Make Room for Me
Theodore Sturgeon
From “Baby is Three”
Volume VI: The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon

	"We shall never see him again...there will be no more arguments, no more pleasant thinking with Eudiche," mourned Torth to the other Titan.
	"Come now. Don't be so pessimistic," said Larit, stroking the machine. "The idea of dissociation has horrified you, that's all. There is every chance that his components will fuse."
	"So involved, so very involved," Torth fretted. "Is there really no way to send the complete psyche?"
	"Apparently not. The crystals are of a limited capacity, you know. If we grow them larger, they cannot retain a psychic particle. If we sent all three encased particles together, their interaction would break down the crystals chemically. They must be sent separately."
	"But—horrible! How can one third of a psyche live alone?"
	"Biologically, you know perfectly well. Psychologically, you need only look about you. You will find a single psyche only in each of our gracious hosts—"
	"—gracious indeed," muttered Torth, "and gracious they will remain, or die."
	"—and each of the natives on the planet to which we sent Eudiche has but one psyche.
	"How then can he occupy three of them?"
	"Torth, you insist on asking questions requiring a higher technological comprehension than yours to understand," replied the other in annoyance. "There are closer ties than physical proximity. Eudiche will avail himself of them. Let that suffice." More kindly, he added, "Eudiche will be all right. Wait; just wait." *

	*The author apologizes for this poor translation of the Titan personal pronoun, which, in the original, is singular and plural, masculine and feminine, and has no counterpart in our tongue.

	The statue of Ben Franklin, by the very weight of its greyness, sobered the green sparkle of the campus. At the foot of the benevolent image the trio stood—Vaughn, tiny, with long braids of flaxen hair; Dran, slender and aquiline, and—apart from the others, as usual—Manuel, with heavy shoulders and deep horizontal creases over his thick brows.
	Dran smiled at some chattering coeds who passed, then slanted his narrow face toward the semi-circle of stone buildings. "After three years," he said, "I've gotten over being delighted by my own uniqueness—the three miserable years it took me to convince myself that distinction and difference are not synonymous. And now that I'm of this place—no longer on the outside looking in, or on the inside looking on, I—"
	"Who's so exceptional?" growled Manuel, moving closer. "Aside from the runt here, who never will get the knack of being a human being."
	"Are you a specimen of humanity?" asked the girl stormily. "Manuel, I don't expect compliments from you, but I wish you'd try courtesy. Now listen. I have something to tell you. I—"
	"Wait a minute," said Dran, "I have something more important, whatever you have on your mind. I've got the answer—for me, anyway—to this whole question of being the same as everyone else and being different at the same time. I—"
	"You said it all last night," said Vaughn wearily. "Only you were so full of sherry that you didn't know what you were saying. I quote: 'Vaughn, not only your charming person but your poetry would be a lot more popular if you wouldn't hide behind this closed door of non-aggression and restraint.' Well, I've been thinking about that, and I—"
	"Manuel," Dran interrupted, "you've got muscles. Throttle her, will you? Just a little. Just until I can put a predicate on this subject."
	"I'd love to get started on that job," grinned Manuel, licking his lips. "Imagine how those wall eyes would pop."
	"Keep your hands off me, animal," Vaughn hissed. "Dran, I'm trying to—"
	"I will not be stopped," said Dran. With a gesture completely characteristic, he knocked back a strand of his red-gold hair, scattering ashes from his cigarette through it. "Be quiet and listen. You two have held still for a lot of my mouthings and gnashings of teeth about my being a white monkey—the one all the brown monkeys will tear to pieces just because he's different. Well, I have the solution."
	"Get to the point," Manuel grunted. "It could be that I got a speech to make, too."
	"Not until I've told you—" Vaughn began.
	"Shut up, both of you," said Dran. "Especially you, Vaughn. All right. What are we here for?"
	"To get a degree."
	"We are not. At least, I'm not," said Dran. "The more I think of it, the less I think school teaches you anything. Oh, sure, there are some encyclopaedics that you sponge up, but that's secondary. A school's real function is to teach you how to learn. Period."
	"All right—then what about the degree?"
	"That's just to convince other people that you have learned how to learn. Or to convince yourself, if you're not sure. What I'm driving at, is that I'm sure. I know all I need to know about how to learn. I'm leaving."
	There was a stunned silence. Vaughn looked slowly from one to the other. Dran's eyebrows went up. "I didn't expect such a dramatic effect. Vaughn...? Say something!"
	"Y—you've been reading my script!" she murmured. Her eyes were huge.
	"What do you mean?"
	"Why—I've been thinking...For more than a year I've known what I wanted to do. And this—" she waved a hand at the grey buildings—"this hasn't been it. This...interferes. And I wanted to tell you about that, and that you mustn't think it means that I've finished learning. I want to learn a world of things—but not here."
	Manuel released a short bark of laughter. "You mean you made a great big decision—all by yourself?"
	"I'll make a decision about you one of these days, now that I've learned the technique," she spat. "Dran...what are you going to do? Where are you going?"
	"I have something lined up. Advertising—direct mail. It isn't too tough. I'll stay with that for a couple of years. See how the other half lives. The half with money, that is. When I'm ready, I'll drop it and write a novel. It'll be highly successful."
	"Real cocky," said Manuel.
	"Well, damn it, it will be. With me. I'll like it. So far as I'm concerned it will be successful. And what about you, Vaughn?"
	"I have a little money. Not much. But I'll manage. I'll write poems." She smiled. "They'll be successful, too."
	"Good thing you guys don't have to depend on what anyone else thinks," Manuel grunted. "Me, I do it the way the man wants it done or else."
	"But you please yourself doing it," Dran said.
	"Huh? I—never thought of it like that. I guess you're right. Well." He looked from Vaughn to Dran and back. They suddenly spoke, almost in unison. "Manuel! What are you going to—" and—"Manuel! What will you do now?"
	"Me? I'll make out. You two don't think I need you?"
	Vaughn's eyes grew bright. Dran put an understanding hand on her shoulder. He said, "Who writes this plot? What a switch! Manuel, of all people, clinging to these walls with the rest of the ivy, while Vaughn and I try our wings."
	"Sometimes you characters give me a pain in the back of my lap," said Manuel abruptly. "I hang around with you and listen to simple-minded gobbledegook in yard-long language, if it's you talking, Dran, and pink-and-purple sissification from the brat here. Why I do it I'll never know. And it goes that way up to the last gasp. So you're going to leave. Dran has to make a speech, real logical. Vaughn has to blow out a sigh and get misty-eyed." He spat.
	"How would you handle it?" Dran asked, amused. Vaughn stared at Manuel whitely.
	"Me? You really want to know?"
	"This I want to hear," said Vaughn between her teeth.
	"I'd wait a while—a long while—until neither of you was talking. Then I'd say, 'I joined the Marines yesterday.' And you'd both look at me a little sad. There's supposed to be something wrong with coming right out and saying something. Let's see. Suppose I do it the way Vaughn would want me to." He tugged at an imaginary braid and thrust out his lower lip in a lampoon of Vaughn's full mouth. He sighed gustily. "I have felt. . ." He paused to flutter his eyelashes. "I have felt the call to arms," he said in a histrionic whisper. He gazed off into the middle distance. "I have heard the sound of trumpets. The drums stir in my blood." He pounded his temples with his fists. "I can't stand it—I can't! Glory beckons. I will away to foreign strands."
	Vaughn turned on her heel, though she made no effort to walk away. Dran roared with laughter.
	"And suppose I'm you," said Manuel, his face taut with a suppressed grin. He leaned easily against the base of the statue and crossed his legs. He flung his head back. "Zeno of Miletus," he intoned, "in reflecting on the cromislon of the fortiseetus, was wont to refer to a razor as 'a check for a short beard.' While shaving this morning I correlated 'lather' with 'leather' and, seeing some of it on my neck, I recalled the old French proverb, 'Jeanne D'Arc,' which means: The light is out in the bathroom. The integration was complete. If the light was out I could no longer shave. Therefore I can not go on like this. Also there was this matter of the neck. I shall join the Marines. Q. E. D., which means thus spake Zarathusiasm."
	Dran chuckled. Vaughn made a furious effort, failed, and burst out laughing. When it subsided, Manuel said soberly, "I did."
	"You did what?"
	"I joined the Marines yesterday."
	Dran paled. Manuel looked at him in open astonishment. He had never seen Dran without an instant response before. And Vaughn clutched at his arms. "You didn't! You couldn't! Manuel...Manuel...the uniform...the pain...you'll be killed!"
	"Yup. But slowly. In agony. And as I lie there in the growing dark, a sweet thought will sustain me. I'll never again see another line of your lousy poetry. For Christ's sake!" he bellowed suddenly. "Get off that tragic kick, stupid! I'll be all right."
	"What did you go and do a thing like that for?" Dran asked slowly.
	"What are you and the reptile leaving for?" Manuel returned. "The same thing. This place has taught me all it can—for me. I'm going where I'll know who's my boss, and I'll know who takes orders from me. What I'll wear, where I'll live—someone else can decide that. Meantime I'll work in communications, which I'd be doing anyway, but someone else will buy the equipment and materials."
	"You'll be caged. You'll never be free," said Vaughn.
	"Free for what? To starve? Free to argue with salesmen and landlords? Nuts. I'll go and work with things I can measure, work with my hands, while you two are expressing your tortured souls. What would you like to see me do instead? Take up writing sonnets that nobody'll ever read? Suppose I do that, and you go join the Marines."
	Dran touched Vaughn's arm. "He's right, Vaughn. What he's doing would be wrong for you, or for me, but it's right for him."
	"I don't...I don't know what to do," she mourned.
	"I do," said Manuel. "Let's go eat."

	"We are parasites," said the Titan, "which is the initial measure of our intelligence."
	Torth said, "Our intelligence doesn't make it possible for us to survive on Titan."
	"It's an impasse. The very act of settling the three components of our psyche into the brains of the natives gives us a home—and shortens the life of the native."
	"Wouldn't that be true of the bipeds on the third planet?"
	"To a degree," admitted the other. "But they are long-lived—and there are three billion of them."
	"And how would we affect them?"
	"Just as we affect the natives here."
	Torth made the emanation which signified amusement. "That should make them very unhappy."
	"You speak of a matter of no importance," said the other irritably. "And it is not true. They will be as incapable of expressing unhappiness as anything else." He applied himself again to the machine, with which he was tracking the three crystalline casings which carried Eudiche on his Earthward journey.

	After dinner they went to a concert. They sat in their favorite seats—the loges—and waited, each wrapped in his own thoughts. Dran stared at the dusty carved figures under the ceiling. Manuel sketched busily—a power-operated shock absorber, this time. Between them Vaughn sat, withdrawn and dreamy, turning night-thoughts into free verse.
	They straightened as the conductor appeared and crossed the platform, amid applause which sounded like dead leaves under his feet. When he raised his baton, Vaughn glanced swiftly at the faces of the other two, and then they pressed forward in unison.
	It was Bach—the Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor. The music stepped and spiralled solemnly around them, enclosing them in a splendid privacy. They were separate from the rest of the audience, drawn to each other. Manuel and Dran moved slightly toward Vaughn, until their shoulders touched. Their eyes fixed unmoving on the orchestra.
	At the last balanced, benevolent crescendo they rose together and left, ahead of the crowd. None of them cared to talk, strangely. They walked swiftly through the dark streets to a brightly lit little restaurant several blocks from the Academy.
	In a high-walled booth, they smiled to each other as if acknowledging a rich secret. Then Vaughn's eyes dropped; she pulled at her fingers and sighed.
	"No effusions from you, please," said Dran—possibly more coldly than he intended. "We all felt it, whatever it was. Don't mess it up."
	Vaughn's gaze was up again, shocked. Manuel said, with an astonishing gentleness, with difficulty, "I was—somewhere else, but you were with me. And we all seemed to be—to be walking, or climbing..." He shook his massive head. "Nuts. I must be thirsty or something. What do you want, runt? Dran?"
	Vaughn didn't answer. She was staring at Dran, her violet eyes dark with hurt.
	"Speak up, chicken. I didn't mean to crush you. I just didn't feel like listening to an iambic extravagance. Something happened to all of us."
	"Thanks f-for crediting me with so little sensitivity that you think I didn't feel it. That you think I'd spoil it!"
	"Not too little sensitivity. Too much—and out of control. I'm sorry," Dran relented. "Let's order." He turned to Manuel, and froze in surprise at the look in the other's face. It was a look of struggling, as if unwelcome forces were waking within him, disturbing the rough, familiar patterns of his thinking.
	Joe passed, flashy, noisy, wide open for hurt. The trio had often discussed Joe. Superficially, he was pushing into their group because of Vaughn, who appeared to make him quite breathless. Dran had once said, however, that it went deeper than that. Joe could not abide a liaison that he couldn't understand. Joe called, "Hi! As I live and bleed, it's the internal triangle. Nice to see you, Vaughn. When am I going to do it on purpose instead of by accident?"
	"Is this drip necessary?" Manuel muttered.
	"I'll see you soon, Joe," Vaughn said, smiling at him. "We have a class together tomorrow. I'll talk to you about it then." Her nod was a warm touch, and a dismissal. Joe appeared about to speak, thought better of it, waved and went away.
	"That impossible idiot," growled Dran. "A more quintessential jerk I have yet to meet."
	"Oh, Dran! He's not bad! Just undeveloped. Of course, he isn't one of us, but he's fun all the same. He reads good poetry, and he's quite a—"
	Manuel brought his hand down with a crash. "That's what I was after. 'One of us.' What do you mean, 'one of us?' Who joins this union? I'm not 'one of us.' You two have more in common than you have with me."
	Vaughn touched his hand. "Manuel," she said softly. "Oh, Manuel! Why, everyone links us together. I—I know I do. So much so that until now I didn't think it required questioning. It's something you accept as natural."
	Dran's eyes brightened. "Wait, Vaughn. Let's not call it natural. Let's examine it. See what we get. I've been chewing on it since the business with the music tonight anyway."
	Manuel shrugged. "Okay. What do the runt and I share after all? You and I can agree on politics, and we have one or two mechanical interests. But you, Vaughn—you..." He wet his lips. "Hell!" he exploded. "You're—useless!"
	"I can ignore that," said Vaughn, very obviously ignoring nothing, "because you are only trying to hurt me."
	"Hold on," said Dran easily. "I think this is worth an effort to avoid that kind of emotional smokescreen. You particularly, Manny. You sound resentful, and I don't know that you have anything to resent."
	"She makes me mad, that's all. Look—there are a lot of useful things in the world—lock washers .. cotter pins. But this—this dame! You couldn't use her for a paperweight. She's a worm trying to be a snake. You can't approach her logically. I can get to you that way, Dran, though I'll admit the going gets a little swampy sometimes."
	"Perhaps this thing we have," said Vaughn softly, "is more than emotion, or intellect, or any of those things."
	"Here we go again," snorted Manuel.
	"A mystic entity or something?" Dran chuckled. "I doubt it. But there is something between us—all of us. It isn't limited to any two. We all belong. I'm not sure of what it's for, or even if I like it. But I'm not prepared to deny it. You aren't either, Manny."
	"Manuel," said Vaughn urgently. She reached across and touched him, as if she wanted to press her eager words into him. "Manuel—haven't you ever felt it even a little? Didn't you, tonight? Didn't you? In your own terms...Manuel, just this once, I'd like to know honestly, without any sneers."
	Manuel glowered at her, hesitated, then said, "What if I have?" truculently. In a gentler tone, he added, "Oh, I have, all right. Once or twice. It—like I said, damn it, it makes me mad. I don't like getting pushed around by something I don't understand. It'll probably stop when I get away from here, and good riddance to it."
	Vaughn touched her knuckles to her teeth. She whispered, "To me, it's something to treasure."
	Dran grinned at her. "If you like it it's got to be fragile, hm?
	Vaughn, it isn't. And I think Manny's in for a surprise if he thinks distance is going to make any difference."
	"I have hopes," Manuel said sullenly.
	Dran spread his hands on the table and looked at them. "Vaughn stands in awe of this—this thing we have, and to Manuel it's like a dose of crabs. Excuse me, chicken. Far as I'm concerned, it's something that will bear watching. I can't analyze it now. If it gets weaker I will be able to analyze it even less. If it gets stronger it will show its nature no matter what I do. So I'm going to relax and enjoy it. I can say this much..." He paused, frowning, searching for words. "There is a lowest common denominator for us. We're all way off balance. And our imbalances are utterly different in kind, and negligibly different in degree."
	Vaughn stared dully. Manuel said, "Huh?"
	Dran said, more carefully, "Vaughn's all pastels and poetry. Manuel's all tools and technology. I'm—"
	"All crap and complication," said Manuel.
	"Manuel!"
	Dran laughed. "He's probably right, Vaughn. Anyway, we're all lopsided to the same degree, which is a lot, and that's the only real similarity between us. If we three were one person, it'd be a somebody, that's for sure."
	"It'd be an insect," Manuel scowled. "Six legs." He looked at Vaughn. "With your head. No one'd know the difference."
	"You're ichor-noclastic," said Dran. Vaughn groaned. Manuel said, "That was one of those puns. The only part I got was the 'corn'. Where the hell's the waiter?"

	"Why Eudiche?" Torth fretted. "Why couldn't they send someone else?"
	"Eudiche is expendable," said the other parasite shortly.
	"Why? His balance is so perfect..."
	"Answer restricted. Go away. One-third of his psyche has found a host and is settling in. The observations are exceedingly difficult, because of the subtlety of Eudiche's operations. And you are most exasperating. "

	For the third time in a week, Vaughn was lunching with Joe—a remarkable thing, considering that in the two years since her departure from the University she had seen less and less of old acquaintances. But after all—Joe was easy to be with because she didn't have to pretend. She could be as moody as she chose. He would patiently listen to her long and misty reflections, and let her recite poetry without protest. The meetings did not hurt her, and Joe seemed to enjoy them so…
	But Joe had something to offer this time, rather than something to take. As the waitress took their dessert order and left, he gently placed a little plush box beside her coffee cup. "Won't you consider it at all?" he asked diffidently.
	Her hand was on the box, reflexively, before she realized what it was. Then she looked at him. Thoughts, feelings, swirled about each other within her, like petals, paper, dust and moths in a small sudden whirlwind. Her eyes fixed on his shy, anxious face, and she realized that she had seldom looked directly at him...and that he was good to look at. She looked at the box and back at him, and then closed her violet eyes. Joe as a suitor, as a potential lover, was an utterly new idea to her. Joe as a bright-faced, carefully considerate thing was not Joe with hands, Joe with a body, Joe with habit patterns and a career and toothpaste and beneficiaries for life insurance. She felt flattered and bewildered and uncertain, and—warm.
	And then something happened. It was as if an indefinable presence had raised its head and was listening. This alien attentiveness added a facet to the consideration of Joe. It made the acceptance or rejection of Joe a more significant thing than it had been. The warmth was still there, but it was gradually overlaid by a—a knowledge that created a special caution, a particular inviolability.
	She smiled softly then, and her hand lifted away from the box.
	"There's nothing final about an engagement," Joe said. "It would be up to you. Every minute. You could give me back the ring any time. I'd never ask you why. I'd understand, or try to."
	"Joe." She put out her hand, almost touched him, then drew it back. "I...you're so very sweet, and this is a splendid compliment.
	But I can't do it. I—If I succeeded in persuading myself into it, I'd only regret it, and punish you."
	"Umm," mused Joe. His eyes were narrowed, shrewd and hurt. "Tied up, huh? Still carrying the same old torch"
	"The same—" Vaughn's eyes were wide.
	"That Dran Hamilton character," said Joe tiredly, almost vindictively. He reached for the ring box. "Part two of the unholy trio—"
	"Stop it!"
	It was the first time he had seen her gentle violet eyes blazing. It was probably the first time they ever had. Then she picked up her gloves and said quietly, "I'd like to go now, Joe, if you don't mind."
	"But—but Vaughn—what did I—I didn't mean any—"
	"I know, I know," she said wearily. "Why, I haven't even thought about them for a long time. For too long. Perhaps I should have. I—know I should have. Joe, I have to go. I've got to get out of here. It's too small. Too many people, too many cheap little lights. I need some sun."
	Almost frightened, he paid the check and followed her out. She was walking as if she were alone. He hesitated, then ran to catch up with her.
	"It's a thing that you couldn't understand," she said dully when he drew alongside. She did not look up; for all he knew she may have been talking before he reached her. She went on, "There were three of us, and that's not supposed to be right. Twos, and twos, and twos, all through literature and the movies and the soap operas. This is something different. Or maybe it isn't different. Maybe it's wrong, maybe I'm too stupid to understand…Joe, I'm sorry. Truly I am. I've been very selfish and unkind." There was that in her voice which stopped him. He stood on the pavement watching her move away. He shook his head, took one step, shook his head again, and then turned and plunged blindly back the way he had come.

	"You're getting old," said Torth maliciously.
	"Go away," said the other. "With two particles assimilated and the third about to be, matters have reached a critical point."
	"There is nothing you could do about it no matter what happened," said Torth.
	"Will you go away? What did you come for, anyway?"
	"I was having an extrapolative session with another triad," Torth explained. "Subject: is the Eudiche experiment a hoax? Conclusion: it could be. Corollary: it might as well be, for all it has benefited our race. I came for your comments on that. You are an unpleasant and preoccupied entity, but for all that you are an authority."
	The old one answered with angry evenness: "Answers: The Eudiche experiment is no hoax. It will benefit the race. As soon as Eudiche has perfected his fusion technique, we shall emigrate. Our crystalline casings are dust-motes to the bipeds of the third planet; our psychic existence will be all but unnoticeable to them until we synthesize. When we do, they will live for us, which is right and just. They will cease thinking their own thoughts, they will discontinue their single-minded activities. They will become fat and healthy and gracious as hosts."
	"But observations indicate that they feed themselves largely by tilling the soil, that they combat the rigors of their climate by manufacturing artificial skins and complex dwelling shelters. If we should stop all that activity, they will die off, and we—"
	"You always were a worrier, Torth," interrupted the other. "Know, then, that there are many of them and few of us. Each of us will occupy three of them, and those three will work together to keep themselves fed and us contented. The groups of three will be hidden in the mass of bipeds, having little or no physical contact with one another and remaining largely undetected. They will slaughter as they become hungry; after all, they are also flesh-eaters, and the reservoir of unoccupied bipeds will be large indeed. If, after we get there, the bipeds never plant another seed nor build another dwelling, their own species will still supply an inexhaustible supply of food purely by existing to be slaughtered as needed. They breed fast and live long."
	Torth saluted the other. "We are indeed entering upon an era of plenty. Your report is most encouraging. Our present hosts are small, few, and too easy to kill. I assume that the bipeds have somewhat the same minuscule intelligence?
	"The bipeds of the third planet," said the other didactically, "have mental powers several hundred times as powerful as do those we have dominated here. We can still take them over, of course, but it will be troublesome. Look at the length of time it is taking Eudiche. However, the reward is great. Once we have disrupted their group efforts by scattering our triads among them, I can predict an eternity of intriguing huntings and killings in order for our hosts to feed themselves. Between times, life will be a bountiful feast of their vital energies.
	"Now, leave me, Torth. As soon as the final part of Eudiche's triad is settled in, we can expect the synthesis, by which he will come into full operation as an entity again. And that I want to observe. He has chosen well, and his three seeds are sprouting on fertile soil indeed."
	 "You have been uncharacteristically polite and helpful," conceded Torth. He left.

	Dranley Hamilton drank the highball with the cold realization that it was one too many, and went on talking cleverly about his book. It was easy to do, because for him it was so easy to define what these fawning critics, publishers, club-women and hangers-on wanted him to say. He was a little disgusted with his book, himself, and with these people, and he was enjoying his disgust immensely, purely because he was aware of it and of his groundless sense of superiority. Then there was a sudden, powerful agreement within him, compounded of noise, heat, stupidity and that last highball, which made him turn abruptly, to let a press-agent's schooled wisecrack spend itself on his shoulder blades as he elbowed his way through the room to the terrace doors. Outside, he stood with his arms on the parapet, looking out over the city and thinking, "Now, that didn't do me any good. I'm acting like something from the Village. Art for art's sake. What's the matter with me anyway?"
	There was a light step behind him. "Hello, Dranley Hamilton." 
	"Oh—it's you." He took in the russet hair, the blend of blendings which she used for a complexion. He had not noticed her before. "Do you know I have hung around this literary cackle-factory for the past two hours only because you were here and I wanted to get you alone?"
	"Well!" said the girl. Then, with the same word in a totally different language, she added, "Well?"
	He leaned back against the parapet and studied her tilted eyes. "No," he said finally. "No. I guess I was thinking of somebody else. Or maybe even something else."
	Her real defenses went up in place of the party set. "Excuse me!" she said coldly.
	"Oh, think nothing of it," he responded. He slapped her shoulder as if it were the withers of a friendly horse, and went back to the reception. That was lousy, he thought. What's the matter with me?
	"Dran." It was Mike Pontif, from his publisher's publicity department. "You got that statement up about your next novel?"
	"Next novel?" Dran looked at him thoughtfully. "There's not going to be a next novel. Not until I catch up on...something I should be doing instead." At the publicity man's bewildered expression, he added, "Going to bone up on biology."
	"Oh," said the man, and winked. "Always kidding."
	Dran was not kidding.

	Manuel crumpled up the letter and hurled it into the corner of the communications shack. He shouldered through the door and went out on the beach, his boots thudding almost painfully down on the rough white coral sand. He drove his feet into the gritting stuff, stamping so that the heavy muscles of his thighs felt it. He scooped up the stripped backbone of a palm frond and cut at the wet sand by the water's edge as he walked, feeling the alternate pull of shoulders and chest.
	He needed something. It wasn't women or liquor or people or solitude. It wasn't building or fighting or laughter. He didn't even need it badly. What he did want badly was to find out what this gentle, steady, omnipresent need was. He was sick of trying this and that to see if it would stop this infernal tugging.
	He stopped and stared out to sea. The thick furrows across his forehead deepened as he thought about the sea, and the way people wrote about it. It was always alive, or mysterious, or restless, or something. Why were people always hanging mysterious qualities on what should be commonplace? He was impatient with all that icky business.
	"It's just wet salt and distance," he muttered. Then he spat, furious with himself, thinking how breathless the runt would be if she heard him say such a hunk of foolishness. He turned and strode back to the shack, feeling the sun too hot on the back of his neck, knowing he should have worn his helmet. He kicked open the screen door, blinked a moment against the indoor dimness, and went to the corner. He picked up the letter and smoothed it out.

	"From some remembered world 
	We broke adrift 
	Like lonely stars 
	Divided at their birth.
	
	For some remembered dream 
	We wait, and search 
	With riven hearts
	 A vast and alien earth..."
	
	With the poem in his hand, Manuel glared around at useful things—the transmitter, the scrambler, the power supply. He looked at worthwhile things—the etched aluminum bracelets, the carved teak, the square-knotted belt he had made. And he looked at those other things, so meticulously machined, so costly in time and effort, so puzzling in function, that he had also made without knowing why. He shook the paper as if he wanted to hurt it. Why did she write such stuff? And why send it to him? What good was it?
	He carried it to the desk, ripped out his personal file, and put it away. He filed it with Dran Hamilton's letters. He had no file for the runt's stuff.

	When she concluded that she loved Dran, Vaughn wrote and said so, abruptly and with thoroughness. His answering telegram made her laugh and cry. It read:

NONSENSE, CHICKEN! ROMANTIC LOVE WRONG DIAGNOSIS. I JUDGE IT A CONVENTIONAL POETIC IMPULSE BETTER CONFINED TO PAPER. A CASE OF VERSE COME VERSE SERVED. TAKE A COLD SHOWER AND GO WRITE YOURSELF A SONNET. BESIDES, WHAT ABOUT MANUEL? HE ARRIVES, INCIDENTALLY, NEW YEAR'S EVE AND INTENDS MEETING ME AT YOUR HOUSE. OKAY?

	Dran arrived first, looking expensive and careless and, to Vaughn, completely enchanting. He bounded up the front steps, swung her off her feet and three times around before he kissed her, the way he used to do when they were children. For a long while they could say nothing but commonplaces, though their eyes had other things to suggest.
	Dran leaned back in a kitchen chair as if it were a chaise lounge and fitted a cigarette to a long ivory holder. "The holder?" he chattered. "Pure affectation. It does me good. Sometimes it makes me laugh at myself, which is healthy, and sometimes it makes me feel fastidious, which is harmless. You look wonderful with your hair down. Never pin it up or cut it again. Manuel's just turned down a commission. He ought to arrive about six, which gives us plenty of time to whirl the wordage. I liked your latest poems. I think I can help you get a collection published. The stuff's still too thin in the wrong places, though. So are you."
	Vaughn turned down the gas under the percolator and set out cups. "You do look the successful young author. Oh, Dran, I'm so glad to see you!"
	He took her hand, smiled up into her radiant face. "I'm glad too, chicken. You had me worried there for a while, with that love business."
	Vaughn's eyes stopped seeing him for a moment. "I was—silly, I suppose," she whispered.
	"Could be," he said cheerfully. "I'll tell you, hon—I like women. Without question there's a woman somewhere on earth that will make me go pitty-pat, quit drinking, write nothing but happy endings, and eat what's given to me instead of what I want. Maybe I've already met her and don't realize it. But one thing I'm sure of is that you're not that woman."
	"What makes you so sure?"
	"The same thing that makes you sure of it. You had a momentary lapse, it seems, but—come now; do you love me?"
	"I wish Manuel would get here."
	"Isn't that irrelevant?
	"No."
	Then the coffee boiled over and the thread was lost.

	They talked about Dran's book until Manuel arrived. The book was a strange one—one of those which captivates or infuriates, with no reader-reactions between the extremes. There were probably far more people who were annoyed by it than not, "which," said Dran, "is one of the few things the book has in common with its author."
	"That remark," laughed Vaughn, "is the first you have made which sounded the way your picture in the Literary Review looked. It was awful. The decadent dilettante—the bored and viceful youth."
	"It sells books," he said. "It's the only male answer to the busty book-jacket, or breast seller. I call it my frontispiece pose; separate but uplifted."
	"And doubly false," snapped Vaughn. When he had quieted, she said, "but the book, Dran. There was one thing in there really worth mentioning—between us. The thing the critics liked the least."
	"Oh—the dancer? Yes—they all said she was always present, never seen. Too little character for such a big influence."
	"That's what I meant," said Vaughn. "I know and you know—and Manuel? We'll ask him—that the dancer wasn't a person at all, but an omnipresent idea, a pressure. Right?"
	"Something like that cosmic search theme that keeps pushing you around in your work," he agreed. "I wonder what Manuel's counterpart is. It would have to be something he'd turn on a lathe."
	Vaughn smiled. And then there was a heavy tread on the porch, the front door flew open, and the room was full of Manuel. "Hi, Dran. Where's the runt? Come out from under the furniture, you little—oh. There you are. Holy cow," he bellowed. "Holy sufferin' sepoys! You've shrunk!"
	Dran threw up his hands. "Sepoys. Foreign background. Authentic touch."
	Vaughn came forward and put out a demure hand. "I haven't shrunk, Manuel. It's you. You're thicker and wider than ever."
	He took her hand, squeezed it, apologized when she yelped, rubbed his knuckles into her scalp until she yelped again, and threw himself onto the divan. "Lord, it's cold. Let's get going. Do something about this New Year's Eve and welcome home and stuff."
	"Can't we just stay here and talk awhile?" asked Vaughn in rumpled petulance.
	"What's the matter, runt?" Manuel asked in sudden concern, for Vaughn's eyes were filling.
	Dran grinned. "I come in here, ice-cold and intellectual, and kiss the lass soundly. You come flying through the door, Lochinvar, shake hands with her and then proceed to roll her around like a puppy. Like the song says—try a little tenderness."
	"You be quiet!" Vaughn almost shouted.
	"Oh, so that's what you want." He strode across to Vaughn, brushed aside her protecting arms, and kissed her carefully in the exact center of the forehead. "Consider yourself smootched," he growled, "and we'll have no more of this lollygagging. Vaughn, you're acting like an abandoned woman."
	Vaughn laced her anger with laughter as she said, "Abandoned is right. Now wait while I get my coat."
	"I brought something back with me," Manuel said.
	They were at a corner table at Enrique's, immersed in the privacy of noise, lights, and people. "What is it?" asked Vaughn. "Something special in costume jewelry?"
	"Always want gilding, don't you, lily? Yes, I have the usual cargo. But that's not what I mean."
	"Quell your greed," said Dran. "What is it, Manny?"
	"It's a..." He swizzled his drink. "It's a machine. I don't know what it is."
	"You don't—but what does it do? What's it made of?"
	"Wire and a casting and a machined tube and ceramics, and I built it myself and I don't know what it does."
	"I hate guessing games," said Dran petulantly.
	Vaughn touched his arm, "Leave him alone, Dran. Can't you see he's bothered about it?" She turned quickly to the Marine, stroked the ribbons on his chest. "Talk about something else if you want to. What are these for?" she asked solicitously.
	Manuel looked down at the ribbons, then thumbed the catch and removed them. He dropped them into Vaughn's hand. "For you," he said, his eyes glinting. "As a reward for talking like a hot damned civilian. I won't need 'em any more. My hitch is up; I'm out."
	"Why, Manuel?"
	"It's...I get—spells, sort of." He said it as if he were confessing to leprosy or even body odor. "Trances, like. Nobody knows about it. I wanted to get out from under before the brass wised up."
	Vaughn, whose terror of "the ills our flesh is heir to" amounted to a neurosis, gasped and said, "Oh! What is it? Are you sick? What do you think it is? Don't you think you ought to have an examination right away? Where does it hurt? Maybe it's a—"
	Dran put an arm around her shoulders and his other hand firmly over her mouth. "Go on, Manny."
	"Thanks, Dran. QRM, we call that kind of background noise in the Signal Corps. Shut up, short-change. About those spells...everything seems to sort of—recede, like. And then I work. I don't know what I'm doing, but my hands do. That's how I built this thing."
	"What sort of a thing is it?"
	Manuel scratched his glossy head. "Not a gun, exactly, but something like it. Sort of a solenoid, with a winding like nothing you ever dreamed of, and a condenser set-up to trigger it."
	"A gun? What about projectiles?"
	"I made some of those too. Hollow cylinders with a mechanical bursting arrangement."
	"Filled with what?"
	"Filled with nothing. I don't know what they're supposed to hold. Something composed of small particles, or a powder, or something. It wouldn't be an explosive, because there's this mechanical arrangement to scatter the stuff."
	"Fuse?"
	"Time," Manuel answered. "You can let her go now. I think she's stopped."
	Dran said, "Manny, I've got the charge for your projectiles." He raised his hand a fraction of an inch. Vaughn said, "Let me go! Dran, let me go! Manuel, maybe you ate too much of that foreign—"
	Dran's hand cut her off again.
	Manuel said, "Like holding your hand over a faucet with a busted washer, isn't it?"
	"More like getting a short circuit in a Klaxon. Vaughn, stop wriggling! Go on, Manny. I might as well tell you, something like it has happened to me. But I'll wait until you've finished. What about the fuse timing?"
	"Acid vial. Double acting. There's an impact shield that pops up when a shell is fired, and a rod to be eaten through which starts a watch-movement. That goes for eight days. As for the acid—it'd have to be something really special to chew through that rod. Even good old Aqua Regia would take months to get through it."
	"What acid are you using?"
	Manuel shook his head. "That's one of the things I don't know," he said unhappily. "That acid, and the charge, and most of all what the whole damned thing is for—those things I don't know."
	"I think I've got your acid too," said Dran, shifting his hand a little because Vaughn showed signs of coming up for air. "But where are your specifications? What's the idea of making a rod so thick you can't find an acid to eat through it?"
	Manuel threw up his hands. "I don't know, Dran. I know when it's right, that's all. I know before I rig my lathe or milling machine what I'm after." His face darkened, and his soft voice took on a tone of fury. "I'm sick and tired of getting pushed around. I'm tired of feeling things I can't put a name to. For the first time in my life I can't whip something or get away from it."
	"Well, what are you going to do?"
	"What can I do? Get out of the service, hole up somewhere, finish this work."
	"How do you know it won't go on for the rest of your life?"
	"I don't know. But I know this. I know what I've done is done right, and that when it's finished, that'll be the end of it," said Manuel positively. "Hey—you better turn her loose. The purple face goes great with the hair, but it's beginning to turn black."
	Dran released Vaughn, and just then the bells began to ring.

	"Old one—"
	The other turned on Torth. "Get out. Get out and leave me alone. Get out!"
	Torth got.

	The bells....
	"Not now," smiled Vaughn. "Not now. I'll give you rascals the punishment you deserve next year sometime." She reached out her arms, and they came close to her. She kissed Manuel, then Dran, and said, "Happy New Year, darlings."
	The bells were ringing, and the city spoke with a mighty voice, part hum, part roar, part whistle, part scream, all a unison of joy and hope. "Should auld acHappy-Nooooo Yearzhz-z-zh-h-h..." said the city, and Manuel pulled Vaughn closer (and Dran with her, because Dran was so close to her) and Manuel said, "This is it. This is right, the three of us. I quit. Whether I like it or not don't matter. I got it and I'm stuck with it. I..."
	EUDICHE!
	No one said that. No one shouted it out, but for a split second there was a gasping silence in the club, in the floors above and the floors below, as three abstracts coalesced and a great subetheric emanation took place. It was more joyous than all the joy in the city, and a greater voice than that of all the other voices; and it left in a great wave and went rocketing out to the stars. And then someone started to sing again, and the old song shook the buildings
	"...and never brought to mind..."

	"It's done!" said the old one.
	Torth replied caustically. "I appreciate the news. You realize that not one of us on Titan could have missed that signal."
	"Eudiche has succeeded," exulted the old one. "A new era for our race...on his next transmission we will start the emigration.
	"And you had doubts of Eudiche."
	"I did—I did. I admit it. But it is of no moment now—he has overcome his defection."
	"What is it, this defection?"
	"Stop your ceaseless questions and leave me to my joy!
	"Tell me that, decrepit one, and I shall go."
	"Very well, Eudiche was imbalanced. He suffered from an over-broadening of the extrapolative faculty. We call it empathy. It need not concern you. It is an alien concept and a strange disease indeed."

	Eudiche left, still in three parts, but now one. He stopped at the railroad station for a heavy foot-locker, and at a hotel for a large suitcase. And in the long ride in a taxi, Eudiche thought things out—not piecemeal, not single-mindedly in each single field, but with the magnificent interaction of a multiple mind.
	"Is it certain that everything will fit together?" asked the mechanical factor.
	"It certainly should. The motivation was the same, the drive was almost identical, and the ability in each case was of a high order," said the intellectual.
	The aesthetic was quiet, performing its function of matching and balancing.
	The mechanical segment had a complimentary thought for the intellectual. "That spore chest is a mechanical miracle for this planet. Wasn't it grueling, without a full mechanical aptitude to help?"
	"The bipeds have wide resources. Once the design is clear, they can make almost anything. The spores themselves have started lines of research on molds, by the way, that will have far-reaching effects."
	"And good ones," murmured the aesthetic. "Good ones."
	Far away from the city Eudiche paid the driver and the intellectual told him to come back in the morning. And then Eudiche struck off through the icy fields, across a frozen brook, and up a starlit slope, carrying with him the spore case, the projector, and the projectiles.
	It was cold and clear, and the stars competed with one another—and helped one another, too, the aesthetic pointed out: "...for every star which can't outshine the others seems to get behind and help another one be bright."
	Eudiche worked swiftly and carefully and set up the projector. The spores were loaded into the projectiles, and the projectiles were primed with the acid and set into the gun.
	The aesthetic stood apart with the stars, while the mechanical and the intellectual of Eudiche checked the orbital computations and trained the projector. It was exacting work, but there was not a single wasted motion.
	The triggering was left to charge for a while, and Eudiche rested. The aesthetic put a hand to the projector—that seeking hand, always, with her, a gesture of earnestness.
	"Back to Titan, and may the race multiply and grow great," she intoned. "Search the spaces between the stars and find Titan's path; burst and scatter your blessings at his feet."
	The condensers drank and drank until they had their fill and a little over—
	Phup! It was like the popping of a cork. Far up, seemingly among the stars, there was a faint golden streak, gone instantly.
	"Reload," said the intellectual.

	Two worked; the third, by her presence, guided and balanced and added proportion to each thought, each directive effort. Eudiche waited, presently, for the projector to charge again. "Earth..." crooned the aesthetic. "Rich, wide, wonderful Earth, rich with true riches, rich in its demonstrations of waste...wealthy Earth, which can afford to squander thousands upon thousands of square miles in bleak hills on which nothing grows...wealthy Earth with its sea-sunk acres, its wandering rivers which curiously seek everything of interest, back and forth, back and backwards and seaward again, seeking in the flatlands. And for all its waste it produces magnificently, and magnificently its products are used. Humans are its products, and through the eyes of humans are seen worlds beyond worlds...in the dreams of the dullest human are images unimaginable to other species. Through their eyes pour shapes and colors and a hungry hope that has no precedent in the cosmos."
	"Empathy," defined the intellectual: "The ability to see through another's eyes, to feel with his finger-tips.
	"To know fire as the feathers of a Phoenix know it. To know, as a bedded stone, the coolth of brook-water..."
	Phup!
	"Reload," said the intellectual
	In its time the second projectile followed, and then a third and a fourth.

	"This is the machine," old Torth said to the youngster. "It was monopolized, long ago, by a caustic old triad who has since died. And may I join him soon, for it troubles me to be so old."
	"And what was the machine for?"
	"One Eudiche was analyzed into his three components and sent to that star there.
	"It's a planet."
	"Youth knows too much, too young," grumbled Torth.
	"And why was Eudiche sent?"
	"To test the sending; to synthesize himself there; and to prepare for mass emigration of our kind to the planet."
	"He failed?"
	"He failed. He took over three inhabitants successfully enough, but that was all. He had empathy, you know."
	The youngster shuddered. "No loss."
	"No loss," repeated Torth. "And then the reason for invasion was removed, and no one bothered to use the machine again, and no one will."
	"That was when the molds came?"
	"Yes, the molds. Just as we came out of space so long ago, as crystalline spores, so these molds arrived on Titan. At that time, you know, we possessed all Titans and reproduced faster than they did. We had to expand."
	"It is not so now," said the youngster with confidence.
	"No," said Torth. "Happily, no. The products of the molds—and the molds grow profusely here—worked miracles with the metabolism of our hosts. They reproduce faster and they live longer."
	"And will they never overpopulate Titan?"
	"Not in our time, not in any predictable time. Titan can support billions of the little creatures, and there are only a few thousand today. The rate of increase is not that great. Just great enough to give us, who are parasites, sufficient hosts."
	"And—what happened to Eudiche?"

	"He died," said Vaughn. Her voice was shocked, distraught in the cold dawn.
	"He had to die," said Dran sorrowfully. "His synthesis was complete in us three. His consistency was as complete. His recognition of the right to live gave him no alternative. He saved his own race on its own terms, and saved—spared, rather—spared us on human terms. He found what we were, and he loved it. Had he stayed here, he and his progeny and his kind would have destroyed the thing he loved. So he died."
	The grey light warmed as they started down the hill, and then the dawn came crashing up in one great crescendo of color, obliterating its pink prelude and establishing the theme for the sun's gaudy entrance. Drunk with its light, three people crossed the frozen brook and came to the edge of the road.
	At last Manuel spoke. "What have we got here?"
	Dran looked at the satchels, at Vaughn, at Manuel. "What have you got?"
	Manuel kicked his foot locker. "I've got the beginnings of a space drive. You've got a whole new direction in biological chemistry. Runt—Oh my god, will you look at that face. I know—poems."
	"Poems," she whispered, and smiled. The dawn had not been like that smile.
	The taxi came. They loaded their cases in and sat very close together in the back.
	"No one of us will ever be greater than any other," Dran said after a time. "We three have a life, not lives. I don't know anything yet about the details of our living, except that they will violate nothing."
	Vaughn looked into Manuel's face, and into Dran's. Then she chuckled, "Which means I'll probably marry Joe."
	They were very close. Dran again broke the silence. "My next book will be my best. It will have this dedication:
	"What Vaughn inspires, I design, and Manuel builds."
	And so it came about.
	Poor Joe.