another. It was all in Pascal's head. No notes, nothing. Just his brain. He told me he meant to write a book when he got around to it. We can't take the body back to the twentieth century and deliver it to the authorities. Because nobody would believe us. They'd throw us in the can."

"We might take it back and leave it somewhere on his premises for someone to find," Cabot suggested.

Yancey shook his head.

"That would be senseless. Just stir up a lot of fuss. An autopsy and an inquest and Scotland Yard half nuts over a new mystery. Pascal would rather be left here."

"I'm inclined to agree," said Cameron.

"That's settled then," said Smith getting to his feet. "What do you say we get started? We got lots of places to go."

Clark laughed.

"You know," he said, sweeping a hand toward the wrecked time-flier, "I get a big kick out of the way this Centaurian business turned out. For five hundred years those long-tailed gangsters just toured all over hell, robbing everything that looked like it was worth taking. Dragging it back into prehistoric time and hiding it away. And in the end all their work was done so that five Earthmen could use it to finance a life-time of time wandering." Andy Smith looked thoughtful.

"But," he said, "the Centaurians must have been robbing for some purpose. They must have had something in mind. They amassed billions of dollars in treasure. For what reason? Not just for the love of it, surely. Not just to look at. Not just for the thrill of taking it. What were they going to do with it?"

"There," said Cameron, "is one question that will never be answered."

Old One-Eye squatted inside the time-tractor.

It was snowing outside, but the tractor provided an excellent shelter and One-Eye was well wrapped in furs and skins. In one corner of the tractor was plenty of food.

Wrapped to his ears in a great mastadon robe, One-Eye nodded sleepily. Life was pleasant for the old Neanderthaler. Pleasant and easy. For the tribe which had wandered into the valley and found him living in the shining cave had taken him for a god. As a result they brought him food and furs, weapons and other offerings, gifts to appease his wrath, to court his favor. For who could doubt that anyone but a god would live in a cave that glinted in the sunshine, a cave made of hard, smooth stone, beautifully shaped, a cave that had no draughts and was secure against the attack of any wild beast.

One-Eye, dozing, dimly remembered the day when, curiously and idly jiggling at the door handle of the tractor, the handle moved in his hand and the door had swung smoothly open.

Henceforward the tractor had become One-Eye's cave. In it he had lived through many summers and many snows. In it he would live out the rest of his days.

One-Eye remembered the strange friends who had come to him in this shining cave. They had gone, long ago. And One-Eye missed them. Vaguely he was lonesome for them. Many times he wished they might come back again.

The old Neanderthaler drew in his breath with a slobbering sigh. Perhaps some day they would. In the meantime, he kept close and jealous guard and maintained the proper respect to the one of them that had stayed behind, the one whose bones lay neady arranged in one corner of the tractor.

But they had remembered One-Eye before they left, these other friends of his. Of that One-Eye was sure. Had they not left behind them, in the tractor, for him to find, the great shining stone which he had given them so long ago in exchange for the shining, keen-edged knife?

One-Eye slobbered pleasurably now as he looked at the stone, sparkling and flashing with hidden fire as it lay in the palm of his hand. One-Eye could not know that the stone had been left in the tractor accidentally, overlooked by the 20th and 56th century men before they left on their excursion into time. Not knowing this, One-Eye held close to him the thought that these friends of his had left behind a token . . . a token that some day, perhaps, they would return and sit around a fire with him and give him bones to gnaw and scratch his back where it itched the most.

Outside the wind howled dismally and the snow slanted down in a new fury. A blizzard raged over the Thames valley.

But One-Eye, snug in his furs, comfortable in his old age, a god to his contemporaries, played with a diamond the size of a man's fist, unmindful of the weather.

DOODAD

Ray Bradbury

There was a crowd pressed together in front of the shop.

Crowell light-footed it into that crowd, his face long and sad. He cast a glance back over one lean shoulder, muttered to himself, and widened a lane through the people, quick.

A hundred yards back of him a low shining black beetle car hummed to the curb. A door clicked open, and the fat man with the gray-white face climbed heavily out, his expression one of silent, dead-pan hatred. Two bodyguards sat in the front seat.

Gyp Crowell wondered why he bothered running away. He was tired. Tired of trying to tell news over the audio every night and waking up every morning with gangsters at his heels just because he had mentioned the fact that "a certain fat man has been doing some dishonest finagling of Plastics, Inc."

Now, here was the fat man himself. That black beetle car had trailed Crowell from Pasadena all the way here.

Crowell lost himself in the crowd. He wondered vaguely why this crowd should be so curious about the shop. Certainly it was unusual, but so is everything else in southern California. He broke through the inner circle, looked up at the large scarlet lettering over the blue glass windows, stared at it without a flicker of expression on his lean, perpetually sad face:

The sign on the shop said:

THINGUMABOBS DOODADS WATCHAMACALLITS HINKIES FORMODALDAFRAYS HOOTINANNIES GADGETS DOOHINGIES

Crowell took it in a dead calm. So this was the assignment his audio editor had given him to cover? Small-time screwpot stuff. Should be handled by a cub reporter. Nuts.

Then he thought about Steve Bishop, the fat man with the guns and the bodyguards. Any old port in a storm.

Crowell drew out a small transpara pad, scribbled down a few of those names—doohingies, hinkies—realizing that Bishop couldn't shoot him in this mob. Sure, maybe he had a right to shoot, after that threatened expose and the blackmail Gyp was using against Bishop: the three-dimensional color images—

Crowell eased over to the translucent door of the shop, pushed it, and followed it in. He'd be safe in here, and doing his routine news assignment, too.

Brilliant light flushed the interior of the shop; pouring over a cold blue-and-white color scheme. Crowell felt chilly. Counting seventeen display cases, he investigated their contents at random, dead-gray eyes flicking passionlessly.

A very tiny man popped out from behind a blue glass case. He was so tiny and bald that Crowell had to repress a desire to pat him upon the head in fatherly fashion. That bald head was made for patting.

The tiny man's face was quite square and a peculiar yellowed tint, as if it had been aged much in the same manner as an old newspaper. "Yes?" he said.

Crowell said "Hello" quietly, taking his time. Now that he was in here he had to say something. So he said, "I want to buy a ... a doohingey." His voice struck the same tiredly grieved note his face expressed.

"Fine, fine," said the tiny man. He dry-washed his hands. "I don't know why, but you're the first customer. The other people just stand out there and laugh at my shop. Now— what year doohingey will you have? And what model?"

Crowell didn't know. He knew only surprise, but his face didn't show it. He'd begun his inquiry as if he knew all about it. Now was no time to confess ignorance. He pretended to muse over the problem and finally said, "I guess a 1973 model would do. Nothing too modern."

The tiny proprietor blinked. "Ah. Ah, I see you are a man of precise decision and choice. Step right this way." And he scuttled down an aisle, to pause before a large case in which reclined a—something.

It may have been a crankshaft, and yet it resembled a kitchen shelf with several earrings dangling along a metal edge which supported three horn-shaped attachments and six mechanisms Crowell couldn't recognize, and a thatch of tentacles resembling shoelaces poured out of the top.

Crowell made a throat noise, as if strangling on a button.

Then he looked again. He decided that the tiny man was an utter idiot; but he kept this decision sealed in his gaunt brain.

As for the little proprietor, he was standing in a perfect ecstasy of happiness, eyes shining, lips parted in a warm smile, hands clasped over his chest, bending forward expectantly.

"Do you like it?" he asked.

Crowell nodded gravely. "Ye-ess. Ye-ess, I guess it's all right. I've seen better models, though."

"Better!" the little man exclaimed. He drew himself up. "Where?" he demanded. "Where!"

Crowell could have gotten flustered. He didn't. He simply took out his note pad, scribbled in it, kept his eyes on it and said cryptically, "You know where—" hoping this would satisfy the man.

It did.

"Oh!" gibbered the proprietor. "Then you know, too. How fine to deal with a connoisseur. How fine."

Crowell flicked a glance out the window, past the chuckling crowd. The fat man and his bodyguards and the black beetle car were gone. They had given up the chase for a while.

Crowell whipped his pad into his pocket, put his hand on the case with the doohingey in it. "I'm in a great hurry. Could I take it with me? I haven't money, but I'll make a down payment in trade. All right?"

"Perfectly all right."

"O. K." Crowell, with some misgiving, reached into his loose-fitting gray blouse and drew forth a metal apparatus, an old pipe cleaner that had seen better days. It was broken and bent into a weird shape. "Here you are. A hinkie. A 1944 model hinkie."

"Oh." The little man exhaled dismay. He stared with horror at Crowell. "Why, that's not a hinkie!" "Uh . . . isn't it?" "No, of course not."

"Of course not," repeated Crowell carefully.

"It's a watchamacallit," said the little man, blinking. "And not a whole one either; just part of one. You like your little joke, don't you, Mr.—"

"Crowell Yeah. My little joke. Yeah. If you don't mind. Trade? I'm in a great hurry."

"Yes, yes. I'll load it on a skate platform so we can roll it out to your car. One moment."

The tiny man moved swiftly, procuring a small wheeled truck, onto which he transferred the doohingey. He helped

Crowell roll it to the door. Crowell stopped him at the door. "Just a moment" He looked out. The black beetle car was nowhere in sight. Good. O. K."

The little man's voice was soft with caution. "Just remember, Mr. Crowell—please don't go around killing people with this doohingey. Be ... be selective Yes, that's it, be selective and discerning. Remember, Mr. Crowell?"

Crowell swallowed a number-ten-size lump in his throat.

"I'll remember," he said, and hurriedly finished the deal.

He took the low-level avenue tube out of the Wilshire district heading for his home in Brentwood. Nobody trailed him. He was sure of that. He didn't know what Bishop's plans for the next few hours might be. He didn't know. He didn't care. He was in the middle of another pall of melancholy. It was a lousy, screwball world, in which everybody had to be dishonest to get along. That fat slug of a Bishop, he—

The contraption on the seat beside him drew his attention. He looked at it with a little shaking dry laugh coming out of his mouth.

"So you're a doohingey?" he said. "Huh, everybody to then-own special racket. Bishop and his plastics, me and my blackmail, and that little dope with the doodads and hing-dooies. At that, I think the little guy is the smartest."

He turned his white beetle car off the sub-branch tube and went down a side tunnel that came up under his block. Garaging his car and scanning the surrounding park carefully, he lugged the doohingey upstairs, opened the dial door, went in, closed the door, and set the doohingey on the table. He poured himself a few fingers of brandy.

A moment later someone rapped softly, quietly and very slowly on the door. No use putting it off. Crowell answered and opened it.

"Hello, Crowell."

That fat man at the door had a face like cooked pork, cold and flabby. His eyelids drooped over red-veined, green-irised eyes. He had a cigar in his mouth that moved with his words.

"Glad you're home, Crowell. Been waiting to see you."

Crowell backed up and the fat man came in. The fat man sat down, put his hands over his round belly and said, "Well?"

Crowell swallowed. "I haven't got the images here, Bishop."

The fat man didn't say anything. He unlocked his two hands slowly, reached into his pocket as if to get a handkerchief and brought out a small paralysis gun instead. Cold blue steel.

"Change your mind, Crowell?"

CroweU's sad white face looked all the sadder with cold sweat on it. His throat muscles lengthened. He tried to get his brain working, but it was locked in cement, hard and hot and furiously, suddenly afraid. It didn't show through to the outside. He saw Bishop, the gun, the room joggling up and down in his vision.

And then he saw the . . . the doohingey.

Bishop shifted the safety stud on the gun. "Where'U you have it? Head or chest. They say you die quicker if they paralyze your brain first. I prefer touching the heart with it, myself. Well?"

"Wait a moment," said Crowell carelessly. He made himself draw back a slow pace. He sat down, all the while realizing that Bishop's finger was quavering on a hair trigger. "You're not going to kill me; you're going to thank me for letting you in on the greatest invention of our time."

Bishop's huge face didn't change a line or muscle. His cigar waggled. "Snap it, Crowell, I haven't time for greasing the tongue."

"Plenty of time," said Crowell, calmly. "I've got a perfect murder weapon for you. Believe it or not, I have. Take a look at that machine sitting on the table."

The gun remained firm, blue steel. Bishop's eyes slid to one side of his face, jerked back. "So what?" he said.

"So if you listen to me you can be the biggest plastics boss to ever hit the Pacific coast. You want that, don't you?"

Bishop's eyes widened a microscopic trifle, narrowed. "Are you stalling me for time?"

"Look, Bishop, I know when I'm cooked. That's why I'm cutting you in on ... on that damned doohingey of mine."

"On that what?"

"I just call it a doohingey. Haven't got a name for it yet." CroweU's brain was rotating, throwing ideas off one after another with the heated centrifuge of desperation. One idea stuck. Keep Bishop stalled until you have a chance to get his gun. Bluff him. Bluff him like hell. Now—

Crowell cleared his throat. "It . . . it's a radio killer," he lied. "All I have to do is give it directions and it'll kill anyone. No mess. No nothing. No clues. Perfect crime, Bishop. Interested?"

Bishop shook his head. "You been drinking. It's getting late—"

"Hold on," said Crowell, suddenly tensing forward, his gray eyes bright. "Don't move, Bishop. I've got you covered.

That machine is trained on you. Before you came in I set it to a certain frequency. One squeak out of you and it'll nail you!"

Bishop's cigar fell to the floor. The gun hand wavered.

Crowell saw his chance. His lean muscles bunched into one tight, compact coil. His mouth opened, words darted out. "Watch it, Bishop! All right, machine, do your stuff! Kill Bishop!"

And with that, Crowell catapulted himself. He felt himself leave the chair, saw the startled look on Bishop's face. The misdirection had worked. The gun went off. The silver beam sizzled past Crowell's ear and splashed on the wall. Crowell snatched with both hands to clutch Bishop, get the gun.

But Crowell never got to Bishop.

Bishop was dead.

The doohingey got there first.

Crowell had a drink. Then he had another. His stomach was floating in the stuff. But he still couldn't forget how Bishop looked—dead.

Bishop had died—how? He had been sort of stabbed, shot, strangled, electrocuted—he'd been . . . uh . . . you know what I mean? He was sort of—dead. Yeah, that's it. Dead.

Crowell had another drink just on account of that. He looked at the bedroom wall and decided that sometime in the next minutes those bodyguards would be busting in up here, looking for their boss. But Crowell couldn't stand the thought of going in the living room to see where Bishop lay on the floor next to the—doohingey. He shivered.

After two more drinks that didn't even touch his mind, he got around to packing some of his clothes. He didn't know where he was going, but he was going. He was about to leave the house when the audio made a gonging noise.

"Yes?"

"Mr. Crowell?" "Talking."

"This is the little man at the Doodads Shop." "Oh, yeah. Hello."

"Would you mind dropping by the shop again? And please bring the doohingey with you, yes? I fear that I've shortchanged you on that model. I have another one here that is much better."

Crowell's voice got caught in his throat. 'This one seems to be working fine."

He cut the contact and held onto his brains with both hands

so they couldn't slide down into his shoes. He hadn't planned on killing anybody. He didn't like the idea. And that put him on the spot even more than before. Those gunmen bodyguards wouldn't stop now until—

His jaw stiffened. Let them come after him. He wasn't running away this time. He was staying in town, doing his news work as if nothing had happened. He was tired of the whole business. He didn't care if he got shot now or not. He'd even laugh with joy when they were shooting.

No use making unnecessary trouble, though. He'd carry the fat man's—body—down to the garage, put it in the back seat of the white beetle, and drive past some lonely spot, bury it, and hold the bodyguards off by telling them he had kidnaped Bishop. Yeah, that was a good idea. Clever man this Crowell.

"All right—" He tried to lift Bishop's tremendous body. He couldn't. He finally got the body downstairs to the beetle, though—the doohingey did it.

Crowell stayed upstairs until the job was done. He didn't like to watch the doohingey at work with a dead body.

"Ah, Mr. Crowell." The little proprietor opened the gleaming glass door. There was still a small crowd outside. "I see you brought the doohingey. Good."

Crowell set the contraption on the counter, thinking quickly to himself. Well. Now maybe explanations would be made. He'd have to be subtle; no blunt questions. He'd—

"Look, Mr. Whosis, I didn't tell you, but I'm an audio reporter. I'd like to broadcast a story about you and your shop for the Audio-News. But I'd like it in your own words."

"You know as much about the thingumabobs as I do," replied the little man.

"Do I?"

"That's the impression you gave me—"

"Oh, sure. Sure I do. But it's always better when we quote somebody. See?"

"Your logic is nebulous, but I shall co-operate. Your listeners will probably want to know all about my Doodad Shop, eh? Well, it took thousands of years of traveling to make it grow."

"Miles," corrected Crowell.

"Years," stated the little man.

"Naturally," said Crowell.

"You might call my shop the energy result of misconstrued improper semantics. These instruments might well be labeled 'Inventions That Do Everything Instead Of Something.' "

"Oh, of course," said Crowell, blankly.

"Now, when a man shows another man a particular part of a beetle car's automotive controls and he can't recall the proper label for that part, what does he do?"

Crowell saw the light. "He calls it a doodad or a hingey or a whatchamacallit. Right?"

"Correct. And if a woman, talking to another woman about her washing machine or egg beater or knitting or crochetting and she had a psychological blocking, forgets the proper semantic label, what does she say?"

"She says 'Take this hungamabob and trinket the turndel with it. You grasp the dipsy and throw it over the flimsy,'" said Crowell, like a school kid suddenly understanding mathematics.

"Correct!" cried the little man. "All right, then. Therefore we have the birth of incorrect semantic labels that can be used to describe anything from a hen's nest to a motor-beetle crankcase. A doohingey can be the name of a scrub mop or a toupee. It's a term used freely by everyone in a certain culture. A doohingey isn't just one thing. It's a thousand things.

"Well, now, what I have done is form into energy the combined total of all things a doohingey has ever referred to. I have entered the minds of innumerable civilized humans, extracted their opinion of what they call a doohingey, what they call a thingum, and created from raw atomic energy a physical contraption of those mentally incorrect labelings. In other words, my inventions are three-dimensional representations of a semantic idea. Since the minds of people make a doohingey anything from a carpet sweeper to a number-nine-size nut-and-bolt, my inventions follow the same pattern. The doohingey you carried home today could do almost anything you would want it to do. Many of the inventions have robotlike functions, due to the fact that the abilities of movement, thought and mechanical versatility were included in them."

"They can do everything?"

"Well, not everything. Most of the inventions have about sixty different processes, all alien, all mixed, all shapes, sizes, molded into them. Each one of my creations has a different set of services. Some are big. Some small. Some of the big ones have many, many services. The small ones have only one or two simple functions. No two are alike. Think of the space and time and money you save by buying a doohingey!"

"Yeah," said Crowell. He thought about Bishop's body. "Your doohingey is certainly versatile, all right."

"That reminds me," said the little man. "About that 1944 model hinkie you sold me in trade. Where did you get it?"

"Get it? You mean that pipe cle—I mean, the hinkie? I— Oh, well, I—"

"You don't have to be secretive. We share trade secrets, you know. Did you make it yourself?"

"I ... I bought it and worked on it. The ... the power of thought, you know."

"Then you know the secret? How astonishing! I thought I was the only one who knew about the transmission of thought into energy forms. Brilliant man. Did you study in Rruhre?"

"No. I was always sorry I never got there. Never had the opportunity. I had to struggle along alone. Look, I'd like to turn this doohingey in for another apparatus. I don't like it."

"You don't like it? Why not?"

"Oh I just don't. Too cumbersome. Give me something simple every time."

Yeah, simple, he thought, something you can see how it works.

"What kind of machine do you want this time, Mr. Crowell?"

"Give me a . . . gadget." "What year gadget?"

"Does that make a great deal of difference, what year?" "Oh, you're joking again, aren't you?" Crowell swallowed. "I'm joking."

"You know, of course, that in each year for thousands of years that the type of gadget and the name for a gadget would be different. A thingooey of the year 1965 would be an oddsblodkins in 1492. Or a ettubrutus in the days of Caesar."

"Are you joking?" asked Crowell. "No. Never mind. Give me my gadget and I'll go home."

That word "home" startled Crowell. It wouldn't be wise to go there just yet. Hide out for a while until he could send a message to the bodyguard saying that he was holding Bishop prisoner. Yes. That was it. That was safest.

In the meantime he was curious about this shop, but not curious enough to have horrible contraptions like that doohingey near him. The little man was talking:

"I've a whole case full of thingumabobs from all historical periods I'll give you," he was saying. "I'm so overstocked with stuff, and nobody but you takes me seriously so far. I haven't made one sale today. It's quite saddening."

Crowell felt sorry for the man, but—"Tell you what. I've got an empty storage room in my house. Send the stuff around in a few days and I'll look it over and take what I like."

"Can't you take some of it with you now?" pleaded the little man.

"I don't think I can—"

"Oh, it's small. Very small stuff. Really. Here. I'll show you. A few little boxes of trinkets and knickknacks Here. Here they are." He bent behind a counter, brought out six boxes, enough to load CroweU's arms up to the chin.

Crowell opened one box. "Sure. I'll take these. Nothing but soup strainers, paring knives, lemon juicers, doorknobs and old meerschaum pipes from Holland. Sure, I'll take these." They looked safe. They were small, simple. Nothing wrong with them.

"Oh, thank you. Thank you. Put these in the back of your beetle, gratis. I'm glad to clean them out of the store. I've done so much energy creating in the last few years or so I'll be relieved to get rid of them. Sick and tired of looking at them. There you go."

Crowell, his arms full, staggered out to his white beetle and tossed the stuff in the back seat. He waved to the little man, said he'd see him again in a few days, and drove off.

The hour spent in the shop, the gibbering joy of the little man, the bright lights, had made him forget, for the time, about Bishop's bodyguards and Bishop himself.

The beetle car hummed under him. He headed downtown toward the Audio studios, trying to decide what was wisest to do. He reached back, curiously, and pulled out one of the little gadgets. It was nothing more nor less than a pipe. Seeing it, made him hungry for a smoke, so he took the pipe, filled it with makings from his blouse pouch, and lit it, experimentally, carefully. He puffed smoke. Fine. A good pipe.

He was busy enjoying the pipe when he noticed something in the rear-view mirror. He was being followed by two black beetle cars. No mistaking those low ebony high-powered crawlers.

He cursed silently and put on speed. The beetles were catching up with him, gaining speed every instant. There were two thugs in one of them, and two in the other.

"I'll stop and tell them that I'm holding their boss as hostage," said Crowell to himself.

There were guns gleaming in the hands of the thugs in the black cars.

Crowell realized that. He had planned on hiding away and calling them and giving them his ultimatum. But—this! They were coming after him. He wouldn't have a chance to explain before they'd shoot him down.

He increased the speed with his foot. Sweat came out to play on his forehead. What a mess. He was beginning to wish he hadn't returned the doohingey to the shop. He could use it now, just as he had inadvertendy used it on Bishop.

Doohingey! Gadgets!

Crowell cried out in relief. Maybe—

He reached into the back seat and scrabbled wildly among the litter of gadgets. None of them looked like they could do anything, but he'd try, anyhow.

"O. K., you thingums, do your stuff! Protect me, damn you!"

There was a rattling crisp noise and something metallic thumped past Crowefl's ears, winged outside on transparent glass wings back in the direction of the pursuing enemy car and hit it head on.

There was an explosion of green fire and gray smoke.

The fraltamoret had done its work. It was a combination of a little boy's automatic airplane and an explosive projectile.

Crowell pressed the floor plate and shot his beetle ahead again. The second car was still pursuing. They wouldn't give up.

"Get them!" cried Crowell. "Get them, too! Get them any way you can!" He dumped two boxes of trinkets out ^he window. Several of them took flight. The others bounced harmlessly on the cement.

Two missiles glittered in the air. They looked like old-fashioned pinking shears, sharp and bright, with an anti-gravity main-mechanistic drive attached. They sang along the boulevard until they got to the remaining black beetle car.

They went in through the open windows gleaming.

The black beetle car lost its control and went off the avenue, turning over and over, smashing, and bursting into a sudden savage fire.

Crowell slumped in his seat. He let the beetle slow down and pull around a corner and over to the curb, stopping. He was breathing fast. His heart crashed.

He could go home now, if he wanted to. There would be no one else waiting for him at home, waiting to ambush him, stop him, question him, threaten him.

He could go home now. Funny, but he didn't feel relieved or happy. He just felt dark, unhappy, ill at ease. The world was a lousy place to live in. He had a bitter taste in his mouth.

He drove home. Well, maybe things would be better. Maybe.

He took the remaining boxes of trinkets and got out of the beede and took the vac-elevator upstairs. He opened the door and laid the boxes down and sorted through them.

He still had that pipe in his mouth, after all the excitement. He had picked it up automatically and put it back in his mouth. He was nervous. Needed another smoke now to quiet his mind.

He put fresh tobacco in his new pipe and puffed it into life. That little man was a screw for giving him all this stuff. Dangerous to have this sort of knowledge lying around in the world. All kinds of wrong people might get hold of it, use it.

He laughed and puffed at his pipe.

From now on, he'd play big shot. With the help of the little man and the shop, he'd make those big Plastics officials jump, pay him money, obey his every thought. Damn them.

It sounded like a lot of trouble, though. He sat down and scowled and brooded about it and his thoughts got dark, like they had been for so many years. Pessimistic.

What was the use of trying to do anything in this world? Why did he bother to go on living? He got so tired.

Sometimes, like tonight and so many nights in the long years, he felt that it might be a good idea if those gunmen caught up with him and filled him full of paralysis. Sometimes, if he had a gun in his own fingers, he'd blast his brains out.

There was a sharp explosion. Crowell stood up suddenly. He stiffened and fell down on his knees.

He'd forgotten about the pipe in his mouth—forgotten it was a thingumabob gadget.

It took an unpleasantly fatal way of reminding him.

AUTOMATON

A. E. van Vogt

The human automaton stirred uneasily in his small, almost invisible plane. His eyes strained into the visiplate, scanning the sky ahead. Out of the blue came two flashes of fire. Instantly, the plane careened as if struck from a double blow.

It fell slowly at first, then more rapidly, down into the enemy lines. As the Earth came near, a resisting mechanism went into operation. The rate of fall grew slower. The automaton had time to see that there was a vast ruin of a city below. Soundlessly, the tiny machine settied into the shelter of the crumbled base of what had once been a building.

A moment passed, then the radio beside him sibilated. Voices which were strange to him were talking to each other.

"Bill!" said the first voice.

"Shoot!"

"Did we get him?"

"Don't think so. Not permanentiy, anyway. I think he went down under at least partial control, though it's hard to tell with that safety device they have. My guess is he's down there somewhere with his motor shut off.

"I think we disabled him."

"Well, then, you know the routine when one of 'em is cornered just inside our lines. Do your psychology stuff. I'll call the Vulture."

"Don't pass the buck to me. I'm sick of spouting those lines. You give 'em!"

"All right. Shoot me the come-on!"

"Hmmmm . . . he's down there. Think we ought to go after him?"

"Naw! The automatons they send out this far are basically the clever ones. That means we couldn't capture him. He'd be just fast enough on the uptake to make it necessary for us to kill him, and who the devil wants to kill those poor, tortured slaves?—Did you get his picture?"

"Yep, he was listening with an intent look on his face. Fine

looking chap . . . It's funny, and kind of terrible how all this started, isn't it?"

"Yeah. Wonder what this guy's number is."

There was a distinct pause. The automaton stirred uneasily. His number? Ninety-two, of course. What else? The voice was speaking again:

"Poor fellow probably doesn't remember that he once had a name."

The other voice said, "Who'd have thought when they first made a human duplicate—flesh and blood and bones and all—that today, only fifty years later, we'd be fighting for our lives against people who look exactly like us, except that they're natural eunuchs."

The automaton listened with vague attention, as the two men went on talking. Every little while he nodded as their words reminded him of something he had almost forgotten. The human duplicates had first been called robots. They had resented that name, and changed it around to make it Tobor, and that stuck. The Tobors proved to be very effective scientists, and at first no one noticed how rapidly they took over scientific posts in every part of the world. Nor was it immediately noticed that the Tobors were secretly carrying on a duplication campaign on a tremendous scale. The great shock to the human masses came when Tobor-infiltrated governments on each continent simultaneously enacted laws declaring duplication would henceforth be the only means of procreation. Sex was forbidden under pentalty of a fine for the first offense, then imprisonment, and then, for recalcitrants, the Tobor-invented process of being made into an automaton.

A special police organization—which turned out to be already in existence—was set up to administer the new law. Tobor enforcement officers swung into action immediately, and there was some street fighting on that first day. Neither side even thought of compromise, so within two weeks full-scale war was raging.

The account ended, as Bill said: "I guess he's heard enough. Come on, let's go."

There was muffled laughter, then silence.

The automaton waited, disturbed. Sketchy memories were in his mind of a past when there had been no war, and, somewhere, there was a girl, and another world.

The unreal pictures faded. And again there was only this ship that clothed his body in almost form-fitting metal. There was the need to go on, aerial pictures to be taken . . . Must get up into the air!

He felt the ship tug in response to his urgent thought, but no movement followed. For seconds, he lay lethargically, then came a second urge for flight. Once more the tiny ship writhed with effort, but no upward movement resulted.

This time the automaton had the slow thought: "Something must have fallen across the ship, and is holding it down . . . Have to go out and remove it , . ."

He squirmed against the metal and padding that encased him. Sweat poured down his cheeks, but presently he stood free in ankle deep dust. As he had been trained to do on such occasions, he checked his equipment . . . weapons, tools, gas mask—

He flung himself flat on the ground as a great, dark ship swooped down out of the sky, and setded to the ground several hundred yards away. From his prone position, the automaton watched it, but there was no sign of movement now. Puzzled, the automaton climbed to his feet. He recalled that one of the men on the radio had said a Vulture had been called.

So they had been playing a trick on him, pretending to go away. Clearly visible on the ship's hull was the name: Vulture 121.

Its appearance seemed to suggest that an attack was to be made. His strong, determined mouth tightened. They'd soon learn it didn't pay to meddle with a Tobor slave.

Die for Tobor, mighty Tobor . . .

Tensely, the young woman watched as her pilot lowered the high-speed plane toward the leveled ruin of the city where the Vulture lay. The big ship was unmistakable. It towered above the highest remnant of shattered wall. It was a black bulk against the gray-dark sameness of the rubble.

There was a bump and she was out of the machine, clutching her bag. Twice, her right ankle twisted cruelly as she raced over the uneven ground. Breathlessly, she ran up the narrow gangplank.

A steel door clicked open. As she hurried inside, she glanced behind her. The door clanged shut; and she realized gratefully that she was safe.

She stopped, as her eyes had to accustom themselves to the dim metal room. After a moment she saw a little group of men. One of them, a small individual with glasses and a thin face, stepped forward. He took the suitcase from her with one hand, and with the other, he grabbed her hand, and shook it warmly.

"Good girl!" he said. "That was well and swifdy run, Miss Harding. I'm sure no spying ship of the robots could have identified you in any way during the half-minute you were exposed. Oh, pardon me."

He smiled. "I shouldn't be calling them robots, should I? They've reversed all that, haven't they? Tobors is their name. It does have more rhythm and should be psychologically more satisfying to them. There now, you've caught your breath. By the way, I'm Doctor Claremeyer."

"Doctor," Juanita Harding managed to say, "are you sure it's he?"

"Definitely, your fiance, John Gregson, chemist extraordinary." ... It was a younger man who spoke. He stepped forward and took the suitcase from the older man's fingers. "The patrol got the picture by the new process, whereby we tune in on their communicating plates. It was flashed to headquarters, and then transmitted to us."

He paused, and smiled engagingly. "My name is Madden. That's Phillips with the long, gloomy face. The big fellow with the uncombed hair, lurking there in the background like an elephant, is Rice, our field man. And you've already met Doctor Claremeyer."

Rice said gruffly, "We've got a hell of a job here, ma'am, begging your pardon for them rough words."

Miss Harding took off her hat with a brisk sweep of one hand. The shadows retreated from her face into her eyes, but there was a hint of a smile on her lips. "Mr. Rice, I live with a father whose nickname is 'Cyclone' Harding. To him, our everyday language is an enemy which he attacks with all available weapons. Does that answer your apology?"

The big man chuckled. "You win. But let's get down to business. Madden, you've got a brain that thinks in words, tell Miss Harding the situation!"

"Right!" The young man took up the refrain grimly. "We had the good fortune to be in the air near here when the first report came through that an automaton had been brought down alive. As soon as the identification arrived, we asked army headquarters to set up a defense ring of all available planes. They stripped the entire nearby line to help us."

He paused, frowning. "It has had to be very carefully done, because we don't want to give the Tobors any idea of what's going on. Your fiance can't get away; that is certain, I think. And he can't be rescued unless they come out in force of a size that catches us momentarily off guard. Our big problem is to capture him alive."

"And that, of course—" It was Claremeyer, who cut in with a shrug of his shoulders—"may be easy or it may be difficult. Unfortunately, it must be fast. The Tobors will not be unaware long of this concentration of forces, then they will examine his file, analyze at least a part of the true situation, and act.

"The second unfortunate aspect is that in the past we have allowed ourselves a percentage of failures. You must realize that our tactics are almost entirely psychological, based upon fundamental human impulses."

Patientiy, he explained the method.

"Ninety-two! . . . This is Sorn speaking."

The voice came sharp, insistent, commanding, from the automaton's wrist radio. The automaton stirred in his concrete shelter. "Yes, Master?"

Apparently, the contact was all that was desired, for he heard the other say, "He's still alive!" The voice was farther away this time, as if the humanoid had turned to speak to someone else.

A second voice spoke hesitatingly, "Normally, I wouldn't have bothered, but this is the one that destroyed his file. Now, a Vulture crew is trying to save him."

"They do it every time."

"I know, I know." The second speaker sounded impatient with himself, as if he was aware that he might be acting foolishly. "Still, they've already given a lot of time to him, more than normal, it seems to me. And there is the fact that this particular ship engaged in a lengthy series of code messages with its headquarters. Afterwards, a woman arrived on the scene."

"They nearly always use women in these rescue operations." The Tobor's voice held a note of distaste, but his words were a dismissal of the other's argument.

This time there was silence for many seconds. Finally, the doubting one spoke again, "In my department, I have been acutely conscious that somewhere in our operations about two years ago we unexpectedly captured a human chemist who, it was stated, had discovered a process for sexualizing Tobors."

His emotional disgust was almost too much for him, and in spite of the frankness of his next words, his voice trembled. "Unfortunately, we learned of this too late for us to identify the individual involved. Apparently, he was put through a routine interview, and dementalized."

He had full control of himself again and went on sardonically. "Of course the whole thing could be just a propaganda story, designed to unnerve us. And yet, at the time, our Intelligence reported that an atmosphere of gloom and depression pervaded human headquarters. In appears that we raided a city, captured him in his home, wrecked his laboratory and burned his papers."

His tone implied that he was shrugging. "It was one of scores of similar raids, quite impossible to identify. Prisoners captured in such forays were in no way differentiated from those captured in other ways."

Once more, silence . . . then . . . "Shall I order him to kill himself?"

"Find out if he has a weapon?"

There was a pause. The voice came close, "Have you a blaster, Ninety-two?"

The human automaton, who had listened to the conversation with a faraway blankness in his eyes and mind, alerted as the question was directed at him through his wrist radio.

"I have hand weapons," he said dully.

Once more the interrogator turned away from the distant microphone. "Well?" he said.

"Direct action is too dangerous," said the second Tobor. "You know how they resist actual suicide. Sometimes it brings them right out of their automaton state. The will to live is too basic."

"Then we're right back where we started."

"No! Tell him specifically to defend himself to the death. That's on a different level. That's an appeal to his loyalty, to his indoctrinated hatred of our human enemies and to his patriotism to the Tobor cause."

Lying in the rubble, the automaton nodded as the Master's firm voice issued the commands. Naturally ... to the death ... of course.

On the radio, Sorn still sounded dissatisfied. "I think we should force the issue. I think we should concentrate projectors in the area, and see what happens."

"They've always accepted such challenges in the past."

"Up to a point only. I believe most earnestly that we should test their reaction. I feel that this man resisted too hard during his captivity and there's a tremendous pressure working on him."

"Human beings are very deceptive," said the other doubtfully. "Some of them are merely anxious to go home. It seems to be a powerful motivation."

His objection must have been rhetorical. After a bare moment of silence, he looked up and said decisively, "Very well, we'll attack!"

By an hour after dark, a hundred projectors were engaged on both sides. The night flashed with long trailers of bright flame.

"Phew!" Rice raced up the gangplank into the ship. His heavy face was scarlet with effort. As the door clanged shut behind him, he gasped, "Miss Harding, that fiance of yours is a dangerous man. He's trigger happy, and needs more propaganda."

The girl was pale. She had watched Rice's attempt to get the screen into position from the great barrier window in the observation room. She said, "Maybe I should go out now!"

"And get burned!" Doctor Claremeyer came forward. He was blinking behind his glasses. "Now, don't you feel badly, Miss Harding. I know it seems incredible that the man who loves you has been so changed that he would kill you on sight—but you'll just have to accept the reality. The fact that the Tobors have decided to put up a fight for him hasn't helped matters any."

"Those beasts!" she said. It was a dry sob. "What are you going to do now?"

"More propaganda."

"You think he'll hear it over the roar of the projectors?" She was astonished.

"He knows what it is," said Doctor Claremeyer matter-of-factly. "The pattern has been established. Even a single word coming through will be a reminder of the whole pattern."

A few moments later, she was listening gloomily while the loud speakers blared their message:

". . . You are a human being. We are human beings. You were captured by the robots. We want to rescue you from the robots. These robots call themselves Tobors because it sounds better. They're robots. They're not human beings, but you are a human being. We are human beings, and we want to rescue you. Do everything that we ask you to do. Do nothing that they tell you to do. We want to make you well. We want to save you. . . ."

Abruptly, the ship moved. A moment later, the Vulture commander came over.

"I had to give the order to take off," he said. "We'll come back again about dawn. The Tobors must be losing equipment at a terrific rate. It's a bridgehead fight for them, but it's getting too hot for us also."

He must have felt the girl would place the worst construction on the withdrawal order. He explained to her in a low voice:

"We can depend on a slave using every precaution to stay alive. He'll have been given training for that. Besides, we did get the screen up and the picture will show over and over."

He went on, before she could speak, "Besides, we have been given permission to try direct contact with him."

"What does that mean?"

"We'll use a weak signal that won't carry more than a few hundred yards. That way they won't be able to tune in on what we're saying. Our hope is that he'll be sufficiently stimulated to tell us his secret formula."

Juanita Harding sat for a long time, frowning. Her comment, when it finally came, was extremely feminine. "I'm not sure," she said, "that I approve of the pictures you're showing on that screen."

The commander said judiciously, "We've got to strike at the basic drives of human beings."

He departed hastily.

John Gregson, who had been an automaton, became aware that he was clawing at a bright screen. As he grew more conscious of his actions, he slowed his frantic attempt to grasp at the elusive shapes that had lured him out of hiding. He stepped back.

All around him was intense darkness. As he backed away a little further, he stumbled over a twisted girder. He started to fall, but saved himself by grasping at the burned and rusted metal. It creaked a little from his weight and flakes of metal came away free in his hands.

He retreated anxiously into the darkness to take better advantage of the light reflections. For the first time he recognized that he was in one of the destroyed cities. He thought: "But how did I get here? What's happened to me?"

A voice from his wrist radio made him jump. "Sorn!" it said insistently. The icy tone stiffened Gregson. Deep in his mind a bell of recognition clanged its first warning. He was about to reply, when he realized that it was not he who had been addressed.

"Yes?" The answer was clear enough, but it seemed to come from a much greater distance. "Where are you now?"

Sorn said slowly, "I landed about half a mile from the screen. It was a misjudgment, as I intended to come down much closer. Unfortunately, in landing I got my directions twisted. I can't see a thing."

"The screen they're using for the pictures is still up. I can see a reflection of it in Ninety-two's Wristo. Surely, it'll be a bright landmark."

"It must be in a hollow, or behind a pile of debris. I'm in pitch darkness. Contact Ninety-two and—"

The first reference to his number had started the train of associations. The second one brought such a flood of hideous memory that Gregson cringed. In a flashing kaleidoscope of pictures, he realized his situation and tried to recall the immediate sequence of events that had brought him back to control of himself. Somebody had called his name insistently. . . . not his number—his name. Each time they had asked him a question, something about a formula for— For what? He couldn't remember, something about—about— Abruptly, it came back!

Crouching there in the darkness, he closed his eyes in a sheer physical reaction. "I gave it them. I told them the formula. But who was—them?"

It could only have been some member of the crew of a Vulture ship, he told himself shakily. The Tobors didn't know his name. To them he was . . . Ninety-two.

That recollection brought him back with a start to his own predicament. He was just in time to hear the voice on the Wristo say vindictively:

"All right, I've got it. I'll be over there in ten minutes."

The Tobor in the distant Control Center was impersonal. "This is on your own head, Sorn. You seem to have an obsession about this case."

"They were broadcasting to him on a local wave," said Sorn in a dark voice, "so direct, so close that we couldn't catch what they were saying. And his answer, when he finally made it, was interfered with so .that, again, we didn't hear it, but it was a formula of some kind. I'm counting on the possibility that he was not able to give them the full description. Since he's still at the screen, he hasn't been rescued, so if I can kill him now, within minutes—"

There was a click ... the voice trailed off into silence.

Gregson stood in the darkness beside the screen, and shud-deringly considered his position.

Where was the Vulture? The sky was pitch dark, though there was an ever-so-faint light in the East, the first herald of the coming dawn. The sound of the projectors had become a mutter far away, no longer threatening. The great battle of the night was over.

. . . The battle of the individuals was about to begin. . . .

Gregson retreated even farther into the darkness, and fumbled over his body for hand weapons. There were none. "But that's ridiculous," he told himself shakily. "I had a blaster and—"

He stopped the thought. Once again, desperate now, he searched himself . . . Nothing. He guessed that in his mad scramble to get to the screen, he had lost his weapons.

He was still teetering indecisively when he heard a movement in the near night.

Vulture 121 landed gently in the intense darkness of the false dawn. Juanita Harding had taken off her clothes, and now had a robe wrapped around her. She did not hesitate when Rice beckoned. He grinned at her reassuringly.

"I'm taking along a cylinder of the stuff," he said, "just in case he doesn't become inspired quickly enough."

She smiled wanly, but said nothing. Doctor Claremeyer came to the door with them. He gave her hand a quick squeeze.

"Remember," he said, "this is war!" She replied, "I know. And all's fair in love and war, isn't it?"

"Now, you're talking."

A moment later they were gone into the night.

Gregson was retreating in earnest and he felt a lot better. It was going to be hard for any one person to locate him in this vast maze of shattered concrete and marble and metal.

Moment by moment, however, the desolate horizon grew lighter. He saw the ship suddenly in the shadowy ruins to his right. Its shape was unmistakable. Vulture! Gregson raced toward it over the uneven ruins of what had once been a paved street.

Gasping with relief, he saw that the gangplank was down. As he raced up it, two men covered him with their blasters. Abruptly, one of them gasped, "It's Gregson!"

Weapons were scraped back into their leathery holsters. Hands grasped eagerly at his hands, and there was a pumping of arms. Eyes searched his face eagerly for signs of sanity, found them, and glowed with pleasure. A thousand words attacked the dawn air.

"We got your formula."

"Great . . . wonderful."

"The genius made up some of the hormone gas in our own ship lab. How fast does it work?"

Gregson guessed that the "genius" was the tall, gloomy individual who had been introduced as Phillips. He said, "It takes only a few seconds. After all, you breathe it in and it's taken right into your bloodstream. It's pretty powerful stuff."

Madden said, "We had some idea of using it to intensify your own reactions. In fact, Rice took some—" He stopped. "But just a minute," he said, "Rice and Miss Harding are—" He stopped again.

It was the small man, Doctor Claremeyer, who took up the thread of Madden's thought. "Mr. Gregson," he said, "we saw a man on our infra-red plates heading for the screen. He was too far away to identify, so we took it for granted it was you. And so, Rice and Miss Harding went out and—" .The Commander cut him off at that point. "Quick, let's get out there! It may be a trap!"

Gregson scarcely heard that. He was already racing down the gangplank.

"Sorn!" The voice on the Wristo sounded impatient. "Sorn, what's happened to you?"

In the half-darkness near the screen, the men and the girl listened to the words of the Tobor on Gregson's Wristo. From their vantage point they watched Sorn looking at the pictures on the screen itself.

"Sorn, your last report, was that you were near where Ninety-two was last known to be hiding—"

Rice put one plump hand over Gregson's Wristo, to block off the sound; and whispered, "That's when I let him have it. Boy, I never had a better idea than when I took along a cylinder of your gas, Gregson. I shot a dose of it at him from fifty feet, and he never even knew what hit him."

"—Sorn, I know you're still alive. I can hear you mumbling to yourself."

Rice said, "We'll have to be careful of our dosage in the future. He's practically ready to eat up the pictures. You can see for yourself—the Tobor-human war is as good as over."

Gregson watched silently as the one-time Tobor leader scrambled eagerly in front of the screen. A dozen girls were on parade beside a pool. Periodically, they would all dive into the water. There would be a flash of long, bare limbs, the glint of a tanned back, then they would all climb out. They did that over and over.

The trouble was, each time Sorn tried to grasp one of the images, his shadow fell across the screen and blotted her out. Frustrated, he rushed to another, only to have the same thing happen again.

"Sorn, answer me!"

This time the Tobor paused. The reply he made then must have shocked the entire Tobor headquarters, and the effect reached out to all the Tobor armies around the world.

Gregson tightened his arm appreciatively around Juanita's waist (she still wore her robe over the beauty with which she was to have lured him back to safety) as he listened to the fateful words.

"Women," Sorn was saying, "they're wonderful!"

THE PEOPLE OF THE CRATER

Andre Norton

Chapter One—Through the Blue Haze

Six months and three days after the Peace of Shanghai was signed and the great War of 1965-1970 declared at an end by an exhausted world, a young man huddled on a park bench in New York, staring miserably at the gravel beneath his badly worn shoes. He had been trained to fill the pilot's seat in the control cabin of a fighting plane and for nothing else. The search for a niche in civilian life had cost him both health and ambition.

A newcomer dropped down on the other end of the bench. The flyer studied him bitterly. He had decent shoes, a warm coat, and that air of satisfaction with the world which is the result of economic security. Although he was well into middle age, the man had a compact grace of movement and an air of alertness.

"Aren't you Captain Garin Featherstone?" Startled, the flyer nodded dumbly.

From a plump billfold the man drew a clipping and waved it toward his seat mate. Two years before Captain Garin Featherstone of the United Democratic Forces had led a perilous bombing raid into the wilds of Siberia to wipe out the vast expeditionary army secretly gathering there. It had been a spectacular affair and had brought the survivors some fleeting fame.

"You're the sort of chap I've been looking for," the stranger folded the clipping again, "a flyer with courage, initiative and brains. The man who led that raid is worth investing in."

"What's the proposition?" asked Featherstone wearily. He no longer believed in luck.

"I'm Gregory Fareon," the other returned as if that should answer the question.

"The Antarctic man!"

From Fantasy Book, No. 1, 1947. Copyright 1947 by Fantasy Publishing Co., Inc.

"Just so. As you have probably heard, I was halted on the eve of my last expedition by the sudden spread of war to this country. Now I am preparing to sail south again."

"But I don't see--------- "

"How you can help me? Very simple, Captain Featherstone.

I need pilots. Unfortunately the war has disposed of most

of them. I'm lucky to contact one such as yourself------------- "

And it was as simple as that. But Garin didn't really believe that it was more than a dream until they touched the glacial shores of the polar continent some months later. As they brought ashore the three large planes he began to wonder at the driving motive behind Farson's vague plans.

When the supply ship sailed, not to return for a year, Farson called them together. Three of the company were pilots, all war veterans, and two were engineers who spent most of their waking hours engrossed in the maps Farson produced.

'Tomorrow," the leader glanced from face to face, "we

start inland. Here-------- " On a map spread before him he in-

dicated a line marked in purple.

"Ten years ago I was a member of the Verdane expedition. Once, when flying due south, our plane was caught by some freakish air current and drawn off its course. When we were totally off our map, we saw in the distance a thick bluish haze. It seemed to rise in a straight line from the ice plain to the sky. Unfortunately our fuel was low and we dared not risk a closer investigation. So we fought our way back to the base.

"Verdane, however, had little interest in our report and we did not investigate it. Three years ago that Kattack expedition hunting oil deposits by the order of the Dictator reported seeing the same haze. This time we are going to explore it!"

"Why," Garin asked curiously, "are you so eager to penetrate this haze?—I gather that's what we're to do—"

Farson hesitated before answering. "It has often been suggested that beneath the ice sheeting of this continent may be hidden mineral wealth. I believe that the haze is caused by some form of volcanic activity, and perhaps a break in the crust."

Garin frowned at the map. He wasn't so sure about that explanation, but Farson was paying the bills. The flyer shrugged away his uneasiness. Much could be forgiven a man who allowed one to eat regularly again.

Four days later they set out. Helmly, one of the engineers,

Rawlson, a pilot, and Farson occupied the first plane. The other engineer and pilot were in the second and Garin, with the extra supplies, was alone in the third.

He was content to be alone as they took off across the blue-white waste. His ship, because of its load, was logy, so he did not attempt to follow the other two into the higher lane. They were in communication by radio and Garin, as he snapped on his earphones, remembered something Farson had said that morning:

"The haze affects radio. On our trip near it the static was very bad. Almost," with a laugh, "like speech in some foreign tongue."

As they roared over the ice Garin wondered if it might have been speech—from, perhaps, a secret enemy expedition, such as the Kattack one.

In his sealed cockpit he did not feel the bite of the frost and the ship rode smoothly. With a little sigh of content he settled back against the cushions, keeping to the course set by the planes ahead and above him.

Some five hours after they left the base, Garin caught sight of a dark shadow far ahead. At the same time Farson's voice chattered in his earphones.

"That's it. Set course straight ahead."

The shadow grew until it became a wall of purple-blue from earth to sky. The first plane was quite close to it, diving down into the vapor. Suddenly the ship rocked violently and swung earthward as if out of control. Then it straightened and turned back. Garin could hear Farson demanding to know what was the matter. But from the first plane there was no reply.

As Farson's plane kept going Garin throttled down. The actions of the first ship indicated trouble. What if that haze were a toxic gas?

"Close up, Featherstone!" barked Farson suddenly.

He obediently drew ahead until they flew wing to wing. The haze was just before them and now Garin could see movement in it, oily, impenetrable billows. The motors bit into it. There was clammy, foggy moisture on the windows.

Abruptly Garin sensed that he was no longer alone. Somewhere in the empty cabin behind him was another intelligence, a measuring power. He fought furiously against it—against the very idea of it. But, after a long, terrifying moment while it seemed to study him, it took control. His hands and feet still manipulated the ship, but it flew!

On the ship hurtled through the thickening mist. He lost sight of Farson's plane. And, though he was still -fighting against the will which over-rode his, his struggles grew weaker. Then came the order to dive into the dark heart of the purple mists.

Down they whirled. Once, as the haze opened, Garin caught a glimpse of tortured gray rock seamed with yellow. Farson had been right: here the ice crust was broken.

Down and down. If his instruments were correct the plane was below sea level now. The haze thinned and was gone. Below spread a plain cloaked in vivid green. Here and there reared clumps of what might be'trees. He saw, too, the waters of a yellow stream.

But there was something terrifyingly alien about that landscape. Even as he circled above it, Garin wrested to break the grip of the will that had brought him there. There came a crackle of sound in his earphones and at that moment the Presence withdrew.

The nose of the plane went up in obedience to his own desire. Frantically he climbed away from the green land. Again the haze absorbed him. He watched the moisture bead on the windows. Another hundred feet or so and he would be free of it—and that unbelievable world beneath.

Then, with an ominous sputter, the port engine conked out. The plane lurched and slipped into a dive. Down it whirled again into the steady light of the green land.

Trees came out of the ground, huge fern-like plants with crimson scaled trunks. Toward a clump of these the plane swooped.

Frantically Garin fought the controls. The ship steadied, the dive became a fast glide. He looked for an open space to land. Then he felt the landing gear scrape some surface. Directly ahead loomed one of the fern trees. The plane sped toward the long fronds. There came a ripping crash, the splintering of metal and wood. The scarlet cloud gathering before Garin's eyes turned black.

Chapter Two—The Folk of Tav

Garin returned to consciousness through a red mist of pain. He was pinned in the crumpled mass of metal which had once been the cabin. Through a rent in the wall close to his head thrust a long spike of green, shredded leaves still clinging to it. He lay and watched it, not daring to move lest the pain prove more than he could bear.

It was then that he heard the pattering sound outside. It seemed as if soft hands were pushing and pulling at the wreck. The tree branch shook and a portion of the cabin wall dropped away with a clang.

Garin turned his head slowly. Through the aperture was clambering a goblin figure.

It stood about five feet tall, and it walked upon its hind legs in human fashion, but the legs were short and stumpy, ending in feet with five toes of equal length. Slender, shapely arms possessed small hands with only four digits. The creature had a high, well-rounded forehead but no chin, the face being distinctly lizard-like in contour. The skin was a dull black, with a velvety surface. About its loins it wore a short kilt of metallic cloth, the garment being supported by a jeweled belt of exquisite workmanship.

For a long moment the apparition eyed Garin. And it was those golden eyes, fixed unwinkingly on his, which banished the flyer's fear. There was nothing but great pity in their depths.

The lizard-man stooped and brushed the sweat-dampened hair from Garin's forehead. Then he fingered the bonds of metal which held the flyer, as if estimating their strength. Having done so, he turned to the opening and apparently gave an order, returning again to squat by Garin.

Two more of his kind appeared to tear away the ruins of the cockpit. Though they were very careful, Garin fainted twice before they had freed him. He was placed on a litter swung between two clumsy beasts which might have been small elephants, except that they lacked trunks and possessed four tusks each.

They crossed the plain to the towering mouth of a huge cavern where the litter was taken up by four of the lizard-folk. The flyer lay staring up at the roof of the cavern. In the black stone had been carved fronds and flowers in bewildering profusion. Shining motes, giving off faint light, sifted through the air. At times as they advanced these gathered in clusters and the light grew brighter.

Midway down a long corridor the bearers halted while their leader pulled upon a knob on the wall. An oval door swung back and the party passed through.

They came into a round room the walls of which had been fashioned of creamy quartz veined with violet. At the highest point in the ceiling a large globe of the motes hung, furnishing soft light below.

Two lizard-men, clad in long robes, conferred with the leader of the flyer's party before coming to stand over Garin. One of the robed ones shook his head at the sight of the flyer's twisted body and waved the Utter on into an inner chamber.

Here the walls were dull blue and in the exact center was a long block of quartz. By this the Utter was put down and the bearers disappeared. With sharp knives the robed men cut away furs and leather to expose Garin's broken body.

They lifted him to the quartz table and there made him fast with metal bonds. Then one of them went to the wall and pulled a gleaming rod. From the dome of the roof shot an eerie blue light to beat upon Garin's helpless body. There followed a tingling through every muscle and joint, a prickling sensation in his skin, but soon his pain vanished as if it had never been.

The light flashed off and the three lizard-men gathered around him. He was wrapped in a soft robe and carried to another room. This, too, was circular, shaped like the half of a giant bubble. The floor sloped toward the center where there was a depression filled with cushions. There they laid Garin. At the top of the bubble, a pinkish cloud formed. He watched it drowsily until he feU asleep.

Something warm stirred against his bare shoulder. He opened his eyes, for a moment unable to remember where he was. Then there was a plucking at the robe twisted about him and he looked down.

If the lizard-folk had been goblin in their grotesqueness this visitor was elfin. It was about three feet high, its monkey-like body completely covered with silky white hair. The tiny hands were human in shape and hairless, but its feet were much like a cat's paws. From either side of the small round head branched large fan-shaped ears. The face was furred and boasted stiff cat whiskers on the upper lip. These Anas, as Garin learned later, were happy little creatures, each one choosing some mistress or master among the Folk, as this one had come to him. They were content to follow their big protector, speechless with delight at trifling gifts. Loyal and brave, they could do simple tasks or carry written messages for their chosen friend, and they remained with him until death. They were neither beast nor human, but rumored to be the result of some experiment carried out eons ago by the Ancient Ones.

After patting Garin's shoulder the Ana touched the flyer's hair wonderingly, comparing the bronze lengths with its own white fur. Since the Folk were hairless, hair was a strange sight in the Caverns. With a contented purr, it rubbed its head against his hand.

With a sudden click a door in the wall opened. The Ana got to its feet and ran to greet the newcomers. The chieftain of the Folk, he who had first discovered Garin, entered, followed by several of his fellows.

The flyer sat up. Not only was the pain gone but he felt stronger and younger than he had for weary months. Exultingly he stretched wide his arms and grinned at the lizard-being who murmured happily in return.

Lizard-men busied themselves about Garin, girding on him the short kilt and jewel-set belt which were the only clothing of the Caverns. When they were finished, the chieftain took his hand and drew him to the door.

They traversed a hallway whose walls were carved and inlaid with glittering stones and metal work, coming, at last, into a huge cavern, the outer walls of which were hidden by shadows. On a dais stood three tall thrones and Garin was conducted to the foot of these.

The highest throne was of rose crystal. On its right was one of green jade, worn smooth by centuries of time. At the left was the third, carved of a single block of jet. The rose throne and that of jet were unoccupied, but in the seat of jade reposed one of the Folk. He was taller than his fellows, and in his eyes, as he stared at Garin, was wisdom—and a brooding sadness.

"It is well!" The words resounded in the flyer's head.

"We have chosen wisely. This youth is fit to mate with the

Daughter. But he will be tried, as fire tries metal. He must

win the Daughter forth and strive with Kepta------------- "

A hissing murmur echoed through the hall. Garin guessed that hundreds of the Folk must be gathered there.

"Urg!" the being on the throne commanded.

The chieftain moved a step toward the dais.

"Do you take this youth and instruct him. And then will I speak with him again. For—" sadness colored the words now— "we would have the rose throne filled again and the black one blasted into dust. Time moves swiftly."

The Chieftain led a wondering Garin away.

Chapter Three—Garin Hears of the Black Ones

Urg brought the flyer into one of the bubble-shaped rooms which contained a low, cushioned bench facing a metal screen —and here they seated themselves.

What followed was a language lesson. On the screen appeared objects which Urg would name, to have his sibilant uttering repeated by Garin. As the American later learned, the ray treatment he had undergone had quickened his mental powers, and in an incredibly short time he had a working vocabulary.

Judging by the pictures the lizard folk were the rulers of the crater world, although there were other forms of life there. The elephant-like Tand was a beast of burden, the squirrel-like Eron lived underground and carried on a crude agriculture in small clearings, coming shyly twice a year to exchange grain for a liquid rubber produced by the Folk.

Then there was the Gibi, a monstrous bee, also friendly to the lizard people. It supplied the cavern dwellers with wax, and in return the Folk gave the Gibi colonies shelter during the unhealthful times of the Great Mists.

Highly civilized were the Folk. They did no work by hand, except the finer kinds of jewel setting and carving. Machines wove their metal cloth, machines prepared their food, harvested their fields, hollowed out new dwellings.

Freed from manual labor they had turned to acquiring knowledge. Urg projected on the screen pictures of vast laboratories and great libraries of scientific lore. But all they knew in the beginning, they had learned from the Ancient Ones, a race unlike themselves, which had preceded them in sovereignty over Tav. Even the Folk themselves were the result of constant forced evolution and experimentation carried on by these Ancient Ones.

All this wisdom was guarded most carefully, but against what or whom, Urg could not tell, although he insisted that the danger was very real. There was something within the blue wall of the crater which disputed the Folk's rule.

As Garin tried to probe further a gong sounded. Urg arose.

"It is the hour of eating," he announced. "Let us go."

They came to a large room where a heavy table of white stone stretched along three walls, benches before it. Urg seated himself and pressed a knob on the table, motioning Garin to do likewise. The wall facing them opened and two trays slid out. There was a platter of hot meat covered with rich sauce, a stone bowl of grain porridge and a cluster of fruit, still fastened to a leafy branch. This the Ana eyed so wistfully that Garin gave it to the creature.

The Folk ate silently and arose quickly when they had finished, their trays vanishing back through the wall. Garin noticed only males in the room and recalled that he had, as yet, seen no females among the Folk. He ventured a question.

Urg chuckled. "So, you think there are no women in the Caverns? Well, we shall go to the Hall of Women that you may see."

To the Hall of Women they went. It was breath-taking in its richness, stones worth a nation's ransom sparkling from its domed roof and painted walls. Here were the matrons and maidens of the Folk, their black forms veiled in robes of silver net, each cross strand of which was set with a tiny gem, so that they appeared to be wrapped in glittering scales.

There were not many of them—a hundred perhaps. And a few led by the hand smaller editions of themselves who stared at Garin with round yellow eyes and chewed black finger tips shyly.

The women were intrusted with the finest jewel work, and with pride they showed the stranger their handiwork. At the far end of the hall was a wondrous thing in the making. One of the silver nets which were the foundations of their robes was fastened there and three of the women were putting small rose jewels into each microscopic setting. Here and there they had varied the pattern with tiny emeralds or flaming opals so that the finished portion was a rainbow.

One of the workers smoothed the robe and glanced up at Garin, a gentle teasing in her voice as she explained:

'This is for the Daughter when she comes to her throne."

The Daughter! What had the Lord of the Folk said? "This youth is fit to mate with the Daughter." But Urg had said that the Ancient Ones had gone from Tav.

"Who is the Daughter?" he demanded.

"Thrala of the Light."

"Where is she?"

The woman shivered and there was fear in her eyes. "Thrala lies in the Caves of Darkness."

"The Caves of Darkness!" Did she mean Thrala was dead? Was he, Garin Featherstone, to be the victim of some rite of sacrifice which was designed to unite him with the dead?

Urg touched his arm. "Not so. Thrala has not yet entered the Place of Ancestors."

"You know my thoughts?"

Urg laughed. "Thoughts are easy to read. Thrala lives. Sera served the Daughter as handmaiden while she was yet among us. Sera, do you show us Thrala as she was."

The woman crossed to a wall where there was a mirror such as Urg had used for his language lesson. She gazed into it and then beckoned the flyer to stand beside her.

The mirror misted and then he was looking, as if through a window, into a room with walls and ceiling of rose quartz. On the floor were thick rugs of silver rose. And a great heap of cushions made a low couch in the center.

"The inner chamber of the Daughter," Sera announced.

A circular panel in the wall opened and a woman slipped through. She was very young, little more than a girl. There were happy curves in her full crimson lips, joyous lights in her violet eyes.

She was human of shape, but her beauty was unearthly. Her skin was pearl white and other colors seemed to play faintly upon it, so that it reminded Garin of mother-of-pearl with its lights and shadows. The hair, which veiled her as a cloud, was blue-black and reached below her knees. She was robed in the silver net of the Folk and there was a heavy girdle of rose shaded jewels about her slender waist.

"That was Thrala before the Black Ones took her," said Sera.

Garin uttered a cry of disappointment as the picture vanished. Urg laughed.

"What care you for shadows when the Daughter herself

waits for you? You have but to bring her from the Caves

of Darkness-------- "

"Where are these Caves----------- " Garin's question was inter-

rupted by the pealing of the Cavern gong. Sera cried out:

"The Black Ones!"

Urg shrugged. "When they spared not the Ancient Ones how could we hope to escape? Come, we must go to the Hall of Thrones."

Before the jade throne of the Lord of the Folk stood a small group of the lizard-men beside two litters. As Garin entered the Lord spoke.

"Let the outlander come hither that he may see the work of the Black Ones."

Garin advanced unwillingly, coming to stand by those struggling things which gasped their message between moans and screams of agony. They were men of the Folk but their black skins were green with rot.

The Lord leaned forward on his throne. "It is well," he said. "You may depart."

As if obeying his command, the tortured things let go of the life to which they had clung and were still.

"Look upon the work of the Black Ones," the ruler said to Garin. "Jiv and Betv were captured while on a mission to the Gibi of the Cliff. It seems that the Black Ones needed material for their laboratories. They seek even to give the Daughter to their workers of horror!"

A terrible cry of hatred arose from the hall, and Garin's

jaw set. To give that fair vision he had just seen to such

a death as this-------- !

"Jiv and Betv were imprisoned close to the Daughter and they heard the threats of Kepta. Our brothers, stricken with foul disease, were sent forth to carry the plague to us, but they swam through the pool of boiling mud. They have died, but the evil died with them. And I think that while we breed such as they, the Black Ones shall not rest easy. Listen now, outlander, to the story of the Black Ones and the Caves of Darkness, of how the Ancient Ones brought the Folk up from the slime of a long dried sea and made them great, and of how the Ancient Ones at last went down to their destruction."

Chapter Four—The Defeat of the Ancient Ones

"In the days before the lands of the outer world were born of the sea, before even the Land of the Sun (Mu) and the Land of the Sea (Adantis) arose from molten rock and sand, there was land here in the far south. A sere land of rock plains, and swamps where slimy life mated, lived and died.

"Then came the Ancient Ones from beyond the stars. Their race was already older than this earth. Their wise men had watched its birth-rending from the sun. And when their world perished, taking most of their blood into nothingness, a handful fled hither.

"But when they climbed from their space ship it was into hell. For they had gained, in place of their loved home, bare rock and stinking slime.

"They blasted out this Tav and entered into it with the treasures of their flying ships and also certain living creatures captured in the swamps. From these, they produced the Folk, the Gibi, the Tand, and the land-tending Eron.

"Among these, the Folk were eager for wisdom and climbed high. But still the learning of the Ancient Ones remained beyond their grasp.

"During the eons the Ancient Ones dwelt within their protecting wall of haze the outer world changed. Cold came to the north and south; the Land of Sun and the Land of Sea arose to bear the foot of true man. On their mirrors of seeing the Ancient Ones watched man-life spread across the world. They had the power of prolonging life, but still the race was dying. From without must come new blood. So certain men were summoned from the Land of the Sun. Then the race flourished for a space.

"The Ancient Ones decided to leave Tav for the outer world. But the sea swallowed the Land of Sun. Again in the time of the Land of Sea the stock, within Tav was replenished and the Ancient Ones prepared for exodus; again the sea cheated them.

"Those men left in the outer world reverted to savagery. Since the Ancient Ones would not mingle their blood with that of almost beasts, they built the haze wall stronger and remained. But a handful of them were attracted by the forbidden, and secretly they summoned the beast men. Of that monstrous mating came the Black Ones. They live but for the evil they may do, and the power which they acquired is debased and used to forward cruelty.

"At first their sin was not discovered. When it was, the others would have slain the offspring but for the law which forbids them to kill. They must use their power for good or it departs from them. So they drove the Black Ones to the southern end of Tav and gave them the Caves of Darkness. Never were the Black Ones to come north of the River of Gold—nor were the Ancient Ones to go south of it.

"For perhaps two thousand years the Black Ones kept the law. But they worked, building powers of destruction. While matters rested thus, the Ancient Ones searched the world, seeking men by whom they could renew the race. Once there came men from an island far to the north. Six lived to penetrate the mists and take wives among the Daughters. Again, they called the yellow-haired men of another breed, great sea rovers.

"But the Black Ones called too. As the Ancient Ones searched for the best, the Black Ones brought in great workers of evil. And, at last, they succeeded in shutting off the channels of sending thought so that the Ancient Ones could call no more.

"Then did the Black Ones cross the River of Gold and enter the land of the Ancient Ones. Thran, Dweller in the

Light and Lord of the Caverns, summoned the Folk to him.

" 'There will come one to aid you,' he told us. 'Try the summoning again after the Black Ones have seemed to win. Thrala, daughter of the Light, will not enter into the room of Pleasant Death with the rest of the women, but will give herself into the hands of the Black Ones, that they may think themselves truly victorious. You of the Folk withdraw into the Place of Reptiles until the Black Ones are gone. Nor will all the Ancient Ones perish—more will be saved, but the manner of their preservation I dare not tell. When the sun-haired youth comes from the outer world, send him into the Caves of Darkness to rescue Thrala and put an end to evil.'

"And then the Lady Thrala arose and said softly. 'As the Lord Thran has said, so let it be. I shall deliver myself into the hands of the Black Ones that their doom may come upon them.'

"Lord Thran smiled upon her as he said: 'So will happiness be your portion. After the Great Mists, does not light come again?'

"The women of the Ancient Ones then took their leave and passed into the place of pleasant death while the men made ready for battle with the Black Ones. For three days they fought, but a new weapon of the Black Ones won the day, and the chief of the Black Ones set up this throne of jet as proof of his power. Since, however, the Black Ones were not happy in the Caverns, longing for the darkness of their caves, they soon withdrew and we, the Folk, came forth again.

"But now the time has come when the dark ones will sacrifice the Daughter to their evil. If you can win her free, outlander, they shall perish as if they had not been."

"What of the Ancient Ones?" asked Garin--------------------- "those

others Thran said would be saved?"

"Of those we know nothing save that when we bore the bodies of the fallen to the Place of Ancestors there were some missing. That you may see the truth of this story, Urg will take you to the gallery above the Room of Pleasant Death and you may look upon those who sleep there."

Urg guiding, Garin climbed a steep ramp leading from the Hall of Thrones. This led to a narrow balcony, one side of which was clear crystal. Urg pointed down.

They were above a long room whose walls were tinted jade green. On the polished floor were scattered piles of cushions. Each was occupied by a sleeping woman and several of these clasped a child in their arms. Their long hair rippled to the floor, their curved lashes made dark shadows on pale faces.

"But they are sleeping!" protested Garin.

Urg shook his head. "It is the sleep of death. Twice each

ten hours vapours rise from the floor. Those breathing them

do not wake again, and if they are undisturbed they will lie

thus for a thousand years. Look there------------ "

He pointed to the closed double doors of the room. There lay the first men of the Ancient Ones Garin had seen. They, too, seemed but asleep, their handsome heads pillowed on their arms.

"Thran ordered those who remained after the last battle in the Hall of Thrones to enter the Room of Pleasant Death that the Black Ones might not torture them for their beastly pleasures. Thran himself remained behind to close the door, and so died."

There were no aged among the sleepers. None of the men seemed to count more than thirty years and many of them appeared younger. Garin remarked upon this.

"The Ancient Ones appeared thus until the day of their death, though many lived twice a hundred years. The light rays kept them so. Even we of the Folk can hold back age. But come now, our Lord Trar would speak with you again."

Chapter Five—Into the Caves of Darkness

Again Garin stood before the jade throne of Trar and heard the stirring of the multitude of the Folk in the shadows. Trar was turning a small rod of glittering, greenish metal around in his soft hands.

"Listen well, outlander," he began, "for little time remains to us. Within seven days the Great Mists will be upon us. Then no living thing may venture forth from shelter and escape death. And before that time Thrala must be out of the Caves. This rod will be your weapon; the Black Ones have not its secret. Watch."

Two of the Folk dragged an ingot of metal before him. He touched it with the rod. Great flakes of rust appeared, to spread across the entire surface. It crumpled away and one of the Folk trod upon the pile of dust where it had been.

"Thrala lies in the heart of the Caves but Kepta's men have grown careless with the years. Enter boldly and trust to fortune. They know nothing of your coming or of Thran's words concerning you."

Urg stood forward and held out his hands in appeal. "What would you, Urg?"

"Lord, I would go with the outlander. He knows nothing of the Forest of the Morgels or of the Pool of Mud. It is easy to go astray in the woodland—"

Trar shook his head. "That may not be. He must go alone, even as Thran said."

The Ana, which had followed in Garin's shadow all day, whistled shrilly and stood on tiptoe to tug at his hand. Trar smiled. "That one may go, its eyes may serve you well. Urg will guide you to the outer portal of the Place of Ancestors and set you upon the road to the Caves. Farewell, outlander, and may the spirits of the Ancient Ones be with you."

Garin bowed to the ruler of the Folk and turned to follow Urg. Near the door stood a small group of women. Sera pressed forward from them, holding out a small bag.

"Outlander," she said hurriedly, "when you look upon the Daughter speak to her of Sera, for I have awaited her many years."

He smiled. "That I will."

"If you remember, outlander. I am a great lady among the Folk and have my share of suitors, yet I think I could envy the Daughter. Nay, I shall not explain that," she laughed mockingly. "You will understand in due time. Here is a packet of food. Now go swiftly that we may have you among us again before the Mists."

So a woman's farewell sped them on their way. Urg chose a ramp which led downward. At its foot was a niche in the rock, above which a rose light burned dimly. Urg reached within the hollow and drew out a pair of high buskins which he aided Garin to lace on. They were a good fit, having been fashioned for a man of the Ancient Ones.

The passage before them was narrow and crooked. There was a thick carpet of dust underfoot, patterned by the prints of the Folk. They rounded a corner and a tall door loomed out of the gloom. Urg pressed the surface, there was a click and the stone rolled back.

"This is the Place of Ancestors," he announced as he stepped within.

They were at the end of a colossal hall whose domed roof disappeared into shadows. Thick pillars of gleaming crystal divided it into aisles all leading inward to a raised dais of oval shape. Filling the aisles were couches and each soft nest held its sleeper. Near to the door lay the men and women of the Folk, but closer to the dais were the Ancient Ones. Here and there a couch bore a double burden, upon the shoulder of a man was pillowed the drooping head of a woman. Urg stopped beside such a one.

"See, outlander, here was one who was called from your world. Marena of the House of Light looked with favor upon him and their days of happiness were many."

The man on the couch had red-gold hair and on his upper arm was a heavy band of gold whose mate Garin had once seen in a museum. A son of pre-Norman Ireland. Urg traced with a crooked finger the archaic lettering carved upon the stone base of the couch.

"Lovers in the Light sleep sweetly. The Light returns on the appointed day."

"Who lies there?" Garin motioned to the dais.

"The first Ancient Ones. Come, look upon those who made this Tav."

On the dais the couches were arranged in two rows and between them, in the center, was a single couch raised above the others. Fifty men and women lay as if but resting for the hour, smiles on their peaceful faces but weary shadows beneath their eyes. There was an un-human quality about them which was lacking in their descendents.

Urg advanced to the high couch and beckoned Garin to join him. A man and a woman lay there, the woman's head upon the man's breast. There was that in their faces which made Garin turn away. He felt as if he had intruded roughly where no man should go.

"Here lies Thran, Son of Light, first Lord of the Caverns, and his lady Thrala, Dweller in the Light. So have they lain a thousand years, and so will they lie until this planet rots to dust beneath them. They led the Folk out of the slime and made Tav. Such as they we shall never see again."

They passed silently down the aisles of the dead. Once Garin caught sight of another fair haired man, perhaps another outlander, since the Ancient Ones were all dark of hair. Urg paused once more before they left the hall. He stood by the couch of a man, wrapped in a long robe, whose face was ravaged with marks of agony.

Urg spoke a single name: "Thran."

So this was the last lord of the Caverns. Garin leaned closer to study the dead face but Urg seemed to have lost his patience. He hurried his charge on to a panel door.

"This is the southern portal of the Caverns," he explained.

"Trust to the Ana to guide you and beware of the boiling mud. Should the morgels scent you, kill quickly, they are the servants of the Black Ones. May fortune favor you, outlander."

The door was open and Garin looked out upon Tav. The soft blue light was as strong as it had been when he had first seen it. With the Ana perched on his shoulder, the green rod and the bag of food in his hands, he stepped out onto the moss sod.

Urg raised his hand in salute and the door clicked into place. Garin stood alone, pledged to bring the Daughter out of the Caves of Darkness.

There is no night or day in Tav since the blue light is steady. But the Folk divide their time by artificial means. However Garin, being newly come from the rays of healing, felt no fatigue. As he hesitated the Ana chattered and pointed confidently ahead.

Before them was a dense wood of fern trees. It was quiet in the forest as Garin made his way into its gloom and for the first time he noted a peculiarity of Tav. There were no birds.

The portion of the woodland they had to traverse was but a spur of the forest to the west. After an hour of travel they came out upon the bank of a sluggish river. The turbid waters of the stream were a dull saffron color. This, thought Garin, must be the River of Gold, the boundary of the lands of the Black Ones.

He rounded a bend to come upon a bridge, so old that time itself had worn its stone angles into curves. The bridge gave on a wide plain where tall grass grew sere and yellow. To the left was a hissing and bubbling, and a huge wave of boiling mud arose in the air. Garin choked in a wind, thick with chemicals, which blew from it. He smelled and tasted the sulphur-tainted air all across the plain.

And he was glad enough to plunge into a small fern grove which half-concealed a spring. There he bathed his head and arms while the Ana pulled open Sera's food bag.

Together they ate the cakes of grain and the dried fruit. When they were done the Ana tugged at Garin's hand and pointed on.

Cautiously Garin wormed his way through the thick underbrush until, at last, he looked out into a clearing and at its edge the entrance of the Black Ones' Caves. Two tall pillars, carved into the likeness of foul monsters guarded a rough edged hole. A fine greenish mist whirled and danced in its mouth.

The flyer studied the entrance. There was no life to be seen. He gripped the destroying rod and inched forward. Before the green mist he braced himself and then stepped within.

Chapter Six—Keptds Second Prisoner

The green mist enveloped Garin. He drew into his lungs hot moist air faintly tinged with a scent of sickly sweetness as from some hidden corruption. Green motes in the air gave forth little light and seemed to cling to the intruder.

With the Ana pattering before him, the American started down a steep ramp, the soft soles of his buskins making no sound. At regular intervals along the wall, niches held small statues. And about each perverted figure was a crown of green motes.

The Ana stopped, its large ears outspread as if to catch the faintest murmur of sound. From somewhere under the earth came the howls of a maddened dog. The Ana shivered, creeping closer to Garin.

Down led the ramp, growing narrower and steeper. And louder sounded the insane, coughing howls of the dog. Then the passage was abruptly barred by a grill of black stone. Garin peered through its bars at a flight of stairs leading down into a pit. From the pit arose snarling laughter.

Padding back and forth were things which might have been conceived by demons. They were sleek, rat-like creatures, hairless, and large as ponies. Red saliva dripped from the corners of their sharp jaws. But in the eyes which they raised now and then toward the grill, there was intelligence. These were the morgels, watch dogs and slaves of the Black Ones.

From a second pair of stairs directly across the pit arose a moaning call. A door opened and two men came down the steps. The morgels surged forward, but fell back when whips were cracked over their heads.

The masters of the morgels were human in appearance. Black loin cloths were twisted about them and long, wing shaped cloaks hung from their shoulders. On their heads, completely masking their hair, were cloth caps which bore ragged crests not unlike cockscombs. As far as Garin could see they were unarmed except for their whips.

A second party was coming down the steps. Between two of the Black Ones struggled a prisoner. He made a desperate and hopeless fight of it, but they dragged him to the edge of the pit before they halted. The morgels, intent upon their promised prey, crouched before them.

Five steps above were two figures to whom the guards looked for instructions. One was a man of their race, of slender, handsome body and evil, beautiful face. His hand lay possessively upon the arm of his companion.

It was Thrala who stood beside him, her head proudly erect. The laughter curves were gone from her lips; there was only sorrow and resignation to be read there now. But her spirit burned like a white flame in her eyes.

"Look!" Her warder ordered. "Does not Kepta keep his promises? Shall we give Dandtan into the jaws of our slaves, or will you unsay certain words of yours, Lady Thrala?"

The prisoner answered for her. "Kepta, son of vileness, Thrala is not for you. Remember, beloved one," he spoke to the Daughter, "the day of deliverance is at hand—"

Garin felt a sudden emptiness. The prisoner had called Thrala "beloved" with the ease of one who had the right.

"I await Thrala's answer," Kepta returned evenly. And her answer he got.

"Beast among beasts, you may send Dandtan to his death, you may heap all manner of insult and evil upon me, but still I say the Daughter is not for your touch. Rather will I cut the line of life with my own hands, taking upon me the punishment of the Elder Ones. To Dandtan," she smiled down upon the prisoner, "I say farewell. We shall meet again beyond the Curtain of Time." She held out her hands to him.

"Thrala, dear one—!" One of his guards slapped a hand over the prisoner's mouth putting an end to his words.

But now Thrala was looking beyond him, straight at the grill which sheltered Garin. Kepta pulled at her arm to gain her attention. "Watch! /Thus do my enemies die. To the pit with him!"

The guards twisted their prisoner around and the morgels crept closer, their eyes fixed upon that young, writhing body. Garin knew that he must take a hand in the game. The Ana was tugging him to the right and there was an open archway leading to a balcony running around the side of the pit.

Those below were too entranced by the coming sport to notice the invader. But Thrala glanced up and Garin thought that she sighted him. Something in her attitude attracted

Kepta, he too looked up. For a moment he stared in stark amazement, and then he thrust the Daughter through the door behind him.

"Ho, outlander! Welcome to the Caves. So the Folk have meddled—"

"Greeting, Kepta," Garin hardly knew whence came the words which fell so easily from his tongue. "I have come as was promised, to remain until the Black Throne is no more."

"Not even the morgels boast before their prey lies limp in their jaws," flashed Kepta. "What mannner of beast are you?"

"A clean beast, Kepta, which you are not. Bid your two-legged morgels loose the youth, lest I grow impatient." The flyer swung the green rod into view.

Kepta's eyes narrowed but his smile did not fade. "I have heard of old that the Ancient Ones do not destroy—"

"As an outlander I am not bound by their limits," returned Garin, "as you will learn if you do not call off your stinking pack."

The master of the Caves laughed. "You are as the Tand, a fool without a brain. Never shall you see the Caverns again—"

"You shall own me master yet, Kepta."

The Black Chief seemed to consider. Then he waved to his men. "Release him," he ordered. "Outlander, you are braver than I thought. We might bargain—"

"Thrala goes forth from the Caves and the black throne is dust, those are the terms of the Caverns."

"And if we do not accept?"

"Then Thrala goes forth, the throne is dust and Tav shall have a day of judging such as it has never seen before." "You challenge me?"

Again words, which seemed to Garin to have their origin elsewhere, came to him. "As in Yu-lac, I shall take—"

Before Kepta could reply there was trouble in the pit. Dandtan, freed by his guards, was crossing the floor in running leaps. Garin threw himself belly down on the balcony and dropped the jeweled strap of his belt over the lip.

A moment later it snapped taut and he stiffened to an upward pull. Already Dandtan's heels were above the snapping jaws of a morgel. The flyer caught the youth around the shoulders and heaved. They rolled together against the wall.

"They are gone! All of them!" Dandtan cried, as he regained his feet. He was right; the morgels howled below, but Kepta and his men had vanished. "Thrala!" Garin exclaimed.

Dandtan nodded. "They have taken her back to the cells. They believe her safe there."

"Then they think wrong," Garin stooped to pick up the green rod. His companion laughed.

"We'd best start before they get prepared for us."

Garin picked up the Ana. "Which way?"

Dandtan showed him a passage leading from behind the other door. Then he dodged into a side chamber to return with two of the wing cloaks and cloth hoods, so that they might pass as Black Ones.

They went by the mouths of three side tunnels, all deserted. None disputed their going. All the Black Ones had withdrawn from this part of the Caves.

Dandtan sniffed uneasily. "All is not well. I fear a trap."

"While we can pass, let us."

The passage curved to the right and they came into an oval room. Again Dandtan shook his head but ventured no protest. Instead he flung open a door and hurried down a short hall.

It seemed to Garin that there were strange rustlings and squeakings in the dark corners. Then Dandtan stopped so short that the flyer ran into him.

"Here is the guard room—and it is empty!"

Garin looked over his shoulder into a large room. Racks of strange weapons hung on the walls and the sleeping pallets of the guards were stacked evenly, but the men were nowhere to be seen.

They crossed the room and passed beneath an archway.

"Even the bars are not down," observed Dandtan. He pointed overhead. There hung a portcullis of stone. Garin studied it apprehensively. But Dandtan drew him on into a narrow corridor where were barred doors.

"The cells," he explained, and withdrew a bar across one door. The portal swung back and they pushed within.

Chapter Seven—Kepta's Trap

Thrala arose to face them. Forgetting the disguise he wore, Garin drew back, chilled by her icy demeanor. But Dandtan sprang forward and caught her in his arms. She struggled madly until she saw the face beneath her captor's hood, and then she gave a cry of delight and her arms were about his neck. "Dandtan!"

He smiled. "Even so. But it is the outlander's doing."

She came to the American, studying his face. "Oudander? So cold a name is not for you, when you have served us so." She offered him her hands and he raised them to his hps.

"And how are you named?"

Dandtan laughed. "Thus the eternal curiosity of women!" "Garin."

"Garin," she repeated. "How like—" A faint rose glowed beneath her pearl flesh.

Dandtan's hand fell lightiy upon his rescuer's shoulder. "Indeed he is like him. From this day let him bear that other's name. Garan, son of light."

"Why not?" she returned calmly. "After all—"

'The reward which might have been Garan's may be his? Tell him the story of his namesake when we are again in the Caverns—"

Dandtan was interrupted by a frightened squeak from the Ana. Then came a mocking voice.

"So the pray has entered the trap of its own will. How many hunters may boast the same?"

Kepta leaned against the door, the light of vicious mischief dancing in his eyes. Garin dropped his cloak to the floor, but Dandtan must have read what was in the flyer's mind, for he caught him by the arm.

"On your life, touch him not!"

"So you have learned that much wisdom while you have dwelt among us, Dandtan? Would that Thrala had done the same. But fair women find me weak." He eyed her proud body in a way that would have sent Garin at his throat had Dandtan not held him. "So shall Thrala have a second chance. How would you like to see these men in the Room of Instruments, Lady?"

"I do not fear you," she returned. "Thran once made a prophecy, and he never spoke idly. We shall win free—"

"That will be as fate would have it. Meanwhile, I leave you to each other." He whipped around the door and slammed it behind him. They heard the grating of the bar he slid into place. Then his footsteps died away.

"There goes evil," murmured Thrala softiy. "Perhaps it would have been better if Garin had killed him as he thought to do. We must get away. . . ."

Garin drew the rod from his belt. The green light motes gathered and clung about its polished length.

"Touch not the door," Thrala advised; "only its hinges."

Beneath the tip of the rod the stone became spongy and flaked away. Dandtan and the flyer caught the door and eased it to the floor. With one quick movement Thrala caught up Garin's cloak and swirled it about her, hiding the glitter of her gem encrusted robe.

There was a curious cold lifelessness about the air of the corridor, the light-bearing motes vanishing as if blown out.

"Hurry!" the Daughter urged. "Kepta is withdrawing the living light, so that we will have to wander in the dark."

When they reached the end of the hall the light was quite gone, and Garin bruised his hands against the stone portcullis which had been lowered. From somewhere on the other side of the barrier came rippling laughter.

"Oh, outlander," called Kepta mockingly, "you will get through easily enough when you remember your weapon. But the dark you can not conquer so easily, nor that which runs the halls."

Garin was already busy with the rod. Within five minutes their way was clear again. But Thrala stopped them when they would have gone through. "Kepta has loosed the hunters."

"The hunters?"

"The morgels and—others," explained Dandtan. "The Black Ones have withdrawn and only death comes this way. And the morgels see in the dark. . . ."

"So does the Ana."

"Well thought of," agreed the son of the Ancient Ones. "It will lead us out."

As if in answer, there came a tug at Garin's belt. Reaching back, he caught Thrala's hand and knew that she had taken Dandtan's. So linked they crossed the guard room. Then the Ana paused for a long time, as if listening. There was nothing to see but the darkness which hung about them like the smothering folds of a curtain.

"Something follows us," whispered Dandtan.

"Nothing to fear." stated Thrala. "It dare not attack. It is,

I think, of Kepta's fashioning. And that which has not true

life dreads death above all things. It is going--------------- "

There came sounds of something crawling slowly away.

"Kepta will not try that again," continued the Daughter, disdainfully. "He knew that his monstrosities would not attack. Only in the light are they to be dreaded—and then only because of the horror of their forms."

Again the Ana tugged at its master's belt. They shuffled into the narrow passage beyond. But there remained the sense of things about them in the dark, things which Thrala continued to insist were harmless and yet which filled Garin with loathing.

Then they entered the far corridor into which led the three halls and which ended in the morgel pit. Here, Garin believed, was the greatest danger from the morgels.

The Ana stopped short, dropping back against Garin's thigh. In the blackness appeared two yellow disks, sparks of saffron in their depths. Garin thrust the rod into Thrala's hands.

"What do you?" she demanded.

"I'm going to clear the way. It's too dark to use the rod against moving creatures. . . ." He flung the words over his shoulder as he moved toward the unwinking eyes.

Chapter Eight—Escape from the Caves

Keeping his eyes upon those soulless yellow disks, Garin snatched off his hood, wadding it into a ball. Then he sprang. His fingers slipped on smooth hide, sharp fangs ripped his forearm, blunt nails scraped his ribs. A foul breath puffed into his face and warm slaver trickled down his neck and chest. But his plan succeeded.

The cap was wedged into the morgel's throat and the beast was slowly choking. Blood dripped from the flyer's torn flesh, but he held on grimly until he saw the light fade from those yellow eyes. The dying morgel made a last mad plunge for freedom, dragging his attacker along the rock floor. Then Garin felt the heaving body rest limply against his own. He staggered against the wall, panting.

"Garin!" cried Thrala. Her questing hand touched his shoulder and crept to his face. "It is well with you?"

"Yes," he panted, "let us go on."

Thrala's fingers had lingered on his arm and now she walked beside him, her cloak making whispering sounds as it brushed against the wall and floor.

"Wait," she cautioned suddenly. "The morgel pit. . . ."

Dandtan slipped by them. "I will try the door."

In a moment he was back. "It is open," he whispered.

"Kepta believes," mused Thrala, "that we will keep to the safety of the gallery. Therefore let us go through the pit. The morgels will be gone to better hunting grounds."

Through the pit they went. A choking stench arose from underfoot and they trod very carefully. They climbed the stairs on the far side unchallenged, Dandtan leading.

"The rod here, Garin," he called; "this door is barred."

Garin pressed the weapon into the other's hand and leaned against the rock. He was sick and dizzy. The long, deep wounds on his arm and shoulder were stiffening and ached with a biting throb.

When they went on he panted with effort. They still moved in darkness and his distress passed unnoticed.

"This is wrong," he muttered, half to himself. "We go too

easily------ "

And he was answered out of the blackness. "Well noted, outlander. But you go free for the moment, as does Thrala and Dandtan. Our full accounting is not yet. And now, farewell, until we meet again in the Hall of Thrones. I could find it in me to applaud your courage, outlander. Perhaps you will come to serve me yet."

Garin turned and threw himself toward the voice, bringing up with bruising force against rock wall. Kepta laughed.

"Not with the skill of the bull Tand will you capture me."

His second laugh was cut cleanly off, as if a door had been closed. In silence the three hurried up the ramp. Then, as through a curtain, they came into the light of Tav.

Thrala let fall her drab cloak, stood with arms outstretched in the crater land. Her sparkling robe sheathed her in glory and she sang softly, rapt in her own delight. Then Dandtan put his arm about her; she clung to him, staring about as might a beauty-bewildered child.

Garin wondered dully how he would be able to make the journey back to the Caverns when his arm and shoulder were eaten with a consuming fire. The Ana crept closer to him, peering into his white face.

They were aroused by a howl from the Caves. Thrala cried out and Dandtan answered her unspoken question. "They have set the morgels on our trail!"

The howl from the Caves was echoed from the forest. Morgels before and behind them! Garin might set himself against one, Dandtan another, and Thrala could defend herself with the rod, but in the end the pack would kill them.

"We shall claim protection from the Gibi of the cliff. By the law they must give us aid," said Thrala, as, turning up her long robe, she began to run lightiy. Garin picked up her cloak and drew it across his shoulder to hide his welts. When he could no longer hold her pace she must not guess the reason for his falling behind.

Of that flight through the forest the flyer afterward remembered little. At last the gurgle of water broke upon his pounding ears, as he stumbled along a good ten lengths behind his companions. They had come to the edge of the wood along the banks of the river.

Without hesitation Thrala and Dandtan plunged into the oily flood, swimming easily for the other side. Garin dropped the cloak, wondering if, once he stepped into the yellow stream, he would ever be able to struggle out again. Already the Ana was in, paddling in circles near the shore and pleading with him to follow. Wearily Garin waded out.

The water, which washed the blood and sweat from his aching body, was faintly brackish and stung his wounds to life. He could not fight the sluggish current and it bore him downstream, well away from where the others landed.

But at last he managed to win free, crawling out near where a smaller stream joined the river. There he lay panting, face down upon the moss. And there they found him, water dripping from his bedraggled finery, the Ana stroking his muddied hair. Thrala cried out with concern and pillowed his head on her knees while Dandtan examined his wounds.

"Why did you not tell us?" demanded Thrala.

He did not try to answer, content to lie there, her arms supporting him. Dandtan disappeared into the forest, returning soon, his hands filled with a mass of crushed leaves. With these he plastered Garin's wounds.

"You'd better go on," Garin warned.

Dandtan shook his head. "The morgels can not swim. If they cross, they must go to the bridge, and that is half the crater away."

The Ana dropped into their midst, its small hands filled with clusters of purple fruit. And so they feasted, Garin at ease on a fern couch, accepting food from Thrala's hand.

There seemed to be some virtue in Dandtan's leaf plaster for, after a short rest, Garin was able to get to his feet with no more than a twinge or two in his wounds. But they started on at a more sober pace. Through mossy glens and sunlit glades where strange flowers made perfume, the trail led. The stream they followed branched twice before, on the edge of meadow land, they struck away from the guiding water toward the crater wall.

Suddenly Thrala threw back her head and gave a shrill, sweet whistle. Out of the air dropped a yellow and black insect, as large as a hawk. Twice it circled her head and then perched itself on her outstretched wrist.

Its swollen body was jet black, its curving legs, three to a side, chrome yellow. The round head ended in a sharp beak and it had large, many faceted eyes. The wings, which lazily tested the air, were black and touched with gold.

Thrala rubbed the round head while the insect nuzzled affectionately at her cheek. Then she held out her wrist again and it was gone.

"We shall be expected now and may pass unmolested."

Shortly they became aware of a murmuring sound. The crater wall loomed ahead, dwarfing the trees at its base.

"There is the city of the Gibi," remarked Dandtan.

Clinging to the rock were the towers and turrets of many eight-sided cells.

"They are preparing for the Mists," observed Thrala. "We shall have company on our journey to. the Caverns."

They passed the trees and reached the foot of the wax skyscrappers which towered dizzily above their heads. A great cloud of the Gibi hovered about them. Garin felt the soft brush of their wings against his body. And they crowded each other jealously to be near Thrala.

The soft hush-hush of their wings filled the clearing as one large Gibi of outstanding beauty approached. The commoners fluttered off and Thrala greeted the Queen of the cells as an equal. Then she turned to her companions with the information the Gibi Queen had to offer.

"We are just in time. Tomorrow the Gibi leave. The morgels have crossed the river and are out of control. Instead of hunting us they have gone to ravage the forest lands. All Tav has been warned against them. But they may be caught by the Mist and so destroyed. We are to rest in the cliff hollows, and one shall come for us when it is time to leave."

The Gibi withdrew to the cell-combs after conducting their guests to the rock-hollows.

Chapter Nine—Days of Preparation

Garin was awakened by a loud murmuring. Dandtan knelt beside him.

"We must go. Even now the Gibi seal the last of the cells."

They ate hurriedly of cakes of grain and honey, and, as they feasted, the Queen again visited them. The first of the swarm were already winging eastward.

With the Gibi nation hanging like a storm cloud above them, the three started off across the meadow. The purple-blue haze was thickening, and, here and there, curious formations, like the dust devils of the desert arose and danced and disappeared again. The tropic heat of Tav increased; it was as if the ground itself were steaming.

"The Mists draw close; we must hurry," panted Dandtan.

They traversed the tongue of forest which bordered the meadow and came to the central plain of Tav. There was a brooding stillness there. The Ana, perched on Garin's shoulder, shivered.

Their walk became a trot; the Gibi bunched together. Once Thrala caught her breath in a half sob.

"They are flying slowly because of us. And it's so far—"

"Look!" Dandtan pointed at the plain. "The morgels!"

The morgel pack, driven by fear, ran in leaping bounds. They passed within a hundred yards of the three, yet did not turn from their course, though several snarled at them.

"They are already dead," observed Dandtan. "There is no time for them to reach the shelter of the Caves."

Splashing through a shallow brook, the three began to run. For the first time Thrala faltered and broke pace. Garin thrust the Ana into Dandtan's arms and, before she could protest, swept the girl into his arms.

The haze was denser now, setding upon them as a curtain. Black hair, finer than silk, whipped across Garin's throat. Thrala's head was on his shoulder, her heaving breasts arched as she gasped the sultry air.

"They—keep—watch. . . . !" shouted Dandtan.

Piercing the gloom were pin-points of light. A dark shape grazed Garin's head—one of the Gibi Queen's guards.

Then abruptly they stumbled into a throng of the Folk, one of whom reached for Thrala with a crooning cry. It was Sera welcoming her mistress.

Thrala was borne away by the women, leaving Garin with a feeling of desolation.

"The Mists, Outlander." It was Urg, pointing toward the Cavern mouth. Two of the Folk swung their weight on a lever. Across the opening a sheet of crystal clicked into place. The Caverns were sealed.

The haze was now inky black outside and billows of it beat against the protecting barrier. It might have been midnight of the blackest, starless night.

"So will it be for forty days. What is without—dies," said Urg.

"Then we have forty days in which to prepare," Garin spoke his thought aloud. Dandtan's keen face lightened.

"Well said, Garin. Forty days before Kepta may seek us. And we have much to do. But first, our respects to the Lord of the Folk."

Together they went to the Hall of Thrones where, when he saw Dandtan, Trar arose and held out his jade-tipped rod of office. The son of the Ancient Ones touched it.

"Hail! Dweller in the Light, and Outlander who has fulfilled the promise of Thran. Thrala is once more within the Caverns. Now send you to dust this black throne . . ."

Garin, nothing loath, drew the destroying rod from his belt, but Dandtan shook his head. "The time is not yet, Trar. Kepta must finish the pattern he began. Forty days have we and then the Black Ones come."

Trar considered thoughtfully. "So that be the way of it. Thran did not see another war. . . ."

"But he saw an end to Kepta!"

Trar straightened as if some burden had rolled from his thin shoulders. "Well do you speak, Lord. When there is one to sit upon the Rose Throne, what have we to fear? Listen, oh ye Folk, the Light has returned to the Caverns!"

His cry was echoed by the gathering of the Folk.

"And now, Lord—" he turned to Dandtan with deference—"what are your commands?"

"For the space of one sleep I shall enter the Chamber of Renewing with this outlander, who is no longer an outlander but one, Garin, accepted by the Daughter according to the Law. And while we rest let all be made ready. . . ."

"The Dweller in the Light has spoken!" Trar himself escorted them from the Hall.

They came, through many winding passages, to a deep pool of water, in the depths of which lurked odd purple shadows. Dandtan stripped and plunged in, Garin following his example. The water was tinglingly alive and they did not linger in it long. From it they went to a bubble room such as the one Garin had rested in after the bath of light rays, and on the cushions in its center stretched their tired bodies.

When Garin awoke he experienced the same exultation he had felt before. Dandtan regarded him with a smile. "Now to work," he said, as he reached out to press a knob set in the wall.

Two of the Folk appeared, bringing with them clean trappings. After they dressed and broke their fast, Dandtan started for the laboratories. Garin would have gone with him, but Sera intercepted them.

"There is one would speak with Lord Garin. . . ."

Dandtan laughed. "Go," he ordered the American. "Thrala's commands may not be slighted."

The Hall of Women was deserted. And the corridor beyond, roofed and walled with slabs of rose-shot crystal, was as empty. Sera drew aside a golden curtain and they were in the audience chamber of the Daughter.

A semi-circular dais of the clearest crystal, heaped with rose and gold cushions, faced them. Before it, a fountain, in the form of a flower nodding on a curved stem, sent a spray of water into a shallow basin. The walls of the room were divided into alcoves by marble pillars, each one curved in semblance of a fern frond.

From the domed ceiling, on chains of twisted gold, seven lamps, each wrought from a single yellow sapphire, gave soft light. The floor was a mosaic of gold and crystal.

Two small Anas, who had been playing among the cushions, pattered up to exchange greetings with Garin. But of the mistress of the chamber there was no sign. Garin turned to Sera, but before he could phrase his question, she asked mockingly:

"Who is the Lord Garin that he can not wait with patience?" But she left in search of the Daughter.

Garin glanced uneasily about the room. This jeweled chamber was no place for him. He had started toward the door when Thrala stepped within.

"Greetings to the Daughter." His voice sounded formal and cold, even to himself.

Her hands, which had been outheld in welcome, dropped to her sides. A ghost of a frown dimmed her beauty.

"Greetings, Garin," she returned slowly.

"You sent for me—" he prompted, eager to escape from this jewel box and the unattainable treasure it held.

"Yes," the coldness of her tone was an order of exile. "I would know how you fared and whether your wounds yet troubled you."

He looked down at his own smooth flesh, cleanly healed by the wisdom of the Folk. "I am myself again and eager to be at such work as Dandtan can find for me. . . ."

Her robe seemed to hiss across the floor as she turned upon him. "Then go!" she ordered. "Go quickly!"

And blindly he obeyed. She had spoken as if to a servant, one whom she could summon and dismiss by whim. Even if Dandtan held her love, she might have extended him her friendship. But he knew within him that friendship would be a poor crumb beside the feast his pulses pounded for.

There was a pattering of feet behind him. So, she would call him back! His pride sent him on. But it was Sera. Her head thrust forward until she truly resembled a reptile.

"Fool! Morgel!" she spat. "Even the Black Ones did not treat her so. Get you out of the Place of Women lest they divide your skin among them!"

Garin broke free, not heeding her torrent of reproach. Then he seized upon one of the Folk as a guide and sought the laboratories. Far beneath the surface of Tav, where the light-motes shown ghostly in the gloom, they came into a place of ceaseless activity, where there were tables crowded with instruments, coils of glass and metal tubing, and other equipment and supplies. These were the focusing point for ceaseless streams of the Folk. On a platform at the far end, Garin saw the tall son of the Ancient Ones working on a framework of metal and shining crystal.

He glanced up as Garin joined him. "You are late," he accused. "But your excuse is a good one. Now get you to work. Hold this here—and here—while I fasten these clamps."

So Garin became extra hands and feet for Dandtan, and they worked feverishly to build against the lifting of the Mists. There was no day or night in the laboratories. They worked steadily without rest, and without feeling fatigue.

Twice they went to the Chamber of Renewing, but except for these trips to the upper ways they were not out of the laboratories through all those days. Of Thrala there was no sign, nor did any one speak of her.

The Cavern dwellers were depending upon two defenses: an evil green liquid, to be thrown in frail glass globes, and a screen charged with energy. Shortly before the lifting of the Mists, these arms were transported to the entrance and installed there. Dandtan and Garin made a last inspection.

"Kepta makes the mistake of under-rating his enemies," Dandtan reflected, feeling the edge of the screen caressingly. "When I was captured, on the day my people died, I was sent to the Black Ones' laboratories so that their seekers after knowledge might learn the secrets of the Ancient Ones. But I proved a better pupil than teacher and I discovered the defense against the Black Fire. After I had learned that, Kepta grew impatient with my supposed stupidity and tried to use me to force Thrala to his will. For that, as for other things, shall he pay—and the paying will not be in coin of his own striking. Let us think of that . . ." He turned to greet Urg and Trar and the other leaders of the Folk, who had approached unnoticed.

Among them stood Thrala, her gaze fixed upon the crystal wall between them and the thinning Mist. She noticed Garin no more than she did the Anas playing with her train and the women whispering behind her. But Garin stepped back into the shadows—and what he saw was not weapons of war, but cloudy black hair and graceful white limbs veiled in splendor.

Urg and one of the other chieftains bore down upon the door lever. With a protesting squeak, the glass wall disappeared into the rock. The green of Tav beckoned them out to walk in its freshness; it was renewed with lusty life. But in all that expanse of meadow and forest there was a strange stillness.

"Post sentries," ordered Dandtan. "The Black Ones will come soon."

He beckoned Garin forward as he spoke to Thrala: "Let us go to the Hall of Thrones."

But the Daughter did not answer his smile. "It is not meant that we should spend time in idle talk. Let us go instead to call upon the help of those who have gone before us." So speaking, she darted a glance at Garin as chill as the arctic lands beyond the lip of Tav, and then swept away with Sera bearing her train.

Dandtan stared at Garin. "What has happened between you two?"

The flyer shook his head. "I don't know. No man is born

with an understanding of women---------- "

"But she is angered with you. What has happened?"

For a moment Garin was tempted to tell the truth: that he dared not break any barrier she chose to raise, lest he seize what in honor was none of his. But he shook his head mutely. Neither of them saw Thrala again until Death entered the Caverns.

Chapter Ten—Battle and Victory

Garin stood with Dandtan looking out into the plain of Tav. Some distance away were two slender, steel tipped towers, which were, in reality, but hollow tubes filled with the Black Fire. Before these dark clad figures were busy.

"They seem to believe us already defeated. Let them think so," commented Dandtan, touching the screen they had erected before the Cavern entrance.

As he spoke Kepta swaggered through the tall grass to call a greeting:

"Ho, rock dweller, I would speak with you------------ "

Dandtan edged around the screen, Garin a pace behind. "I see you, Kepta."

"Good. I trust that your ears will serve you as well as your eyes. These are my terms: Give Thrala to me to dwell in my chamber and the oudander to provide sport for my captains. Make no resistance but throw open the Caverns so that I may take my rightful place in the Hall of Thrones. Do this and we shall be at peace. . . ."

"And this is our reply:"—Dandtan stood unmovingly before the screen—"Return to the Caves; break down the bridge between your land and ours. Let no Black One come hither again, ever. . . ."

Kepta laughed. "So, that be the way of it! Then this shall

we do: take Thrala, to be mine for a space, and then to go to

my captains------- "

Garin hurled himself forward, felt Kepta's lips mash beneath his fist; his fingers were closing about the other's throat as Dandtan, who was trying to pull him away from his prey, shouted a warning: "Watch out!"

A morgel had leaped from the grass, its teeth snapping about Garin's wrist, forcing him to drop Kepta. Then Dandtan laid it senseless by a sharp blow with his belt.

On hands and knees Kepta crawled back to his men. The lower part of his face was a red and dripping smear. He screamed an order with savage fury.

Dandtan drew the still raging flyer behind the screen. "Be a little prudent," he panted. "Kepta can be dealt with in other ways than with bare hands."

The towers were swinging their tips toward the entrance. Dandtan ordered the screen wedged tightly into place.

Outside, the morgel Dandtan had stunned got groggily to its feet. When it had limped half the distance back to its master. Kepta gave the order to fire. The broad beam of black light from the tip of the nearest tower caught the beast head on. There was a chilling scream of agony, and where the morgel had stood gray ashes drifted on the wind.

A hideous crackling arose as the black beam struck the screen. Green grass beneath seared away, leaving only parched earth and naked blue soil. Those within the Cavern crouched behind their frail protection, half blinded by the light from the seared grass, coughing from the chemical-ridden fumes which curled about the cracks of the rock.

Then the beam faded out. Thin smoke plumed from the tips of the towers, steam arose from the blackened ground. Dandtan drew a deep breath.

"It held!" he cried, betraying at last the fear which had ridden him.

Men of the Folk dragged engines of tubing before the screen, while others brought forth the globes of green liquid. Dandtan stood aside, as if this matter were the business of the Folk alone, and Garin recalled that the Ancient Ones were opposed to the taking of life.

Trar was in command now. At his orders the globes were posed on spoon-shaped holders. Loopholes in the screen clicked open. Trar brought down his hand in signal. The globes arose lazily, sliding through the loopholes and floating out toward the towers.

One, aimed short, struck the ground where the fire had burned it bare, and broke. The liquid came forth, sluggishly, forming a gray-green gas as the air struck it. Another spiral of gas arose almost at the foot of one of the towers—and then another .... and another.

There quickly followed a tortured screaming, which soon dwindled to a weak yammering. They could see shapes, no longer human or animal, staggering about in the fog.

Dandtan turned away, his face white with horror. Garin's hands were over his ears to shut out that crying.

At last it was quiet; there was no more movement by the towers. Urg placed a sphere of rosy light upon the nearest machine and flipped it out into the camp of the enemy. As if it were a magnet it drew the green tendrils of gas, to leave the air clear. Here and there lay shrunken, livid shapes, the towers brooding over them.

One of the Folk burst into their midst, a woman of Thrala's following.

"Haste!" She clawed at Garin. "Kepta takes Thrala!"

She ran wildly back the way she had come, with the American pounding at her heels. They burst into the Hall of Thrones and saw a struggling group before the dais.

Garin heard someone howl like an animal, became aware the sound came from his own throat. For the second time his fist found its mark on Kepta's face. With a shriek of rage the Black One threw Thrala from him and sprang at Garin, his nails tearing gashes in the flyer's face. Twice the American twisted free and sent bone-crushing blows into the other's ribs. Then he got the grip he wanted, and his fingers closed around Kepta's throat. In spite of the Black

One's struggles he held on until a limp body rolled beneath him.

Panting, the American pulled himself up from the bloodstained floor and grabbed the arm of the Jade Throne for support.

"Garin!" Thrala's arms were about him, her pitying fingers on his wounds. And in that moment he forgot Dandtan, forgot everything he had steeled himself to remember. She was in his arms and his mouth sought hers possessively. Nor was she unresponsive, but yielded, as a flower yields to the wind.

"Garin!" she whispered softly. Then, almost shyly, she broke from his hold.

Beyond her stood Dandtan, his face white, his mouth tight. Garin remembered. And, a little mad with pain and longing, he dropped his eyes, trying not to see the loveliness which was Thrala.

"So, Outlander, Thrala flies to your arms------------ "

Garin whirled about. Kepta was hunched on the broad seat of the jet throne.

"No, I am not dead, Outlander—nor shall you kill me, as you think to do. I go now, but I shall return. We have met and hated, fought and died before—you and I. You were a certain Garan, Marshal of the air fleet of Yu-Lac on a vanished world, and I was Lord of Koom. That was in the days before the Ancient Ones pioneered space. You and I and Thrala, we are bound together and even fate can not break those bonds. Farewell, Garin. And do you, Thrala, remember the ending of that other Garan. It was not an easy one."

With a last malicious chuckle, he leaned back in the throne. His battered body slumped. Then the sharp lines of the throne blurred; it shimmered in the light. Abrupdy then both it and its occupant were gone. They were staring at empty space, above which loomed the rose throne of the Ancient Ones.

"He spoke true," murmured Thrala. "We have had other lives, other meetings—so will we meet again. But for the present he returns to the darkness which sent him forth. It

is finished."

Without warning, a low rumbling filled the Cavern; the walls rocked and swayed. Lizard and human, they huddled together until the swaying stopped. Finally a runner appeared with news that one of the Gibi had ventured forth and discovered that the Caves of Darkness had been sealed by an underground quake. The menace of the Black Ones Was definitely at an end.

Chapter Eleven—Thrala's Mate

Although there were falls of rock within the Caverns and some of the passages were closed, few of the Folk suffered injury. Gibi scouts reported that the land about the entrance to the Caves had sunk, and that the River of Gold, thrown out of its bed, was fast filling this basin to form a lake.

As far as they could discover, none of the Black Ones had survived the battle and the sealing of the Caves. But they could not be sure that there was not a handful of outlaws somewhere within the confines of Tav.

The Crater itself was changed. A series of raw hills had appeared in the central plain. The pool of boiling mud had vanished and trees in the forest lay flat, as if cut by a giant scythe.

Upon their return to the cliff city, the Gibi found most of their wax skyscrappers in ruins, but they set about rebuilding without complaint. The squirrel-farmers emerged from their burrows and were again busy in the fields.

Garin felt out of place in all the activity that filled the Caverns. More than ever he was the outlander with no true roots in Tav. Restlessly, he explored the Caverns, spending many hours in the Place of Ancestors, where he studied those men of the outer world who had preceded him into this weird land.

One night when he came back to his chamber he found Dandtan and Trar awaiting him there. There was a curious hardness in Dandtan's attitude, a somber sobriety in Trar's carriage.

"Have you sought the Hall of Women since the battle?" demanded the son of the Ancient One abruptly.

"No," retorted Garin shortly. Did Dandtan accuse him of double dealing?

"Have you sent a message to Thrala?"

Garin held back his rising temper. "I have not ventured where I can not."

Dandtan nodded to Trar as if his suspicions had been confirmed. "You see how it stands, Trar."

Trar shook his head slowly. "But never has the summoning

been at fault------- "

"You forget," Dandtan reminded him sharply. "It was once—and the penalty was exacted. So shall it be again."

Garin looked from one to the other, confused. Dandtan seemed possessed of a certain ruthless anger, but Trar was manifestly unhappy.

"It must come after council, the Daughter willing," the Lord of the Folk said.

Dandtan strode toward the door. "Thrala is not to know. Assemble the Council tonight. Meanwhile, see that he," he jerked his thumb toward Garin, "does not leave this room."

Thus Garin became a prisoner under the guard of the Folk, unable to discover of what Dandtan accused him, or how he had aroused the hatred of the Cavern ruler. Unless Dandtan's jealousy had been aroused and he was determined to rid himself of a rival.

Believing this, the flyer went willingly to the chamber where the judges waited. Dandtan sat at the head of a long table, Trar at his right hand and lesser nobles of the Folk beyond.

"You know the charge," Dandtan's words were tipped with venom as Garin came to stand before him. "Out of his own mouth has this outlander condemned himself. Therefore I ask that you decree for him the fate of that outlander of the second calling who rebelled against the summoning."

"The outlander has admitted his fault?" questioned one of the Folk.

Trar inclined his head sadly. "He did." As Garin opened his mouth to demand a stating of the charge against him, Dandtan spoke again: "What say you, Lords?"

For a long moment they sat in silence and then they bobbed their lizard heads in assent "Do as you desire, Dweller in the Light."

Dandtan smiled without mirth. "Look, outlander." He

passed his hand over the glass of the seeing mirror set in

the table top. "This is the fate of him who rebels---------------- "

In the shining surface Garin saw pictured a break in Tav's wall. At its foot stood a group of men of the Ancient Ones, and in their midst struggled a prisoner. They were forcing him to climb the crater wall. Garin watched him reach the lip and crawl over, to stagger across the steaming rock, dodging the scalding vapor of hot springs, until he pitched face down in the slimy mud.

"Such was his ending, and so will you end------------ "

The calm brutality of that statement aroused Garin's anger.

"Rather would I die that way than linger in this den," he cried hotly. "You, who owe your life to me, would send me to such a death without even telling me of what I am accused. Little is there to choose between you and Kepta, after all—except that he was an open enemy!"

Dandtan sprang to his feet, but Trar caught his arm.

"He speaks fairly. Ask him why he will not fulfill the summoning."

While Dandtan hesitated, Garin leaned across the table, flinging his words, weapon-like, straight into that cold face.

"I'll admit that I love Thrala—have loved her since that moment when I saw her on the steps of the morgel pit in the caves. Since when has it become a crime to love that which may not be yours—if you do not try to take it?"

Trar released Dandtan, his golden eyes gleaming.

"If you love her, claim her. It is your right."

"Do I not know," Garin turned to him, "that she is Dandtan's. Thran had no idea of Dandtan's survival when he laid his will upon her. Shall I stoop to holding her to an unwelcome bargain? Let her go to the one she loves . . ."

Dandtan's face was livid, and his hands, resting on the table, trembled. One by one the lords of the Folk slipped away, leaving the two face to face.

"And I thought to order you to your death." Dandtan's whisper was husky as it emerged between dry lips. "Garin, we thought you knew—and, knowing, had refused her."

"Knew what?"

"That I am Thran's son—and Thrala's brother."

The floor swung beneath Garin's unsteady feet. Dandtan's hands were warm on his shoulders.

"I am a fool," said the American slowly.

Dandtan smiled. "A very honorable fool! Now get you to Thrala, who deserves to hear the full of this tangle."

So it was that, with Dandtan by his side, Garin walked for the' second time down that hallway, to pass the golden curtains and stand in the presence of the Daughter. She came straight from her cushions into his arms when she read what was in his face. They needed no words.

And in that hour began Garin's life in Tav.

FRANCHISE

Isaac Asimov

Linda, aged 10, was the only one of the family who seemed to enjoy being awake.

Norman Muller could hear her now through his own drugged, unhealthy coma. (He had finally managed to fall asleep an hour earlier but even then it was more like exhaustion than sleep.)

She was at his bedside now, shaking him. "Daddy, Daddy, wake up. Wake up!"

He suppressed a groan. "All right, Linda."

"But, Daddy, there's more policemen around than any time! Police cars and everything!"

Norman Muller gave up and rose blearily to his elbows. The day was beginning. It was faintly stirring toward dawn outside, the germ of a miserable gray that looked about as miserably gray as he felt. He could hear Sarah, his wife, shuffling about breakfast duties in the kitchen. His father-in-law, Matthew, was hawking strenuously in the bathroom. No doubt Agent Handley was ready and waiting for him.

This was the day.

Election day!

To begin with, it had been like every other year. Maybe a little worse, because it was a Presidential year, but no worse than other Presidential years if it came to that.

The politicians spoke about the guh-reat electorate and the vast electuh-ronic intelligence that was its servant. The press analyzed the situation with industrial computers (the New York Times and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch had their own computers) and were full of little hints as to what would be forthcoming. Commentators and columnists pin-pointed the crucial state and county in happy contradiction to one another.

The first hint that it would not be like every other year, was when Sarah Mul'er said to her husband on the evening of October 4 (with Election Day exactly a month off), "Cant-

well Johnson says that Indiana will be the state this year. He's the fourth one. Just think, our state this time."

Matthew Hortenweiler took his fleshy face from behind the paper, stared dourly at his daughter and growled, "Those fellows are paid to tell lies. Don't listen to them."

"Four of them, Father," said Sarah, mildly. "They all say Indiana."

"Indiana is a key state, Matthew," said Norman, just as mildly, "on account of the Hawkins-Smith Act and this mess in Indianapolis. It—"

Matthew twisted his old face alarmingly and rasped out, "No one says Bloomington or Monroe County, do they?"

"Well—" said Norman.

Linda, whose little point-chin face had been shifting from one speaker to the next, said pipingly, "You going to be voting this year, Daddy?"

Norman smiled gently and said, "I don't think so, dear."

But this was in the gradually growing excitement of an October in a Presidential Election Year and Sarah had led a quiet life with dreams for her companions. She said, longingly, "Wouldn't that be wonderful, though?"

"If I voted?" Norman Muller had a small, blonde mustache that had given him a debonair quality in the young Sarah's eyes, but which, with gradual graying, had declined merely to lack of distinction. His forehead bore deepening lines born of uncertainty and, in general, he had never seduced his clerkly soul with the thought that he was either born great or would under any circumstances achieve greatness. He had a wife, a job and a little girl and except under extraordinary conditions of elation or depression was inclined to consider that to be an adequate bargain struck with life.

So he was a little embarrassed and more than a little uneasy at the direction his wife's thoughts were taking. "Actually, my dear," he said, "there are two hundred million people in the country, and with odds like that, I don't think we ought to waste our time wondering about it."

His wife said, "Why, Norman, it's no such thing like two hundred million and you know it. In the first place, only people between 20 and 60 are eligible and it's always men, so that puts it down to maybe fifty million to one. Then, if it's really Indiana—"

"Then it's about one and a quarter million to one. You wouldn't want me to bet in a horse race against those odds, now, would you? Let's have supper."

Matthew muttered from behind his newspaper, "Damned foolishness."

Linda asked again, "You going to be voting this year, Daddy?"

Norman shook his head and they all adjourned to the dining room.

By October 20, Sarah's excitement was rising rapidly. Over the coffee, she announced that Mrs. Schultz, having a cousin who was the secretary of an Assemblyman, said that all the "smart money" was on Indiana.

"She says President Villers is even going to make a speech at Indianapolis."

Norman Muller, who had had a hard day at the store, nudged the statement with a raising of eyebrows and let it go at that.

Matthew Hortenweiler, who was chronically dissatisfied with Washington, said, "If Villers makes a speech in Indiana, that means he thinks Multivac will pick Arizona. He wouldn't have the guts to go closer, the mushhead."

Sarah, whs ignored her father whenever she could decently do so, said, "I don't know why they don't announce the state as soon as they can, and then the county and so on. Then the people who were eliminated could relax."

"If they did anything like that," pointed out Norman, "the politicians would follow the announcements like vultures. By the time it was narrowed down to a township, you'd have a Congressman or two at every street-corner."

Matthew narrowed his eyes and brushed angrily at his sparse, gray hair, "They're vultures, anyhow. Listen—"

Sarah murmured, "Now, Father—"

Matthew's voice rumbled over her protest without as much as a stumble or hitch. "Listen, I was around when they set up Multivac. It would end partisan politics, they said. No more voter's money wasted on campaigns. No more grinning nobodies high-pressured and advertising-campaigned into Congress or the White House. So what happens? More campaigning than ever, only now they do it blind. They'll send guys to Indiana on account of the Hawkins-Smith Act and other guys to California in case it's the Joe Hammer situation that turns crucial. I say, wipe out all that nonsense. Back to the good, old—"

Linda asked, suddenly, "Don't you want Daddy to vote this year, Grandpa?"

Matthew glared at the young girl. "Never you mind now."

He turned back to Norman and Sarah. "There was a time I voted. Marched right up to the polling booth, stuck my fist on the levers and voted. There was nothing to it. I just said: This fellow's my man and I'm voting for him. That's the way it should be."

Linda said excitedly, "You voted, Grandpa? You really did?"

Sarah leaned forward quickly to quiet what might easily become an incongruous story drifting about the neighborhood. "It's nothing, Linda. Grandpa doesn't really mean voted. When he was a littie boy, they had something they called voting. Everyone did that kind of voting, Grandpa, too, but it wasn't really voting."

Matthew roared, "It wasn't when I was a little boy. I was 22 and I voted for Langley and it was real voting. My vote didn't count for much, maybe, but it was as good as anyone else's. Anyone else's. And no Multivac to—"

Norman interposed. "All right, Linda, time for bed. And stop asking questions about voting. When you grow up, you'll understand all about it."

He kissed her with antiseptic gentleness and she moved reluctantly out of range under maternal prodding and a promise that she might watch the bedside video till 9:15, if she was prompt about the bathing ritual.

Linda said, "Grandpa," and stood with her chin down and her hands behind her back until his newspaper lowered itself to the point where shaggy eyebrows and eyes, nested in fine wrinkles, showed themselves. It was Friday, October 31.

He said, "Yes?"

Linda came closer and put both her forearms on one of the old man's knees so that he had to discard his newspaper altogether.

She said, "Grandpa, did you really once vote?" He said. "You heard me say I did, didn't you? Do you think I tell fibs?"

"N—no, but Mamma says everybody voted then." "So they did."

"But how could they? How could everybody vote?"

Matthew stared at her solemnly, then lifted her and put her on his knee.

He even moderated the tonal qualities of his voice. He said, "You see, Linda, till about forty years ago. everybody always voted. Say we wanted to decide who was to be the new President of the United States. The Democrats and Republicans would both nominate someone and everybody would say who they wanted. When Election Day was over, they would count how many people wanted the Democrat and how many wanted the Republican. Whoever had more votes was elected. You see?"

Linda nodded and said, "How did all the people know who to vote for? Did Multivac tell them?"

Matthew's eyebrows hunched down and he looked severe. "They just used their own judgment, girl."

She edged away from him and he lowered his voice again, "I'm not angry at you, Linda. But, you see, sometimes it took all night to count what everyone said and people were impatient. So they invented special machines which could look at the first few votes and compare them with the votes from the same places in previous years. That way the machine could compute how the total vote would be and who would be elected. You see?"

She nodded. "Like Multivac."

"The first computers were much smaller than Multivac. But the machines grew bigger and they could tell how the election would go from fewer and fewer votes. Then, at last, they built Multivac and it can tell from just one voter."

Linda smiled at having reached a familiar part of the story and said, "That's nice."

Matthew frowned and said, "No, it's not nice. I don't want a machine telling me how I would have voted just because some joker in Milwaukee says he's against higher tariffs. Maybe I want to vote cockeyed just for the pleasure of it. Maybe I don't want to vote. Maybe—"

But Linda had wriggled from his knee and was beating a retreat.

She met her mother at the door. Her mother, who was still wearing her coat and had not even had time to remove her hat, said breathlesssly, "Run along, Linda. Don't get in mother's way."

Then she said to Matthew as she lifted her hat from her head and patted her hair back into place, "I've been at Agatha's."

Matthew stared at her censoriously and did not even dignify that piece of information with a grunt as he groped for his newspaper.

Sarah said, as she unbuttoned her coat, "Guess what she said?"

Matthew flattened out his newspaper for reading purposes with a sharp crackle and said, "Don't much care."

Sarah said, "Now, Father—" But she had no time for anger. The news had to be told and Matthew was the only recipient handy. So she went on, "Agatha's Joe is a policeman, you know, and he says a whole truckload of secret service men came into Bloomington last night."

"They're not after me."

"Don't you see, Father? Secret service agents, and it's almost election time. In Bloomington!"

"Maybe they're after a bank robber."

"There hasn't been a bank robbery in town in ages . . . Father, you're hopeless."

She stalked away.

Nor did Norman Muller receive the news with noticeably greater excitement.

"Now, Sarah, how did Agatha's Joe know they were secret service agents," he asked, calmly. "They wouldn't go around with identification cards pasted on their foreheads."

But by next evening, with November a day old, she could say triumphantly, "It's just everyone in Bloomington that's waiting for someone local to be the voter. The Bloomington News as much as said so on video."

Norman stirred uneasily. He couldn't deny it, and his heart was sinking. If Bloomington was really to be hit by Multivac's lightning, it would mean newspapermen, video shows, tourists, all sorts of—strange upset. Norman liked the quiet routine of his life and the distant stir of politics was getting uncomfortably close.

He said, "It's all rumor. Nothing more."

"You wait and see, then. You just wait and see."

As things turned out, there was very little time to wait, for the door-bell rang insistently, and when Norman Muller opened it and said, "Yes?" a tall, grave-faced man said, "Are you Norman Muller?"

Norman said, "Yes" again, but in a strange dying voice. It was not difficult to see from the stranger's bearing that he was one carrying authority and the nature of his errand suddenly became as inevitably obvious as it had, until the moment before, been unthinkably impossible.

The man presented credentials, stepped into the house, closed the door behind him and said ritualistically, "Mr. Norman Muller, it is necessary for me to inform you on the behalf of the President of the United States that you have been chosen to represent the American electorate on Tuesday, November 4, 2008."

Norman Muller managed, with difficulty, to walk unaided to his chair. He sat there, white-faced and almost insensible, while Sarah brought water, slapped his hands in panic and moaned to her husband between clenched teeth, "Don't be sick, Norman. Don't be sick. They'll pick someone else."

When Norman could manage to talk, he whispered, "I'm sorry, sir."

The secret service agent had removed his coat, unbuttoned his jacket and was sitting at ease on the couch.

"It's all right," he said, and the mark of officialdom seemed to have vanished with the formal announcement and leave him simply a large and rather friendly man. "This is the sixth time I've made the announcement and I've seen all kinds of reactions. Not one of them was the kind you see on the video. You know what I mean? A holy, dedicated look, and a character who says: 'It will be a great privilege to serve my country.' That sort of stuff." The agent laughed comfortingly.

Sarah's accompanying laugh held a trace of shrill hysteria.

The agent said, "Now you're going to have me with you for a while. My name is Phil Handley. I'd appreciate it if you call me Phil. Mr. Muller can't leave the house any more till Election Day. You'll have to inform the department store that he's sick, Mrs. Muller. You can go about your business for a while but you'll have to agree not to say a word about this. Right, Mrs. Muller?"

Sarah nodded vigorously. "No, sir. Not a word."

"All right. But, Mrs. Muller," Handley looked grave, "we're not kidding now. Go out only if you must and you'll be followed when you do. I'm sorry but that's the way we must operate."

"Followed?"

"It won't be obvious. Don't worry. And it's only for two days till the formal announcement to the nation is made. Your daughter—"

"She's in bed," said Sarah, hastily.

"Good. She'll have to be told I'm a relative or friend staying with the family. If she does find out the truth, she'll have to be kept in the house. Your father had better stay in the house in any case."

"He won't like that," said Sarah.

"Can't be helped. Now, since you have no others living with you—"

"You know all about us, apparently," whispered Norman. "Quite a bit," agreed Handley. "In any case, those are all my instructions to you for the moment. I'll try to co-operate as much as I can and be as Utile of a nuisance as possible. The government will pay for my maintenance so I won't be an expense to you. I'll be relieved each night by someone who will sit up in this room, so there will be no problem about sleeping accommodations. Now, Mr. Muller—" "Sir?"

"You can call me Phil," said the agent again. "The purpose of the two days preliminary to formal announcement is to get you used to your position. We prefer to have you face Muldvac in as normal a state of mind as possible. Just relax and try to feel this is all in a day's work. Okay?"

"Okay," said Norman, and then shook his head violentiy. "But I don't want the responsibility. Why me?"

"All right," said Handley, "let's get that straight to begin with. Multivac weighs all sorts of known factors, billions of them. One factor isn't known, though, and won't be known for a long time. That's the reaction pattern of the human mind. All Americans are subjected to molding pressure of what other Americans do and say, to the things that are done to him and the things he does to others. Any American can be brought to Multivac to have the bent of his mind surveyed. From that the bent of all other minds in the country can be estimated. Some Americans are better for the purpose than others at some given time, depending upon the happenings of that year. Multivac picked you as most representative this year. Not the smartest, or the strongest, or the luckiest, but just the most representative. Now we don't question Multivac, do we?"

"Couldn't it make a mistake?" asked Norman.

Sarah, who listened impatiently, interrupted to say, "Don't listen to him, sir. He's just nervous, you know. Actually, he's very well-read and he always follows politics very closely."

Handley said, "Multivac makes the decisions, Mrs. Muller. It picked your husband."

"But does it know everything?" insisted Norman, wildly. "Can't it have made a mistake?"

"Yes, it can. There's no point in not being frank. In 1993, a selected Voter died of a stroke two hours before it was time for him to be notified. Multivac didn't predict that; it couldn't. A Voter might be mentally unstable, morally unsuitable, or, for that matter, disloyal. Multivac can't know everything about everybody until he's fed all the data there is. That's why alternate selections are always held in readiness. I don't think we'll be using one this time. You're in good health, Mr. Muller, and you've been carefully investigated. You qualify."

Norman buried his face in his hands and sat motionless. "By tomorrow morning, sir," said Sarah, "he'll be perfectly all right. He just has to get used to it, that's all." "Of course," said Handley.

In the privacy of their bedchamber, Sarah Muller, expressed herself in stronger fashion. The burden of her lecture was, "So get hold of yourself, Norman. You're trying to throw away the chance of a lifetime."

Norman whispered, desperately, "It frightens me, Sarah. The whole thing."

"For goodness sake, why? What's there to it but answering a question or two?"

"The responsibility is too great. I couldn't face it."

"What responsibility? There isn't any. Multivac picked you. It's Multivac's responsibility. Everyone knows that."

Norman sat up in bed in a sudden access of rebellion and anguish. "Everyone is supposed to know that. But they don't They—"

"Lower your voice," hissed Sarah, icily. "They'll hear you downtown."

"They don't," said Norman, declining quickly to a whisper. "When they talk about the Ridgely administration of 1988, do they say that Ridgely was corrupt and the nation was foolish to elect him? Do they say he won them over with pie-in-the-sky promises and racist baloney? No! They talk about the 'goddam MacComber vote' as though Humphrey MacComber was the only man who had anything to do with it because he faced Multivac. I've said it myself—only now I think, the poor guy was just a truck-farmer who didn't ask to be picked. Why was it his fault more than anyone else's. Now his name is a curse."

"You're just being childish," said Sarah. "I'm being sensible. I tell you, Sarah, I won't accept. They can't make me vote if I don't want to. I'll say I'm sick. I'll

say—"

But Sarah had had enough. "Now you listen to me," she whispered in a cold fury. "You don't have only yourself to think about. You know what it means to be Voter of the Year. A Presidential year at that. It means publicity and fame and, maybe, buckets of money—"

"And then I go back to being a clerk."

"You will not. You'll have a branch managership at the least if you have any brains at all, and you will have, because I'll tell you what to do. You control the kind of publicity if you play your cards right, and you can force Kennell Stores, Inc., into a tight contract and an escalator clause in connection with your salary and a decent pension plan."

"That's not the point in being Voter, Sarah."

"That will be your point. If. you don't owe anything to yourself or to me—I'm not asking for myself—you owe something to Linda."

Norman groaned.

"Well, don't you?" snapped Sarah.

"Yes, dear," murmured Norman.

On November 3, the official announcement was made and it was too late for Norman to back out even if he had been able to find the courage to make the attempt

Their house was sealed off. Secret service agents made their appearance in the open, blocking off all approach.

At first the telephone rang incessandy, but Philip Handley with an engagingly apologetic smile took all calls. Eventually, the exchange shunted all calls directly to the police station.

Norman imagined that in that way, he was spared not only the bubbling (and envious?) congratulations of friends, but also the egregious pressure of salesmen scenting a prospect and the designing smoothness of politicians from all over the nation. Perhaps even death threats from the inevitable cranks.

Newspapers were forbidden to the house now in order to keep out weighted pressure and television was gently but firmly disconnected, over Linda's loud protests.

Matthew growled and stayed in his room; Linda, after the first flurry of excitement, sulked and whined because she could not leave the house; Sarah divided her time between preparation of meals for the present and plans for the future; and Norman's depression lived and fed upon itself.

And the morning of Tuesday, November 4, 2008, came at last and it was Election Day.

It was early breakfast, but only Norman Muller ate, and that mechanically. Even a shower and shave had not succeeded in either restoring him to reality or removing his own conviction that he was as grimy without as he felt grimy within.

Handley's friendly voice did its best to shed some normality over the gray and unfriendly dawn. (The weather prediction had been for a cloudy day with prospects of rain before noon.)

Handley said, "We'll keep this house insulated till Mr. Muller is back, but after that we'll be off your necks." The secret service agent was in full uniform now, including side-arms in heavily-brassed holsters.

"You've been no trouble at all, Mr. Handley," simpered Sarah.

Norman drank through two cups of black coffee, wiped his lips with a napkin, stood up and said, haggardly, "I'm ready."

Handley stood up, too, "Very well, sir. And thank you, Mrs. Muller, for your very kind hospitality."

The armored car purred down empty streets. They were empty even for that hour of the morning.

Handley indicated that and said, "They always shift traffic away from the line of drive ever since the attempted bombing that nearly ruined the Leverett election of '92."

When the car stopped, Norman was helped out by the always polite Handley into an underground drive whose walls were lined with soldiers at attention.

He was led into a brightly lit room, in which three white-uniformed men greeted him smilingly.

Norman said, sharply, "But this is the hospital?"

"There's no significance to that," said Handley, at once. "It's just that the hospital has the necessary facilities."

"Well, what do I do?"

Handley nodded. One of the three men in white advanced and said, "I'll take over now, agent."

Handley saluted in an off-hand manner and left the room.

The man in white said, "Won't you sit down, Mr. Muller? I'm John Paulson, Senior Computer. These are Samson Levine and Peter Dorogobuzh, my assistants."

Norman numbly shook hands all around. Paulson was a man of middle height with a soft face that seemed used to smiling and a very obvious toupee. He wore plastic-rimmed glasses of an old-fashioned cut, and he lit a cigarette as he talked. (Norman refused his offer of one.)

Paulson said, "In the first place, Mr. Muller, I want you to know we are in no hurry. We want you to stay with us all day if necessary, just so that you get used to your surroundings and get over any thought you might have that there is anything unusual in this, anything clinical,-if you know what I mean."

"It's all right," said Norman. "I'd just as soon this were over."

"I understand your feelings. Still, we want you to know exactly what's going on. In the first place, Multivac isn't here."

"It isn't?" Somehow through all his depression, he had still looked forward to seeing Multivac. They said it was half a mile long and three stories high, that fifty technicians walked the corridors within its structure continuously. It was one of the wonders of the world.

Paulson smiled. "No. It's not portable, you know. It's located underground, in fact, and very few people know exactly where. You can understand that, since it is our greatest natural resource. Believe me, elections aren't the only thing it's used for."

Norman thought he was being deliberately chatty, but found himself intrigued all the same. "I thought I'd see it. I'd like to."

"I'm sure of that. But it takes a Presidential order and even then it has to be countersigned by Security. However, we are plugged into Multivac right here by beam transmission. What Multivac says can be interpreted here and what we say is beamed directly to Multivac, so in a sense we're in its presence."

Norman looked about. The machines within the room were all meaningless to him.

"Now let me explain, Mr. Muller," Paulson went on. "Multivac already has most of the information it needs to decide all the elections, national, state and local. It needs only to check certain imponderable attitudes of mind and it wili use you for that. We can't predict what questions it will ask, but they may not make much sense to you, or even to us. It may ask you how you feel about garbage-disposal in your town; whether you favor central incinerators. It might ask you whether you have a doctor of your own or whether you make use of National Medicine, Inc. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"Whatever it asks, you answer in your own words in any

way you please. If you feel you must explain quite a bit, do

so. Talk an hour, if necessary." =„.j*YeS)sir »

"Now, one more thing. We will have to make use of some simple devices which will automatically record your blood pressure, heart beat, skin conductivity and brain wave pattern while you speak. The machinery will seem formidable, but it's all absolutely painless. You won't even know it's going on. So don't worry about it."

The other two technicians were already busying themselves with smooth-gleaming apparatus on oiled wheels.

Norman said, "Is that to check on whether I'm lying or not?"

"Not at all, Mr. Muller. There's no question of lying. It's only a matter of emotional intensity. If the machine asks you your opinion of your child's school, you may say, 'I think it is overcrowded.' Those are only words. From the way your brain and heart and hormones and sweat glands work, Mul-tivac can judge exactly how intensely you feel about the matter. It will understand your feelings better than you yourself."

"I never heard of this," said Norman.

"No, I'm sure you didn't. Most of the details of Multivac's workings are top secret. For instance, when you leave, you will be asked to sign a paper swearing that you will never reveal the nature of the questions you were asked, the nature of your responses, what was done, or how it was done. The less is known about the Multivac, the less chance of attempted outside pressures upon the men who service it." He smiled, grimly, "Our lives are hard enough as it is."

Norman nodded. "I understand."

"And now would you like anything to eat or drink?"

"No. Nothing right now."

"Do you have any questions?"

Norman shook his head.

"Then you tell us when you're ready."

"I'm ready right now."

"You're certain there's nothing else you want to ask." "Quite."

Paulson nodded, and raised his hand in a gesture to the others.

They advanced with their frightening equipment and Norman Muller felt his breath come a little more quickly and his heart beat more rapidly as he watched.

The ordeal lasted nearly three hours, with one short break for coffee and an embarrassing session with a chamber-pot. During all this time, Norman Muller remained encased in machinery. He was bone-weary at the close.

He thought sardonically that his promise to reveal nothing of what had passed would be an easy one to keep. Already the questions were a hazy mish-mash in his mind.

Somehow he had thought Multivac would speak in a sepulchral, superhuman voice, resonant and echoing, but that, he now decided, was just an idea he had from seeing too many television shows. The truth was distressingly undramatic. The questions were slips of a kind of metallic foil patterned with numerous punctures. A second machine converted the pattern into words and Paulson read the words to Norman, then gave him the question and let him read it for himself.

Norman's answers were taken down by a recording machine, played back to Norman for confirmation, with emendations and added remarks also taken down. All that was fed into a pattern-making instrument and that, in turn, was radiated to Multivac.

The one question Norman could remember at the moment was an incongruously gossipy: "What do you think of the price of eggs?"

He had answered, blankly, "I don't know the price of eggs."

Now it was over, and gently they removed the electrodes from various portions of his body, unwrapped the pulsating band from his upper arm, moved the machinery away.

He stood up, drew a deep, shuddering breath and said, "Is that all? Am I through?"

"Not quite," Paulson hurried to him, smiling in reassuring fashion. "We'll have to ask you to stay another hour."

"Why?" asked Norman, sharply.

"It will take that long for Multivac to weave the new data into the trillions of items it has. Thousands of elections are concerned, you know. It's very complicated. And it may be that an odd contest here or there, a comptrollership in Phoenix, Arizona, or some council seat in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, may be in doubt. In that case, Multivac may be compelled to ask you a deciding question or two."

"No," said Norman. "I won't go through this again."

"It probably won't happen," Paulson said, soothingly. "It rarely does. But just in case, you'll have to stay." A touch of steel, just a touch, entered his voice. "You have no choice, you know. You must."

Norman sat down wearily. He shrugged.

Paulson said, "We can't let you read a newspaper, but if you'd care for a murder mystery, or if you'd like to play chess, or if there's anything we can do for you to help pass the time, I wish you'd mention it."

"It's all right. I'll just wait."

They ushered him into a small room just next to the one in which he had been questioned. He let himself sink into a plastic covered armchair and closed his eyes.

As well as he could, he must wait out this final hour.

He sat perfectly still and slowly the tension left him. His breathing grew less ragged and he could clasp his hands without being quite so conscious of the trembling of his fingers.

Maybe there would be no questions. Maybe it was all over.

If it -were over, then the next thing would be torchlight processions and invitations to speak at all sorts of functions. The Voter of the Year!

He, Norman Muller, ordinary clerk of a small department store in Bloomington, Indiana, who had neither been born great nor achieved greatness would be in the extraordinary position of having had greatness thrust upon him.

The historians would speak soberly of the Muller Election of 2008. That would be its name, the Muller Election!

The publicity, the better job, the flash flood of money that interested Sarah so much, occupied only a corner of his mind. It would all be welcome, of course. He couldn't refuse it. But at the moment something else was beginning to concern him.

A latent patriotism was stirring. After all, he was representing the entire electorate. He was the focal point for them. He was, in his own person, for this one day, all of America!

The door opened, snapping him to open-eyed attention. For a moment, his stomach constricted. Not more questions! But Paulson was smiling. "That will be all, Mr. Muller." "No more questions, sir?"

"None needed. Everything was quite clearcut. You will be escorted back to your home and then you will be a private citizen once more. Or as much so as the public will allow."

"Thank you. Thank you." Norman flushed and said, "I wonder—Who was elected?"

Paulson shook his head. "That will have to wait for the official announcement. The rules are quite strict. We can't even tell you. You understand."

"Of course. Yes." Norman felt embarrassed.

"Secret Service will have the necessary papers for you to sign."

"Yes." Suddenly, Norman Muller felt proud. It was on him now in full strength. He was proud.

In this imperfect world, the sovereign citizens of the first and greatest Electronic Democracy had, through Norman Muller (through him!) exercised once again its free, un-trammeled franchise.

09

IN

WQRL

...a man learns wisdom from the trees and risks death to keep his forbidden knowledge...a time traveler tries lo save the world from destruction and is hunted down because he doesn't "belong"... a sailor jumps ship and finds 4 landwhere the earth is pure gold, fiercely guarded by killer ants.

Cover painting: Jack Faragaaw

AMACFADDEN-BARTEL; BOOK

Printed in U.S.A.