which meant that his quarry had passed this way after her most recent visit to the plains. Westwood had been certain all along that she lived in the foothills, but the igneous nature of the wasteland that had to be crossed to gain them was not amenable to impressions, and this was the first footprint he had found.

He stood gazing down at it for some time, estimating the height and weight of its owner. No wonder the plains people were afraid to come out of their huts after dark!

The afternoon sun was hot upon his back and a warm wind was flowing up from the south. The naked wasteland lay behind him, while before him the foothills, green and grassy and patterned with trees, tumbled away to the slopes of beard-blue mountains. He had made the acquaintance of the wasteland early that morning when Brand, the one-man staff of the newly established Nightfall Guidance Center, had ferried him across the dark river that separated it from the low and fertile plains where the plains people tended their flocks, planted their crops and reared their offspring.

The five toe impressions of the footprint pointed straight toward the hills. Proceeding in that direction, Westwood presently came upon a second print. He counted five more toe marks. Five and five made ten. It had gone without saying that his quarry would have ten toes, because that was how many the plains people had. Gods are not the only superbeings man creates in his own image.

Pausing long enough to light a cigarette and to shrug his pack into a more comfortable position, Westwood went on. The pack was small and compact and contained a three-day supply of rations, an inflatable tent, a small heater, a blanket and a two-way radio. And, at the last minute, Westwood had jammed some extra supplies into the pockets of his fatigues: water-purifying tablets, pneumocartridges for the tent and extra minibatteries for the heater. Slung haphazardly across the pack, long, slim and deadly, was his loaded Dammerung.

• • •

"Harry, you take this business too lightly," George Brand had said after ferrying Westwood across the river. "Show me a pro with your experience and I'll show you a reckless man whose worst enemy is his overconfidence."

"You sound like my mother," Westwood had said.

"I've seen some of the things Dijleha can do, and you haven't. And you don't understand peasants the way I do, either. Basically, that's what Dijleha is—a peasant. She behaves like one, reacts like one and she thinks like one."

"The hell I don't understand peasants," Westwood had said. "What kind of people do you think created some of the other ogres—not to mention gods—I've killed? Udon, for instance. Mother Magrab, Trisk, Chitzen, Mimb."

Brand shook his head. "Peasants in some cases, nomads in others. But I'll concede there's very little difference. What I'm trying to say is, Harry, that you don't know primitive peoples firsthand. You know them only through their creations. They're shrewd. They think differently. We're products of an affluent society. They have to work for a living. As a result, we can never accurately predict their next move."

"If you really knew anything about primitive peoples, George, you'd know that it's their vindictiveness you're talking about, not their shrewdness. ... I think you're actually afraid of this outsize cannibal these plains people have brought to life."

At this point, Brand had lost his patience. "All right!— let her make a meal out of you, then! Not that you'll make much of a one. You should lay off the booze, Harry. Christ, you're skin and bones!"

• • •

To Westwood's left, the hills hogbacked away to the horizon. To Ms right, they grew steeper and became indistinguishable from the mountains. The sky was blue above his head.

As he started up the first ridge, he saw near the crest a number of white splotches that he at first mistook for bones. Then he saw the bones move and knew that the splotches were members of a species of small white baboons indigenous to this part of Nightfall. They were herbivorous and quite tasty, and the plains people loved to cook and eat them. Westwood was tempted to try for one with his Dammerung, but he didn't because there wouldn't have been enough of it left to bother with. They scattered at his approach, and it was doubtful if he could have got one, anyway.

Dijleha's footprints guided him as he made his way deep into the hills, although, owing to the greater firmness of the ground, they were much less distinct. But there were other signs of her passage: a broken sapling, the indentation left by a boulder she had picked up and playfully tossed into a nearby valley, an elephantine dune of dung. He began to see occasional bones, too. A sternum with several ribs attached, a clavicle, a femur. In some cases, the bones had been cracked and the marrow sucked out.

A cannibal creature indeed. Dijleha, she who devours alive.

At length, the footprints and the bones led Westwood to a pass. Before entering it, he pulled the butt of his Dämmerung closer to his right shoulder so that he could grab the weapon in a hurry should a sudden need for it arise. The butt was smooth and familiar to his touch. It should have been. Unlike some Beowulfs, Westwood never changed guns. This one had been with him since the beginning.

The beginning . . . that was Trisk, wasn't it? Sometimes he had trouble remembering his kills in their proper sequence. Yes, Trisk. . . .

• • •

Trisk had lived in the mountains of Godawful's northern temperate zone. He was a huge Panlike creature with a ballooning belly and a pair of enormous black hooves on which he thundered down into the valleys and trampled his creators' crops. Brains he had not, for if he had, he would have realized that in cutting off his victims' food supply, he was cutting off his own. The situation was intolerable no matter how you looked at it, and when Galactic Guidance got wind of it, they dispatched a Beowulf posthaste.

Westwood had been green but he hadn't been afraid. He took his Dämmerung and went up into the mountains and followed Trisk to his lair. When Trisk came out, Westwood saw that the ogre was too tall for him to get off a good head shot and, to bring the head closer, he deliberately stepped from behind the boulder he'd chosen for concealment and flung a rock at the ogre's right knee. Trisk let out a huge howl and bent down and gripped the knee with both hands. The head was close enough now. Too close. The face looked like the surface of a meteor-pocked planet. West-wood had to hold the Dämmerung almost vertically to get off his shot, and, in his excitement, he forgot that this was something you weren't supposed to do. In appearance, the weapon was jet black and looked like an ancient muzzle-loading musket that could be fired from either end. In actuality, it was something else. Its trigger, when squeezed, detonated a hypercartridge that sent a high-velocity projectile, capable of blowing up a small house, spinning through the big barrel. The recoil was brutal, and it was imperative to freeze to the weapon at the moment of firing, but you couldn't freeze to it when you fired it vertically, and West-wood's collarbone cracked; the projectile passed through Trisk's forehead and exploded in the middle of his thick skull. He fell forward on his ruined face, and Westwood had to scramble to get out of the way.

In the valley that night, the natives had feted him and he had filled himself with native wine, and after a while the pain of his broken collarbone had gone away and the sickness in his stomach had departed. He had been little more than a boy at the time, and he had needed a mother. He had found her in the wine.

• • •

The pass was behind him now, and Westwood halted on a hilltop, detached his water thermos from his belt and took a long, cool draft. Below him lay a grassy valley through which a slender stream unwound like silken thread. There were trees massed along the banks, but not thickly enough to conceal a being as huge as Dijleha. He made a mental note to crawl over the crest of the next ridge instead of silhouetting himself against the sky. The abode of the ogress could not be very far away, and he wanted to spot her before she spotted him.

The day was very nearly done. The trees bordering the slender stream were throwing long shadows. Westwood decided to spend the night in the valley and resume his search early the next morning. Some superbeings could see in the dark. He didn't think this one could, but there was no sense taking the chance.

He recapped the thermos, reattached it to his belt and descended the hill. Halfway down, he had to detour round a sizable tree that had been torn up by its roots and cast aside. Since Dijleha was carrying at least a dozen dead natives, even discounting the ones she'd already devoured, she must have uprooted it with one hand. Impressive— though it went without saying that a superbeing as huge as Dijleha would have the strength of 50 men. Not that she needed to be huge in order to be phenomenally strong. A superbeing's strength, like its other physical and mental attributes, derived from the collective imagination of its creators. It was as strong as they believed it to be.

Take Grendel, for example. Not only had modem research unearthed evidence of his existence, it had also unearthed evidence that he was no more than eight feet tall. And yet, on his first visit to Heorot, Hrothgar's hall, he had carried off 30 thanes. Beowulf scholars had generally written off this exploit as the hyperbole of a primitive poet, but modem research had proved otherwise. Despite his relatively small stature, Grendel could have carried off 30 thanes. Whether he actually had or not, no one would ever know.

Once on the valley floor, Westwood headed for the stream. Dijleha, too, had refreshed herself there. He saw a pair of large, rounded impressions made by her enormous knees when she had knelt on the bank to drink. The water was crystal-clear and mountain-fresh; nevertheless, he popped a water-purifying tablet into his thermos before he refilled it. Then he washed his face and hands.

Dusk was moving into the valley. Soon the coolness of the mountains would sink into the hills and the temperature would drop below 50. Westwood slipped off his pack, opened it and got out his inflatable tent. He pulled a pneu-mocartridge out of his pocket, inserted it, squeezed it to life and watched the tent change from a compact cube the size of his fist to a large rubberoid cabin replete with a door that laced shut, two transparent windows and a built-in bed. Promptly it took on the hue of its surroundings and became indistinguishable from the shadows.

After activating the heater and setting it just within the doorway, Westwood opened a thermopac and ate a light meal. He washed it down with hot coffee from a second pac, lit a cigarette and squatted Indian fashion in the tent doorway, letting the warmth from the heater penetrate his back. The darkness by this time was complete, and a rash of stars had appeared in the heavens. The air was clear and cold and there was no wind.

And yet, paradoxically, he could hear a wind. No, not a wind, but a sound suggestive of a wind blowing through heavy foliage. And presently, from far away, he heard the crackling sound of breaking limbs. The ground shuddered beneath him.

From where he sat, he had an almost unobstructed view of the ridge he would climb tomorrow. He saw her as she came over the crest, and she was tree-tall against the stars. She dwindled rapidly as she descended the nearer slope, then disappeared altogether as she blended with the dark mass of the ridge. The valley floor trembled with every step she took; the silence of the night fled before her kettledrum tread.

Westwood killed his cigarette and released the safety on his Dammerung. He got slowly to his feet.

Why was she retracing her. steps? Had she already devoured the last of the victims she had carried off the previous night and was she setting out on another raid? Or had she somehow divined his presence? He tried to see her in the darkness, but the black background of the ridge thwarted him. Her kettledrum tread crescendoed.

There was another sound now. A rumbling, as of thunder. But it was too high-pitched to be thunder, and it was broken up into syllables. It was the sound of her voice.

Westwood was somehow reminded of a woman calling a cat. Here, kitty. Here, kitty-kitty-kitty! Even as the simile crossed his mind, he saw the white baboon that was watching him from the other side of the stream and realized the true magnitude of his danger.

Suddenly the baboon began to gibber in a shrill voice. The kettledrums grew silent, then resumed their rhythmic beat, each note louder than the one before.

Westwood did not move. Immobility was his only salvation. If only he had seen the baboon sooner and guessed it was Dijleha's petl If only someone had told him she had a pet! Damn Brand! Damn the plains people! Damn all people who made up bugbears to scare their children and then, unaware of the life-force engendered by their imaginations en masse, unconsciously transformed fantasy into fact!

Westwood smelled carrion, stale sweat. A tree crashed, narrowly missing the tent. Abruptly a pale pillar with an elongated base descended from the sky and ground into the earth mere inches from where he stood. Gazing upward, he saw the mountainous flesh of her, the huge curvatures and the shaglike hair. When she stooped to snatch up her pet, it was like a building bending. He glimpsed a massive countenance, with a pair of pale eyes set in pudgy flesh. Then the building straightened and the awesome visage went away.

He could have got her right between the eyes. He could have, but he hadn't. For one thing, she had taken him too much by surprise; for another, he was a seasoned Beowulf now and knew better than to fire a Dammerung vertically.

Short hairs the size of spikes protruded from the massive leg. Its surface was mud-smeared and grimy. The enormous foot was blackened with innumerable layers of filth. It ground deeper into the earth as she put her full weight on it; then, with a sucking sound, it shot upward and out of sight. Another tree crashed; the ground shuddered. The beat of the kettledrums grew slowly softer, finally faded away. As she recrossed the crest of the ridge, she appeared once more against the stars; then she dwindled from view.

Westwood crawled into the warm cocoon of the tent, laced the door behind him and lay down on the built-in bed. He felt like the 31st thane.

He reactivated the safety on his Dammerung and set his mental alarm for an early hour. Tomorrow, when it aroused him, he would enter the next valley and accomplish his assignment. He would center the projectile right between Dijleha's eyes and destroy her evil ogress brain.

He would need elevation for maximum accuracy. A tree would do. Judging from the sounds she had made ascending the slope, there were many trees in her valley. He would climb the most strategic one and, when the moment was exactly right, he would write finis to this walking nightmare. Then he would contact Brand on the two-way radio and tell George to pick him up in the Guidance Center's copter. By tomorrow night he would be on board ship en route to Mars. While he was waiting for the shuttle, he would get drunk. Very, very drunk.

Sometimes he wondered why unsophisticated races such as the plains people didn't create benevolent rather than malevolent superbeings. Maybe they would if they were aware of the creative energy their combined imagination was capable of unleashing. But there was no way to make them aware without first educating them, and if you were to educate them, you would weaken the naive belief which was the source of the energy and bring them prematurely to that sterile plateau of intellectual development upon which the creation of a living being was possible only through physical union.

Maybe masochism lay at the root of their ability. In any event, even when they came up with a god, he was almost always a vindictive god. Yahweh was a case in point. So was Zeus. But, in a cosmic sense, superbeings never lived long enough to do very much harm. Physically, they endured only as long as their creators believed in them. Then they vanished and all the Up service in the world was insufficient to bring them back to life.

Was it right for an institution like Galactic Guidance to destruct a god—with or without the consent of its creators? It was argued that living beings like Dijleha should be permitted to die naturally, but Westwood didn't agree. Evil must be dealt with, in any form, and he felt fully justified in his kills.

He put these thoughts carefully out of mind—and slept.

When Westwood's mental alarm jerked frim awake, a predawn grayness was seeping through the tent windows, creeping through a crevice between the laced-together door flaps and the floor. He unlaced the door and went outside and washed in the cold stream. The impression of Dijleha's foot had filled with water during the night and appeared as an elongated pond. He regarded it thoughtfully as he ate a meager but sustaining morning meal; then he collapsed the tent, reassembled his pack, shouldered it and set out, carrying his Dammerung at port.

He walked in a straight line, across the stream, through the trees and up the farther slope, cautiously now, alert for the slightest movement, the faintest sound. Behind him, the sun edged above the ridge he had descended the previous afternoon and light rushed into the valley, turning the dew to gold.

Up the slope, moving on his hands and knees, inching his eyes above the crest. He looked down into a valley similar in most respects to the one that lay behind him. It, too, boasted a slender stream and a grassy floor, but there were far more trees, and on the opposite side there were cliffs. Limestone, as nearly as Westwood could make out. Pitted with caves, probably; honeycombed with tunnels. From his present perspective, the trees seemed to grow right up to their feet.

He gave the Dämmerung a final check, turning it slowly in his hands.

And he thought of Chitzen,

The god Chitzen roared when He talked, and He slept on a great granite mesa in the middle of the Desert of Strange Stones. His worshipers brought offerings at the beginning of each week and laid them at the base of a towering outcropping at the foot of his bed—the fattest of their livestock, the choicest of their crops, the plumpest of their virgins, the rarest of their wine—but He was never satisfied and eternally demanded more food, more virgins, more wine. And when it became impossible for his worshipers to supply Him with more, He arose from his granite bed and strode across the Desert of Strange Stones to the oases where the villages lay and took what He wanted and destroyed what He didn't, and before long, dark days came and the villagers feared to leave their huts, and a famine settled upon the land.

Scattered over the valley floor were thousands of small white objects that gleamed in the morning sunlight, and at the base of one of the cliffs, half-hidden by a frescolike fringe of trees, was a mound of similar objects. Westwood realized that the objects were human bones.

He made his way down the slope, taking maximum advantage of the cover afforded by snarls of little trees. When he was halfway down, a white baboon bounded out of a nearby copse and hotfooted it to the valley floor, where it disappeared in the tall grass. Was it Dijleha's pet? Why hadn't she eaten it? No doubt, being an ogress, she enjoyed nothing but human flesh.

Reaching the valley floor, he continued on a circuitous course toward the cliffs, keeping out of sight behind trees, thickets and bushes and—when no other cover was available—crawling belly down through the tall grass.

After Westwood crossed the stream, concealment was less of a chore. The trees were closer together and considerably larger. He made his way toward the cliff with the mound of bones at its base. He could smell the bones, even though there was no wind; mingled with their miasma was another smell, compounded of body odor and dung.

When the Beowulf branch of Galactic Guidance was first established, copters were used exclusively to track down superbeings. Now, however, they were rarely employed without good reason, for, as often as not, when a super-being saw a copter, it fled to its lair and stayed there, complicating the task of the hunter.

• • •

There had been two good reasons for using a copter on the Chitzen assignment: Chitzen's abode was in the open, and, being a god, it was unlikely He would flee.

The weird outcroppings of the Desert of Strange Stones drifted by beneath Westwood and the pilot as they flew east into the face of rising Antares. They sighted the granite mesa only to find it empty when they passed above it. Clearly, Chitzen was an early-rising god. He was also a clever god. Too late, they realized that the humanoid shape before and below them, which in the blinding light of Antares they had mistaken for another outcropping, was Chitzen Himself. A hand came up and batted the copter down.

The pilot was killed instantly. Westwood's right leg was crushed, caught in the wreckage of the cabin. He could not extricate it. There was a gaping hole in the cabin roof through which he could see the blue sky. Presently Chitzen's face swam into view and his cold and terrible eyes gazed down into Westwood's own. The massive countenance occulted the sky. Above the plateaulike forehead, strands of golden hair danced like solar prominences in the morning wind. From the left ear, a golden earring swung faintly to and fro.

Half in a dream, Westwood felt for his Dammerung. It should have been at his side. It was not. It was lying several feet away. Desperately, he tried to reach it. He could not. Perhaps it was just as well. He did not think he could use it, anyway. He did not think he could kill a god. As the thought crossed his mind, he saw the hand come through the hole in the cabin roof and the gigantic fingers close round the barrel of the Dammerung. He saw the weapon lifted aloft, saw simultaneously that the impact of the crash had dislodged the safety.

The trees thinned out and Westwood had to cross a grassy clearing to reach the fresco forest that paralleled the cliffs feet. He crawled through the grass, did not stand up till he was safe among the trees. He could see the mound of bones. It lay straight ahead of him. Above and to the right of it, pretty much as he had figured, was a king-size cave mouth. Moving in closer, he found a large tree that stood on the inner edge of the fresco forest on a line with and some 70 yards distant from the mouth.

Standing behind the trunk, he listened. He heard the faint humming of insects, the scuttering .sound of a small animal of some kind burrowing in the dead leaves. He also heard what he had expected to hear—a sound as of bellows pumping, muted but distinct. Yes, Dijleha was in her den. Still gorged, probably, from yesterday's repast. Gorged and fast asleep.

He removed his pack and slung his weapon. He picked up several small stones and pocketed them. He had to shinny a good 15 feet before he reached the first limb. He went on to the next and the next. At length he came to a crotch that he estimated to be about the right height, and he settled himself into it, unslung his Dämmerung and rested the weapon on his lap. Leafy branches hanging down from above screened him from sight and at the same time afforded him an excellent view of the cliff face through the interstices in their foliage.

He released the safety on his Dämmerung; then he took one of the small stones out of his pocket and threw it across the intervening distance and into the cave. He heard it rattle on the rock floor.

• • •

Chhzen straightened to his full height and Westwood could see Him through the hole in the cabin roof, studying the tiny weapon in his hands. He tried to loop his gargantuan thumb around the trigger, but the trigger guard thwarted Him. He looked more like a child than a god—a child puzzled by a technological toy that it could not comprehend.

Abruptly, Chitzen vanished from view.

There was a silence. Westwood felt the first throb of pain as numbness began to leave his injured leg. Had the god gone? Had it been only the Dämmerung He wanted? Had

He no thoughts of revenge?

Westwood's two-way radio hung from a cord around his neck. There had been no point in beeping for a rescue copter before. Now hope trembled in his throat as he turned the tiny dial.

The handle of the cabin door turned and the door swung open, and a handsome young man stepped into the room. He had feathery golden hair, a high, wide forehead and wide-apart eyes, and from his left ear a golden earring dangled. Westwood's black and deadly Dämmerung was cradled in his arms.

The cold and terrible eyes rested on the hunter, no less cold, no less terrible, in their new dimension than they had been in their old. A god might not be able to change the size of a weapon that was too small for it to operate, but it could change its own size. And within his framework of values, there was no other way for Chitzen to kill West-wood than the way Westwood had intended to kill Him.

He raised the Dämmerung and incorrectly pointed the butt at Westwood. The god had the unfamiliar weapon reversed; the barrel was aimed at his own head. He slipped his right thumb through the trigger guard and began to squeeze the trigger. Westwood smiled thinly as the Dämmerung thundered, leaping from Chitzen's grasp onto Westwood's lap. The projectile passed through the god's head and exploded.

Apparently Dijleha was a light sleeper, for no sooner had the stone that Westwood cast ceased rattling on the cave floor than her head emerged from the cave mouth. At first, all he could see was her hair. It made him think of a haystack. Then, as she crawled on all fours out into the daylight and stood up, Westwood got a clear view of her face. The nose was turned up slightly and the eyes were set close together. The cheeks were full. She had a wide mouth and rather heavy lips. At the moment, they were discolored with dried blood. Her chin was gently rounded. It was the face of a mischievous—and cruel—young girl.

Westwood was less interested in her face than in her body. The mere weight of her breasts caused them to sag prematurely, but they were as nothing compared to her huge and sagging belly. She had gone to fat early in her career, and as though her obesity were not repulsive enough, her face and body were covered with the accumulated grime of her brief lifetime. The stench was overpowering.

She was carrying her pet baboon in the crook of her arm, where it was almost hidden by the enormous overhang of her left breast. The height of Westwood's perch put his eyes on a level with hers. There was a quality about her that suggested a self-indulgent teen-ager rather than an ogress— a teen-ager who was unable to put a curb on her appetite and slim down so the boys would go for her.

Now she was walking straight toward the tree in which he was sitting. Probably heading for the forest to relieve herself. Westwood had already aimed the Dammerung at a spot midway between her eyes; all he had to do was squeeze the trigger. Let her get closer. . . .

The earth shook from her footsteps; the leaves of the forest trembled. Her face, vast to begin with, grew vaster still. When she was almost to the tree, she halted and reached out with her free hand and tweaked off the two overhanging branches that screened Westwood from view.

She grinned at him.

Westwood squeezed the trigger.

Click!

He squeezed it again. Click!

Dijleha's grin became a gruesome smile. Her teeth were two tiers of chiseled gray rocks.

Westwood lowered the Dammerung and checked the magazine. It was empty.

The great grimy hand that had tweaked off the branches of his hideaway was now approaching the crotch in which he sat. Westwood gripped the Dammerung by the barrel and brought the heavy weapon down with all his might across the ogress's knuckles. The butt shattered from the impact, and the barrel was torn from his grip as Dijleha snatched the injured hand away and stepped back. The howl she let out activated a small avalanche on the cliff behind her.

Three facts were now self-evident: (1) The white baboons of Nightfall were not quite as far down the evolutionary ladder as Galactic Guidance assumed; (2) unlike the barbaric desert dwellers who had created Chitzen, the plains people were familiar with modern firearms and had endowed their superbeing with a working knowledge of the Dammerung; and (3) they were latent telepaths and had passed their gift on to Dijleha in active form.

Her pet baboon had "told" her about Westwood—probably last night after she had found it and taken it home. And she in turn had "told" the baboon to empty West-wood's Dammerung. Afterward, the baboon had played sentinel and informed her of the hunter's approach. Their telepathic rapport, apparently, functioned only at close range.

She was standing a giant step away, sucking her bruised knuckles and contemplating him with her wicked eyes. It was her usual custom to wring her victims' necks before she devoured them. In this respect, she was quite humane. But the cunning expression on her face told him that no such merciful death lay in store for him, that he was going to have to pay and pay dearly for what he had done to her hand.

Precisely how would she make him pay? He shuddered. He did not even need to ask himself. He knew.

In his mind he heard Brand's voice. "A peasant. She behaves like one, reacts like one and she thinks like one."

Dijleha had approached the tree again and was reaching into the branches for him. Just before the terrible fingers encircled his waist, he extricated four pneumocartridges from his pocket and gripped two of them in either hand. Then he was torn from the crotch and borne aloft. The branches ripped his clothing, stung his skin. The vast face grew into a foreboding cliff. There was a cave in this cliff of flesh, filled with two horizontal tiers of chiseled gray rocks.

The tiers separated at his approach. She chose his right hand. He had thought she would, because it was her right hand he had struck with the na.mmp.ning, but he had taken no chances. She pinched the elbow between her thumb and forefinger so that the arm jutted straight out The mouth of the cave came forth to meet him; her fetid breath combined with his terror and nearly overwhelmed him. But he managed to retain awareness long enough to squeeze the two pneumocartridges to life and flick them over her tongue and down her throat before the terrible tiers came together.

And thine eye shall not pity, but life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand. . . .

• • •

Westwood had fainted. He came to lying on his back at the edge of the fresco forest. Blood was spurting rhythmically from the stump where his right hand had been, but apparently none of his bones were broken. With immense effort, he fashioned a tourniquet from his belt and got the bleeding under control. Nearby, Dijleha was dying. From where she had dropped him at the edge of the fresco forest, he watched her great writhings, the shouting and the screaming and the thrashing of the huge limbs. At last it was over and the body lay quietly in the morning sunlight like a range of gentle hills.

Westwood crawled to the base of the tree where his pack lay, got out his two-way radio and turned the emergency dial to on. In less than an hour, Brand would arrive in the copter. Computerized medical techniques would have West-wood's stub healed in a week, and in less than another he would be fitted with a prosthetic hand superior to the one he had lost. The pain was beginning. . . .

Damn, but he wanted a drink! He wanted to blot out the pain and the stench and the images in his mind. Next time he would bring some wine. It was against the rules, drinking on a hunt—but to hell with the rules. Next time. . . .

Westwood lay on his back in the Valley of Bones, gazing up through the foliage of the fresco forest at the blue sky. He managed to get a cigarette going and blew smoke at the morning sun. Hearing a faint rustle in the grass, he turned his head and saw Dijleha's pet baboon sitting on its haunches several yards away. It was looking at him forlornly. He reached out with his good arm and, when the little animal came closer, he patted its downy head. The baboon whimpered and snuggled up against his chest.

(rhythm guitar) and Royce (who can play anything, but mainly sings).

I PR for the boys, and I set up the contest. Been in publicity since I was knee-high to a French horn. I handled Dust, the first Moon group, in 1990, and I've had enough Martian sand in my craw to feel like a native. But I'm not. I'm blond and blue-eyed and I'm no zeeb. They call me Hoff. Earth blood.

"What's the problem?" I really want to know, because I'm fogged out on the why.

"Everything's the problem," growls Dirk. He hangs one long peppermint-striped pants leg over the edge of my couch and rides it like a saddle. "You seen those Earthies?"

He means the photos of the contest entrants, and I admit I've seen them.

"Look," I tell him, "there's still a couple of weeks till
deadline. More'll come in by then. There's bound to be at
least one you can--------- "

"I'm not Unking up with any freebing Earthie," says Dirk. He angrily pops the buttons on his lemon metafile shirt. They make a sound like popcorn hitting the hardwood floor.

"Nobody's forcing anything on you," I say. "You all get together, as a group, and pick the winner. Then she picks one of you."

"From the creepies I've seen," puts in Royce, "if one picked me, I'd vomit." He's a Uthe Uttle character, with enormous shining teeth, who crouches over a mike like he's about to bite it off. Zeebs are fish eaters, and I got some heavy promo hanging out on how Royce lives on raw Martian fish. One of the rock rags even printed a special outer-space raw-fish ish, Usting maybe a hundred zeeb recipes. It helped. It all helps.

"This is a freak trip, Hoff, and you know it," says Dirk to me, still riding my couch. The others are strung out on chairs around my Brentwood pad, looking drained. We've had a full day cutting tracks for a new LP, and now all I want to do is get them out so I can fold myself into the sack.

"None of us want to be married," says Royce.

"Too late," I say. "Way too late. The scene's locked in. We're guaranteed front-page coverage on this right down the line. The whole "Marry a Zeeb" bit means prime Earth bread for all of us. Life and Look are both hot to cover the honeymoon—and Buckley Three, Jr., is condemning us in National Review."

Dean joins the hassle. He's our stand-up comic, the one with flap ears and that sappy smile, the one we hoke with for laughs—still a big Earth fave with the preteenies—but he's playing it for sour now. "It was one thing when you got us the teeny crowd with that skin-flake routine, but we're past that now. We don't need to sell our bodies anymore."

Now I'm pissed off about what Dean just said, because that skin-flake idea of mine put the Red Dogs over the top. The other groups were selling their hair and love beads and dung like that when I came up with the flake bit. Hey, kids! Send in for your own genuine, certified, medically sterilized bits of zeebskin, carefully and painlessly scraped from the bodies of your four faves! The preteenies flipped. We got enough orders for a ton of flakes—and the fact that we used whales, on which I got a helluva buy, was also my inspiration. Takes a medical expert to tell whaleskin from zeebskin. So when I get this new contest idea, I know it's ultraheavy: Girls! If you're of legal age of consent and wish to be the Earth bride of a Martian zeeb, send us your photo and tell us why we should choose you in 50 words or less. The lucky winner will be able to pick out her new husband and spend a fab two-week honeymoon in a genuine, certified, medically sterilized Martian sand igloo.

With raw fish, yet!

We'd all rapped it down and agreed. It was set and rolling. Now, suddenly, everybody wants out, and I'm pissed.

I turn to Pops, who manages the boys. He's cool, he's with it, he's in the large scene. Pops has seen it all, the full life bag. He doesn't ruffle. "Look, you tell them," I say to him. "You're their goddamn father!"

Pops has his shirt rolled up from the waist, and he's been studying his navel. He looks up, with those big black Martian bird eyes sweeping us. "A man's navel contains the wisdom of the universe," he says, tapping his whale-black stomach. "It's all here."

"What does your navel tell us, Pops?" asks Eddie. He's fat, never says much and falls asleep a lot, but he's a wild man with the sticks.

Pops walks to the center of the room, eyes us all. We wait. Pops sighs and goes back to his navel. For more study.

Which is when the envelope arrives.

It is delivered by special messenger, and I ask exactly who's it from, but the special messenger doesn't know, just that it was some female and it's for us.

I take the envelope in to the boys. There's a card inside. They all look at it.

"What does it mean?" Royce asks.

The card bears a single line of print: the bottom builders. And under that, in purple ink, is written, "I dig your double buns—and I can make you all immortal. My name is Jenny. I'm downstairs. Let me come up and you won't be sorry." There was a purple P.S. "And I'm no plastic zeebie girl—I'm the real stuff."

I flip the card against my thumb and give them all a grin. "You mean you haven't heard of the Builders?"

They look blank.

Having just returned to L.A. from Frisco, I caught the latest rap up there on these three females who, I'm told, are something else. "Believe me, this one's for real. See her. Find out. Live!"

They exchange raised eyebrows. Pops stays with his navel. Cool. Finally, Dirk says, "Buzz her up."

Which we do.

Jenny is maybe 18 to 20. Nice hair, nice pink Earth skin, nice smile—and with a better than nice body. The legs are long and sleek and golden. Very short skirt. Very loose blouse, with lots inside. She's in purple, to match her ink.

She's the undiscovered country.

"There used to be three of me," she says sweetly. "Three of us, I mean. But we called it off as a team when I split for L.A. Marcy is living with a legless Hindu in Sausalito, and Joan is doing vocals with the Armpits. We all learned to do it in high school." She giggles. "Now I do it alone."

The boys are wigged out. Even Pops has abandoned his navel.

"What is it?" Dean wants to know. "I build bottoms," says Jenny.

She opens the leather traveling bag she's been carrying and takes out a kind of folding pink canvas thing that she snaps together and sets on the floor.

We all stare at the tiling. Like a baby's potty.

"That's to sit in," she says. "I fill it up with plaster and dental alginates and hot water. The mixture has to be just right. Rick Fedding, one of the Sub Basements, got stuck in there when we were just learning about bottoms. We couldn't get him loose. It was awful. Embarrassing, you know. We had to kind of hammer him out. Rick was such a sport about it, too. His buns were sore for a week, but he never hassled us about it."

As she tells us all this, she is laying out a line of stuff on my coffee table: measuring scoops, a jar of Vaseline, some wooden spatulas, three plastic cups—and a thermometer. "For testing water temp," she says. "We tried it without the thermo once and, boy, did that cat jump! It was too hot, like scalding. We had to rub in some banana oil."

She stops messing with the contents of the bag, turns, gives us all a bright, young, innocent smile. "Now, if you guys will just drop your pants."

Dean flaps his ears. "Wow."

Royce clicks his moose teeth. "What a come-on!"

Jenny frowns. "This is no come-on! I told you on the card that I'd make you all immortal. Well, this proves I can. Long after you're dead—maybe even hundreds of years from now—they'll still have your bottoms in the Library of Congress."

"I didn't know the Library of Congress collected bottoms," says Dirk.

"They'll collect mine," declares Jenny with a toss of her long hair. "A bottom can often tell you more about a person than any book about him ever could." Her brows knit. "Don't you guys want to be immortal?"

"I don't want my butts roasted," pipes Eddie, shaking his head. The other zeebs agree, mumbling darkly about the inconvenience of having to have their asses hammered out and stuff like that.

This is when I come in. Strong. I been in PR too long to miss a Good Thing, and suddenly I'm onto a Good Thing. "Hey, knock off and listen to me. This chickie knows how to protect your precious rumps. She's a pro. The beauty part is what we do with the molds. We make chairs is what we do with them. Chair bottoms. Bottom bottoms."

The great thing, considering the situation, about Martian zeebs is that they are double-bottomed. Two pairs of buttocks per zeeb—which makes them kind of unique.

"We sell plastic replicas to every lousy furniture store in the country," I go on, talking fast. "We even ship 'em to the Moonies up in the colony. Just lay it on your freebing minds: What we got here is a fortune in zeeb bottoms!"

A silence while they let my words register.

Pops stands up, walks to the center of the room again. Whenever Pops has something really heavy to say, he walks to the center of the room to say it. Now he says, solemn-eyed, "Drop your pants."

Royce slowly shakes his head. "Whoever casts my bottoms does it in the dark. I don't go around having my bottoms cast in front of anybody."

Jenny considers this, nods. "There's no reason we can't do this in the bedroom. I can prepare the mixture, douse the lights and call you guys in one at a time. When you leave, I turn the lights on again and finish my work. All right?"

Royce agrees. They all figure that will be all right. Yeah. The bedroom. In the dark. With Jenny. The undiscovered country.

Two weeks after that the letter arrives. From Jenny, in Kansas.

"What the hell's she doing in Kansas?" Dirk asks me, and I tell him I don't know, but I guess that's her home state and she's gone back home.

"I thought she was supposed to stick around and deliver our bottoms," Royce says.

I nod. "She was. That was the agreement. That's what she promised to do."

"So just read the letter," says Pops.

So we read the letter.

Hey, you Red Dogs!

I've got a little confesh to make: I can't send you your bottoms. I messed up in the tagging and I got so mad trying to figure out which bottom was which that I broke the molds—just tossed them SPLAT! against the wall. So no chairs, fellas! Sorry.

Got another little confesh to make: When I came to see you guys, I was virgie. No lie. Can you feature it? Nineteen and a half and pure as the driven. But at least that's over. Whooie! They say all cats are gray in the dark; so I can't say which of you did me, but it sure was some trip!

My third and last confesh: I missed my month— meaning I'm bound to be just a little bit pregs. I didn't use anything. I mean not the pill or anything. That's because I want to mother a zeeb. Our family is very, but very, fertile—and I'm sure my own little double-bottomed zeeb is sleeping inside me right now.

Isn't that zappy?

Bottoms up! Jenny

The boys look poleaxed, all glassy in the eyes. We're recording, right in the middle of a tight overdub sesh, but right away the juice drains. One thing about zeebs, there are no half-breeds, ever. The zeeb blood is so strong that when a nonzeeb female gets preggie by a zeeb, the Martian strain takes over. When Jen had her baby, he'd sure as hell have two bottoms!

Eddie walks away from his drums and puts the palms of both hands flat against the studio wall. "That's what comes of going bare-assed for posterity."

Dirk flips the guitar strap over his head and puts down his instrument. He pops his knuckles, a habit he has which none of us like. "That damn little Earthie could sell her story to the papes and ruin us," he growls.

"I didn't know there were any nineteen-year-old Earth virgins," says Dean. His flap ears are sagging.

I wind a mike cord aimlessly around my wrist like a lasso. Wind it. Unwind it. I'm thinking. "I got it," I say.

Nobody looks at me.

I say it again. "I got it."

Dirk grunts, puffs a lip.

Then I give them my solution. "Jenny wins! She wins the marry-a-zeeb contest."

"But she didn't enter it," says Eddie.

"That can be rigged. The point is, you guys need a winner, and all you've got are creepies. Jen is no creepie. She is also no virgin. She wins, we bring her out, tell her to pick a zeeb—and off we all go to Vegas for the ceremony.

You guys end up with a sweet-looking chick and Jenny has a legit father for her kid."

"It's a solution," nods Dean. "I diggo."

They all diggo.

Jenny goes along with the setup cheerfully. She thinks the idea is one long wig-out. We have a special plane fly her in from Kansas. Big prewedding reception at the Whiskey. Tons of photos. Tons of publicity.

"Dirk, kiss her!"

Dirk kisses Jenny.

"Eddie, kiss her."

Eddie kisses Jenny.

"Dean, kiss her!"

Dean kisses Jenny.

"Royce, kiss her!"

Royce kisses Jenny.

And the photogs go nutcake.

We keep mum on the bottom building. Jenny agrees to drop the whole schmeer, deny she was ever with the Builders in case one of the Frisco crowd remembers. We buy off her two former teammates and the legless Hindu in Sausa-lito. Her makeup is changed, along with her hair. She's just a sweet little Kansas Earthie who grooves on the Red Dogs.

I write the "50 words or less" myself:

I want to marry a zeeb because in this awful age of growing unrest, all the peoples of the worlds need to unite together in a true test of solar solidarity. By marrying a zeeb, I can make a personal contribution to racial equality and universal understanding. Thus, I offer my everlasting love!

Jenny reads it, almost gags. "I can't sign that!" "Why not?"

"I'd never write star drek like that." She looks down at the words and makes a face. "Blahah!"

"It's just what the national rags will eat up," I explain. "Full of heavy sentiment—picks up on the Martian racial bag."

"Sign," says Dirk, cracking his knuckles. "Don't argue." She signs: Jenny Ann Fingstatter. We all breathe a sigh of relief.

"Now you'd better split," I tell her. "You've got a Tri-

Planet show to rehearse, two satellite spots with Riddle, then a photo sesh at Sanctuary. They're gonna shoot you running around some track they've got set up over a bank, to show you getting in shape for the honeymoon."

"Kinky," says Jen.

She splits.

"OK," I say, looking over the boys, "it's time to select the lucky groom."

"Doesn't Jen just pick one of us?" asks Eddie.

"Normally she would, if this thing was straight," I tell' him. "But with her pregs, we do the picking."

"How?" This from Dirk. His lizard eyes are slitted. He-looks sour, as usual. If you handed Dirk a million bucks, tax-free, and a ticket to Fame Junction, he'd look sour.

I hold up four plastic matches. "The ones who shagged her draw, and short match is the groom. So who shagged her?" I look them over. "All of you, right?"

"I didn't touch a pink inch of that freebing little Earthiel" says Dirk. "Just went in, sat in her gook and went out."

Dirk never lies; so I shrug and turn to the others.

Eddie shakes his curls. "Not me, Hoff. I'm clean on this run. She turned me off with that hot-bottom stuff."

"Same with me," says Dean. "I never shagged her."

"Me, either," says Royce. "I just wanted to get my tender buns in and out of that room."

None of them. Not one of them. Which meant....

They get it when I do.

"Moonshit!" Dirk says in deep disgust. "Hoff shagged her. Right?"

I swallow hard. "Well—sure. ... I mean, I figured all of you would ... that you had ... well, hell, sure I shagged her."

The four zeebs are giving me the Martian eye. It's incredible, a mind blower. I can't believe it, but there it is— me, ole Hoff, a father!

"So who marries her?" asks Royce.

"Not me," I protest. "I can't marry her. It's gotta be a zeeb."

"And what about the kid she has?" asks Dean. "How are we going to explain a blond-haired blue-eyed baby with just one bottom?"

I groan, rubbing my blond head. "I'll work it out," I promise. "We go ahead and let her pick one of you, then play it as planned. As for the kid—believe me, I'll work it out."

"Yeah, Hoff," says Dirk, "you just better do that. You just better the hell work it out." We are into the hooley but good.

We don't tell Jenny anything. We just let her pick her zeeb and that is that. She picks Royce. Which figures. Eddie is too fat. Dirk is too mean. Dean is too ugly.

"Jen's not so hard to take," Royce tells us, showing those big teeth of his in a wide grin. "She's a lot better than raw fish!" I've had Royce at the fish again, for a Luna photog, and Royce blames his stomach cramps on me.

We're at the airport, waiting out the jet to Vegas. The boys are all sharked out in wild threads. A gassy wedding party.

"You'll be fine in the sand igloo," I tell him. "We've got it heated by Westinghouse."

"Pops lived in a sand igloo once, didn't you, Pops?" Royce looks at him for confirmation.

Pops admits he lived in one for three days once in his crummy hometown near the Red Mountains. He didn't like it. Too cold.

"We got this one heated by Westinghouse," I repeat again.

We all begin to fidget some.

"Where the hell is Jenny?" Dirk wants to know. "We're due aboard any minute."

"She's in the crapper," Royce says. "Fixing her hair." "Here she comes," I say. Jenny is too much.

She is wearing a gauzy Moon toga (white for purity)— with nothing underneath—and California poppies braided into her hip-length hair. A phony Martian wedding diamond has been pasted smack in the center of her forehead, and her sandals are made of white yucca blossoms. A gold engagement band glitters on the little toe of her left foot. No lipstick, but big purple circles gooped around her eyes.

"Hi, gang!" she says. "How do I look?"

She looks hip and bridey and I tell her so.

We get the boarding go-ahead. The press boys are waiting outside, tongues hanging, by the jet ramp.

"Everybody ready?" I ask. Nods all round.

"OK, then . . . into the lion's ass!"

The wedding sews it up for us. We stage the whole ba-zoola at the Space Frontier, with the boys doing Zeebie Girl at the reception while all the guests chew Martian eelcake.

She's just a little zeebie girl, a sad, slick, plastic chick,

ballin' all the heavy names, playin' all the sexual games, ridin' her plastic cloud, turned on to the cool, cool crowd.

Groovin' like there's no tomorrow, our own little child of sorrow, that little plastic zeebie girl. . . .

Jenny floats through it all on her own plastic cloud, while the photogs snap about a zillion pix.

We have the honeymoon jet painted to look like a star-ship, and we run the two kids out to the plane on a wheeled sand sled pulled by half a dozen Martian huskies I hired cut-rate from a studio flack. It is all way out.

It is only later, when I'm alone back at my pad in Brentwood, that I get the shakes when I think about Jenny's baby.

Like I promised the boys, I have to do something. But what?

• • •

The coverage from Mars is fantastic.

Look does an igloo feature showing the newlyweds as they leave to go out on the sand. We get shots of them hiking happily through the dunes, playing with a cute little eight-legged Mars pup, pulling glowfish from a canal —all that kind of crap.

I try to figure some way of getting one of the rags to run shots of them coupling inside the igloo, but this is nixed by Jenny. She points out that up to now the whole bazoola has been in good taste, and why spoil that for a few rag shots. I agree.

Sometimes you can go too far.

• • •

A couple of months slide by, and we have our doc examine Jen. Yeah, she's pregs and, yeah, she got pregs before the honeymoon and, yeah, he'll keep his mouth buttoned on just when providing we make it worth his while. Which we naturally do.

Meanwhile, I am thinking and pondering and working out the hooley. Ole Hoff will bust through with something, I tell the boys. And I do.

Like wow.

Perfect.

Brilliant.

Foolproof.

"Get Pops in here," I tell my secretary. It's late and I'm down at the studio going over some album cuts, trying to figure a new jacket approach, when I bust the hooley.

Pops comes in ten minutes later. He's sore. He's due at the Ash Grove.

"Forget it," I tell him. "You're going home." "Home?"

"The Red Mountains. To that crummy little zeeb village where you were born. The one you're ashamed to tell anybody about. Home."

"Why?"

"To buy a baby."

Pops is cool. As always. He nods, asks me to elaborate.

"Nobody knows anything about the place except you," I tell him. "You fly back there incognito and you locate a zeeb couple with a pregnant wife. The timing has to be just right. Jen will give birth in early June; so that's when the zeeb kid has got to be out of the hangar. Diggo?"

"Diggo."

"You stay on the scene till you hear from me. I'll phone from here the minute Jen goes into labor. Then you hustle the zeeb kid out here and we make the switch. You take Jen's kid back home and have it raised by the zeeb couple. Paying them handsomely for their trouble. Jen never knows about the switch, nor does her public. She gives birth to a healthy little zeeb and the world rejoices."

Pops looks at me. "Hoff ... at times you approach greatness." This, from Pops, brings tears to my eyes. "When do I leave?"

"I got you booked on a rocket out tonight," I say. "You've got to begin scouting for a preggie zeeb you can buy off. Fact is, for safety's sake, you better set up another couple in case the first pair gives you trouble. We don't want to be caught in a squeeze. So get going."

Pops got.

And the hooley was busted.

Like wow.

Perfect.

Brilliant.

Foolproof.

After the honeymoon, we get all kinds of offers. The Dogs are hot, they are steaming. All the clubs want us. We gig in St. Louis, Fort Worth, San Antonio, New York, Washington and Chicago. We get offers to do top gigs on the Moon.

We sign a new contract with Disco Tech and the boys cut Robot Man. It shoots to the top of the charts and stays there for ten weeks; then they follow that one up with Hieronymus Bosch on Sunday, with its funky cross-rhythm shifts and esoteric chord progressions. The boys have prime talent; now they are able to showcase it.

Jen travels with Royce and the others on their first road tour, but stays in L.A. when they go out again, pampering herself with gallons of Tiger's Milk and raw carrot juice.

She can't wait to be a zeeb mother.

The whole world loves her. She is every teener's dream come true, living proof that a simple Kansas farm girl can marry a famous rock-'n'-roll zeeb and bear his child. Jenny is an Event, a one-girl Happening, and we have to hire a round-the-clock secretary to take care of the mail that pours in for her. The president sends her a United Space Fellowship scroll, and a group of Moonheads in Frisco name her "Dog Mother of the Year." She gets advice on childbirth from 16 nations and a principality.

Finally, as the Time approaches, I call a press confab. "The baby's due to be somewhat premature," I tell the newsboys, "so Jenny's going to have it in a private clinic. We've got a crack medical staff set up to handle every detail. But the clinic is off limits until after the birth—so no photos until then. Sorry, fellas, but we're playing this one on a closed set."

They don't like it, but they have no other option.

So far it's a slide.

The clinic costs us a bundle, but we've like got nets out to take in all the new bread from LPs and concert dates; so this is no problem.

We bring in our own doc to make the delivery, with strict instructions that no one, but no one, is to see Jen's baby.

"How do you feel, chickie?" I ask her. We are in Jen's new pad near the clinic, and Royce is with her.

"Not so hot," she says and tries for a smile. Doesn't make it. A wave of pain hits her. "In fact, you'd better get me over there. I think it's started."

Started I

"Oops!" I yelp, giving Royce a nudge. "I just forgot a vital engagement. Vital. Can you get her over OK?" "Sure, I'll take care of it, Hoff." "Check you later, chickie," I say. Jenny just groans.

I hot-tail it downstairs and phone Pops, L.A. to Mars. "Red alert! All systems go!"

"I read you," says Pops. "I'm coming in now." "Don't forget the goods."

I meet his jet a few hours later at L.A. International and he's there safe—with the goods. I hustle him out to the clinic in a closed car and stash Pops and the zeeb kid in an emergency wing there, with a special nurse we've got to watch over things.

By now Jen's inside the delivery room, and the boys are pacing the hall. They look worried and they're sweating a lot. "Cool it," I tell them. "The fix is in."

They all sit down. But they keep sweating.

"It's gonna work," I say. "No hitches. It's a lock."

I sit down with them. Nobody says anything.

We wait.

The delivery-room door swings open and the doc comes weaving out. He's got a stunned look on his face. He flutters both hands in the air.

I leap up. "Born?"

"Born," he says.

"Healthy?" "Healthy," he says.

"Then, we make the zeeb switch now, right?" "Wrong," he says. "Why the hell wrong?"

"Not necessary." He gulps. "Jenny's baby is a zeeb." "Huh?"

The boys stare at each other. Then they stare at me.

"I don't get it," I say. "You guys didn't lie, did you?"

They all shake their heads. No, they didn't he.

"Well, then, I've already admitted that I'm the only----------------- "

My voice trails off. I push by the doc and rush into the room where they have Jenny and her baby. She's awake and smiling.

"Listen," I say to her, "this is important. How many bottoms did you cast that night back at my pad?". .

She frowns, remembering. "Uh . . . yours—and the five doubles. Why?"

"Never mind," I say, nodding to myself. Yeah. Me. The four Red Dogs. And. . . .

And Pops.

He's standing by the door, and we're all giving him the eye. He walks slowly past us to the bed, leans over and pats the kid on its cute black double bottom.

For the first time in my life, I see Pops smile.

"Coochy coochy coo!" he says.

cargo was now just a matter of days from Earth,

Within the C&D Unit, the three surviving members of the crew sat at their stations, expressions of relief on their faces. The final hyperspace jump was done and they had come back into space time almost on top of Saturn, a mere 27 million kilometers from the ringed planet, less than four and a half billion kilometers from Earth orbit.

"Well, Cal, we made it,"-said the astrogator, an artificially red-skinned Tatar from the human-colonized world of Phaethon, Meghito, a technocrat of Megalon. 'That's old Saturn over there." The scientist-aristocrat pointed toward the starboard viewing tank.

"Tanni," said the ship's master, glancing over his shoulder to the cargo train's second officer, "see if you can raise Titan."

Ijams c'Tanni acknowledged her commander's order and began adjusting the controls of the communications console before her.

Outside, on the C&D's hull, a large antenna gimbaled into position, guided by the approximate coordinates of Saturn's largest moon fed to its servomotors by the ship's computer. Moments later a powerful maser transmitter within the ship came to life, feeding the coherent energy into the antenna's horn. Splashing off the parabolic screen, focused and aimed, the carrier wave leaped skyward toward Saturn, toward Titan.

"This is Cargo Train 394 calling Port Grissom," the dark-haired, almond-eyed second officer said into the microphone suspended before her. "Cargo Train 394 out of Con-stantine, bound for Earth, calling Port Grissom, Titan. Clear us for passage to Earth and transmit current Earth coordinates for confirmation."

A little over three minutes later, the signal came from Titan. "This is Port Grissom, Cargo Train 394. Stand by for IFF."

The second officer reached over and flipped a toggle switch that cut in the cargo train's IFF transceiver. Then she waited a while longer while the identity of the ship was confirmed.

Following hard behind the words of the radioman at Port Grissom was a carefully coded, carefully modulated identification signal. When it was received by the cargo train, when it was fed into the sealed IFF unit, a series of relays clicked, the pulse-phase modulated signals were decoded, analyzed, interpreted, and the proper answering signal was transmitted back to Titan. Had the signal sent back from the cargo train been anything other than the exact series of codes that were transmitted, a barrage of nuclear-tipped missiles would have sprung from their silos deep beneath the frozen surface of Titan, searched out and destroyed the "invader." But the signal was correct, and four minutes later Port Grissom acknowledged.

"IFF positive, CT 394," said the voice from Titan. "Current Earth coordinates will be transmitted. Stand by." Then the voice relaxed, became less official and more human. "Is there anything else we can do for you?"

"Yes, there is," Tanni said, then hesitated, looked up at her commander for permission to relay the terrible information that they had brought with them across the light-years.

The ship's master shook his head and whispered so that his words would not be picked up by the microphone. "No, not yet. We'll tell Earth as soon as we can, but there's no point in alarming Titan."

Tanni nodded, turned back to the microphone, said, "Inform Earth that we're coming in. They'll probably want to know. We anticipate arrival in Earth orbit 07:01:36."

"Will do," Port Grissom said. "How was your trip?"

Tanni paused for a long moment before answering. "It was OK," she said at last. "Kind of long."

"I can imagine," the distant radio operator said. "How are things on Constantine?"

"Not too bad when we left," she told him. "The druul are still a long way off."

By this time, Meghito acknowledged that the coordinates of Earth had been received by the ship's computer and, after correcting for a displacement of 27 times ten to the sixth kilometers, agreed very well with his own figures. They could find the home world fairly easily. He gave Tanni a nod.

"Coordinates received and confirmed," she said. "We're all set, Port Grissom."

After the three-minute delay, Port Grissom replied, "Very well, CT 394. Have a good trip. Port Grissom out"

"Thank you," Tanni said. "Cargo Train 394 out."

"Ought to be ready to boost in about twenty minutes,

Cal," the astrogator said.

"Good enough," the ship's master answered. "I think I'll make a personal check of the globes before we do. Hold tight till I come back."

Three more days, thought the mind that inhabited the body of the ship's master as it ordered its stolen hands to open the equipment locker and pull out a space suit. Three days, four at the most, and I will be on their Earth.

The driil felt a tremendous sense of buoyancy as he fitted the body he wore into the space suit. The long trip was nearly over, and in a very few more revolutions of Earth, he would be there, on the home world of mankind, the center of its political, economic and industrial power. Within a month that power would be in mortal danger; within a standard year that power would be controlled by the druul.

With the space suit on, sealed and checked out, the living form of Lacey c'Calvin, ship's master, walked to the end of the C&D Unit, cycled through the air lock and began the inspection tour of the fourteen 90-meter spheres that made up the train's valuable cargo. The inhabitant of that body was happy at the thought that this holmium would never be used by humans, would never supply the fusion chambers of Earth's star fleets, would never carry her warships to the worlds of the druul.

Haledon-prasec, for that is the name that he called himself when among his own kind, knew that the most dangerous part was ahead. That danger would come when the cargo train went into orbit around Earth, but he was confident that he could handle that. Hadn't he been the first of his kind to capture a human body? Wasn't he the first to learn the location of mankind's Earth? With that much to his credit, how could he fail? The only danger lay in the frailty and weakness of the body he wore.

Haledon-prasec, living within and controlling the body of the human form called Lacey c'Calvin, walked across the taut fabric of number-one cargo globe, moving on to check the couplings that held the 14 spheres together, making sure that the couplings were tight, but would release when the signal was given.

As he made his tour, the driil continued to feel a great sense of satisfaction. His name would go down in the history of his kind as the conqueror of Earth, as the one who had begun the destruction of the race of mankind. He would rank along with Probanth-tanifant, who was credited with the beachhead on Rartarburand, the home world of those allies of the humans, the Luntinasel.

There had been awkward moments, Haledon remembered, moments when he feared that he might be discovered by the human members of the cargo train's crew. But the first crisis had been passed successfully when he, not yet fully in control of his new body, had forced the still-living mind of Lacey c'Calvin to shoot down the ship's engineer, the Terran Christian Hombroek. Now the others, the Constantinian female called Tanni and the Phaethonese named Meghito, firmly believed that Hombroek had been the drill, believed that the drill was dead and gone and the danger was past. Their concern was in getting the information to Earth that a driil had been able to board the cargo train at the refueling point on Hydros.

The parasitic creature that dwelt within the cranial cavity of the ship's master, the organism of nerve tissue that had entered the human structure, that had created its own all-pervading nervous structure while destroying that of its host, that had stolen the memories of Lacey c'Calvin while it dissolved his brain, the creature that man and Luntinasel called driil, was quite certain that his plan would prove successful.

All 14 of the cargo globes were checked and found to be in good condition, all 14 of the coupling pairs operating properly, ready to disconnect when Haledon-prasec gave the command. But, he told himself, that would have to wait. First he would have to reach the atmosphere of Earth.

The war was on, the strange war that was sometimes fought with fleets of starships, but more often in the dark, warm moistness of organic tissue, where the bodies of young druul germinated, grew, spread, conquered. The war was on, and when and where and how it started, no one could say.

The history of the druul, as far as men knew, began only 120 standard years before. The Luntinasel, an intelligent and humanoid race not greatly unlike mankind in physical appearance and mentality, had found the druul, or perhaps had been found by the druul. By the time the Lennies—as men called them—knew of the subtle, secret, insidious invasion of druul, their own home world was virtually controlled by the intelligent parasites, dwelling within the bodies of Luntinasel. Fleeing to their fledgling colonial worlds, the surviving, uninfected Lennies began to fight back against those who took their bodies from them, fought doggedly but hopelessly against the spreading cancer.

Their hope for survival was nearly gone when man and Lennie made first contact, but mankind, realizing its own danger, came to the aid of the embattled aliens, sent weapons and ships and began building a star fleet to carry the war back to the planets from which the druul had come.

That is why the cargo ship of refined holmium crossed the 600-odd light-years from the human colony on Con-stantine to Earth, holmium for use in the hydrogen fusion chambers of Earth's warships, the holmium that was urgently needed in order that Earth, that mankind, could begin the fight for its life.

And that is why Haledon-prasec had made his way into the cargo train, into the body of Ship's Master Lacey c'Calvin—to prevent the cargo from being used against the druul, to begin the capture of mankind's most powerful world.

• • •

"Everything looks good," Haledon said as he seated his stolen body in the acceleration cot in the C&D Unit. "I'm ready to boost when you give the word."

"Set for boost in five minutes from my mark," said the naked aristocrat of Megalon, red-skinned Meghito. There was a pause. "Now! Begin counting."

The eyes that had been those of Lacey c'Calvin looked at the complex before him. The chronometer had begun sweeping its dial, creeping down toward the glowing red dot five minutes away. Green light after green light sprang to life on the board as the automatics checked and found the ship ready, though the hands of Haledon-prasec waited above the controls in case anything went wrong, waited for the unlikely event of the failure of the automatics and the computer.

He glanced over his right shoulder to Tanni, who sat strapped in her acceleration cot and peered intently at the duplicate panel before her, the backup for the ship's master and the computer. At this stage she was a supernumerary, but one that it would be dangerous to be without

Haledon smiled to himself, finding a certain amount of satisfaction in being a human, despite the frailty of the structure. He had absorbed enough of the mentality and personality of Lacey c'Calvin to appreciate the attractiveness of Ijams c'Tanni, enough to enjoy the relationship that his host had had with her and which he carried on. Yes, he told himself, it wasn't altogether unpleasant being a human, and he would certainly enjoy it while he could.

One minute to go, the chronometer said. The artificial gravity of the ship began to drop toward zero, preparing to swing negative to counteract the forces of acceleration that would arise when the three fusion chambers of the C&D's outriggers fired.

"Thirty seconds," Meghito said.

"Everything looks good," Haledon answered.

"Good here," Tanni acknowledged.

"Boost in twenty seconds," Haledon said, eyeing the chronometer. Pumps in the reaction tanks of the C&D Unit began moving liquid hydrogen into pipes, out toward the fusion chambers on the ends of the outriggers. "Fifteen . .. ten. . . ." Hydrogen, now gaseous, boiled into the fusion chambers, built pressure, awaited the nuclear trigger that would begin the thermonuclear reaction, the proton-proton chain. "Five . . . boost!"

There was an instant of weightlessness as the contragrav completed its reversal, then began bucking the forces of acceleration as the huge cargo train surged forward. The contragrav canceled all but one gravity of the acceleration; the net force felt by the crew was one gravity toward the rear of the ship, one g pushing them down into their acceleration cots, one g that would remain with them through boost and deceleration when they approached Earth.

• • •

Hours later, acceleration was cut and the cargo train fell sunward, fell toward mankind's planet, Earth. All was going well.

• • •

Earth was a bright blue-green disk, about one degree in angular diameter in the unmagnified forward viewing tank. Luna, Earth's diminutive sister, now between them and their destination, was just a little less than half a degree, only slightly smaller than its size as seen from Earth, a distinct disk several degrees to the left of Terra.

"Lunaport B, this is Cargo Train 394 out of Constantine, flight 199-3498-58:9. Destination Earth orbit. Cleared by Titan. Request orbital assignment." Tanni was speaking slowly, distinctly, into the microphone.

"Hello, CT 394," came the reply from Lunaport, delayed by the speed of light for nearly three seconds. 'This is Lunaport B. Stand by for IFF."

Again there was a wait while the men and machines that guarded Earth determined whether the vessel was, in reality, the cargo train it claimed to be. It still was.

"CT 394, this is Lunaport B. Clear and acknowledge. Stand by for orbital coordinates and confirmation."

"CT 394 standing by," Tanni replied.

"It is strange, Cal," Meghito said, waiting for the coordinates to be fed into his computer. "As you well know, I do not like Earthies, nor do I like Earth Gov. But, somehow, that is still a beautiful planet there. Our ancestors did have a lovely world."

Haledon nodded. The Lacey c'Calvin component that still remained in his mind somehow agreed with the astro-gator, but his true personality did not see that beauty. Images of a long-forgotten world came into his mind, a world of harsh browns and ochers and reds, of sand and wind and twisted flowering plants and a double sun in the sky, and he wondered if these were racial memories of the world that had brought forth the first of the druul. Oh, we know so little of ourselves, he thought, expressing his thoughts in the human words that he had taken from the mind of Lacey c'Calvin. Where did we come from? How old are we? These were questions a drill rarely asked and were quickly forgotten. They did not matter, not really. The past was dead, was gone, but the future. . . . Ah, the future! The day when the galaxy was one, when all the variegated forms of life were of but one mind and that mind was the druul. Yes, that was what mattered. And to accomplish that—Haledon's stolen eyes looked at the blue-green disk in the tank—to accomplish that, I must reach Earth.

"Lunaport B," Tanni was saying, "this is CT 394. Acknowledge receipt of orbital coordinates."

"Very good, CT 394," Lunaport replied. "Proceed to establish orbit. Medship will meet you for examination. You will be notified of estimated time of arrival of transport shuttles from Gobi Center."

Tanni looked up at the ship's master. "Shall we tell them now?"

Haledon-prasec shook his head.

"But, Cal," she said, covering the microphone with her hand, "we'd better tell Earth before we get into orbit. You know they'll want to know all about the drill before they let anyone board."

"I'd rather wait," he replied coldly.

"But why? They'll have to know."

Haledon shook his head again and said, "Let's get into orbit. There's no reason to start a fuss now and have our orbit delayed."

"They're sending a medship," the girl protested. 'They
should------- "

"I said to wait," Haledon said sternly, thinking that the longer he prevented Earth Gov from knowing that there had. been a drill on the ship, the better his chances were, and knowing that he could never let the men and auto-medics of the medship examine him. He would have to act before the medship intercepted them.

"CT 394, this is Lunaport B," a voice from the maser receiver's loudspeaker said. "Is anything wrong?"

"You're ship's master, Cal," Tanni said, her hand still over the microphone. "I'll do as you say, but under protest."

"Enter it in the log," the drill told her, "but do as I say. I have my reasons."

"Lunaport, this is CT 394," Tanni said, moving her hand away from the microphone. "Acknowledge coordinates and arrival of medship. CT 394 out."

"Lunaport B out."

"The computer is programmed, Cal," Meghito said. "Proceed to orbit," Haledon told his crew.

• • •

The cargo train maneuvered, firing steering jets, then blasting momentarily with fusion engines. Like a great interstellar snake, the 15 units of the train aimed around the huge bulk of Luna, aimed toward the blue-green disk of Earth that awaited them nearly 800,000 kilometers away.

• • •

Four hours later the distance had been cut in half. Off to the side, the pockmarked face of Luna moved past them, thousands of kilometers away, but still several degrees wide. Earth swelled now two degrees, as large as it is when seen from Luna.

The time had not yet come to begin deceleration when Haledon-prasec decided to act.

Til be back in a minute," he said, rising from his cot.

Tanni gave him an odd look, still slightly angered by his refusal to inform Earth of the danger they had faced, a danger that Earth herself might face if another drill were to find its way aboard a ship bound for Earth.

She did not speak, and Haledon was glad of that. His thoughts were sufficiently colored by the stolen personality of Lacey c'Calvin to give him an unpleasant feeling about destroying her.

Quickly the dniMnhabited body moved out of the control room and down the corridor to the arms locker. Haledon unlocked the cabinet, carefully removed a hand weapon from its cradle, checked its charge. Full.

He slipped the weapon inside the folds of his Terran uniform blouse, sighed a very human sigh and started back up the corridor.

Human beings are not so detestable, he thought, realizing that Lacey c'Calvin's memories had impressed themselves on his own personality, his own ways of thinking. Perhaps it was unfortunate that they were so inimical to his own kind. It would be nice to remain with them for a while longer. The human method of reproduction was very pleasant when you became accustomed to it.

But even then Haledon-prasec could feel the stirrings within the body he inhabited, the tiny, almost imperceptible movements of the growing spores, the maturing of his children, ready even now to be released from the confining sacs within the body of Lacey c'Calvin. In another day, when he stood on the surface of Earth, he would split the sacs, expell them from the body he wore, out into the air of man's home world, flitting like gnats on their fragile, short-lived wings. Seeking the warmth and nervous complexity of higher, intelligent mammals, the 100 spores would find 100 hosts, hosts which they could enter and then control, growing to maturity and then "reading" the racial memories of their complex, message-carrying chromosomes, knowing then who and what they were and why. Maturing, controlling and breeding again, 100 spores each, his children would begin the conquest of Earth.

No, the sexless creature that called itself Haledon-prasec thought, this way was better. Forget the slow and clumsy, though pleasurable, method by which humans conceive their own kind. We breed faster and better. We breed quickly enough for my children to control a world in less time than it takes for Earth to circle her sun. Our way is better.

Haledon now stood at the hatch. Beyond it was the control room and the two humans who could, perhaps, still prevent him from reaching Earth. He would have to do it quickly, before they could send a message to Lunaport. And he would have to do it carefully: A stray blast could easily destroy valuable equipment he would need to get him to the surface of the man planet. Well, then, do it quickly and do it well.

The left hand that once belonged to Lacey c'Calvin reached down and thumbed the release on the hatch. As the metal door slid open, the right hand was on the butt of the weapon within the blouse he wore.

"Cal," Tanni said, turning and looking across the back of her acceleration cot, "you'd better. . . ."

I hate to do this, Tanni, the human residue in his mind said as his hand came out of the blouse, holding the weapon, thumb on firing stud, aiming, depressing.

The bolt of energy was aimed low, into the upholstered fabric of the acceleration cot. But the cot had never been designed to withstand a blast. Fabric melted, burned. Metal fused, flowed. Energy poured through—into the body of Ijams c'Tanni. She fell backward, clawing at the stump of her left arm, her voice a scream of pain and terror.

The weapon was fired again—and the full Up, upturned nose, sensual eyes of the Constantinian spacewoman no longer existed.

Meghito was on his feet, stumbling backward into the computer, horror whitening the redness of his harsh face, his body now so terribly, terribly naked.

"Cal!" he screamed hoarsely. "You!"

"Get away from the computer," the voice of Lacey c'Calvin ordered. "Get away, Meghito."

"No!" the technocrat of Megalon answered. "I'm not moving. You . . . you are the drill, aren't you? Not Hom-broek, but you."

"Does it matter?" Haledon asked. "Move, damn it!"

"No, I won't. You don't dare shoot me as long as I'm here. You're afraid of hitting the think tank. You won't kill me."

"Damn it, you fool, I wUl," the drill said, taking a step forward.

Meghito backed against the computer input controls. "Stay clear. I can damage it so that you wiU never be able to repair it."

"You won't," Haledon-prasec said, "not unless you want to die very slowly and very painfully."

"Shoot, Cal—whatever you are—shoot and you'll never get off this ship. You'll burn up like a meteor when you hit Earth's atmosphere."

The driil leaped forward, reached toward the astrogator.

Meghito, his feet still in place, leaned toward the ship's
master's control position, slapped his hand down across the
maser transmitter's controls, yeUed into the microphone,
"Luna, listen, for God's---------------- "

A beam of energy lashed toward the astrogator, toward the radio set into which he spoke. The blast seared through the flesh and bone of Meghito's hand, struck the microphone, melted the radio's controls. The astrogator screamed, pulling back the smoldering stump of his wrist, throwing his body against the computer, hugging it for protection.

Within the body of Lacey c'Calvin, adrenaline surged, adrenaline that affected the mind of a driil in much the same way it affected the mind of a man, though perhaps more strongly. A red haze filmed over the drill's captured eyes; anger took control for an instant, an instant that depressed the firing stud of the weapon still another time.

Meghito died whimpering like a child, died as furious energy cut through his chest, through his bones and lungs and into the metal and paraglass and silicon and germanium and ferrite cores of the computer.

In an instant it was over. The red-skinned body, nearly cut in half, slumped forward, and Haledon-prasec could see the computer against which it had stood, the computer that would never function again.

"CT 394, this is Lunaport B," an urgent voice said from
the receiver at the second officer's position. "What's hap-
pening, CT 394? Do you read me? This is Luna--------------------- "

Haledon spun toward the receiver, an angry, mindless gesture bringing his right hand, still holding the weapon, down against the maser console. The thin panel buckled, pilot bulbs burst, electrical sparks spattered across broken connections. Then it, too, was silent.

The drill suddenly felt pain and realized what it had done. Powerless fingers released their grip on the weapon and it fell to the deck. Haledon slowly raised the hand to look at it and saw that the little finger was hanging at an odd angle, white bone protruding through torn skin, blood oozing out, splattering on the deck.

Carefully, very carefully, Haledon severed connections with the agonized nerves in that hand, cut off the pain. Then he took a handkerchief from his pocket and made a crude bandage. And while he did so, Haledon cursed the feeble, fragile human body that he wore, cursed it in human words and in the terms of his own kind. Fragile, delicate, so easily broken, but he wouldn't need it for long, just long enough to get him to Earth, long enough to spill his children into the winds of man's home planet.

That will have to do, he thought, looking at the crude bandage that turned red even as he watched. He had no time for anything else. Lunaport knew that something was wrong, would investigate. He would have to act quickly and without a computer. But Earth would still be his.

Awkwardly, Haledon-prasec strapped himself into the acceleration cot with one hand. The right hand was still useful, he told himself. The thumb and index and middle fingers still functioned. He could at least throw switches with them, and that was all that mattered now.

Ignoring the careful sequence, both hands went to the firing controls of the outrigger fusion chambers. He cut them on, waited while the magnetic fields built, magnetic fields powerful enough to contain and enfold the tremendous, star-hot temperatures and pressures that would be created when the fusion reactions began.

Now Earth was perceptible, a swelling disk in the viewing tank, nearly two degrees in angular diameter or better, a mere 400,000 kilometers, hardly more than a second away at the speed of light, but four hours away at his present speed. Well, his speed would increase rapidly when the fusion chambers came to life, and he would close that distance quickly.

Three lights winked green on the control panel before him. All three fusion chambers were ready to fire.

For an instant Haledon wished that he had not been so foolish, wished that he had not smashed the maser control panel, shorting out his external communications system. But it was out, useless, and he had no time in which to repair it. So there was now no possibility of radioing Luna-port and trying to cover up Meghito's last screams for help —though he was sure that Lunaport still had no idea of what was really happening on the cargo train.

As far as he could tell, the C&D Unit was nearly ready to boost. Without the computer he could not be absolutely sure, but Cal's memories, the memories of a highly trained and experienced spacer, told him that he could probably make it. And his job was to get to Earth, with or without a computer.

Haledon cut the contragrav to zero. Without the computer, he would have to fight the forces of acceleration manually. That might be tricky, but except for the broken hand, his human body was in good condition; it could take at least that much punishment.

He started the pumps that fed the liquid hydrogen out of the rear storage tanks, hydrogen that had been extracted from the water the cargo train had picked up on Hydros, where Haledon himself had boarded the train. The —254 degrees C. liquid moved out through heavily insulated pipes into the fusion chambers on the ends of the outriggers. All else was ready. The proton-proton chain was about to begin.

A rather conventional atomic-fission charge moved into position, a carefully controlled atomic explosion that would provide the initial temperatures required to begin the fusing of hydrogen atoms, temperatures on the order of 50 million degrees C.

Liquid hydrogen boiled into the fusion chamber, building up sufficiently high pressure of the gas, atoms of ordinary hydrogen, of deuterium, of tritium. Haledon fired the triggers. Hell, atomic hell, came into being within the chambers, and starlike temperatures were approached, reached, exceeded. Ordinary ₁H¹ hydrogen atoms came together, fused, spitting out positrons and neutrinos. Heavy jH² hydrogen fused with ₁H¹ hydrogen, forming ₂He³helium and discharging photons, burning, searing gamma rays. And the proton-proton chain went on, emptying helium and furious energy into space, propelling the spacecraft forward with the violence of its transmutation.

The nearly kilometer-and-a-half-long cargo train boosted, metric ton after metric ton of metal and paraglass and refined holmium moving forward, picking up speed as hydrogen became helium and the forces that built stars pushed it on.

Haledon considered uncoupling the tremendous dead weight of cargo that the C&D Unit pulled, leaving all that mass behind and letting the fusion chambers carry only the C&D Earthward. But, no, he couldn't do that. They were a part of his plan, those cargo globes; they were necessary when he entered Earth's atmosphere, when Earth's surface defenses came into play, began searching the skies for the invader, began throwing missiles and lasers against him. He would need those globes for shielding when he reached Earth—if he could get past the orbiting defenses.

The weightlessness of null g became a backward force as the acceleration built. At one g, Haledon began to reverse the contragrav, began applying the antiacceleration forces. As acceleration increased, he managed to keep the repelling force near one g, sometimes less, more often greater, but close enough to standard gravity to maintain the use of his stolen body.

Earth swelled in the forward tank, began to grow perceptibly as he watched.

But now Lunaport knew, he thought. The men on Earth's moon would have come to realize what was happening.

Their computers would have analyzed the motion and direction of the cargo train and would have concluded that it was, in fact, headed for Earth at speeds in excess of those authorized. Their masers were transmitting, he knew, demanding to know what the master of the cargo train had in mind, why the craft was aiming toward Earth at that speed. Oh, yes, he had been cleared for Earth orbit, and that might delay them some, but not for long. One doesn't boost as Cargo Train 394 was boosting if one is merely intending to settle into a normal, comfortable orbit a few thousand kilometers up.

Soon they would be radioing Earth, informing Earth Defense Command of the train's unusual behavior, telling EDC of the strange last message and the fact that the train no longer answered their calls. EDC was jumpy and scared. EDC lived in mortal fear of just exactly what was happening —a driil coming to Earth. EDC would take action.

Orbiting missiles would be alerted, fed the trajectory of the cargo train. Their own reaction engines would burst to life; they would move toward the anticipated path of the train, scanning, searching, seeking the invader.

But, Haledon-prasec thought, perhaps it would be too late, perhaps the invader would be too close to Earth, perhaps they would have no time to reach it and destroy it before it entered Earth's atmosphere, flaming like a meteor, and vanished from their ken. Yes, perhaps. And not perhaps. It was almost certain.

A very human smile came across the face that had once belonged to a Constantinian spacer. Haledon had gotten too close to be stopped now.

Earth swelled larger and larger in the forward viewing tank. At least eight degrees in angular diameter, at the very most 200,000 kilometers. And, according to the memories of Lacey c'Calvin, Earth's main orbital defenses lay at a point about 100,000 kilometers out. He would soon pass that point.

The fusion chambers of a cargo train were designed to carry it at speeds approaching that of light itself, to carry it starward at 270,000 or 280,000 kilometers per second, for such speeds are necessary, even with hyperspace warp, to carry men across stellar distances within times short enough to be meaningful. But, of course, the designers of the cargo train's Crew Control and Drive Unit had anticipated that days or even weeks would be taken to build sufficient acceleration to approach the speed of light.

Haledon-prasec did not have days or weeks, but, then, he did not need speeds approaching 300,000 kilometers per second. Even a rather small fraction of that speed would do nicely, would get him inside Earth's orbital defenses before they were able to react to his coming. And that would be enough.

• • •

Earth swelled majestically before him, burgeoning from a two-dimensional disk pasted on the black sky to a sphere, a globe, a world in space, a mottled blue and green and white-clouded planet rotating on its axis under a yellow-white sun.

A hundred thousand kilometers away, almost eight degrees across the sky, against the backdrop of stars; gray-white Luna dwindling to his left rear. The massive cargo train rushed Earthward.

Manually, Haledon-prasec scanned with the laser radar, for he had no computer to do it for him. He had no computer to monitor the other functions of the ship: the heat and magnetic shielding of the fusion chambers, the life-support systems, the rate of hydrogen consumption, anything at all! He did it manually, but the important thing was that he did it.

He guessed. That's all it could have been. He had few readings, few figures, no computer, but he did have the hand calculator at the ship's master's control position and he did have the memories of a very experienced spacer to rely on.

Now, those memories told him. His hands, or, rather, one hand and what was left of the other, fell across the control boards, slapping down toggle switches, cutting off the supply of hydrogen to the fusion chambers in the outrigger pods. Chambers two and three ceased to fire almost at once as their hydrogen was exhausted. But number one—there was something wrong. Somehow, hydrogen was still being fed into the chamber, not much, but enough to keep the thermonuclear reaction going, to keep pushing the C&D Unit forward, off-balance, threatening to turn, to snap the kilometer-and-a-half train of cargo globes like a huge whip.

There was a switch, Haledon-prasec's memories told him, a switch to which only the ship's master had access. There, under that panel. Open it. Thumb in slot. Wait while a scanner reads the whorls. Now, recognition. A relay clicked. The panel opened. The thumb that had belonged to Lacey c'Calvin went down into the opening, depressing the hidden switch.

For an instant, the C&D Unit ceased to function. There was total darkness. The power supply of the C&D was totally, but temporarily, cut off. For a heartbeat, the cargo train was a derelict.

And then there was hell!

He hadn't thought of that. He had only wanted to stop the pump, not. . . .

The magnetic shielding of number-one fusion chamber did not exist. It was only a moment, less than a moment, a fraction of a microsecond, but that was enough. The tremendous forces that had been contained within the chamber were loosed, a tiny sun, yes, a very, very tiny sun, but nonetheless a sun. The fusion chamber, the pod and half the outrigger ceased to be in an instant of time, metallic vapor trailing behind the C&D Unit.

Somehow, still controlling the body that he wore, shaken, battered, torn, Haledon-prasec's thumb withdrew from the switch. Power returned. A gyro deep within the heart of the C&D screamed, fought against the unbalancing forces, righted itself, corrected the path of the ship. Cargo Train 394 fell Earthward.

Not taking the time to consider the full implications of the blunder he had just committed, Haledon used the hand calculator to determine his approximate distance from Earth, his rate of fall.

Now he was 78,000 kilometers from Earth's surface. And his speed was now about 94 kilometers per second. He was minus one fusion chamber, but he could do without it once he unloaded his string of cargo globes; gyros and lateral jets could compensate. The situation was bad, but not nearly bad enough to cause him alarm.

Nor did he feel alarm when his laser radar picked up a missile following him.

Well, he thought, Earth Defense Command has finally begun to act.

Again at the hand calculator, working from the radar's figures, he estimated the missile's distance and speed and probable time of contact. And he smiled.

That was the closest missilel That was the best that they could do!

He looked back at the blip on the radarscope as the gap very, very slowly narrowed. He calculated again and the answer was the same. He was safe. EDC had acted but not nearly soon enough.

But below, he knew, on the surface of man's home world, other missiles were being readied, others trained to intercept the craft as it entered Earth's atmosphere, to blast it out of the sky before it could land.

Well, Haledon-prasec thought, it's going to be rough. The C&D was never meant to take this kind of beating, but I think it will, even with only two fusion chambers.

I wonder how many bombs EDC will be willing to set off in their own atmosphere to stop me? How much fallout will they risk to destroy me? Will they gamble on poisoning their own planet just to prevent one suspected driil from landing? They don't even know who or what I am. They can only guess. And how many lives will they risk on a guess, a hunch, a fear?

A lot, Haledon-prasec answered himself, a lot, but not enough.

Earth grew—50,000, then 40,000, then 30,000 kilometers. Down, down, down, for now Earth was a world and was below.

Down past the communications satellites, past the weather stations, past laboratories and observatories, down, down, down, toward the atmosphere.

Ten thousand kilometers. Now five.

Haledon-prasec's hands touched the uncoupling controls, the switches that would release the string of cargo globes that trailed behind him. Ready. Wait

Four thousand kilometers. Three. Two. One. Earth was but ten seconds away at this speed!

Now!

At 1000 kilometers, Haledon-prasec released the couplings. The 14 spheres were free, falling along with, but now independent of, the C&D Unit.

Lateral steering jets came to life under his hands. Gyros turned. The C&D Unit crabbed away from the falling globes, turned 180 degrees around, nose back skyward. It fell rear first toward the outer fringes of the atmosphere.

The massive contragrav unit, designed for maneuvering the craft within a planetary atmosphere, came to life. Fields of gravitational energy, bucking the pull of Earth, sprang into being, enfolding the plunging craft, attempting to slow it.

Fifteen objects entered the atmosphere of Earth, began to glow with friction as the thinly scattered molecules of air rushed past them, battered against them.

He was going too fast, much, much too fast. Even para-glass could not endure that for long.

Automatic cooling equipment, independent of the disabled think tank, came into operation; liquid hydrogen from the reaction mass tanks began to circulate within the hull, grabbing the heat that was formed, cycling it back and out, but only for a few moments. Even liquid hydrogen cannot carry away that much heat

A spot on the hull changed from red to white, from solid to liquid. A transport line was heating, despite the —.254 degrees C. of the hydrogen it carried. The line burst. Liquid hydrogen spilled out, boiled off in clouds of invisible vapor.

The fabric of" the cargo globes was gone, burned away seconds before, and the holmium, fine metallic powder, nakedly met the thin air—but now at temperatures above its melting point, more than 1600 degrees C. The holmium fused, a thin liquid sphere around the powder, enough to hold the falling material in a spherical shape, molten metal covering the heating dust. Fourteen spheres of metal burned away as they fell.

Now! Haledon-prasec cried to himself. Contragrav was slowing the craft, but not enough. His hands moved to the switches that would fire the two remaining fusion chambers, cursing while he did so the clumsiness and inefficiency of the human body that he wore. The fusion chambers sputtered but fired. The glowing C&D Unit, a two-legged tripod now, fought back against the gravitation of Earth, fired off-balance to keep the craft from being reduced to light and vapor. Gyros screamed again, struggled to hold the balance. Lateral steering jets aided. Together they won.

Within the C&D, the heat continued to rise despite elaborate shielding. Sweat poured off the human body within which Haledon-prasec lived, heat rising and still rising, suffocating him, bringing the body he wore to the limits of usefulness.

Somewhere, he seemed to remember, Lacey c'Calvin's memories told him, there was still another switch, one that would fire a ring of chemical rockets in the tail of the craft Where is it? Yes, there.

Haledon-prasec did not stop to ask himself what that additional thrust would do to the already battered craft, whether it could endure those additional conflicting forces, whether its structure could withstand that buffeting. Nor did he wonder about the body he wore. They would have to take it It was that simple.

He was shaken violently. G forces mounted again, tried to crush his human body against the suddenly hard acceleration cot. A hand that weighed tons, bones bending under their own weight, struggled to reach the internal contragrav controls. Found them. Cut back. Fought the deceleration.

And the craft slowed.

By now the burning spheres of molten metal had fallen past, far past, down, brighdy, into the thicker atmosphere. Brilliant against the dark sky, visible to the watchers on Earth below, visible to the missiles that must now be climbing skyward to destroy the invader. Fourteen spheres fragmented into dozens, then hundreds of glowing objects, objects for the nuclear missiles to chase, to find, to destroy, glowing objects that shielded the battered but still operative C&D Unit

The craft still glowed, but not as brightly. And it still fell, but not as fast.

The solid-fuel retro-rockets had burned themselves out. The fusion chambers still fired. And the landing contragrav continued to operate. The craft slowed even more. The burning holmium vanished below.

The viewing tanks still worked, their cameras buried deeply below the hull. Fused screens of paraglass had been kicked away, allowing the cameras to "see." But he had no radar. The antennas were gone; so he could only guess, purely and simply guess.

Haledon-prasec's mind functioned. His stolen eyes, blurry but operative, peered at the tanks. Earth was huge below him, huge and still growing.

Where am I now? he asked himself. That must be Africa. And that over there South America. North America would be there, over the curve of the planet. That's it.

Though he could not see them, had no radar to track them, Haledon knew that the missiles must be coming to meet him, coming at speeds that would now exceed his own. Soon they would begin blasting the falling objects. And soon the Earth-based radar would distinguish the C&D from the free-falling chunks of metal as those chunks of metal fell away, burned away. He had no more time.

Canting the craft slightly, firing a brief burst of thrust, he guessed at a new trajectory that would bring it sweeping north over the North American continent. The direction of travel changed, but the overburdened gyro stabilizing gear finally gave up the fight, smoldered, screamed, refused to battle the laws of nature any longer. The falling craft began to tumble crazily.

Haledon forced his protesting, unwilling body up, out of the acceleration cot, back toward the rear of the craft and the escape pods. He would have to leave the C&D now, as he had planned from the beginning. Let it go on down. Let the EDC's nuclear missiles blast it out of the sky. He would not be in it.

It seemed like hours, but it could only have been seconds. He made his way into the pod, ignoring the urgent demands of an overworked body. The hatches sealed behind him. He strapped himself into the single seat, administered antiac-celeration drugs, sighed, pressed the palm of a bleeding hand against the release switch, held the breath in his human lungs, performed a mental exercise that was his equivalent of prayer, withdrew from the body he inhabited, waited.

• • •

When his consciousness returned to the real universe, the simpleminded automatic equipment of the pod had blown it away from the mother craft. For an instant he was falling alongside it. Then the pod's own retros, estimating the rate of descent, finding it too high, far too high, fired. Haledon-prasec was jolted, shocked, thrown about, his battered human vessel battered still more, brought still closer to its limits of endurance.

The C&D Unit fell away from him, turning, spiraling, plunging toward the turning planet below.

Haledon caught his breath, checked for broken bones, spit blood and broken teeth from a lacerated mouth. Two ribs were soft and spongy to his touch, and there was a sensation in his viscera that indicated internal damage, though he could not tell how serious. But still he was satisfied. He would not need this body much longer. It would serve him well enough.

The C&D was invisible below when the missile found it. Again the universe exploded around him. Again the human body in which he dwelt was subjected to forces it never should have felt. Momentarily he withdrew from the sensations and thought that a mind that could not draw back as his did could not have endured the pain. He stimulated the heart into action when it paused, sent electrical spasms into the muscles that made the lungs breathe in and out. The body of Lacey c'Calvin continued to live.

When his stolen eyes could see again, Haledon was aware of the sinking fireball off to his right rear, though he carefully avoided looking at it, even through the polarized para-glass. The C&D Unit was gone, and he, in that tiny escape pod, would be shielded from the prying eyes of radar by the radiation storm of the fireball.

He had passed the final test. By the time radar again picked up the pod, it would be too late. By then he would be too close for them to stop him.

Haledon-prasec had no illusions about how long he would survive on Earth. A matter of minutes, at best. Then they would cut down the body in which he dwelt and his own being with it. But that did not matter. Only a few minutes, that was all he needed, a few minutes to consciously will the bursting of the spore sacs within the body he wore. Scatter the spores into the air. They would investigate, form a committee to study the matter, evacuate the area. But then it would be too late for them. The almost microscopic spores of his children would be fluttering away from the scene of the landing, touching human flesh, burrowing into muscle, seeking the nervous systems of their hosts, germinating and growing—capturing. By the time they decided what to do, it would be too late.

The escape pod was above a body of water. Haledon searched Lacey c'Calvin's memory concerning the geography of Earth. This must be the Atlantic Ocean. And that body of land over there, to my left, North America. But that up ahead, a white triangle peering around the curve of the planet. It is . . . what? Whiteland? No, that's not it. Some color in its name. Oh, yes, Greenland. How did it ever come by that name?

The controls of the escape pod were next to nothing. Four lateral steering jets. Several rings of solid-fuel retro-rockets. Parachutes. But no gravity controls, very little to cushion the shock of impact. It would be a rough landing.

Manned craft were probably in the air now, he thought, scrambling to reach the pod that they must have sighted. No matter. They would have sighted it too late, shielded as it was by the thermonuclear blast that destroyed the C&D. Yes, he was going to land.

Haledon looked again at the world below him. There was something in the back of his mind about Greenland, but he did not know what it was. Lacey c'Calvin's knowledge of Earth had been hazy except for the spaceports and the nearby bars and brothels. He had had the colonial's inherent dislike and distrust of the mother planet. But, Haledon thought, there was something special about Greenland, but he couldn't recall it as being anything dangerous. No, more like a place that Lacey c'Calvin had wanted to visit if he ever got the chance. Well, Haledon thought sardonically, now he had the chance.

He hit the steering jets, giving the pod what maneuverability it had, swinging north across the Atlantic, plunging now toward the white island that came across the climbing horizon.

The distance was now measured in tens of kilometers, and the figures were rapidly shrinking. Greenland grew below him.

He fired a ring of solid-fuel retro-rockets, felt the backward thrust of deceleration, waited a few moments, fired another ring.

One after another, the retros slowed his fall. Then there was no more fuel. How high he did not know, he released the first parachute.

Like an angry giant, the first of the unfurling chutes shook him. The thin fibers of white material grabbed for a hold on the air, fought for a moment, then ripped, tore. The pod still fell, a little slower now. One after another, Haledon released the parachutes until one held, fighting the wind, but held. The tiny pod fell free no longer.

Haledon-prasec laughed aloud. It was over now. He had made it. In a matter of minutes, he would be outside, in the open air of Earth, releasing his spores into the wind. For all practical purposes, Earth was a planet of the druul.

Seconds before striking the hard-packed snow, Haledon saw a dark speck in the sky above him, an aircraft, probably one of the aerospace interceptors they had sent up to stop him. But it was too late. You have lost, you poor bastards! You have lost.

The pod met the surface of Earth at just under 50 kilometers per hour.

• • •

The roar of the interceptor's drive was fading away when he was again able to see. It was going on. It hadn't spotted him. The whiteness of the parachute and the pod blended with the snow. The pilot was still searching, perhaps unsure that he had even seen anything fall from the sky.

Oh, they'd find him, he knew, but it would do them no good.

Awkwardly raising an uncooperative hand, he found his face wet and warm and twisted into an unlikely, grotesque shape. The face had struck something, or something had struck it on impact. So what? the human phrase spoke in his mind. I don't need the face any longer. Let it go.

When he fumbled to release the straps that held him in, he discovered that the arm he was using was twisted, sprained, perhaps broken. It would work, but just barely. He released the strap and tried to stand up. His feet pushed against the deck of the pod. He came up awkwardly, off-balance, feet slipping against the red moisture that flowed across the canted deck. Then one leg slipped out from under him. He fell forward, across the pod's minuscule control panel, to the deck. And, as he did so, he withdrew his remaining connections with the body, drawing back from the pain of which he was becoming more and more aware.

Lacey c'Calvin's body was more abused than he had realized. It was almost dead. There were too many broken bones, too many internal organs ruptured. There was little more he could do to keep it operating. Such a frail, useless body these humans have! Are they even worth the trouble of taking? But he knew that they were, and he knew that he would take them; he would be the father of their masters.

He awkwardly pulled himself across the canted deck, sensing that the dying lungs were awkwardly gasping for air, the heart struggling fitfully, the remaining eye fogging out, fading.

A broken hand fumbled with the hatch, released the catch that held it closed, pushed it open. A breath of arctic cold blew into his mutilated face.

With one arm, Haledon-prasec pulled the stolen body through the hatch, pushing, fumbling, then tumbling out onto the frozen ground.

The heart of the body of Lacey c'Calvin ceased beating, ceased beating forever, but that was not important.

Haledon-prasec was on Earth.

• • •

A cold arctic wind blew down from the pole, down across the white and barren land of the Greenland Game Preserve. High pressure was moving south, carrying with it tons of frozen water vapor. The worst winter storm of several decades was on its way. By tomorrow the northern half of North America would be covered with snow. But the weather satellites had given ample warning. North America was prepared, as were the wardens and the rangers of the Greenland preserve. They were all huddled around the fires in Sydproven. And only arctic animals roved across the hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of the uninhabited arctic game preserve.

A caribou, big and white and hungry, slowly made its way down across the drifts of snow, searching for food. Off in the distance, to the northwest, the animal smelled an unusual odor, an odor like that of man, yet somehow different. Topping a rise, the caribou looked down at the huge egg half-covered with snow, at the man who lay face first against the ice, surrounded by the redness that seeped from his body.

The caribou sniffed the wind again and did not like the odor it smelled and went on its way, hoping to find moss in another valley.

Later in the day, an aircraft swooped low over the snow, but its pilot did not see the dead, frozen body. Nor did it matter.

desk. "The Hunneker reel is on monitor five," he said. He was a lean young man, nearing 30, with short-cropped sandy hair.

Dirks said, "Leave the technical end of things here at Conglobe Facilities to me and this mechanical prick."

"You don't like me because I'm Japanese," said the robot, who was copper-plated and tank-shaped.

Tim pushed the six button on the wall panel behind his boss's desk.

The sixth tray-sized television screen in the wall bank of a
dozen popped on and a man in a gray herringbone jump suit
appeared. He had his left pant leg rolled up to the knee and
was whacking at his metal leg with a silver-headed hammer.
"I didn't get this fake leg sitting around on a guaranteed
income. No, it was down in the fetid and noisome jungles of
Brazil back in 1984, friends. A band of leftist sons of bitches
shot my real leg off from ambush while we were down there
defending the swell junta of liberal and agrarian-reform-
minded generals against a maddened rabble of sloganeering
lefties. Now, friends, if you watch my news marathon daily,
around the clock, as I know ten million of you in the Greater
Los Angeles area sincerely do, then perhaps you've heard
this little leg yarn before. No matter, it bears repeating.
Friends, when I trudged into those repulsive and putrid
jungles of Brazil, I was known as Major General Harold
Mintosh. But I came out of there Peg Leg Mintosh. And
Peg Leg Mintosh I'm going to stay until every no-good,
low-down, smellful, socioeconomically cockeyed, mother-
humping------- "

"Push monitor seven," suggested Dirks. He had the vege-burger free of its wrapping and was looking under the top slice of soy bread.

Tim pushed seven.

"Come on, try it this way," said the naked blonde. "No, I mean, don't take your boots off at all, Ranch."

"She-it, Marcy, let me leastwise take my spurs off. Else I'll slash up that there bed canopy. That's real antique rayon, ain't it, now?"

"Harvey'U pay for it," said the blonde. "Come on, try it my way, Ranch. Now what's the matter?"

"Well, I can't rightly seem to get the old whacker up, Marcy. Standing on my head like this and with my boots on and all."

"Maybe you're right, Tim," said Dirks. "Try five." "Wasn't that," asked the robot, "your sweetheart, Harvey?"

Dirks took a bite of his sandwich. "Yes, that's Marcy. She's got a lot of spunk. She knows damn well I've got our suite bugged." He frowned at Tim. "Is that cowboy the cowboy we're thinking about using in one of our Saturday-morning kid shows?"

"I'm not sure," said Tim. "I never saw him upside down and naked before."

"Ranch Keene, that's him," said Dirks. "I don't know if we want the six-year-olds of the entire country to watch a show starring a guy who screws upside down with his boots on."

Tim shrugged. "It's not the whole country, Harvey. Only the West Coast."

"Maybe," said Dirks. On the fifth screen, a giant gray-haired man dived out of a palm tree and toward an alligator-infested stream. "He still looks old to me. I don't know . . . an ape-man with gray hair."

The robot said, "We didn't find him until day before yesterday. This is only a very rough screen test you're seeing."

"Why's he sinking under the water?"

"They told him to hold in his stomach," explained the talent-agency robot. "He's not used to that and it affects his breathing when he swims."

"What's that alligator doing to him?"

"We stuck a little rug on Hunneker—a small hairpiece to cover the scars—and the alligators liked the taste of the glue."

"What kind of jungle thrills do you call that? An alligator eating this prick's wig." Dirks slapped the unfinished sandwich on his desk and grabbed up a hard-boiled egg. "You sure the survey computers aren't going goofy? You know, everybody goes goofy in this town sooner or later. Marcy used to be a convent girl and now she's screwing cowboys upside down."

The robot's chest swung open and a sheaf of fax copies flipped out. Tim caught them as the machine explained, "Has Conglobe Facilities ever put together a television-show package that didn't get a place among the top shows in any one season segment? Have we?"

"The Hardware Hour," said Tim, leafing through the charts and maps.

'That was one incident out of a hundred," said the robot. "I grant you, there was a case where a computer had an exaggerated ego and kept suggesting shows built around nuts and bolts. He's long since been replaced."

Dirks pointed at the screen, which now showed a stretch of unrippled jungle stream. "Where'd Hunneker go?"

"This is the part where he got a cramp. They'll be fishing him out in a second."

"Where'd you say the old prick was living when they finally located him?"

"Well, after our show-projecting and audience-anticipation computers determined that the public, mingling nostalgia and a burgeoning new interest in the still-emerging nations of Africa, wanted a Hunneker jungleman sort of show, our talent operatives got on the job," said the robot. "Hunneker hasn't made an ape-man film or TV show since 1979. His last known agent was a time-share computer in a real-estate office down near Laguna Beach. Eventually we tracked him down in a ghetto up in Oakland."

"You mentioned he's got some scars," said Tim.

"Yes, he's been trying to earn a living as a free-lance exhibition swimmer," said the robot. "Usually he'd simply crash a swimming event and dive for pennies. Naturally, he had to move fast, and now and then he'd slip and crack his head on the tiles."

"I don't know," said Dirks. "Audiences still want him, huh?"

"According to the audience-anticipation machines," said Tim, who was studying the robot's report.

Dirks said, "I suppose our cosmetic-surgery department could do something with him."

"Yes," said the robot, "once he's cured."

"Cured of what?"

"He's become a headache-capsule addict," said the robot. "Also, he's hooked on vitamin-enriched toothpaste."

"His teeth don't look all that good," said Dirks.

"He doesn't use it—he eats the stuff," said the copper-plated robot. "Those aren't his teeth, anyway."

"A toothless, fat, overage, junkie ape-man," said Dirks. "Jesus, back in the Seventies I could still operate on hunches. If this was then, my hunch would be, forget it."

The robot's chest flicked open once more.

"No more reports," said Dirks. 'Tim, turn that Hunneker off."

Tim blacked the screen. "Want to package the show?"

"I don't know." Dirks finished his egg, then asked the robot, "What can you promise?"

"Audience Anticipation predicts—and this was double-checked by two of our live sociologists—that a Hunneker ape-man show will reach eighth place within its first two weeks on the network web and then make it up to three before leveling off. The show should be good for at least three season segments and ought to gross Conglobe"—the robot reached into his side and unfurled a streamer of adding-machine tape—"four million, six hundred thousand dollars."

Dirks said, "OK, we'll do it."

The robot said, "Now, our only other problem is a jungle."

"Which jungle?" "That's the problem."

Tim sat back down in the tin chair and looked out at the ocean and the single white gull skimming toward the horizon. "How come we can't use the jungle where the demonstration film was shot?"

The robot replied, "That was the Wheelan lot It burned down."

"Burned down?" said Dirks. "Since yesterday?"

"Some black militants," explained the robot, "still don't like jungleman shows."

"I thought the public wanted Hunneker."

"A significant portion—not all."

"And some spades burned down the Wheelan lot?"

"All the jungle, part of Dodge City and the left side of the Great Pyramid."

"How'd those pricks know Hunneker was there?"

"They saw him swinging through the trees," replied the robot.

"The Wheelan lot has low walls," said Tim.

"OK, we better put a security team to watching Hun-necker," said Tim's boss. "Now, what other jungles are available?"

"Well," said the robot, "there is an acre of jungle over at.

the McNamara-International studios. Except it's developed some kind of blight."

"Jesus, a fat ape-man swinging from a sick tree. I suppose we can't afford to fly this fat-ass Hunneker to Africa?"

"Not and gross five million," said Tim.

Dirks asked, "How about India, then?"

The robot blinked. "There isn't any India anymore. Didn't you know?"

"Since when?"

Tim said, "The Chinese blew up India last winter, Harvey, testing some new missiles."

"No kidding!" Dirks rubbed his left cheek. "I don't have time to keep up with events anymore. Where does this leave us so far as jungles are concerned?"

"We're running a computer trace now," put in the robot.

Tim's head tilted up as the gull far over the ocean glided up and out of sight. "Isn't there," he said, "an old Hunneker movie location down the coast someplace?"

"You're right," said Dirks. 'The Belgraf estate. Yes, old Vincent Belgraf has several hundred acres inland from the beach, around San Amaro. The old prick's hobby is jungle flora and fauna. His whole spread is transplanted jungle." He picked up a mock-carrot stick. "There could be something wrong there, though, Tim. Old Belgraf has refused to rent it for years—not since 1984 or thereabouts. Go down there, anyway."

"Me?"

"Yes," his boss told him. "Get one of my secretaries to fix you up with an appointment with Belgraf. Today, if possible. This calls for in-person handling, and you're the most affable assistant I've got right now. When do we have to start production?"

The robot replied, "Next Wednesday, at the latest."

"So you've got less than a week to sign up that jungle for Conglobe, Tim."

"How much can I offer Belgraf?"

The robot reached beneath himself and tugged some papers out. "Wait a sec. Yes, here. A thousand per week is the top figure we can afford."

"Go as high as two thousand," Dirks said. "And he'll have to throw in other concessions. We'll need to tie in on his power lines, and so on. Take a car when you go down there, Tim. As I recall, old Belgraf doesn't like aircraft."

"Wasn't his nephew, Clement Belgraf, a stock-plane racer?" Tim got up again.

"Don't ask me. I don't keep up with sports, either. You can get there by land car in three hours if you hook on to the slot highway at Santa Monica. Oh, before."

"What?"

"Punch on that monitor seven again." "OK." Tim did and turned for the door. "Jesus," said Dirks, "she's finished with the cowboy and now it's that guy with the puppets." Tim left.

The mechanized highway unhooked Tim's land car and snapped him onto an off ramp leading inland. A soft late-aftemoon fog was spilling up from the ocean and drifting across the scrubby countryside. Tim took over control of. his electric car and headed for the bypass road that he could use for the last ten miles to San Amaro.

He was one block into the outskirts of a low stucco-and-tile town named Cadella when the street blew up about 300 feet in front of him.

His car seemed to slap the road and swing out of his grip, zigzagging for the curb. Tim caught back control just short of the sidewalk and swung into a space. Motorcycle parts and tatters of cloth were spattering down out of the fog. A lead-tipped nightstick thwacked against his front window.

Tim eased across the front seat and ducked out on the sidewalk side. "What's wrong?" he asked toward the three scattered pedestrians.

A black man in a purple jump suit said, "It's only those kids again."

"Which kids?"

"One of those anarchist groups," replied the Negro. "They're blowing up policemen again. Look out!"

A plastic elbow dropped out of the fog and hit Tim on the top of his head. "Android cops?"

"Usually."

A pale fat man in a dark two-piece suit was wiping at his perspiring face with a stiff white napkin. "Anybody care for a cup of coffee? After an incident of terrorism, lots of people like to relax with a hot cup." He nodded at Tim, then at the narrow whitewashed building at his wide back. "My place."

Antique tubes of neon spelled out academy of motion picture arts & sciences all-night coffee shop. Tim was early for his seven-in-the-evening appointment at the Belgraf estate. "OK," he said. There were no more explosions, and he followed the fat man inside.

"Young people nowadays have more spunk," said the heavy proprietor. "When I was young—and I'm only thirty-eight now, but no longer a youth, as I'm the first to admit— we wouldn't have dreamed of blowing up law officers."

"Oh, so?"

"Once in a great while, we might take a live cop's gun away from him and shoot at him with it," admitted the fat man.

There were six tables and a counter in the place. At each checkered table sat motion-picture celebrities of the past. "Androids?" asked Tim.

"Don't I wish they weren't," said the fat owner. "I run this place on a franchise from the Motion Picture Academy, but I happen to be a real movie buff on top of it. This little place here is more than a coffee shop, it's a shrine. You probably didn't expect to find a shrine in a crumbum town like this, but here we are."

"I'll sit at the counter."

"You can sit with the androids and it doesn't cost anything extra," said the fat man. "You might like the cowboy table, for instance. It contains William S. Hart, Gene Autry, Tim McCoy, John Wayne and Ranch Keene."

Tim said, "The last time I saw him, he was standing on his head."

"Really? I don't go to many movies nowadays. I only took Ranch Keene, if you want the honest truth, to try to lure the youth market in. No such luck. They're too busy blowing up cops."

Tim chose the table with comedian androids. "Coffee."

"Want to see a menu?"

"No, coffee'll be enough."

"How about some stills from famous films of yesteryear?" The fat man reached under his coat. "I have a whole bin of them out back. Here's a classic scene. Remember the great moment in If I Were King where Ronald Coleman bends

over to buckle his shoe?" "No."

"There it is." He left the glossy photo with Tim and moved into the kitchen.

Tim recognized three out of the four androids at his table: Buster Keaton, Harry Langdon and Oliver Hardy. The fourth, a thin, freckled young man in a canvas suit, puzzled him.

"I'm a living person," said the young man after a moment. Tim asked, "You work here?"

"No, I simply fled in here in much the same manner as yourself, only a bit earlier, when those Pallbearers started carrying on."

"Pallbearers?"

"A local leftist white destructionist group. In most quarters they are as yet unknown. My name is Audie Sayers." "Tim McCarey."

Sayers licked his thin lips. "Would you be heading farther inland?"

"As far as San Amaro."

Sayers looked quickly around. "Ah," he said.

At the cowboy table, the William S. Hart android stood up, wobbling, and slapped his sombrero against his chaps. "The grandeur of it all."

John Wayne rose up and punched him.

'They're badly kept up," said Sayers.

"You from around here?"

"No, Altadena. I know all sorts of things, though," replied the freckled young man. "Intelligence work is sort of a hobby with me. My mother gave me a toy parabolic mike when I was nine and I've been at it ever since."

"Know anything about the Belgraf estate?"

"My, don't tell me you're a recruit, too?"

"I'm not. Recruit in what?"

"I've already spoken too much."

Oliver Hardy tugged at his tie. "Another fine mess," he remarked and tipped over. He landed with his derbied head in Sayers's lap.

"What a shabby world we've made for ourselves," said Sayers, sighing. "Mad young anarchists and defective androids and little love anywhere. Well, with Clement Belgraf there is hope."

"Vincent Belgraf s nephew, the sports-plane flyer?"

"Clement Belgraf is no longer that," said Sayers. "He's quite a bit more now. I'm afraid I've talked much too much. If there's one thing intelligence work teaches, it's that too much talking can be dangerous." He uprighted Oliver Hardy. "All I'll say beyond what I've blurted out is that I've made up my mind to join up."

Tim nodded. "What exactly is going on at the Belgraf estate?"

"My hps are sealed," said Sayers. "And why are you bound there, McCarey?"

"A business deal. I have an appointment with Vincent Belgraf."

"Business?"

"Show business," answered Tim.

The fat owner said, "Did I hear you correctly?" He set down two cups of coffee and a soy éclair. "You didn't mention you were in show business."

"I sometimes don't."

The proprietor lifted Harry Langdon out of his chair and took his place. "We don't get much of the show-business crowd here anymore; so this is an especially rare treat for me."

"Another fine mess," said Oliver Hardy, falling over.

The television set in the back seat was saying, "Now, friends, there's no one can pretend that Peg Leg Mintosh is unfair. No, I see to it that on my twenty-four-hour news marathon you get a chance to listen to every kind of opinion there is. Some of you write in to me and ask, 'Peg Leg, how come you let those wild-eyed, web-footed, radical bums on the same show with you?' Friends, the lowest of wild-eyed, web-footed, radical bums has his right to free speech. Isn't that what this America business is all about? Friends, that's why we fought in the nauseant jungles of Brazil."

Tim asked, "Did he just bang his leg with a hammer?"

Sayers, who was in the rear seat of the land car, said, "No."

"Must be the engine, then."

"This buggy is in a lot better shape than my poor car," said the freckled young man. "What an ordeal. I'm certainly glad I had that chance meeting with you. Imagine coming out of that nostalgic cafe and finding the torso of an android cop imbedded in my engine. And his brass buttons had pocked the trunk and rear window. These radical kids." He sighed. "You're very kind to give me a lift."

"I'm heading there; so it's no trouble," said Tim. "They told me to report to gate E. Is there a fence around the Belgraf place?"

"Are you sure you're not a spy?"

"You've been a counterspy since childhood—can't you tell?"

"You seem too flippant to be a secret agent. Spies tend to be dour fellows, sobersided."

Peg Leg Mintosh was saying, "You folks in the audience can boo and catcall at our guests, but don't fire guns. You'll have to turn in all your handguns to the ushers right away and put your rifles down under your seats. And you there, you sweet-faced little granny, you're not kidding me with that fake purse. Give it to the usher. OK. So, friends, here's our next guest on the news—Josh Mambert, a colored boy who has quite a following among lefties. His latest book is titled Screw You, White Folks! and it's doing very well on the best-seller charts despite its web-footed, punk point of view. Good evening, Josh."

"Hello, you crippled mother jumper."

"Now, let's see, Josh, are you ready to answer some of the questions we solicited from our studio audience?"

"Ask away, shithead."

"First, where do you get your ideas? And do you have a regular work schedule?"

Sayers clicked the set off. "Clement Belgraf is right."

"About what?" They were climbing uphill now and the fog was thinning some.

"Militants on the left," sighed Sayers. 'Too much talk and not enough action. Not much exercise, either. We're nearly there."

The road was narrow and made clattering sounds beneath the car. Black oaks and thick willows grew on all sides. Suddenly, a male peacock stepped into their path. Tim swerved the machine and the peacock went fluttering back in among the trees. "One of Belgraf s."

"You'll notice, if you get the chance, that there's a great difference between the old man and Clement Belgraf. Old Vincent is of an era where the material object was still pursued."

"Is it materialistic to own a peacock?" "There it is," exhaled Sayers, "up at the crest of the incline."

"That blank wall, you mean."

"It keeps the curious back. That's the Belgraf estate."

Tim pulled off the road and parked under a willow tree. The ten-foot-high brick wall stretched for a good quarter mile. "There was a gate a few yards back," Tim said, getting out of the car.

Catching up his canvas suitcase, Sayers followed Tim to the solid wood gate. "Here at last."

There was a large E whitewashed on the gate. No knocker or bell showed. "Well," said Tim.

"We'll have to find gate J. That's the recruit gate."

A flashlight came on above them and shone on Tim and then swung over to Sayers.

Sitting on top of the wall was a heavyset man in white flannels and a loose sweater. His legs were dangling and swinging slightly. "Tourist season ended many years ago, folks," he said, tilting his rifle to point at them.

"Isn't there broken glass on top of that wall?" Tim asked.

"Not if you know where to sit" "I'm a recruit," said Sayers.

"That makes a difference. Get on down to gate J. Recruits we always let in." He turned the gun and the light on Tim. "How about you?"

"Where do I sign up?"

"Follow your buddy down to gate J."

Once Tim got inside on the estate grounds, he could explain. Right now, pretending to be a recruit was easier than getting shot

Gate J opened onto a long arbored-over path that led to what looked like a large enclosed band pavilion. The guard at gate J wore khaki Bermuda shorts and a blue Wind-breaker.

"I suppose they don't wear uniforms where the public might see them," said Sayers.

"You were expecting uniforms?" Tim said. Beyond the laths of the arbor there was, sure enough, a jungle thick and shadowy.

"You're not sympathetic," said Sayers. "In my gratitude for getting directly here, I may have spoken out of turn."

"Will Clement Belgraf meet us in the pavilion there?"

"Certainly not. We'll no doubt be taken charge of by one of his assistants."

The doors of the pavilion were open. Up where a gas chandelier had once hung, someone had strung a line of Christmas-tree bulbs. These provided the room's only light.

On the bandstand there was a card table, and sitting behind it was a small middle-aged man in a flannel bathrobe.

"Why, that's Colonel Granger," whispered Sayers as they entered.

"Out of uniform, too."

The colonel stood up. "Men, welcome aboard. On behalf of our commander, I welcome you." He cleared his throat and motioned them forward. "As a result of some good-natured horseplay in the officer's mess, I cannot greet you in my usual attire."

Tim was trying to place the colonel. "Aren't you Joe Granger, the character actor?"

"I might be. We'll cover that in a future lecture. Now, then, men, I think we'll all admit that there's no use going over our aims and goals, since they are by now well known to us. It is enough to say, Keep 'em flying."

"Sir," said Sayers.

"Yes, recruit?"

"Mr. McCarey here isn't actually a recruit. He's really here to see Mr. Vincent Belgraf and is only in this room because none of the other gates were open."

'This true, McCarey?"

"I'm from Conglobe Facilities in L.A."

"Oh, Conglobe?" said the colonel. "Well, now that you're here, wouldn't you care to be sworn in? Seems wasteful to run through the whole ceremony for one recruit."

"I've come all the way from Altadena," said Sayers, hold^ ing up his suitcase.

"We'll do it," said Colonel Granger. "I was hoping for a bigger audience."

"If you can tell me how to get to the main house," said Tim, "I'lrget on with my job."

The colonel looked at his watch. "No, not tonight. It's already twilight, much too late. You'd have to cross quite a stretch of jungle to get there. It's too late."

"Just past seven."

"After dusk, no one is allowed to roam about." The colonel retied the cord on his robe and looked at Sayers. Then he said, "McCarey, you go to the barracks. There are some empty bunks in barracks C, upstairs. In the morning I'll get you an escort to the big house."

"There's no chance of----------- "

"None. Now, hightail it out the back door and down the path there to the barracks. Carry on."

Tim nodded and went out the back of the pavilion. He stood in the darkness and waited until the colonel started talking again. When the ceremony seemed under way, Tim started into the jungle.

The moonlight dropped down harsh and thin through the trees. Tim pushed by yards and yards of dark silhouettes as he tried to keep on one of the paths. The bright colors of the jungle were grayed and there was a moist quiet all around him.

He passed under what looked like drooping stalks of bananas. Stumbling, he bumped into a thicket of dry bamboo and set it to clattering.

Tim stopped and tried to get a fix on the main house. He was certain he had seen it earlier, seen its lights through the jungle.

A swirl of wind shook fat, dead orchids down on him. Slapping the sticky flowers off his coat, Tim started for a path that led off the one he was on.

And then, far ahead and dead white, the great three-story Victorian house showed. Tim could see patches of twisted gingerbread and poised gargoyles. There were lights on, windows filled with yellow. He halted among spiky ferns and brushed the last of the orchids off his sleeve.

Behind him, distantly, a crashing started. It sounded as though a piece of heavy machinery had broken loose and was rolling down at him. Tim turned. He spotted no sign of anything behind him, but the crashing and shaking grew louder.

"Get over here," said a girl's voice.

Tim spun and saw her. "Beg pardon?"

The girl caught his arm. "This way, and be quiet." She pulled him off the path and then through a stretch of thorny brush. She brought him finally to a small clearing circled by a dozen alpine-style cottages. The girl ran across a cobblestone path and into the nearest cottage. Tim followed her.

The girl shut the thick door as soon as he was inside, locked it and bolted it. She was a slim brunette, wearing a short blue robe. "There, now."

Tim noticed the fire in the narrow fireplace and moved nearer to it. "I guess you saved me from something."

"Yes," she said. "Hold it for a minute."

A heavy object thanked at the door, then another.

The girl grinned a quirky grin and leaned back against the bolted cottage door. "He's only throwing rocks tonight; so that won't be much of a problem." The door rattled under another smack. "My name is Carrie Conner. I'm a private secretary here. Are you a trespasser or a poacher?"

"Nope, I'm Tim McCarey. I work for Conglobe Facilities, and I came down to see about renting the jungle. I'm supposed to have an appointment. Which Belgraf are you secretary to?"

Carrie ran her slender fingers through her dark hair and grinned once again. "Clement Belgraf." One more rock hit the door. "Like a cup of coffee while you're waiting?"

He noticed a fringe of white lace under the edge of the robe. "Could you tell me first why I'm waiting?"

"Your appointment is with Vincent Belgraf, isn't it?"

"Right," said Tim, "and it was originally for seven tonight."

She crossed to an eagle-footed phone table and punched on the vidphone. It whirred, but the saucer-sized screen stayed blank. Then, for a moment, a blurred picture of Peg Leg Mintosh swinging his now-detached metal leg at a black man flashed on. "Things go blooey often here,". observed Carrie. "He's probably ripped down something again. You won't be able to get through to the house from here tonight."

"I'll just go on up there, then."

"It's not safe. May not be for several hours," said the girl. "Depends on his mood."

"Who? Was that some kind of wild animal I almost ran into?"

"Something like that," she said. "Do you know much about dreams?"

"I've had them," said Tim. "Look, is it always this difficult to keep an appointment with Vincent Belgraf?"

"It's usually impossible to even get an appointment," answered Carrie. "I'd bet they have another reason for letting you in. You'll find out when you see them."

"And why it's not safe to go outside at night?"

She grinned. "Probably. Do you absolutely have to get back to L.A. tonight?"

"No."

Going into the kitchen, she said, "Good, come along and I'll tell you about this dream I had this morning." She flipped on the lights. "I was dreaming I'd rented a bicycle. I didn't have the right change, and then the rental office blurred—you know the way they do—and I was playing tennis with a traffic cop. He was an android but he played a great game. I never know what these things mean." She dialed a pot of coffee on the cooking unit.

"Are you under orders to keep me here?"

"Quite the antithesis," she answered. "That's an old movie line. No, I'm not supposed to be out after twilight, either. I had a feeling I should open the door and look around. Good thing I did." She had high cheekbones, faint shadows beneath her eyes. She gave him a small, careful smile now.

"You're not going to tell me any more about what is going on here?" "No." "OK."

"How old are you, Tim?" 'Twenty-nine."

"You're not a young boy flash or anything, then. Probably only an assistant to somebody."

"To Harvey Dirks at Conglobe Facilities."

"I thought so," said Carrie. The wall handed her the pot of fresh coffee and she carried it out of the kitchen. "You're too easy to put off—not that that's a bad thing, maybe even around here. You're not in charge of anything?"

"Nope."

"My advice is," said the pretty girl, "don't let these bastards get you down." "I was planning not to." "So was I once."

He watched her pour the coffee into two heavy tan mugs. "An uncle of mine used to have a dream book. But that was only to help him predict the future."

"Did it work?"

"The only thing he was infallible on was television soap operas. He sometimes could predict the story lines three weeks in advance."

"Not the kind of talent you can immediately turn a buck with."

She handed him his coffee. "You can stay here tonight, OK?"

Tim watched as she sat in a vinyl morris chair. "OK."

"Out here, though."

"Where?"

"On the window seat. It's really quite spacious," she said. "Would you like to sit by the fire and tell ghost stories?" "No."

"We'll talk, then."

Tim asked, "Look, is there any possibility that Belgraf will rent us his jungle?"

"Ask them." She gave a left-sided shrug. "You ask a lot of questions."

"Part of my job."

"Let's talk and not ask questions." She sat on the round rug near the fireplace.

A final rock tapped at the cottage door and then there was the sound of something going away.

• • •

The orange-and-blue macaw squawked up off the window-sill, and Tim rolled over to see Carrie standing in the kitchen doorway. She was wearing a short black skirt and a white blouse. She was holding a glass of tomato juice.

"Good morning," Tim said.

"Do you always sleep with your coat and tie on?"

"I thought we might be attacked again." He blinked his eyes, stood up, taking the glass of juice she held out to him.

"You'll have to see Laura before you can get in to talk to Vincent Belgraf," Carrie said.

"Who's she?"

"Laura Belgraf, Clement's sister. Mr. Belgraf is their uncle."

Tim looked over his shoulder. The macaw was back on the sill watching him. "What time could I see her?"

"Right now. I made an appointment while you were sleeping." Carrie moved to the front door. "The John's off to the left there. I'm going on up to the house. I'm sure I'll run into you later in the day."

The jungle outside was brightening in the morning sun, red and yellow flowers sparkled in among the palm trees.

The path to the big white house was paved with flagstones which gave a little underfoot.

The transplanted jungle stretched high all around Tim. Not watching, Tim almost stepped on a peacock. He dodged as the bird galloped away.

From some distance behind him came a vague tramping sound. Not something following him. Maybe something doing down at the barracks.

Around a turn in the path, there was a little old man spread-eagled on a patch of moss.

"Hey," said Tim, running and kneeling by the white-suited man.

"Playing dead," the old man said. He had a pink face and tightly curling white hair. "Don't be alarmed." Tim helped him up. "You OK?"

"Yes, more's the pity. I'm Dr. Leonard Jackstone." He grunted to his feet. "How are you?" 'Tim McCarey."

"No, I said how are you. Coming down with something, perhaps?"

"I don't think so. Do I look sick?"

"Unfortunately not." He shook his round head. "Perhaps if I gave you a thorough examination, something would turn up—a nice complex disease."

"I'm only here for the day."

"You wouldn't care to have your appendix out, on spec?" "I've had it out. Tonsils, too."

"I get restless," said the old doctor. "Are you going up to the main house?"

"I'm supposed to see Laura Belgraf."

The doctor bobbed and smiled, taking Tim's arm. "That's good news." He squinted one eye and studied Tim's head. "Haven't had a good fracture to work on in over a year."

"You expect Miss Belgraf will fracture my skull in the course of our interview?"

"She has a fondness for projectiles. She once threw a complete set of Thackeray at me. And he was a prolific writer." He laughed softly. "It was a lark patching myself up."

"How about the men at the barracks?"

"Once in a while we get a case of food poisoning. Mostly they go in for sprains and bruises."

"How many men are there down at the barracks?"

The doctor shook his head. "Here we are, at the house."

Directly in front of them was the house—big and white, loaded down with gingerbread, gargoyles, stained glass, ironwork.

And in the shadows of the wide front porch, an old striped swing was creaking slowly back and forth.

"That's Laura," the doctor whispered. He tapped Tim's arm. "I'll be in cottage seven if you need me." He touched his forehead and bowed toward the dark figure on the swing. Then he hurried back into thé jungle.

"McCarey?"

"Miss Belgraf?" Tim came to the foot of the wooden steps.

She didn't answer.

"I'm from Conglobe Facilities."

"Come up here, McCarey."

"OK."

The girl on the swing was younger than he'd expected. Not more than 20. She was wearing white tennis shorts, a black jersey sweater and Japanese sandals. Her long blonde hair was tied back with a black ribbon. "What sort of work do you do for those people?"

"Junior-agent stuff, some public relations, publicity."

"Like a beer, McCarey?"

"Not at this time, no, ma'am."

"How about a Spanish omelet?"

'Thanks, I'm not hungry, Miss Belgraf."

The girl jumped up and stretched her arms over her head. Her jersey slid up and a band of smooth, tanned skin showed. "My office is inside, McCarey."

The front door of the house was open a few inches and Laura Belgraf pushed inside.

A deep-brown hallway stretched clear through the house, lost in dim sunlight and drifting dust at its end. Just inside the door was an umbrella rack held up by four plaster figures that resembled the Hearst Puck. A tarnished silver hat rack was thick with dusty bowlers and homburgs and one checkered golf cap with a union button stuck on the brim.

Laura stepped through a beaded curtain, clacking green and blue glass beads.

Following, Tim found her seated in a swivel chair with her feet up on a closed rolltop desk. "What was it you wanted to see my uncle about, McCarey?"

There was a set of six television screens mounted in the wall above her desk. One showed two dozen men in unfamiliar green uniforms, made tiny by their distance from the camera, marching in what looked like another part of the Belgraf jungle. On the only other lighted screen, Peg Leg Mintosh, wearing a vinyl nightshirt and sitting on the edge of an aluminum cot, was interviewing two young men who were hefting opposite ends of a large case of dynamite.

"I assume you know already, Miss Belgraf," Tim said, "I'm with Conglobe Facilities and we'd like to rent part of your jungle for filming. The project is a television series featuring Hunneker, the ape-man. Most of this was explained to somebody here by my boss's secretary."

Laura kicked one foot so that the sandal flipped off and somersaulted into her hand. "We might rent a portion of the jungle, though there are quite a few obstacles."

"Quite a bit else seems to be going on here now."

"You're very observant, McCarey," she said. "Have you ever heard of my brother?"

"Clement Belgraf, yes. He used to participate in air races."

Laura stood. Hopping, she tugged the sandal back on. "A long time ago, McCarey, that was. He doesn't do that anymore." She was near a shuttered window and she rested her left hand lightly on the pane and stroked at the thin lines of sunlight that got through. "Clem is a very bright person. He's a first-rate political thinker. You probably haven't heard of his books."

"Does he write under bis own name?"

"Yes. I'll give you a copy of one of them." She crossed to a glass-doored cabinet. After a moment she said, "Dam, dam." She dropped down on a flowered hassock and tapped one fist just below her small breasts. "I can't find the dam books."

"I can ask at the public library."

"Not for Clem's books. You can't get them, or even film-spool copies, at any of the so-called public libraries in south-em California. There's a conspiracy." She hunched and tossed her blonde hair once. "If you want to rent some of our jungle, you'll have to do us a favor. Frankly, McCarey, that's why we agreed to this interview at all. You are good at public relations and publicity and related areas."

"Especially related areas."

"Yes, I'm sure you're very good at publicity and propaganda. You'd have to be. We've just been thinking of trying to hire someone down from L.A. and then your call came."

"Wait, now," said Tim. "A job I already have, and I'm relatively happy with it."

"Still, you could spend a day or so here and give us some
advice and help," said the girl. "Otherwise, McCarey, I'm
afraid_____ "

"Yes, I could do that."

Laura laughed and returned to her desk. "I'm glad." She handed him a large silver-plated key. "Use cottage six while you're here. I have to handle some things for Clem now, but I'll set up some meetings for you later in the day."

"OK," said Tim. "Can I call Conglobe from here?" He pointed at the vidphone near the window.

"Use the phone in your cottage, McCarey."

"It's in working order?"

"Of course." She turned and left the room through a doorway beyond the TV wall. The marching men were gone and the jungle field was empty. Peg Leg Mintosh was smacking a stick of dynamite against his knee.

Tim left the big old house.

Tim tried his cottage phone again. Nothing happened. He watched the parade of elves that decorated the base of the table, then stood up.

Outside, he crossed over to the cottage he figured must be Dr. Jackstone's. He knocked on the door and waited.

Carrie's cottage was number three, across the clearing. She was still up at the main house.

The door of the doctor's cottage snapped open and someone in a green uniform pushed Tim out of the way and ran across the clearing. The bright-gold epaulets flashed as the uniformed figure caught a low-hanging vine and pulled itself up. There were gold spurs on the slick boots.

But instead of hands, there were paws.

"A gorilla in a soldier suit," Tim said.

Inside the doctor's place, there were magazines scattered across the living-room floor. "Dr. Jackstone?"

"Over here," said the doctor dimly.

Tim found Jackstone behind a rolltop desk, with his head pinned in the lid. "Here." Tim forced the desk carefully open and pulled the flushed doctor out. "You all right?"

Dr. Jackstone felt his neck and the back of his head. "I'm afraid so."

"Was that a gorilla I saw rushing out of here?"

The doctor nodded. "He got mad. These weekly examinations are upsetting him more and more."

"They shouldn't let that thing run around loose if it's dangerous."

The doctor smiled. "Indeed?"

"Can I get you a glass of water or something?"

"No, no." The doctor reached into a white cabinet and took out a fistful of small pill bottles. "I'll try some of these."

Tim bent and gathered up the magazines. They were all at least four years old. "I'm going to be staying here in cottage seven—for a while."

"I imagined you might," said the doctor, shaking some round yellow pills into his cupped palm. He brought them up close to his left eye, then shook out three capsules from another bottle.

"What are my chances of getting to talk to the old Mr. Belgraf?"

"I can't say. You never know."

"Well," said Tim, "they all seem to feel that Clement has a lot to say about what goes on around here. Will I get a chance to see him?"

Dr. Jackstone tilted his hand and let the assortment of pills slide onto his tongue. He swallowed twice and said, "You just did. That was him—the gorilla in the uniform."

Tim lowered himself to the leather-cushioned window seat. "I had the notion Clem Belgraf was a tall, skinny guy."

"He was," replied Dr. Jackstone, "before the operation."

"That's some side effect. What operation?"

The round little doctor raked his fingers through the stiff
white curls at his temples. "It all began---------------- " he said.

His vidphone gave a raspy series of buzzes, and before the doctor reached it, Laura's face appeared on the screen. "Is McCarey there with you, Jackstone?"

"Yes, he is."

"I want to talk to him."

Tim came to the phone. 'Yes?"

"I've been trying to contact you at your own cottage, McCarey."

"Speaking of breakdowns in communication, I can't seem to get a call out to Conglobe."

"Really? I can't imagine why not," said the blonde girl. She was rubbing one hand absently across her breasts, the tops of which just showed on the phone screen. "Listen, if you can get up here in ten minutes or so, you can talk to uncle. Please do." She clicked off.

"Going to dash up to the main house now?"

"Yes. Am I likely to run into that gorilla again?"

"No, he's certain to be with his troops by now."

"Fine." Tim stepped out onto the bright-afternoon flagstones. "We'll have the rest of our talk later, Doctor."

"Yes. And if you go crazy with the heat, be sure and send for me." Jackstone waved and closed the door of his Cottage.

Tim heard the porch swing creak, and then Laura was up and standing at the top step. She was wearing a pair of gray tapered slacks now and a sleeveless gold-colored blouse. Her blonde hair was still tied back with the black ribbon. "You have a funny idea of what ten minutes is, McCarey."

"Yes, several scientists are interested in the idea, and I'm planning to read a paper on it soon."

The girl wrinkled her nose. "You seem to grow surlier as the day progresses, McCarey."

"Sorry, ma'am," he said, reaching her side.

Laura gripped his elbow. "Inside."

They went farther down the dim brown hallway this time, stopping in front of a highly polished oak door.

Knocking, Laura called out, "It's McCarey, finally, Uncle Vincent."

The door snapped open inward. "As to the jungle . . ." said Vincent Belgraf. He was a small, thin man, his shoulders dipped forward and his chest curved in. He had fine-spun white hair and was wearing a loose black suit. While Tim and Laura were coming into the room, he began pacing on the flowered throw rug in front of the empty fireplace. "There is," he continued, "just barely, the distinct possibility that a portion of the jungle might be rentable."

Laura put Tim into a brown leather armchair. "Providing certain conditions are fulfilled," she said.

The room seemed all filing cabinets, old wooden ones, and framed photos. The photos were old, too, and Tim couldn't make out who the people grouped in any of them were. 'The condition being that I help you folks in some sort of PR way?"

Vincent Belgraf widened the circle of his pacing until he brushed against a ball-footed wooden desk. "A day or so, almost certainly. We sincerely trust the period of extreme crisis will not exceed a day or so."

"Usually we don't," said Laura, putting her back flat against a tower of file drawers, "have visitors at all. We are able to keep out strangers."

"Tight security," said Vincent Belgraf. "Who is your boss at Conglobe?"

"Harvey Dirks."

Belgraf tapped the desktop and found a memo pad. "We'll add that name to this wire."

"It turns out our vidphone system is fouled up," said Laura.

"I'd noticed," said Tim. "What's the wire say?"

Belgraf read it. "Negotiations rolling merrily along. Belgraf in jolly mood. Need a wee bit more time. Will report again in not too many days."

"You've captured my style."

Tearing off the memo sheet, Belgraf handed it to Laura. "See that that message gets on the bakery wagon this afternoon."

Laura folded the note and slipped it into a slash pocket of her slacks. "We've decided to admit a few things, McCarey." Tim sat up. "Well, good."

Old Belgraf edged around behind his desk. "First off," he said, "our public relations are bad. The public has little or no idea about our ideals, our aims and goals."

"That stone wall probably discourages them," said Tim.

"Secondly," continued Belgraf, "our propaganda isn't having as much of an effect as it should." He shook his head and his milk-white hair fluttered. "We have to step things up in the public-relations line."

"In the coming days," said Laura, "with your expert advice to help us, McCarey, our publicity and propaganda should shape up just fine."

Belgrafs freckled hands were flapping, shuffling papers. "Expenses, expenses," he said. "Was there ever a great movement in history that didn't cost?"

"About tonight," Laura said.

"The price of liberty is high," said Belgraf. "Come to dinner tonight."

"At seven," said Laura. "Cocktails first. We've sent clothes and such over to you."

"Money," said Belgraf, sinking low into his swivel chair.

"Thank you for your time, uncle," said Laura, motioning Tim up.

"Yes," said Tim.

Outside in the hallway, Laura said, "Be on your toes tonight, wear a dark suit and try not to be too surly." "OK," he said. "Why?" "You're going to meet Clem."

• • •

It was the first time Tim had seen a gorilla in a dinner jacket. He looked from Laura to her uncle, then reached out and shook hands with the gorilla. "Glad to meet you,. Mr. Belgraf."

"Clem," said the gorilla in a deep, slightly burred voice. "We're all friends here."

Clement Belgraf seemed real. The hand was harsh and furry and the head didn't look like a prop. Tim hadn't been able to talk to Dr. Jackstone again, since the doctor had gone off to tend to the troops. And Carrie didn't seem to be around anywhere. So Tim hadn't been able to find out exacdy why he appeared to be a gorilla. "Clem it is," he said.

The living room was large, with a high, beamed ceiling. There were Navajo rugs on the buff-colored plaster walls and a fringed Spanish shawl hung on the closed grand piano near the French windows. In the center of the room, there were three sofas, old and fat, set at angles around a clear spot of hardwood floor. "A Beefeater martini?" asked old Vincent Belgraf, sitting on the green sofa.

Clem took the black sofa. "Just a little Cutty Sark for me, Laura, with hardly any ice."

Laura moved to a portable bar near Tim. "McCarey?"

He was watching Clem, trying to spot any seams or zippers.

"Beg pardon?"

"To drink?"

"Scotch is fine."

Laura stepped to the automatic portable bar and depressed the proper drink-ordering keys. The copper-plated unit lurched suddenly to the left and began singing, "Roll out the barrel, we'll have a barrel of fun." It rolled away from the girl and wheeled twice around the piano. It bounced over a throw rug, and Scotch began to spout straight up from one of its spigots. "This is table number one, number one," it sang. Then it stopped spouting and came to a stop beside Laura. "Would you mind repeating that order?"

"Bought secondhand from a bankrupt caterer," said old Belgraf. "An economy measure and perhaps a mistake."

"We can always afford," observed the gorilla, "to go first-cabin."

Laura, who was wearing a simple black cocktail dress that pushed her breasts slightly together, ordered the drinks a second time. The machine produced them. Handing two to Tim, the girl said, "It's the butler's night off. Mind taking that one to Clem?"

"Sure, fine."

Clem Belgraf s left paw was coarse and furry, too. "Thank you," he said, taking the drink. The hand was warm, which a gorilla suit wouldn't be.

The living-room door opened. Tim turned, hoping Carrie might be coming to dinner, too. It was a tall, thick paratrooper in a green uniform. The uniform consisted of green paratrooper pants with silver jump boots, a green shirt and black tie and a green blouse with silver piping. The man's cap was silver-visored and he wore it crushed down on the back of his round, crew-cut head. "How do you work the crapping oven?" he asked.

Clem dropped his glass and jumped up. An odd rumble sounded in his chest. "Corporal Wilkie, your manner of entry is far from correct"

Wilkie saluted and came nearer. "Sorry, chief, but the crapping oven won't light. It's not like the mess stove." He noticed Tim and smiled tentatively at him. "I've got a lovely roast, but it won't do any good if the oven is on the fritz."

Standing, Vincent Belgraf said, "Come along, Wilkie. I'll straighten it out." He moved between Clem and the corporal and backed Wilkie toward the door.

"I'll see you at my office at oh seven hundred tomorrow," Clem said, his arms arching out at his sides and his nostrils enlarging.

"Not if you want breakfast," said Wilkie. "You get rid of the cook and rush me into the gap, you've got to make allowances."

'To the kitchen," said Vincent Belgraf quietly and nudged Wilkie out through the doorway.

Clem spun around and glared at Tim. His eyes were yellow and bloodshot. They narrowed and he brought a paw up in front of them.

"Sit down, Clem," said Laura, "and I'll get you a new drink."

The gorilla noticed the unbroken glass on the slick floor and kicked it away with his opera-slippered foot. He dropped to the black sofa. "We have something of a servant problem," he said finally to Tim.

Laura brought a new glass of iceless Scotch to Clem, patting his arm. "That's just Wilkie's way."

"It's a question of discipline."

"You'll adjust him in time," the girl said. She knelt and wiped up the spilled Scotch with a bar towel.

The gorilla rested a paw on her bare back and tilted his large head to one side. "Laura's a lovely girl, isn't she?"

"Well, yes," agreed Tim.

"Well, thank you, McCarey," said Laura as she rose. Clem made a coughing sound and jiggled his head. He poked at his black bow tie with a thick finger. "It goes on quietly even while we sit here," he said. "The invisible conquest. They've gotten to more cooks and domestics than you think."

"They?" asked Tim.

Laura seated herself next to Tim. "Certain elements."

"Do you realize," said Clem, "that they control sixty-five percent of all outdoor swimming pools. Not to mention nearly all Jewish delicatessens and at least one large toothpaste company."

Tim said, "Who?"

"You see how simple it will be," continued Clem, rocking, "when the order is given. Missiles, bombs, rockets." He laughed suddenly. "Forget bombs and planes and radar. Forget food-supply stockpiles and tin hats. They control seventy percent of our five-and-ten-cent stores already, and their control creeps increasingly. They own two or perhaps, more frighteningly, three motorcycle companies. Our do-nothins government knows it, too. They also won a major frozen-food company. They simply won't need open warfare.

They can skulk on cat feet." Clem's giant fingers scurried off his lap and around the sofa cushions. "When the order is given, and given it -will be, they simply put their plan into effect. They may well be, unheeded by our ostrichesque government, putting it into effect right now. Germs, brainwashes, little tricks. That's them. You dive into the pool and come up a hopeless slave. You bite into a seemingly innocent hot pastrami sandwich and your mind is no longer your own. You jump up in the morning and brush your teeth with their insidious toothpaste and it attacks your gums and, before you know it, you've lost your patriotism and, if they use a certain formula long since perfected, your virility as well."

"This is some Communist movement you're talking about?" Tim asked.

Clem laughed again. "You, too," said the gorilla. "You believe exactly what they want you to. The poor, simple Commies, a lot they know." He rocked with laughter now and fell back with his hairy hands flapping and his wide, flat feet thumping the hard floor. "You poor, simple man. The Commies are dupes like the rest of our so-called politicians."

"I wanted McCarey to read some of your books," Laura said.

"I had to rip up many of them," said Clem, his laughter fading. To Tim he added, "They've gotten to the printers. I noticed, on rereading, that they'd made them put in a great number of typographical errors that did grave damage to the logical development of my exposé." Clem's paws became large black fists. "Logic, logic, damn them, is all they'll listen to. You have to think, use your intellect, make them think in turn." He paused. "By them, in this context, I mean the so-called public, the self-styled masses."

"We've just installed our own printing press," Laura said. "There shouldn't be any more trouble."

"If they don't get to Rasmussen," said Clem.

"Rasmussen is our printer."

"Now," said Tim, "how is it exactly you'd like me to help?"

"Laura's been getting up a dossier on you and she says you're ninety percent clean, which is all we can hope for. They've got control of a good part of Hollywood, too. But Laura says you're OK."

"Thanks," said Tim.

Laura smiled along the rim of her glass. "We don't have to go into specifics tonight, Clem. McCarey will be getting together with me in the morning."

Clem chuckled. "I feel confident, Laura."

Vincent Belgraf came quietly back and resumed his sofa. "It may take some time for dinner. Wilkie insists on the roast."

"I wonder," said the gorilla, "if they've gotten to Wilkie." He steepled his fingers and closed one eye thoughtfully.

• • •

At the head of the dinner table, the gorilla rested his elbows on the bright white cloth. His lips flared up over his teeth and he said, "Everybody is willing to concede that democracy has had its chance."

Old Vincent Belgraf rotated his wineglass between his palms and glanced toward the swing door to the kitchen. 'The notion that this is a republic we live in is outmoded as well."

The gorilla's head bobbed positively. "An empire," he said, beaming down at Tim. "I see," said Tim. "Virility," said Laura. "Beg pardon?"

"An emperor must have virility," the girl explained. "He must be an image of forcefulness and masculinity."

"Events," said Clem, leaning back in the chair. "Events are on the move and the new leader must step forth."

"People want answers," said Belgraf. He asked Tim, "Do you think we should include television in our propaganda plans? It's costly."

Clem waved a paw in Tim's direction. "Yes, what's your feeling on that?"

"You mean, you'd appear on TV?"

"I'd insist on a full half hour to myself," said the gorilla. "Commercials are too restrictive."

Tim studied his fork. "Yeah, a whole show would be more effective."

"You're coming up with some good suggestions already," said Belgraf. He made a low sighing sound and slid his chair sideways, rising up carefully. "It's been a half hour since the chicken gumbo soup. I'll see what's delaying Wilkie." He shuffled into the kitchen.

"You're not getting a good impression of the efficiency of our setup," Laura said, smiling across the wide table.

Clem's teeth clicked and his eyes grew wide. His head ticked and he grunted. "I'm losing my patience. I'm losing my patience."

The kitchen door swung loudly open and Wilkie appeared. He was in uniform still but had added a chefs hat with chief cook and bottle washer embroidered on it. "This needling of me has got to knock off," he said. "I can't cook with people always looking over my shoulder."

Laura inhaled sharply. "It's all right, Clem."

His chair somersaulted away and landed on its side at the temporary chefs feet. The gorilla raised his arms high and then, lunging, loped for Wilkie.

"Oh, boy," said Wilkie. He dodged into the dining room, heading for the French windows.

Clem roared and dived. He caught Wilkie, knocked him down and jumped on his back.

Wilkie said, "Oof."

The gorilla snatched the man up, hugged him and bounced him harshly up and down, then spun him overhead and nipped him. Wilkie was briefly on the table, his limp body made a C and then he thudded onto the floor.

Clem raised his arms again, threw his black tie at Laura, smashed through the French windows and went crashing away into the darkness.

Vincent Belgraf stepped in from the kitchen. "He's very excitable," he said calmly. "Many great men are."

Laura shook her head, her face was pale and she kept swallowing. "You really aren't getting a good impression of our household operations, McCarey."

"I'll call Dr. Jackstone," said Tim, dropping down next to Wilkie.

Corporal Wilkie seemed to be still breathing.

• • •

Two privates in green-and-silver fatigues carried the stretcher into the dark jungle. Dr. Jackstone watched, perched on the porch rail. He rocked roundly back and forth, absently depressing his tongue with a thumb-shaped wooden stick and humming, "Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah."

Tim and the doctor were alone on the shadowy porch of the Belgraf house. "So how is Wilkie?"

"A little shock," said Jackstone, sliding the depressor into his coat pocket. "The wind's been knocked out of him, that's about all. More's the pity."

"Is it a good idea to send him down to the infirmary tonight?" Tim asked, swinging himself up on the rail next to the doctor. "Clement is still out there someplace, roaming around."

"There is the possibility that he'll do something drastic to the other two fellows," said Dr. Jackstone. "There's always that hope. Anyway, Laura doesn't think it's a good idea to leave Wilkie here tonight. Clem will eventually calm down and come back home. She doesn't want him to get upset all over again."

Glancing back at the closed front door, Tim said, 'That gorilla really is Clement Belgraf?"

Jackstone fished his stethoscope out of an inside pocket of his white suit and hooked it over his plump neck. "Clem is my greatest medical triumph," he said. "But not one medical journal has ever written it up. Remember Dr. Dafoe—-the bundle of money he made just for delivering five little French-Canadian girls? Nothing to that."

"But Clem?"

"You remember him from his racing days?" "Vaguely," said Tim.

"Some four years ago, Clem, as a result of a discussion with his Uncle Vincent over the communistic nature of income tax, got interested in politics. At first he contented himself with the wide variety of groups that the Los Angeles area has to offer." Jackstone listened to his own chest for a moment. "The main thing wrong with these other groups was that they already had leaders. Clem Belgraf, you know, is a born leader. Thus, with Vincent Belgraf s backing, he began to recruit his own group. Simple political agitation wasn't enough, and the army idea followed. Barracks were erected here and the wall built around the estate."

"That was about the time Belgraf stopped renting out the jungle."

"They never really needed the rental fees," said Dr. Jack-stone. "With Clem and his army, there was excitement around all the time, not just on the occasions when Hollywood came down and Hunneker or somebody was swinging from limb to limb."

"OK," said Tim, "I understand about the army now. Not the gorilla."

"Oh, this is a new army," Jackstone said. "The original,was only a few dozen fellows Clem gathered up from unemployment lines—race bums, garage hangers-on, surfers. The problem was that Clem, the old Clem, was a stubborn and violent sort of person. One evening his army gave up on the whole idea. Back at that juncture, I was simply the family doctor, having a practice of my own on the outside."

"These guys turned on Clem? Jumped him?"

The doctor spun the listening piece of the stethoscope by its tube. "That's right. He looked like the residue of a street rumble when I got here. The troops had, by that time, scattered to the winds. They even burned part of the old barracks. Clem himself was dying."

"Where'd the gorilla come from?"

"Yes, the gorilla," said Jackstone. "As part of his jungle collection, Vincent Belgraf had a small zoo. It consisted, at the period of Clem's accident, of a leopard, two elderly lions, four ostriches, a zebra and a gorilla. Plus a few tailless monkeys and an anteater." The doctor smiled, his eyes nearly closing. "I'd always had a hankering to transplant a brain. It was a hobby I'd fooled with for decades, ever since my student days at Stanford Medical. Here, then, at last, was the opportunity. Clem couldn't possibly survive, even by rushing him the twenty-two miles to the nearest hospital. I therefore suggested saving at least his brain, which, happily enough, was in tip-top shape."

"They agreed, just like that?"

"Of course," said Jackstone. "They admired his intellect as much as the rest of him. Laura was just seventeen then. Clem was twenty-five. He was her favorite heroic figure, her favorite philosopher as well. Yes, both Uncle Vincent and Laura agreed to let me try a transplant. I'd hoped for a human being. The troops, as I've said, were off and running. The butler was in his late sixties and hardly the leader type. That left the animals. A gorilla isn't the best bet for a brain transplant, you know." The doctor shrugged. "But Clem as a leopard or a zebra was absolutely out of the question. A gorilla it had to be."

"How come he can talk and all?"

Jackstone's eyes widened and he grinned. "All due to my work. This little medical trick here is one of the wonders of modern science." He sighed. "But not one journal or popular big-circulation magazine will ever know of it."

"How'd he get the new troops?"

"While Clem was adjusting to his new self, he began writing, putting his views into book form. His point of view, having an answer for every current problem, attracted some. The rest have been recruited by the Belgrafs. The pay is very good."

"Do you think the present army will be more loyal than the last batch?"

The doctor pressed his chubby fingers in among his stiff white curls. "There could be more trouble. Clem, as you must realize by now, has not mellowed with the years. He is, in fact, becoming more and more like the darned gorilla, if not worse."

The front door creaked, swung in. "McCarey?"

Tim dropped from the rail onto the porch.

"I'll be getting to my new patient," said Dr. Jackstone. "Good night, all."

Tim said good night and went in to see what Laura wanted.

• • •

There was no moonlight, and the shortcut path to the cottages grew narrower and narrower. "You have to admit, McCarey," said Laura, up ahead of him on the dark trail, "that it's thoughtful of me."

"Yes," said Tim.

Somehow, there was an iron-grillwork bench a little off the overgrown path, nudged back in among flat-leaved bushes. When Tim caught up, Laura was sitting on the bench, her legs crossed and one black shoe swinging from her toe.

"How many other clients," she said, "would show you a quick way home after a business dinner?"

"You're the first client who's ever guided me through a jungle at eleven o'clock at night," said Tim, stopping. "I don't know much about woodlore, but shouldn't you keep your shoes on?"

The girl shrugged one shoulder, and the shoes arced free and fell into the high grass. "McCarey," she said, "something really funny."

"What?"

"I actually like you, McCarey." Tim watched her, nodding.

"Not this surface personality you have," Laura continued,

"which I imagine is applied to you by your Hollywood bosses."

"Two coats of personality and one of varnish."

"It's the you underneath I like, McCarey." She cupped her hands over her knee and smiled. "I like the shape of your head, too. McCarey, as soon as we get the propaganda off the ground, we'll have more spare time."

A ripe orange hit the free side of the bench, and rind fragments splashed Laura and Tim. Tim spun around but could see no one. After the orange came a banana and five papayas.

Laura had jumped up. Finding her shoe, she said, "He's watching us." Her ponytail flicked at her bare shoulders as she shook her head. "He gets very excited meeting new people sometimes. It means you made a good impression on him."

"That's Clem out there?"

"He'll calm down," Laura said. She braced herself against him with one hand and tugged on her black shoe. "Wilkie angered him. Clem has to work out his anger and excitement." She stood free and called, "Clem, it's all right." To Tim she said, "Go on down the path. You'll find your cottage with no trouble."

"You're staying here?"

"I'll talk to him and he'll come home eventually." She touched Tim's arm. "Be at the house at nine in the morning. And don't forget what I've said, McCarey."

"No, ma'am."

Tim started away. A mushy orange hit him hard in the back, but he didn't turn around.

Tim had sponged Clem-flung orange from the back of the suitcoat and hung it over the shower-curtain rod. From his overstuffed chair in the main room of the cottage, he could see one dark sleeve hanging. He lunged up and closed the bathroom door.

All the framed prints on the cottage walls were of alpine scenes. Tim wandered around and looked at each one and then hunkered down in the chair again. He lit a new cigarette from the old one and started counting the roses in the painted trim that circled the room a foot from the floor. There were dark old books in the bookcase, which was rose-colored with simulated knotholes. Tim didn't feel like

reading. It was 12 o'clock midnight Someone tapped lightly on the door. "Friend or gorilla?" he said, not moving. "Tim," said a girl's voice, "you still up?" Tim grinned and went to the door.

It was Carrie. She had a coffeepot in one hand. "Like a cup of coffee?"

"I was thinking about it. Come in." She did and he closed the door.

"You have a kitchen here, you know," said Carrie, walking toward a door with spiraling twining flowers painted all over it. "Right in there."

"Yeah," said Tim, "but all the pots have rosebuds on them and there're elves and gnomes all over the walls."

"Suspecting you might feel that way, I brought coffee in from the outside." She went into the kitchen. "All the coffee cups have Tyrolean landscapes on them," she called. "Is that going to bother you?"

"I'll put up with it," he said. "Where were you all day?"

"I have my own Utile office up on the second floor of the house."

"You didn't come to dinner."

"I don't eat with the family."

"Neither did I, as it turned out."

Carrie brought in two cups of coffee. "I heard Clem dismissed another cook, huh?"

"Thanks," said Tim, taking a cup and nodding at a rattan chair. "Something I'm wondering, Carrie."

She seated herself, straight, with her knees tight together. "I know—what's a nice girl like me doing in a place like this?"

"Yes, that's it."

"I knew Clem before," she said. "So?"

"He knows some things about me," Carrie said. "They need a good secretary here. I'm one. That's all." "Is Clem forcing you to stay?"

"Sometime we'll talk about it. Not tonight, not now," she said.

Tim stayed standing. "They never mention that he's a gorilla," he said finally.

"He isn't to them," said Carrie. "Clem is the answer to' too many of their problems. They have to see him differently."

"I still don't know why you stay." "And what's keeping you here?" "It's my job to get the jungle if I can," Tim said. "That's everybody's favorite reason," the girl said. "I only work here."

'Tonight, right after Clem pitched an orange at me, I thought of walking out on this. Back in L.A., though, I'd have to tell them something."

"You like the job?"

Tim said, "I don't like people who tell you about their childhood the first time they meet you. Still, I'm considering doing it."

"This is the second or third time you've met me," said Carrie. "Go ahead."

"Well, I had an uncle—on my mother's side—Uncle Norman," said Tim. He drank some coffee, paced. "He had a job in an ornamental-iron shop until the 1940s and then he quit. He was going to be a professional ballplayer. He was thirty-three and weighed two hundred pounds. For a ballplayer only five feet, five inches tall, that's a little too much weight."

'They could have nicknamed him Slim or something," said Carrie. "Ballplayers go in for nicknames a lot."

"They didn't nickname him anything. He never made it and he kept drifting around. To drift for something like twenty-two years, that's an accomplishment. He died in 1976. He was living in San Francisco, in a hotel room in the Tenderloin. My father paid for the funeral." Tim stopped behind Carrie's chair.

"Your father probably always said something like 'If you don't watch out, you'll end up like your Uncle Norman,' huh?"

"Sure, everybody with an Uncle Norman has heard that. I know it's not a code to live by. 'Yes, boys and girls, I've always lived by this simple principle: Don't end up like your Uncle Norman.' Still, here I am doing PR for a gorilla."

Carrie reached down and placed her coffee cup on a jigsaw table. She turned in her chair until she was kneeling in it facing him. "My principle is much simpler: You've got to watch out so the bastards don't get you."

Tim's shoulders ached suddenly and he reached out and rested his hands on the girl's. "That's sound advice."

"It tops Uncle Norman."

He kissed her, letting go her hands, gently resting his

palms flat on her back.

• • •

On one of the screens above Laura's desk, Peg Leg Min-tosh was sitting on an inflated sofa next to a black man with a guitar. "Not all colored boys are troublemakers, friends," Mintosh was saying. "Here's one who isn't a member of any terrorist group, and he's hardly a leftie at all. You regular viewers of our little news marathon should already know this fellow. He is no less than Blind Sunflower Slim, the last of the great darky bluesmen. How's your infirmity today, Slim?"

"Can't complain, Mr. Peg Leg."

"Slim here, friends, was born with his handicap and didn't
acquire it by defending the rights of the many against the
distorted dreams of a few in the pestilential jungles of re-
mote Brazil. Nevertheless, he's no slouch. Before we get to
talking about the news, let's have a tune, Slim." ^

"Glad to oblige, Mr. Peg Leg," said Blind Sunflower Slim. He began to sing, "I had a dream last night that the whole round world was mine. Yes, baby, I had a dream last night about the whole round world was mine. But when I woke up this morning, mamma, well, I still didn't have a dime."

The sound shut off as Laura entered the room. "Good morning," Tim said.

"As to the Negro . . ." said Laura Belgraf, letting the rainbow sunlight that came through the stained-glass window of her office fall across the lower half of her body.

"Which Negro?" asked Tim. Laura placed him in a coarse-materialed morris chair and gave him a thick yellow legal tablet and six highly sharpened pencils.

The blonde girl stretched her arms up, made a yawning sound. She was wearing lemon-yellow shorts and a pale-blue jersey, and the stretching brought her navel into view. "The Negro," Laura said. "I mean the Negro in general, McCarey."

He watched the navel until Laura lowered her arms and it disappeared. "Negroes in general?"

"Clem hasn't decided what to do with them when he takes over the country," she said. Sidestepping out of her sandals, she slid barefoot across the rug to her rolltop desk. "You know about his plan to solve unemployment once he's in control?"

"Nope."

"He's going to put all the unemployed to work." "Say," said Tim, "that'll do it, won't it?" Laura frowned. "It's how Clem's going to do it that's the brilliant part, McCarey." "OK, how?"

"He's going to put them to work building concentration camps." "Oh, so?"

Laura swiveled in her chair and spread her left-hand fingers out. She ticked them off one by one, saying, "The Jews, of course. You really can't have a concentration camp without them."

Tim reminded himself that he was here to rent a jungle.

"Then the Chinese," said Laura, touching another fingertip. "They're all Communists, anyway. Then probably the Japs, though we might need them to keep gardens up and things like that." Laura smiled some. "The Russians, naturally. I guess that's it so far. The Negro we're not decided on yet."

"These you-know-who people," Tim said, "the 'they' Clem refers to—who, exactly, are they?"

The girl shook her head. "That's classified, McCarey. The details are, I mean." Tapping the side of her head, she said, "Clem carries a good deal of that top-secret material in his mind. Don't worry, you don't need all the details in order to write stuff for us. Shall I get on about the Negro?"

"Sure," he said.

"Well, Clem is torn between putting them in concentration camps or eliminating them," Laura said. "See, none of the other inmates would want to be in the same concentration camp with Negroes. You can't blame them for that. Building separate but equal concentration camps may prove too costly."

She added sharply, "Take a few notes, McCarey."

"Yes, ma'am." He chose a pencil from the batch fanned out on the table next to him, held it up to her.

The girl turned and leaned forward, tugging at the roll-top. The desk opened and Laura said, "I'll give you copies of our most recent propaganda, and then you can get a better idea of our general philosophy."

"Would Carrie Dormer have any files I should see?" he asked.

"No." Laura stood, fists filled with small pamphlets of many colors. "That's right. It was Carrie who set up your

first meeting with me. You spent the night with her." "Not exactly."

"I can imagine. Have you been seeing her?" "We nod on the way to work."

She crossed and flipped the booklets and pamphlets into his lap. "If I think you should talk to Carrie, I'll tell you about it. Right now, remember, I'm in the process of growing fond of you."

"I know," said Tim.

"You still do want the jungle, don't you?" She snapped her fingers. "Oh, that reminds me." She slid her hand flat into the waist of her shorts and drew out a folded telegram. "From your boss. I'll read it to you. 'Sounds good, Tim. Be positive and enthusiastic and you'll win out. Know you can. Counting on you. (Signed) Harvey.'" She tucked the refolded wire away. "Be enthusiastic, McCarey, and you'll get just what you want."

Tim gathered the booklets and pamphlets together and slapped them inside the notebook. "Fine."

Laura swung down and rested her palms on the arms of his chair. "I really do like the shape of your head, McCarey. You must have a wonderful skull."

"Well, I have gotten rather fond of it myself."

Laura sighed. "Darn, I have to go confer with Uncle Vincent now. I'll be getting back with you this afternoon, McCarey." She kissed him on the forehead. "Yes, I'm very fond of you."

After she'd gone out the side door between the bookcases, Tim rose up quietly. He moved to the bead-screened doorway to the hall and listened. If it looked clear, he'd try to get upstairs and see Carrie. She'd told him her office was someplace up there.

One step into the hall and a paw grabbed him.

"Just who I'm looking for," said Clem. "Come along."

Tim went along.

• • •

Abruptly, the path became paved with flagstones. The jungle thinned and the sounds of marching grew louder.

Clem loped ahead of Tim and stopped at a rise. He swept his silver-visored cap off and beckoned to Tim with it "Come and look. You're here during a splendid week."

Tim stopped at the gorilla's side and looked down. In a

clearing below were, at the farthest edge, a half-dozen two-story army-style barracks, plus three Quonset huts and a recreation hall. On a parade ground, some 60 men in green and silver were being drilled by a man who seemed to be Colonel Granger. Nearer to Tim and Clem, some 50 yards away, was a half-built review stand. "Going to be a parade?" Tim asked the gorilla.

"Exactly," said Clem with a deep chuckle. "Day after tomorrow. I've arranged for you to be seated right on the reviewing stand with the officials and dignitaries."

"Will there be guests coming in?"

Clem put his high-peaked cap back on. "A few sympathetic political figures from the surrounding areas, yes."

"How many troops do you have here in all?"

The gorilla's head turned. "Exact figures are classified. I'll tell you what sort of numbers to use in our publicity." He grimaced. "How's the campaign coming?"

"Right along," said Tim.

"Good. We'll have a big conference tomorrow." The gorilla's lips puckered and he rolled his eyes. "Do you think we can run off a pamphlet in time for the parade?"

"If your printer will cooperate."

"Rasmussen will cooperate."

"I was wondering," said Tim, watching the troops do a to-the-rear march. "Would it be OK for me to check things out with your secretary? It might speed the work up in case I can't locate something."

"With Carrie, you mean?"

"Yes."

"No," said the gorilla. "There's a great load of correspondence. Carrie has to devote all her time to that. You've met my secretary, have you?"

"When I first got here."

"She's too busy for much social conversation," said Clem. "She's a very complex girl, Carrie is. I've known her a long time."

"I see," Tim said.

"I wanted you to see the work in progress," said Clem, extending one paw, palm up, toward the uncompleted stand. "That's going to be an inspiring place to watch a parade from, isn't it?"

"It is."

"Good," said the gorilla. "I have to join my men now. Can

you get on back to the house on your own?" "No trouble," said Tim.

Clem held out his right paw. "Damn glad you're aboard." He shook hands and clicked his heels. Then he pivoted and galloped downhill toward the marching troops.

Tim turned away. Despite the gorilla's polite warning, Tim wanted to look in on Carrie.

Near the big Victorian house, a voice called him. "Come into my office for a moment and take a look at some charts and graphs." It was old Vincent Belgraf, waving from his study window.

"Belgrafs, Belgrafs everywhere," Tim said to himself, returning the wave.

The dusty grandfather clock made a gear-shifting sound and chimed once. Vincent Belgraf cocked his head, pronging his silver watch out of its pocket and studying it. "What say to some lunch?" he asked Tim.

Tim blinked and sat up. He was half-buried in blueprints and charts. He said, "Yes, if we're finished here." He stood slowly, the charts falling away from him and rustling like giant dead leaves.

"No, no," said Belgraf. "Nevertheless, we have to keep ourselves in good condition. We'll break, therefore, for lunch." He rested a thumb against Tim's shoulder. "You won't mind potluck in the kitchen? We're in transition between cooks, you know."

"Sure, that's OK."

Moving down the brown hallway, Belgraf said, "Listen to this." He stopped and jumped in the air, landing flat-footed. "This house is over a hundred years old. Yet it's still sturdy and solid. They built them to last in Sanford Belgrafs day. Ever wonder why houses aren't built like this in our so-called modern times?"

"No," said Tim.

"They didn't have income taxes then"—he bit his thin, dry lower lip—"that's the reason." He tried another leap. "Not a creak. This house is solid." He massaged his ribs. "It unsettles me a little, though."

Tim rested back against a dark wood wall, to watch in case Belgraf did any more jumping. "Sanford Belgraf," he said, "he was in the railroad business, wasn't he?"

"They called him the Jack Harkaway of railroading," said Belgraf. "Jack Harkaway was a famous old-English highwayman. Yes, Sanford Belgraf was one of California's favorite robber barons. People love tycoons, you know, despite what today's crybaby government says." The old man exhaled sadly and moved on.

Laura was already in the long, cool, pale-blue kitchen. The kitchen was bright and new, with everything built into the walls. Laura was still wearing the lemon-colored shorts, but she'd gotten rid of the jersey and was wearing a vinyl halter. "I started without you two," she said. "Thought you'd be holed up all afternoon." She was hunched on a chrome-and-blue-Ieather kitchen stool, eating a sandwich.

Old Vincent Belgraf smiled at his niece. "I believe I'll have some of my canned figs," he said. He shuffled to a door with the word pantry lettered on it in illuminated script. He opened the door and then his steps sounded on wooden stairs.

"Pantry's way down under the house," said Laura. "What would you like for lunch?"

"Sandwich will be OK," Tim said, noticing a plate of them on the kitchen table.

"Take one. It's tuna and mustard, which I like. Is that OK with you, McCarey?"

He took a sandwich. "Sure."

Laura straightened and stretched her legs out in front of her. "Would you believe it, McCarey?" "Believe what?"

"In the few hours since I last saw you, I've grown even fonder of you." She finished her sandwich and touched her fingertips to her hps.

Down in the pantry there was a scuffling and tottering and a muffled crash. "What the hell?" Tim moved to the pantry door.

"It's just Uncle Vincent falling off his ladder," Laura said. "Come back here, McCarey." "I'll go help him."

"No, no," said Laura, "he's always falling off things. Helping him up only wounds his pride. The Belgrafs are a proud, fierce race, McCarey. It will take him a few minutes to right himself. Come here."

Tim's thumb was sinking into the bread of the tuna sandwich. He went back toward the girl.

"You seem reluctant to spend time near me, McCarey."

Laura crossed her legs and reached one hand out to him. "I thought you might like to kiss me until Uncle Vincent comes back."

"Wait till I set down, my sandwich." He dropped the thing back on the plate and stood watching the girl.

Laura smiled, her tongue flicking at her upper lip. "Well, McCarey?"

"I guess I'm not used to spending my lunch hours this way."

"I thought in Hollywood that's all they did at noon." "I only get an hour for lunch."

"I should think that would be more than enough time."

"Well," said Tim, "by the time the girl gets her whip and boots and I get into my lion suit, a good lot of time has gone past."

Laura dropped to the floor. "OK, McCarey, kid me if you want to."

Belgraf came slowly up the stairs and wavered into the kitchen. "I'd do anything for these figs," he said. "Eat something now. Then it's back to work we go."

Tim picked up the sandwich again.

• • •

In the darkness outside Tim's cottage, grasshoppers were mating. Tim scowled at the half-finished sandwich on the plate on his knee. He'd made this one himself.

It was after seven and he still hadn't seen Carrie. All afternoon he'd rotated from Belgraf to Belgraf, gathering bundles of propaganda, rolls of charts, folders of clippings. Out of it all he was supposed to invent a unified campaign, to help eventually sell Clem to the country.

Fortunately for the Belgrafs, Carrie was in this business now. It was added incentive for Tim to stay.

A faint knock on the door.

Tim grinned. He sprinted the few feet to the door and yanked it open to let in Carrie.

"I don't know if you remember me or not, but I'd like to talk to you." It was Audie Sayers, the recruit Tim had given a lift to.

"Sure, Sayers, what is it?"

The young man licked his lips. "May I come in?" "I'm expecting someone." "Not Clem?"

"No," said Tim. "OK, come in for a minute."

Once inside the cottage, Sayers said, "Oh, Mr. McCarey, I may have made a mistake." He had on green-and-silver fatigues. His left eye was yellow around the edges.

"Clement hit you?"

"Yes, for not knowing my manual of arms," said the recruit. He noticed the half sandwich. "Have you any further use for that?"

"No, didn't you eat tonight?"

"I'm supposed to be in the stockade," said Sayers, grabbing the sandwich. "A friend let me out to slip over here. Food, though, he couldn't get any of."

"You're disappointed with the setup?" Tim asked, starting for the kitchen. "Cup of coffee?"

"If I might," said Sayers. "Yes, I'm bitterly and terribly disheartened."

Tim reached into, the kitchen. "How so?"

"Mr. McCarey, I'm an idealist." He shook his head. "I was so certain that a man with Clement Belgrafs beliefs would be the nearest thing to a saint this jaded old century could offer."

Pointing at the pamphlets, Tim asked, "You've read that stuff?"

"Of course. Over and over. The thinking is beautiful—so logical, providing an answer for every problem, even acne," said Sayers. "However, the man himself...."

Tim narrowed one eye. "You weren't expecting a gorilla, perhaps?"

"I knew he had been, well, disfigured as the result of an accident," said Sayers, finishing the sandwich. "Frankly, Mr. McCarey, I find his present appearance rather virile and heroic. It's simply that he's so mean and disagreeable."

Tim poured a cup of coffee and handed it to him. "What do you plan on doing?"

"I heard scuttlebutt to the effect that you were staying on for a few days." He clutched the cup in both hands. "I was hoping that when you left, you might conceal me in your car— if you leave."

"If?"

"I'm hoping you'll be allowed to leave," said Sayers. "After all, the Belgrafs supposedly like you. Still, they also like Dr. Jackstone, and he can never set foot beyond these walls."

"Well, if I make it through the walls, you can come, OK?"

"I'll have my friend contact you. I may be in the stockade for quite some time." Sayers gulped all of the hot coffee down. "Now I must slip away."

"Take it easy," said Tim, opening the door.

"Bless you." Sayers ducked out into the night

"Hello," said a voice.

Tim squinted. "At last."

Carrie, in a skirt and blouse, with a short tan coat hooked on her forefinger and hanging over her shoulder, was standing a few feet away. "I understand you're having one of your famous at-home evenings. Are visitors welcome?"

"Come in and browse," he said, reaching out to her.

She came in. "What did you learn today?" she asked Tim.

He dumped all the Clem propaganda on the floor to make room so she could sit in the chair. He poked the stuff with his foot. "Is his mail and correspondence in the same vein?"

"Yes," the girl said. She rested the fingers of one slender hand against her cheek, and it heightened the sharp line of her cheekbone. "Though some of the letters that come in aren't as articulate as that."

"You don't-------- " began Tim.

"Share Clem's point of view?" She grinned. "Do you suspect that I do?"

"No," said Tim, "but, damn it, I wish you'd tell me."

"Tell you what—my political outlook?"

"No, what it is that he knows about you. Why he can hold you here."

Carrie shook her head. "I can tell you about a dream I had
when I finally got home last night."
"Carrie------------ " he said.

"In the dream, I was traveling across the Midwest with an educated bear. We both had bicycles and one of them was named Kafka. It was the bear's bike that had a name, and I remember I felt very envious. That's what I dreamed."

Tim turned away. "OK, fine."

"Aren't things unsettling enough already without trying to unearth my screwed-up past?" He faced her again.

Carrie's head swung once from side to side. "I'm sorry, Tim, but let's drop it."

He said, "My automatic icebox has Tuborg beer. Want one?"

"Yes, please," said Carrie. Her eyes had narrowed, her mouth grew thin and small. Then, suddenly, she smiled, laughed. "It's a mean old world. I really like you, Tim. I'm sorry I seem such a screwball."

Tim went in and dialed two bottles of beer. "They put eight tins of Plumrose deviled ham in here and two loaves of rye bread. Want a sandwich?"

"No," said Carrie. She had risen and come into the kitchen to watch him.

He looked at the girl. "Wait a second."

"What?"

He moved to her, kissed her. "First things first."

Carrie smiled. "This is really some setting for an office romance, isn't it?"

"Now, now, Miss Dormer. You're more than just a typist to me, I assure you, my dear young lady."

"You'll get the jungle and sneak off without leaving so much as a forwarding address."

"Hey," Tim said.

"Yes?"

"Let's not kid for a minute, OK?"

Carrie widened her eyes. "OK."

"No, really."

The phone buzzed.

"I'll answer it," said Tim.

"Be serious with them."

Tim ran in and jerked up the receiver. "Hello?"

"Put her on the line, McCarey." Laura was on the screen.

"Whom?"

Laura's voice was low and even. "Carrie Donner. Don't stall around, McCarey. I know she's with you. Tell her if she values her job, she had better get up here now. Clement has some urgent dictation."

"Fine."

"And it may take all night, McCarey," said Laura and cut off.

"They want me?" asked Carrie.

"Yeah, that was Laura. They want you back at the house."

"Swell," she said, gathering up her coat.

"I can call in and say you've broken something."

"Laura knew I was here, huh?"

"She did."

"I'll go," Carrie said. She took his hand for a second and then left.

Tim kicked the propaganda.

A dry, hot wind blew all the next day. It scattered leaves, fronds and dust. It whacked bamboo stalks together and toppled cockatoos off trees.

The birds kept banging, squawking, against the leaded panes of the parlor in the big house, where Tim was pretending to be putting together a new, improved Clement Belgraf campaign. Whenever Tim looked up from his desk, which was often, he saw a solid wall of oval-framed Civil War generals. Actually, there was one World War One aviator in among the whiskered generals—a slim young guy with leather helmet and flapping neck scarf, smiling and waving alongside a black biplane.

He had tried to spend some time with Carrie, but the Belgrafs kept waylaying him. He passed her in the hallway once, but old Vincent Belgraf had him by the arm that time. Carrie looked fresh and bright, except her guarded smile turned into a yawn.

Late in the afternoon, the sky blurred and the wind died. Night came on at once and a heavy, hard-hitting rain began to fall. Tim rocked back once in his chair and put the eraser end of a pencil in his ear.

"Tim," said a soft voice. A hand touched his shoulder.

He got the pencil free and turned. "Yes?"

It was Laura. She was wearing a pair of black Levi's and gray-striped shirt. She had two butterfly-sized black bows in her hair. "I'm sorry if I was rather salty to you last evening." She put the tip of her forefinger where the eraser had been, rotating it clockwise.

Tilting hi« head and freeing his ear, Tim stood up. The rain throbbed against the window. "Is Carrie going to have to work tonight, too?"

Laura's face tightened slightly. "That's really up to Clem. He and Uncle Vincent are caught up in the preparations for the parade and the attendant ceremonies." She flattened the fingers of one hand across her stomach. "I came to suggest that you have dinner with me. I haven't had a reason to do some real gourmet cooking in a long while. I'll turn off the gadgets and do it all by hand."

"Well..." said Tim.

"You can be sure Carrie will be busy till long after dinner." Laura eased her hand across her stomach so that her upright thumb brushed the bottom of her breasts. "I'm very good at lobster bisque." Her hands interlocked and she moved closer to Tim, her sneakered feet sliding on the rug. "Or mulligatawny."

"I was never quite sure what's in mulligatawny soup," said Tim, leaning back against the rain-wracked window.

"Chicken, veal bouillon, carrots," said Laura, transferring her hands from her stomach to his, "onions, cloves, leek, celery, mushrooms, mace, cardamom, cinnamon, butter"—the tips of her breasts touched his chest—"cornstarch, curry and heavy cream."

"No kidding."

"It's a meal in itself. For the entrée, I'm thinking of sweetbreads à la lyonnaise," said the girl. She caught his ears in her hands and pulled his head down, kissing him.

"Though sometimes I just pick up something frozen at the supermarket," Tim said.

A sopping macaw slammed against the glass.

"Well," said Laura, kissing him again.

Tim felt like a kaleidoscope.

"Where are my maps of the Greater Los Angeles freeway system?" called Clem outside the door.

Like a motion picture running down, Laura undid one final button, the one nearest his belt buckle, and then, gritting her teeth, she stepped back. She gave a wet-cat shake and said, "I'll get in touch with you later."

After she left the room, Tim shoved all the papers on his desk into a scuffed briefcase Laura had given him. Stuffing the thing under his coat, he left the house. He made himself stroll back to his cottage. The rain didn't help any.

The swaybacked horse was eating the bunting on the left side of the review stand. At the edge of the parade ground, Laura Belgraf hunched down in her lynx coat and said to Tim, "I wish that horse would lay off the decorations."

The morning was cold, streaked with mist. Tim kept his hands in his pockets. "Why don't you ask the old guy riding the horse to knock it off?"

"You just don't do that with Jack Moog."

Tim stared at the brittle, lanky old man on the ancient horse. He had a lock of dead-white hair hanging across his forehead. The big, high-crowned stetson was splotched, and there was a patch on the sleeve of the checkerboard shirt. But now Tim recognized the old cowboy. "That's Jack Moog? I thought he vanished with half-hour TV."

"He had the right kind of investments. He's one of Clem's most ardent supporters and backers. He comes to all our rallies and parades."

"Can you be ardent at eighty-five?"

"He's barely eighty," said Laura, shaking her head as the horse swallowed the last of a poster. "That's Fred the Wonder Horse."

"If that's Fred the Wonder Horse from old-time TV, he must be forty years old," said Tim. "That's pretty old for a horse."

"Fred's partly automated now," explained the blonde.

Jack Moog had spotted Laura. He rested one sharp old elbow on his saddle hom and spun his big white hat in the air. Tim remembered from a documentary that this was the way Jack Moog opened all his shows. The horse took three tentative steps in their direction and then toppled over.

"Dam," said Laura.

"The horse must be dead," said Tim.

"No, he's napping, right on the parade ground. I hope it doesn't anger Clement."

"Wahoo, wahoo," called Jack, giving his hat another spin.

Sucking her cheek, Laura gestured to some of the soldiers who were loitering around the review stand. They hustled over to drag the semiautomated horse into the underbrush. Moog supervised and then gave one of his famous running jumps and landed up on the review stand. He'd gone over the stand rail the same way he used to leap over saloon bars to get at the tinhorns. If he hadn't landed spread-eagled between two folding chairs, it would have been a perfect moment of recaptured past.

"Yucky, yucky, yucky," said someone behind Tim. He turned and saw a trio of middle-aged people: a round, cherubic man and a round, cherubic woman in a fur-trimmed cloth coat. Her hair was white, tinged with light blue. With this couple was a soft, handsome man with a beautiful blond hairpiece and grinning false teeth.

"Yucky, yucky, yucky," said the woman again. ,

"Mr. and Mrs. Friesen," said Laura, "you're early."

"We always are," said Mr. Friesen, "first ones here."

"Except for Jack Moog. The parade won't start for an hour," said Laura, "though you're welcome to go up on the stand."

Mrs. Friesen smiled at Tim. "We don't know you. Yucky, yucky, yucky."

"I'm Tim McCarey. And you folks are the famous Friesens who have all those educational cartoon shows on TV." A rival talent agency handled Win Friesen.

"Sure we are," said Mr. Friesen, shaking hands. "And right here with us is Bryan Spoiner himself."

"Oh?" said Tim.

"My radio show is heard on four hundred and twenty-six radio stations across the land, and I have supporters in the halls of government and the shadow of the pulpit, in the penthouse and in the marketplace," said Spoiner. His voice was deep and well thought out.

"Yeah," said Tim, remembering, "you do something called Alarm."

'The Paul Revere of radio," said Mrs. Friesen. "Yucky, yucky, yucky."

"Rather, the Peg Leg Mintosh of radio," corrected Spoiner.

"I'm trying," said Tim, "to place that catch phrase, Mrs. Friesen."

"Mommy is the voice of our best-known cartoon character," said Mr. Friesen. He waited for Tim to supply the name, then finally said, "Alex Ant."

Tim snapped his fingers. "Sure, I should have got it at once."

"Yucky, yucky, yucky," said Mrs. Friesen, "that's what Alex Ant says."

"Mommy is Benny Bird, too." "Tweetle twee," said Mrs. Friesen. "And Doctor Dog." "Bowwow, bowwow."

"I'll escort you to your seats," said Laura, getting both the Friesens by an elbow.

"A dedicated couple," said Spoiner. "They earned twenty-six million last year." He shook hands and headed for the review stand.

Tim put his hands back in his pockets and watched the fog thinning away over the parade ground. "Arf," he said.

Clement Belgraf arrived about a half hour later. His green-and-silver uniform seemed brand-new. He had a splendid gold-lined cape over his shoulders and his helmet was gold-plated.

Tim was in a folding chair toward the back of the stand. He had looked over his shoulder for Carrie so often that his neck was stiff. The girl hadn't shown up.

"Tell them to drag it farther away," Clem was saying to Laura. Moog's horse was still asleep and it had moved some out of the jungle as it tossed and snorted.

Two dozen people were on the stand now. There was even the acting mayor of a small beach town. Among the other visitors was Handy "Call Me Cousin" Hotch, who ran a religious robot crusade out of Tijuana, Mexico. When he'd introduced himself to Tim, he'd given him a free transistor radio with decal pictures of the 12 android apostles on it. Tim counted and could find only nine of them. Sitting next to him was Sonny Boy Baylight, the former child star. He told Tim he had created a special tap dance in honor of Clem. Sonny Boy was about 40, still curly-headed and freckled. He was a greeter in a Hawaiian delicatessen in Orange County, his movie career long behind him.

The parade itself began smoothly, only four minutes behind schedule. First on the field was Clement Belgraf's marching band. It had 20-some members, and for some reason, half of them played French horns, but the march tune, which Sonny Boy Baylight whispered he'd contributed some notes to, sounded not too bad. As the band marched around, a float rolled out of the jungle. This consisted of a heroic-sized representation of Clem himself, with one paw shielding his eyes, looking vigilantly to the future, and his other on a large cannon. It was all modeled out of California poppies and red carnations. Jack Moog's horse woke up when the band passed him. He raised his head and gave a high-pitched neigh, then galloped for the float. The jeep that was pulling the thing swerved. Tim saw now that the jeep driver was Audie Sayers. Everybody had been sprung from the stockade to participate in the festivities.

Sayers was watching Fred the Wonder Horse, and this
caused him to drive straight into the first wave of marching
infantry. Two privates cartwheeled upward as Sayers hit the
brakes. The float accordioned into the jeep, and Jack Moog's
horse attacked it. .

"Yucky, yucky, yucky," said Mrs. Friesen.

Clem rose up. Laura caught at his arm. He roared and ripped off bis cape. Laura got tangled in it. Clem was on the rail now. He jerked off his boots and threw them and his helmet at the confusion of troops and flowers. "Spoiled, spoiled," he shouted.

Clem went through the musicians first. The air was filled with French homs and plumed hats. The audience had fallen silent and you could hear bones breaking. Clem paused halfway into the band and chucked his uniform. He was bellowing now. "Spoiled it all, spoiled it all."

He got Sayers at last The freckled young man had tried to climb up onto the flower cannon for protection. Clem leaped up on the ruined float and gripped Sayers's shoulders. He flapped him in the air like a dusty rug and then sent him whirling out over the parade ground. Sayers made a loud oofing sound when he hit and then didn't move.

"You, too," said Clem. Fred, the horse, was nibbling poppies off the figure of Clem. The gorilla roared again and jumped on the horse's back.

Jack Moog leaped to his feet and reached for his gun belt. He wasn't wearing it, and he cursed and jumped over the rail.

Fred gave a whinny and began to gallop in tight circles. Clem was pummeling the horse. Fred stopped still and started to buck. The gorilla and the saddle shot free.

"Hold off, mister," shouted Moog as Clem laughed again at the bucking Fred.

Clem spun, waved both hairy arms. He wasn't using words anymore.

"I ain't got much use for a man who mistreats a horse," said the cowboy.

Clem hesitated.

"You're getting too ornery," said Moog. "I reckon I'd best stop payment on that last check I contributed."

The gorilla fisted his paws and brought them up in front of his muzzle. Then he growled and ran off, bounding across the parade ground and into the jungle.

"My God," said Laura, "he'll never come back."

• • •

"Over here," called Laura. She was pacing the low diving board at the end of the glass-enclosed room.

The pool was official size, its water rocking gently, a pale silver blue. The roof was made up of hundreds of panels of green-tinted glass. The glass and the thick border of palms, fems and large-petaled flowers around the water gave the place a hothouse look and smell.

"Your brother back yet?" Tim asked, walking carefully on the mosaic-tile flooring.

Laura had her hair tied back and was wearing a short candy-striped robe. Flicking a cigarette butt into the water, she said, "No." She swayed at the very edge of the board. "That's not unusual, really. He was quite upset by the fiasco of the parade review. It's likely he simply wants to be alone to think."

"Uh-huh," said Tim. He sat on the footrest of a white wicker lounge chair. "Why'd you send for me? Do you have some more work you'd like me to handle?"

Wind rattled the glass panes and the shadows of large leaves hit the glass roof. "Swimming helps me unwind, Tim. I hoped you'd join me. If you want trunks, there's a bathhouse back in the hall there." She pointed at a black alcove.

"Suppose Clem doesn't come back?"

Laura wound her hands around the cord of her robe and pulled it tighter. "I told you he was very temperamental. Don't get the idea he's going to stay out in the jungle running wild forever."

"Isn't that what you're afraid of?"

Laura undid the cord and the robe swung open. "Fm beginning to think that the mess on the parade ground wasn't entirely an accident."

Tim watched her moonlit stomach. "You think Moog's horse was a dupe?"

Laura slipped out of the robe, bounced once on the board and knifed into the water.

A cockatoo walked across the roof.

Laura surfaced at the other end of the pool, tossing her head and sputtering. She vanished again and in a moment was climbing out, up the brass ladder. "Are you wondering whom I suspect of sabotaging the ceremonies?"

"No," said Tim.

Laura hugged her slick stomach and sucked her cheek. She walked by Tim and moved, very straight, onto the board. She bent and retrieved the robe, which was hanging with its arms almost in the shimmering water. Tossing her head again, she said, "I've almost got you figured out, McCarey."

Metal groaned. Tim glanced up and saw a giant shaggy cross on the glass. "Clem's watching," he said.

"He is back," said Laura, hurrying into the robe. She tied it with a lopsided bow. Cupping her hands, she called, "Clem, Clem, meet me in my room. I'll be there in a minute."

The gorilla hesitated, then snaked slowly across the roof and was gone. "Think he'll meet you?"

Laura ran back onto the tiles. "Yes, he's back to stay now. Whenever he comes looking for me, I know he's back to stay. He can get right into my bedroom window from the roof here. I'll see you tomorrow, Tim." She ran into the dark alcove.

A square of glass toppled from the ceiling and immel-manned down to the water. It balanced on the surface for an instant and then sank.

On his way back to the cottage, Tim stopped to watch a marmoset. The small woolly monkey was sitting on a black wrought-iron chair. It gave Tim a sad grin, revealing that most of its teeth were gone.

"He's quite old."

Tim turned and Carrie caught up with him. "Not as old as Moog's horse," Tim said, taking the girl's hand.

"I heard about all that." She smiled.

"How come they didn't let you come to the parade?"

"Laura seemed to think there was lots of work to get out of the way. They just turned me loose now."

"Clem finally came back," said Tim. "Want to leave with me? Right now?"

"I told you, I can't."

When they reached the door of her cottage, Tim said, "Tell me why."

"Questions, questions," Carrie said. "Sorry."

She pushed into the cottage. "Tim." He stepped into the dark room. "Yes?" Pressing close against him, holding hard, she finally said, "This is one of those nights when I get frightened." "I'll stay."

Carrie laughed. "I was hoping you would."

• • •

Her knees were drawn up, warm against his side. Her hands were cupped on his shoulders. "We were about to be married," Carrie was saying in a husky, early-morning voice. "It was a cathedral, sort of, except much smaller and covered with vines and hollyhocks. I remember a gargoyle all tangled in honeysuckle." He felt her smile against his ear. "It really is handy being able to tell you these dreams almost as they happen."

His eyes were still partly closed. "Get to the wedding gifts. What did we amass?" The day outside the girl's cottage was a pale, cold white.

"In the middle of the wedding, the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 happened. I thought it was a lousy time for that."

Out among the birdcalls and animal cries, there was the jangle of spurs, and booted feet. Tim swung out of bed. "Troops coming this way."

Carrie stretched and shrugged. "They're probably practicing for the next parade."

A fist pounded on the outside door of Carrie's cottage. "Are you awake, Miss Donner?" called one of Clem's soldiers.

Carrie looked at Tim. "Am I?"

"Better check out what they want." He dressed fast, fireman fashion.

"Yes," said Carrie, searching the bedroom for a robe. She raised her voice. "Yes, I'm awake. It's nice of you to ask." "We've come to arrest you."

Carrie was half into a lace-trimmed robe. "Too fancy for getting arrested in." From a closet she reached down a faded terry-cloth kimono. "What for?" she said to the door of the next room.

"Treason, Miss Donner. Better hurry up, now."

"Let's not stall anymore," said another, angrier voice.

"Even if it is treason, Jay, we still have to be polite."

A harsher pounding started on the door. "Come on out— now."

"Damn it," said Tim. He moved to the bedroom door. "I'll stop them."

"No," said Carrie, "this is probably just some prank of Laura's. Stay in here."

"And hide under the bed?"

"It's all hatboxes under there," she said. "Please relax." Somebody began kicking the front door in. "Coming," said Carrie. She ran from the bedroom, closing the door between her and Tim.

He hesitated against it, listening.

"I have to read this to you, Miss Donner."

"Well, OK."

"I bet you deliberately opened the door while my foot was stuck through it," said the angry soldier.

"Stop hopping around, Jay, so I can read."

"Let's just drag her off. The hell with formality."

"You should really get your foot loose first," said Carrie.

"Shut up," said Jay. Wood splintered. "There goes my best boot."

"To whom it may concern," began the other soldier. "That's me, I guess," said Carrie.

"You keep interrupting and I'll knock you down," said Jay.

Tim tightened his hand over the bedroom doorknob.

"To whom it may concern," repeated the first soldier. "It is hereby and henceforth declared, taking into consideration due process of civil procedures, that the following person, Carrie Jane Donner, is to be taken into custody at once. The charges against said Carrie Jane Donner being treason in the form of deliberate sabotage against an important parade and its attendant ceremonies."

Tim hadn't known Carrie's middle name until now.

"That's silly," said Carrie. 'Tell Laura I'll be up for work after I have some breakfast."

"This is serious, Miss Donner."

"I warned you," cried Jay. There was the sound of a harsh slap.

Tim yanked the door open and ran for Carrie. Jay, a wide, close-cropped blond young man, hit her across the face again, then ducked and bent her over his shoulder.

"Hey," said Tim. His voice was low and calm, not at all his. "Hey, you son of a bitch." He made a dive for Jay. On the cottage doorstep, just into the warming morning air, a rifle butt slammed into Tim's face, once in his chin and again, as he tottered, against the side of his head.

• • •

Several macaws were picketing him. Tim lifted his head and they scattered.

From across the way, a voice said, "Feeling better?"

Tim felt his face. There was dried blood on the left side, a swelling on the right. "I suppose, Dr. Jackstone. Have you examined me while I was knocked out?"

"Haven't had a chance, Tim," said the plump doctor. He was hefting a large packing case through the doorway of his cottage. "You were not dead or seriously hurt; I knew that from the way you were sprawled." He dropped the case inside.

"Aren't you eager for patients anymore?" Tim rolled over from his stomach to his back.

'The hassle yesterday was a bonanza. Besides," said Dr. Jackstone, gesturing at the five large cardboard cartons reigning in his doorway, "I've got all this to uncrate. As a matter of fact, I may have ruptured myself lifting that last one. That would be interesting."

"How many were injured yesterday?" Tim dug in with his elbows and managed to sit up, his stomach whirring.

"A good half dozen." Jackstone trotted over to Tim. "I dashed over here from the infirmary to get these samples out of the way."

"Samples?" Tim masked his eyes for a moment, taking deep breaths.

"Brought in yesterday. One of Clem's supporters is in the wholesale-drug line. Now and then I get a wonderful array of new drugs." He studied Tim a moment. "Any history of malaria in your family?"

"No," said Tim, "why?"

"A shame," said the doctor. He scratched his crinkly white hair. "Being in the jungle like this, I keep hoping for a malaria case. Breaks my heart to think that I now have a whole gross of candy-flavored malaria pills and no one to use them on."

"You could talk a mosquito into biting you."

"They shun me, the rascals." Dr. Jackstone tugged Tim to his feet. He gasped, then chuckled. "Yes, I think I do have a nice rupture coming along."

"Congratulations." Tim blinked. "Do you know where they took Carrie?"

'To the big house, I imagine. I was in my office unpacking syringes when the troops carried her off." He shook his head. "Don't be discouraged. Many romances have impediments strewn in their paths."

"How many of those troopers do you think I could tackle in the shape I'm in?"

"About as many as you could before," said the doctor. He crossed and sat on a carton. "My advice is to go through channels." He fogged his stethoscope with his breath and rubbed it on his left buttock.

"Was it Clem's idea to arrest Carrie?"

"I would imagine Laura had something to do with it," Dr. Jackstone said. He spread his legs so that he could read the lettering on the crate he was sitting on. "She's taken a liking to you. Look at this, a whole case of children's vitamin pills shaped like biblical animals. That's fascinating."

"I don't have a concussion or anything, do I?" said Tim. It was easier to stand now.

"Do you feel as though you did?" Dr. Jackstone's eyes lit hopefully.

"No," said Tim, "but, then, I've never had one before."

"Take it easy today. See me tomorrow if you think you're really in serious trouble physically." The doctor slapped his knees and jumped off the box. "I have to get back to work, Tim. If you should develop a severe cough, which I hate to admit isn't too likely, I got in some nice fruit-flavored codeine."

"Thanks," said Tim. He walked into the jungle. "P^st!"

Tim jumped back.

A figure detached itself from the shadows. "It's me, Audie Sayers."

"I thought you were a snake," Tim said. "What's up?"

"I've found a way out of here," Sayers said. "Part of the wall is broken, and I'm leaving tonight. I thought you might want to go with me."

"I can't," Tim said. "Would you deliver a message for me though?"

"Sure. Where?"

"To Conglobe. I can't seem to reach the outside world, probably because the Belgrafs don't want me to. Do you have a pencil?"

Sayers fished in his jacket and produced a ball-point pen and some paper. Tim hesitated briefly, then began writing as fast as he could. "Harvey: Better start looking for another jungle. Will explain when I see you."

Finishing, he folded the paper and addressed the outside.

"Sure you don't want to come along?" Sayers asked, putting the message in his jacket.

"I've got some unfinished business here. Good luck."

Sayers melted into the shadows and Tim waited until the sounds of his retreat had faded.

• • •

Carrie was being kept in one of the attic rooms of the main Belgraf house. At least that was where the half-dozen green-and-silver-uniformed men who had carried her off were standing guard. The ceilings were sharply pitched here and the men had to hunch. When one of them shuffled, his bayonet made a dusty arc on the plaster.

The sparsely chinned lieutenant who had led the arresting group shook his head when he noticed Tim approaching. "Sorry about the roughhouse," the soldier said.

Tim had been roaming the house for several minutes. He hadn't gotten around to cleaning up his face and clothes. "I want to see Miss Dormer."

Jay, the wide, blond one, started to lunge. His bayonet inscribed a line on the wallpaper and then entangled with a defunct gas lamp. "You and your aspersions," he said, bobbing his head out of the way of the scattering glass fragments of the lamp.

"No visitors," said the lieutenant, blocking Tim's way, "without written permission."

Jay quivered and the lamp debris fell away from him. He scooted around the lieutenant and grabbed at Tim. "Interloper," he said.

Tim stepped carefully back and then swung his foot up and kicked Jay, a technical sergeant, in the crotch.

"That's not--------- " began Jay. Then he gave a half spin and

sat down on the Persian rug.

"I didn't expect so much violence when I joined this army," said the lieutenant. "You'd best go seek out Miss Belgraf or Mr. Belgraf if you want to talk to the prisoner, sir."

"Comer boy, street arab!" said Jay.

"Nobody'd better touch Miss Donner again," said Tim, "at all." He turned and went back downstairs.

• • •

"Permission denied," said Laura.

Tim had found her on the second-floor landing. She was wearing a pair of green jodphurs, black boots and a green silver-trimmed blouse. "Where's your riding crop?" Tim asked after she'd refused to let him talk to Carrie.

"I broke it over someone's head."

He leaned back against an eagle-head newel post. "Look, I'm being helpful, working on the propaganda with you. Let Carrie loose, huh?"

"A lot of people think treason can't happen," said Laura. Her nostrils were flaring. "It does, though."

"You know there wasn't any treason involved yesterday. Clement lost his temper. The rest of it was a simple result of his troops not being very well trained," Tim said. "He's getting more and more violent. It has nothing to do with Carrie —or with any conspiracy."

The girl looked away from him, brought her hand down against her thigh as if she were still carrying the riding crop. She descended to the first floor. "That isn't so."

"I want to see her," Tim repeated, following.

"You can't." She spun to face him. "You'll find out, McCarey, that sleeping with somebody doesn't give you any proprietary rights over her."

"Oh, so?"

"And if you continue in this negative mood, I really think you won't be of much use to us"—she grinned a sharp-edged grin—"nor we to you, as far as the jungle goes."

"Come on, Laura," said Tim, "turn her loose."

"There will be a trial," she said. "Uncle Vincent is mapping it out right now. It is rolling on inexorably. You'll see, McCarey."

"Where's your uncle, in his study?"

"I won't tell you."

Tim took her arm. "Where?"

"He moved outside because things were so hectic with prisoners and all. He's in Clem's old playhouse. That's out back some quarter of a mile," she said. Pulling free, she added, "You won't stop it, I guarantee you that, McCarey."

Tim stepped back. "Yes, ma'am," he said. He left the house.

A brass Humpty Dumpty teetered on the thatched roof of the old playhouse. The sharp wind nudged Tim toward the redwood door. He knocked on it just under the rabbit-head knocker as a swirl of eucalyptus leaves rattled against the cottage. Looking out of the unshuttered part of the nearest window was a giant stuffed panda. "Mr. Belgraf," Tim called, knocking again.

"I'm in conference." The old man seemed to be right

behind the gingerbread grille on the door. "By yourself?"

"There's no precedent as to the number who can attend a conference," said Vincent Belgraf. "Shuttlecock v. Bales proved that."

"I want to talk to you right now."

The wind gave Humpty Dumpty another shaking. After a moment, the playhouse door creaked inward. "I'm becoming quite an expert on jurisprudence," said Belgraf.

Tim stepped inside and a shepherd's crook fell over in front of him. "It's about Carrie," Tim said.

"Bopeep," said the old man, stopping.

"What?"

Belgraf retrieved the staff and leaned it against a giraffe-shaped hat rack. "This was part of Clement's Bopeep set. It's hard to imagine him with long golden hair and a dozen stuffed sheep, isn't it?"

"I've never tried." Tim followed Belgraf into a low, octagonal room. In the center was a short-legged, round chil-dren's-size table piled with papers and law books. Around the edges of the room were tumbles of toy cars and planes and stuffed animals: lemurs, rabbits, bears, elk, marmosets, dalroations, kangaroos, lady bugs and bats. "I think this trial idea has to stop."

"You can't simply stop a trial," said Belgraf, pushing a velvet teddy bear off a wicker chair and sitting down in it. "They tried that in the case of Boatwright v. Boatwright. Look what happened to Boatwright."

"Which Boatwright?"

'That's immaterial," said the old man. 'Treason is trea-son.

"And law is law. You can't hold a trial here."

"I hope you're not suggesting we hold it someplace else," said the old man. "No, no, they're always up to something on the outside."

"I'm talking about Carrie Donner. I want her turned loose now."

"People aren't turned loose in treason cases, McCarey. Was Roger Casement turned loose? No, he was stuck in the Tower of London. Never trust a queer Irishman, anyway."

"Mr. Belgraf," said Tim—he had to squat down to be on eye level with the old man in his children's chair—"you aren't really a judge or even a lawyer. No one is, here."

"Don't have to be, in a military trial," said Belgraf. "Did you know, McCarey, that the court of Ogadai Khan was rife with treason? To say nothing of the situation with Kuyuk Khan and Mangu Khan." He pointed one thin finger upward. 'Thirteenth Century China can teach us many things."

"Let me suggest," said Tim, holding on to himself, "a change of venue. Hold the trial someplace else."

"I haven't come to that, whatever it is, yet in my reading. But, I repeat, anything that suggests going outside is not apt to turn my fancy."

Tim straightened up and moved back. The wind slammed
a shutter, and a stuffed plush rat fell at Tim's feet He
stepped over it. "Listen------------ " he began.

"I really have to get going on the floor plan for the courtroom. We're going to do over the spare ballroom—I don't recall you've ever been there, since we haven't had a ball since your arrival—for the occasion." He lifted a felt marking pencil off a marble-covered book.

Taking two deep breaths, Tim said, "OK, fine."

He strode into the hallway. He heard the shepherd's staff fall over again as he slammed the door and ran into the jungle to see Clem.

• • •

Steam spun out of the not quite closed bathroom door. "Clem," said Tim, stopping in the center of the gorilla's bedroom. "Clem," he said again, louder.

The shower was running high and made hail sounds on the stall panels. Clem was singing, Rodgers and Hart songs, it sounded like. The steam fogged the bedroom windows, graying the day outside.

Tim kicked the door open and said, "I want to talk to you."

'Thou witty, thou grand," Clem sang. His voice slowed down into silence. The shower stopped. The part of the stall door with dolphins etched on it slid open. "Well, Tim, you're really getting to be one of the family." His big mouth made a wide grin. "A general always has time for his people, though. Yes?"

Tim dropped the lid down on the toilet and sat. The seat cover had appliqued tulips on it. "Very simple," he said, "I want you to let Carrie go."

The gorilla stayed in the shower, dripping, his eyes watching Tim through the opening. "That's always a possibility," he said. Steam was rising from his damp fur.

Tim said, "Meaning ... ?" There was a thick smell of pine cones in the white-tiled room.

"There is a possibility Carrie will be acquitted. Not that treason trials come out that way much. Still, it could happen." He hunched one shoulder, shivered. "Hand over my robe, will you?"

Tim glanced at the terry-cloth robe hanging from the handle of the medicine cabinet. Steam had brought out a large, flat handprint on the mirror. "You know damn well that not you or anyone else here is qualified to pass judgment on Carrie."

"To lead an army, to rule a nation," said Clem, "requires a lot more ability and chutzpah than handing down a verdict on one untrustworthy secretary." He swung out a paw and grabbed the bathrobe. "Carrie isn't even a very good typist, if you come right down to it. Did you know that?"

Tim said, "You knew her before, didn't you?"

The gorilla hopped out of the stall, making a breast-stroke motion as he got the robe on. His teeth slowly grew more visible. "Before what?"

"Before she came to work here."

Clem tied the cord. "I'd have to check personnel records."

Tim noticed now that the gorilla was wearing a red rubber shower cap on the back of his head. "You knew her in Los Angeles or someplace. You do have some kind of hold on her."

Clem started for the medicine cabinet. His wet feet made a squeegie sound and he began to fall. He grunted and caught at the sink. The sink grated and came halfway off the wall. Clem grunted once more, righted himself. "I'm tired of being a nice guy with you. Go away. There's going to be a trial and Carrie is going to be taken care of, Tim." He snapped the cabinet door open and pawed out a green squeeze bottle of deodorant. "She'll more than likely sink. Don't get pulled down with her."

Tim lowered his head for a second. He stood then. Not speaking, he left the bathroom. The deodorant bottle hissed twice.

Tim crossed the bedroom carefully.

In the hallway, he said quietly, "God damn." He nodded to himself.

Out in the late afternoon, he headed for the arsenal.

Tim found it difficult to sneak up on the arms supplies. Several dozen men were gathering around the plain board shack. Halting, Tim was about to backtrack when a soldier called to him, "Hey, McCarey."

"Huh?" It looked like Corporal Wilkie, the one who'd gone through the window at the dinner party.

"Want to join a revolt?" asked the corporal, moving through the twilight to Tim.

"What's your first move?"

Wilkie narrowed an eye. "You haven't said you're on our side yet."

"I came down here," said Tim, "to steal a rifle. They've got Carrie Donner locked up in the big house. I want to get her out."

Wilkie nodded. 'That's as good a place to start as any. We'll save her. A nice girl, I think, though cold in some of her dealings with the noncommissioned. After that, we'll roust Clement."

A group around the arms-shed door gave a cheer. The room had been successfully broken into. "How about the guys who are loyal to Clem?" asked Tim.

"The officers mostly and a couple of dozen bleeding hearts. That's why we have to hurry. By now, they've sneaked up to the big place to warn everybody."

Rifles and ammunition were passed around. The rifles ran out before Tim's turn came up. He got a .45 automatic, but

no ammunition.

During the first moments of the siege, Vincent Belgraf manned a machine gun on the front porch. After Wilkie's army shot away most of the gingerbread trim several yards around him, old Belgraf ducked inside. For all the shooting, no one had hit him.

Wilkie tried to convey their request for the release of Carrie under a flag of truce. From a second-floor window, Colonel Granger shot the flagpole out of the corporal's hands with a squirrel gun, causing Wilkie to discard the conventional rules.

"We'll have to seize the place and drag everybody out," said Wilkie.

"Carrie could get hurt."

"You can't call all the shots in a war."

After 15 minutes, most of the men who'd made it to the big house to defend Clem and the Belgrafs had given up. Wilkie's side wasn't accurate in its marksmanship but the soldiers were all persistent.

Dusk blacked down to night. Firing was not being returned from the old Victorian house much at all now. Tim had spotted Laura up in one of the towers. She had a revolver but only used it intermittently.

A roar of triumph went up and two score of Wilkie's men stormed the front steps.

"Come on," said Wilkie.

"Hey," called a private, "he's ducking out the back." "I'll get Clem," said Wilkie, not joining the main charge on the house.

Tim hesitated. He heard Carrie's voice cry out from around the side of the house. He trotted along with Wilkie.

• • •

Fragments of stained glass blossomed from the attic. Clem came shooting out onto the shingles of the pitched roof and went skittering along the ridge of the highest gable. His spurs and the ornamental stock of his rifle sparkled in the harsh moonlight.

"Now we'll get the bastard," said Wilkie, swinging his rifle upward.

Tim said, "He's got Carrie," and chopped down with the flat of his hand against Wilkie's arm.

The girl was unconscious, apparently. Clem held her casually in the crook of his arm. As they watched, he went sailing into the darkness. He thudded onto a lower roof, danced a spinning dance across it and then leaped again.

"It's like a damn jungle movie," said Wilkie, lowering his gun.

Clem jumped again, this time from a cupola straight into the jungle. "Damn," said Tim. He began running along the flagstone path that skirted the house.

Wilkie and two dozen other soldiers followed. "Don't shoot the girl," Wilkie told them.

Tim hesitated at the jungle edge. He listened and then heard Clem crashing off to the right. "The playhouse," Tim said.

Tim didn't notice he was winded until he had dropped behind a cluster of bamboo to watch the cottage. Taking a deep breath made him dizzy and he had to catch hold of a spiked bush to keep from tumbling down.

"That's him on the roof," said one of Wilkie's men.

"No," said the former chief, "that's Humpty Dumpty. Don't get twitchy."

"He's inside," said Tim, catching a flash of silver.

Clem smashed out a window pane. A stuffed animal fell out with the broken glass. He began firing.

"Hold off shooting," whispered Wilkie. To Tim he said, "Come on." They began crawling, moving quietly for the back of the playhouse. "This jungle-warfare stuff comes in handy sometimes, huh?"

When they were behind the gingerbread house, they heard Carrie's voice say, "What the hell is going on? Why'd you drag me here?"

Clem's reply was a low growl. "I might need a hostage. You were handiest." His rifle sounded once more.

Wilkie had selected a thin vine and cut off a length. "I've been curious to see if this works or not," he said. He was much more adept in the underbrush than he was in the kitchen. Soundlessly, he located the rear door to the little house. Getting it open, he eased inside.

By the time Tim got into the dark room, Wilkie was spinning over Clem's head. He'd tried to garrote him from behind and it hadn't worked. Clem roared anger. "Get in here," shouted Wilkie.

Clem threw him against the wall, but the stuffed animals cushioned the impact.

Tim hurdled the round table and caught Carrie up. "Come on. Let's get out of here."

Clem's paws got a grip on Wilkie and the corporal yelled.

The front door shattered and a dozen soldiers made for Clem. One of them had grabbed up the hat rack, and he walloped the gorilla over the skull with it. Clem roared and clawed out at the men.

More soldiers had found the place now and they shattered windows and shivered shutters, forcing their way into the playroom. It looked like a lopsided football game as Tim and Carrie left.

He led Carrie away, back toward their cottages. "Do you know where they've stowed my car?"

"There's a garage down near gate F for visitors' cars and such," said the girl. "They probably brought it in off the road and stuck it there."

"We're going to leave. Got much to pack?"

"I can't," began Carrie.

Coming toward them on the path was Laura Belgraf. 'They're hurting Clem, aren't they?" she asked. In her right hand she had a .38 revolver.

Tim and Carrie stopped. "Clem seemed to be on the losing side when we left the playhouse."

"All of them have deserted now. They all went over. Except for Jay, and the others roughed him up." Laura gestured with the pistol. Then, looking beyond them, she brightened. "Clem."

Tim pushed Carrie out of the way and turned.

The gorilla was weaving, swaying into tree trunks, stumbling over vines and branches. He shuffled to a halt a few feet away.

"Clem," said Laura, "where's your uniform?"

The gorilla wasn't wearing anything. He put his arched paws on his chest for a moment, his big head cocked at his sister.

"Don't bother to explain now," said Laura. "We'll get you hidden where they can't find you. I'll bandage up your hurts and you'll be fine. Clem?"

Clem flinched and then made a gutteral sound. He repeated it twice. He leaned, and his hands swept at the path. Glowering, he made the noise again and then loped off the trail and into the jungle.

"He's crossed over for sure," said Tim.

"No," said Laura, "he's simply upset." She bit the knuckles of the hand that wasn't holding the gun and then started after the gorilla.

From the direction of the playhouse drifted Wilkie's voice. "Get some torches."

"The barracks," someone shouted.

Carrie said, "He really is just a gorilla now? Finally."

"I think so."

"I suppose we can leave, then," she said. "Yes, we can leave, Tim."

Far-off flames began to crackle.

Tim swung two suitcases into the trunk of his car; Carrie added a hatbox and three coats.

Smoke was rising above the barracks area; cinders flickered up into the night sky. Carrie slid into the front seat.

Tim pushed the ignition. Nothing happened. "Damn it. Car's been sitting here too long." He jumped out of the car.

"Will it start with a push?" asked Dr. Jackstone, who was hurrying along the path that wound by the garages.

"I imagine," said Tim.

The doctor dropped his black bag against a passion vine. "We'll roll it out of the garage and then down that way to gate F."

"Great," said Tim. "This isn't going to mess up your hernia?"

"I'm betting it will."

As they worked the car slowly out of the garage, Tim asked, "You going to be staying on here? I can give you a ride out."

"Not now," replied the doctor, straining. "I've got a smorgasbord of contusions, gunshot wounds, minor bums and breakages to look after right here. Plus the unique challenge of Clement Belgraf himself."

"He's just about completely a gorilla now, isn't he?"

"Perhaps," said Dr. Jackstone, "though there is always hope."

The car began rolling downhill. Tim leaped in beside Carrie, and in a few yards, the engine whirred on. "Thanks, Dr. Jackstone."

They moved down the jungle road toward the gate in the wall, the sounds of the now-burning main house dropping away behind them. There were no guards now, no sign of anyone as Tim stopped and threw the switch that made the high, thick gate swing inward.

"Eventually . . ." said Carrie when they were on the roadway outside.

"Eventually what?"

"I'll tell you everything in detail," the girl said. "I knew Clement Belgraf before. Before he was this way, back in Los Angeles. He had some things, hidden away, that he sort of used to persuade me to stay on—pictures, actually."

"Later you can tell me," said Tim. He touched her hand. "We'll have to figure something for you to do from now on."

"Besides staying relatively close to you?"

"Besides that, yes," he answered. "And I still have to find
another damn jungle by-------- Hey, what day is this, anyway?"

"I've lost track, too. I'll check the news." Carrie reached over into the back seat of the land car and turned the television set on.

"And this bulletin just now in," said Peg Leg Mintosh. "A very big fire over in San Amaro at the secluded estate of patriot Vincent Belgraf. No word yet as to cause of the fire, but, friends, if you want my opinion...."