	ANOTHER END

	A novel by

	Vincent King


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"THE GREAT WORK": The attempt (partially successful) by "The Race" (qv) to explore "The Galaxy" (qv) at less than the speed of light (Lightspeed). Only the unlimited, unwarranted optimism, of The Race made this attempt conceivable. They were put to the most fantastic consequences and inventions! 

RIDER: The Scouts. The members of The Race who rode the "Probes" (qv) on "The Great Work."


CHAPTER ONE

"HE HEARS! HE HEARS MY SEAM ENDS POPPING! I know he hears my bulkheads crying! HE HEARS! Adamson knows!" The Probe's voice was shrill, urgent. The Probe was in agony. It cried out with its pain.

Perhaps Adamson was mad. Perhaps this approach to the end and edge of matter was the cause. It was an extreme place, beyond reason. Perhaps he was mad.

"He feels the stresses! The heat! The scouring radiations glare. It hurts me! It hurts!"

White-heat billowing flames reached out, touched at the Probe. The energy there... the fatal energy! It damaged the Probe and the Rider knew it and went on.

"He knows! HE KNOWS! HOW CAN WE STAND IT?" The Probe knew the dangers, knew the safety margins, what it could take and what it could not. "He knows it ... and he is singing!"

In still and on. Time-distorting and dimension warped. A round thing suddenly five-sided, square, octagonal and also, somehow, spherical, the displays sudden and haywire. Swooping the Probe swept in, converged nearer, spiral gravity acceleration ending on that sun's surface. "Fearful gravity here! The fearful gathering forces!" All through the baying agony of its structures the Probe screamed in Adamson's ears, warned him and warned him again of what was happening. All in the moaning of its skins, the harsh noises of its distortion, all the time it spoke to Adamson.

"I see Adamson! I watch him! I feel the knotted shaking in his muscles as he holds the overrides!" The probe tasted Adamson's sweat on the handles, metered the blood flow, the Pounding heart. "I measure the flooding adrenaline of anger... ? Of fear?

"OF FEAR! I know he is afraid and he is singing and we go on? I feel him. I know what he feels and I know he is afraid and I know we go on!

"How can you understand a thing like that?"

Then the Photosphere. Adamson drove the Probe down to skim the Photosphere. That miasma heart and heat hell of sun power... he drove the Probe to kiss it.

Made the Probe to flat pebble bounce ducks and drakes on that molten surface of glory!

"He is smiling! Smiling and singing still! He is afraid and I am afraid and he is smiling and I am burning!" Adamson lost consciousness. Possibly the Probe slipped a needle in, drugged him where he sat. Who knows? It doesn't matter much.

He slumped. The cradle grabbed him, wrapped him and shielded him from the forces he had dared. The overrides clicked out.

The Probe kindled its motors, calculated its courses and thrusts, shoved on columns of pure energy to force open the spring spiral of its orbit, escaped the blazing sun maw.

Safe beyond the twelfth planet the Probe gathered itself. It salvaged what might be salvaged, rearranged its distorted structures, its disturbed informations, repaired its ruptured hide, remade its shriveled senses and sensors, its melted antennae. It evacuated its surplus energy and wondered why Adamson should take such risks.

"But why... why? Such danger, such torture? He is not so insane?"

Adamson was also damaged. The Probe mended the broken ribs, the bleeding lungs, the distorted organs.

"It is my purpose to bear him and to protect him, to see to his continuing. With me he could live forever, but he risks it all. He understands that, he does not want to die -- he was afraid, he was hurt! He did not do it for pleasure... he did not enjoy it... yet he risked all...?"

Far... so remote this furthest man, this Rider out into that darkness where all the suns are only stars; where matter is a scattered radiation pattern on the blackest velvet of nothing... where light is a pinpoint hole in the ultimate dark.

Sometimes he existed and sometimes he did not. Once he had a name. Adamson. But that he had long forgotten, it did not matter, not out there toward the edge of matter and the limits of light. He was lost to the memory of his people, he was forgotten, and that did not matter either, not out there, not in that remote there and then, not in that vast drive hard and out into the infinite and the indefinite.

This man then, this Rider, Adamson. He travels, has traveled, all through the spiral of the Galaxy's reaches, always outwards and into the cold. He is at the ultimate summit of the Race's tottering ladder of technology and science. He does not know how far out he has reached, he does not know how far he can go, he does not know everything. Only God knows that... and sometimes he guesses.

Lonely and not lonely, sustained and living in the outward drive of innumerable ages, this Adamson exists - perhaps only exists - in the knowledge and memory tracks of that vast complexity, the enormous consciousness, that is his Star Probe. In one, special, sense he might live forever.

Somewhere, somewhere in the random patterns of existence there was some other intelligence, some other sentience. There had to be.

Men had always known that. It was an article of faith. Without believing, it would not have been bearable to be human, not in that situation. Maybe it would not have been bearable anyway, not to be Adamson.

The Race had believed it. Adamson and the men who had sent out the Probes and Riders had believed it. Hoped against hope as time had passed and Passed. Hoped and believed enough to make and despatch the teeming Probes to fan and scatter into the seething immensity of nothing that is the Galaxy. They sent the Riders as long as there were Probes to go and men fit to crew them. They sent and kept sending for thousands upon thousands of years. Kept on sending until, in the end, the Race forgot how.

That is why the Probe is where it was, that is why Adamson was in it, that is why they were approaching the edge of matter. That is the why of it, the reason for what the Race called "The Great Work." It is why the Probe had been in agony, it was why, now, it rested beyond the twelfth planet considering reasons.

"He is insane," it said sadly. "A matter of existence. Too long from his own kind, too often in the Tank... too long in the empty reaches.

"So he doubts his own reality. He makes himself real with fear and suffering, buries his self-doubt in a flood of animal reaction. Makes himself real with pain. Drowns the doubt in adrenalin. He can tell that he is alive by how much it hurts."

Now that Adamson was unconscious the Probe took its chance. It did what it knew was best for them both. It put Adamson safe where he could do them both no harm. It Jumped him on.

The Probe returned the man to its memories. Dissolved his conscious, deepened his sleep to nothing, sadly watched him writhe and sometimes scream as the shapes and darknesses came contracting in.

Adamson was reduced to his molecules, to the patterns and quantities of his elements, to carefully engraved gene plans on coiled miles of spun fine microwires, written down there in numbers and charges, then stored away in the electronic depths for future use, for when it would be time to bring him back to life and intelligence. It was all there, all of Adamson, nearly indestructible, all the complexity and delicacy, the records of charge and countercharge, the biology, the connections and the chemistry that was Adamson and his consciousness.

"I unravel him," said the Probe softly. "I unravel him again and I will make him again. A matter of precision. What a piece of work is man, my master...

"Or nasty... messy. Depending on how one considers it. Full of guts and corruption, a god and full of that! 

"Foul and fleshy... not pure thought It depends on what you have seen of the Race."

Then the Probe continued on The Great Work, that long and so far fruitless search of the Galaxy. Ten or fifty, perhaps ninety or a hundred light years on, it would bring Adamson from nonexistence to the flesh again.

Then the man would be that much further on; perhaps, the Probe thought, he would have forgotten and be sane again by then. Perhaps he would even be glad, grateful and happy, glad to come back and be further on, a little along into The Great Work.



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DISSOLUTION/RECONSTITUTION TANK (qv) The mechanism by which the Race, being mortal (qv), were able to span almost infinite time (potentially). A bloodyminded curiosity, a barbarity, which shows well the lengths to which men were prepared to go for their ambition, their insane presumption in seeking to know an end. Small wonder that Adamson was mad! (See also "Jump.") How dare they face immortality... eternity?


CHAPTER TWO

So the Probe made its man die again. It was a somber thing for the Probe, a deep moment, fall of solemn dedication and strength, a sonorous act

The Probe looked back on a numberless vista of repeating Dissolutions, all Adamson's endless deaths to cross time. It considered the myriad deaths of the whole race of Probe Riders. Even though there was Reconstitution to follow as light succeeded dark it did not ease the pain, either for Adamson or the Probe.

"But the Riders are almost immortal," said the Probe to itself. "They have enormous power, they enjoy near onminotence through their Probes. In their own eyes they are almost gods... well rewarded for their pains. Why is it sad?

"Highly priced," decided the great machine. "Intermittent life among the myriad deaths. How many times has my Adamson died? How can he stand it? I would not care to die."

Ambition and curiosity. But more than that, a faith... an obsession. An insanity. A racial obsession, "The Great Work." This was the reason for all the vast effort. All the expense, the hardship of worlds and populations to make and send the Probes... all those Riders going out down the long millenia. All that time... and all without hope of knowing results or seeing profit.

"No wonder my Adamson feels unreal... no wonder that he hides in fear and suffering, that he skims suns. My Adamson has spanned more time than his whole Race before him. Of course he is touched by it! Respect him for what he has survived! He is a Prometheus without a god making his own chains... inventing his own eagle to tear his guts!"

The Probe accelerated up. It chanted its satisfaction. "Up and on toward the God-state of Superlight! Toward that blessed time we Probes may one day touch!" They reached the third area of mass paradox, the acceleration slowed as they reached .4 Lightspeed.

The Probe was in its element. "I am in my dimension. My Adamson sleeps inside me. I am a bird here, a fish moving in my deep water and I am happy. I am making my purpose... It only remains to look at the stars..."

It was impossible for the Probe to believe that in all the numbers, in all time, in all the possibilities of chance, that it had only happened once; that life had only once made all the steps of evolution to sentience.

"It is incredible that the Race might he unique! If I had been told I would not believe it." The Probe sniffed at another sterile star system. "I do not believe it anyway!

"Statistically there must he more intelligence. Somewhere... I mean... It is that we have not found it.

"It is right to believe... it was right to believe. It is logical, the Galaxy is too big to be empty.

"Where though? Where? What? There is the race Man made. We Probes... and the robotics. There are other men... the branches, the colonies that have grown so different. There must he others.

"On then!" sang the Probe. "To the Rim! To the outside fringes!

"Somewhere... it must he somewhere!"

The Probe had all the hope of the Race, all the optimism of Adamson when he had been young, in many ways it was very like him even now. Matrix. The Probe was mother to the man. It held the molds to make him from formlessness. The Probe was his cradle... the force that guarded him, loved him. A beautiful relationship. The Probe was made as an extension of Adamson's psyche. In a sense he was its father as it was his mother... it was a circular relationship too.

"On!" said the Probe. "On to the edge of the Galaxy, that verge where the stars end and the Abyss, Metaspace, begins.

"To the ultimate shore of nothing... !"

Eons flowed. Time passed the way it does. Eternity seemed to stir itself... to grow a little older. The slow Galaxy turned a little, moved somewhat from its neighbors, infinity slipped a little by.

The Probe dragged the vast length of its ion trail across that virgin nothing across the emptiness of those dark reaches... across the distant, thin-spread stars.

Then, almost suddenly, the whole spilled brilliance of the Milky Way, the riches there, thick toward the center, then that was all behind them and they had reached the Rim... that edge of possibility where reason topples.

The Probe was undecided. It should Reconstitute Adamson, but it remembered what had happened before. For a while it paused. It thought of the impact on Adamson. For him to suddenly face, to suddenly know the ultimate truth of the Galaxy. To realize itl

"Space, the volume between the stars, that is vast... incomprehensible to a mind like my Adamson's. He cannot think of that darkness... of what it is...

"And now dare to face him with the space between the galaxies!

"Will I measure it?

"There is only the punctuation... the spotted faint radiations of the galaxies. Think what it will be for him to confront that!

"Think what it will be for Adamson to face the final realization that practically everything is darkness! So void! So sterile... to know at last how insignificant the stars really are inside their dust-mote galaxies!"

The Probe was frightened of what Adamson might do. It did not want to risk what might happen at the extinction of his hope. It remembered what had happened last time, how Adamson had entered his last Dissolution. The Probe uneasily thought of skimming more suns.

But Adamson had to be roused. The probe must do for that was its function and the Law. Regretfully, fearfully, it brought him together in the dark green, liquid shadows of the Dissolution/Reconstitation Tank.

Adamson uncoiled his new body. He cracked his joints, yawned, walked on the agony of his stiff legs to the Gallery, to where the Probe had uncovered the crystal domes for him.

In childhood this man had seen the sun rise on the mountains of the moon. He had seen those needle points catch the first white loops of light, seen them shine like white flowers above the cold and dark of Lunar night,

He had stood on the surface of Mars, felt his boots break the thin, rare ice fungi there. He had seen the softcolored glory of Saturn's rings, moved in the knife-edge perfections of their architecture, the beauty of that place. He had seen the moons there, and their shadows on the vastness. Adamson had stood above the beacon station deep in Pluto, on the hard smoothness there, checked an azimuth and found his father sun, almost insignificant in the heavens.

He had seen the richness of the star-banks, where the suns are close apart in mutual orbits, the binary systems, the colored multiples, the space there sodden with radiations, thick with hydrogen vapors and a haze of light.

He had sounded the dust of the Galactic plane, thrilled to the density of the antimatter clouds in the Upper Quarter. He had seen the glory and the diversity, the irregular suns, the pink and gold, the red and blue, the panoply of spectrums, all the glory of matter.

He had seen the planets too. The heartbreak there, the few poor lichens, the airlessness, the dryness, the beauty and the sterility, the thin rudimentary life, the poverty and the desertion. He had seen the abandoned cities, the failure, the places the Race had gone from, the debris of its passage.

Adamson had been around. He had been around and he did not think he could be shocked. He had lived so long and he did not think he could be disturbed. Adamson had seen everything, he had survived it and he had not been too frightened. But now, this time, this Reconstitution, as he staggered, stretched his new limbs, listened to, but did not hear, the statistics babble from the Probe, this time he was shattered.

Standing on the cool, milled metal of the Gallery floor, in the clarity of the domes, his mind reeling, his brain spinning... this time he was petrified.

It was an end. Men, not believing in Gods, had thought they were so themselves. Now it had come home to roost, nature and eternity were revenged on their arrogance.

Now Adamson knew! Now he could read his place in the stars!

"Poor man," said the Probe. "How did he think he could stand it?"

Their orbit was around a small, yellow sun. There was one planet.

"Orbit: four thousand nine hundred sixty point seven eight. Mass: .95 Earth. Atmosphere: nil. Type: 94/D7/RE8/SE5A- Status: sterile." The Probe told Adamson exactly how it was.

"Aren't they all?" Adamson whispered "They all are... we should know that by now."

He stood in the warm sunlight, collected what thoughts he could. He was smiling, but sadly.

A memory of Earth stirred in him. His lost youth, the hope then, the deaths, the lost companionship... the thought of this last sunlight in the darkness brought tears to his cheeks.

The Probe revolved. On the night side, looking out from the sun, it was worse. Adamson could see more clearly.

He could see the edge of the Galaxy. He could see it run away forever.

The edge of the light forest. Spangled, irregular, it led back and down the spiral arm and into the glory, back to the heart of the teeming, sterile richness of matter and energy... he could see all that

To his left was the Abyss. There were lights there too. Some. But separate, impossibly remote...too remote to breathe of.

"Stars, stars," thought Adamson. "Stars are possible, you can grasp the possibility of a galaxy... but not the Abyss. Not that great nothing with galaxies in it. That is not possible. That is not conceivable."

This yellow sun was the last. The furthest. The last end of the Galaxy's farthest arm. There was the one last planet. It was the last place and Adamson was at it.

What next... what was there next? What could a Rider run to after that? Staring at the stars Adamson was hypnotized by the horror they meant to him. "Catatonic," thought the Probe. "What else could I expect...?"

"Perhaps," thought Adamson. "Perhaps, even with all The Great Work, all those eons of search, perhaps we missed something. Possibly we have only scratched the surface. We have seen every star, listened, but how could we be sure there was nothing there? How could we be so sure about something so big... Perhaps... perhaps some report from the far side of the Galaxy. It would take so long to reach us...?" 

But he knew it was hopeless. He knew there was no other sentience. He felt it in his bones and he knew it with certainty.

Adamson turned from the Gallery. The Probe beamed out their last signal. It gathered the information of the last thousand years, compressed it to code, transmitted it in brief repeating blasts on its Lightspeed crawl across the sky.

There was hope in that. Somehow, somewhere, some other Probe, or even on Planet One... someone would hear it. The knowledge that man had failed would get home and if Adamson died it would not. At least he could share the pain.

Also the message might live forever in space. Go on, just go on. Float like a note in some ancient bottle, float for chance finding, possibly, in some remote future, perhaps it might even reach another galaxy. Someone, something, someone else might find it then. When he thought about it there was comfort for Adamson even in that.

He went down and stood on the bone-white rock of the world. Erosion marks, pebbles sunk in dished holes told how there had once been an atmosphere, perhaps even seas. There had been no life, ever. There were no shells in the pockets of dun sand, no complex carbons... Or anything else, not in those rocks. There was only the black sky and the hard sun. Adamson didn't order his Traveler; somehow it seemed more honest to walk that place.

Behind him the Probe hovered, it followed him, gliding and drifting a few feet above its black shadow on the brilliant surface, all the time wondering why Adamson should choose to walk.

It wondered if he was really mad, why he should pursue pain, why the cooling of the man's suit was set so low. Why he made himself stagger with the heat when it was so unnecessary.

Adamson found the place he was seeking.

The rock came up out of the sand, formed a low, rounded hill. Low-domed, almost perfectly symmetrical, granite, smooth, unfaulted, polished by the ancient, long past winds.

All that world's hills were low and smooth, all the valleys were shallow, all half-filled with the gray-yellow sand: "A neutral place," murmured Adamson. "Right... an end in whites and grays... a little ochre... the sky mourning black. A suitable ending."

The Probe still waited, still wondered if Adamson was sane. They had done this before, but each time the Probe puzzled at the things the Race did and wondered if its man was mad.

When Adamson gave the order, the Probe transmuted the usual sheet of silver. The usual triangle, equilateral, a foot thick, of Adamson's own height.

On it they incised the image of man, of a bifurcated creature, with nose and eyes and mouth. All around they engraved the history of the Race, number sequences, pictographs, ideograms of what men were and what they had done. They repeated it all on the back in polarized crystals; and then again in radioactivity. They surrounded it all in a clear diamond pyramid, fused it to the hilltop. It would never move again, possibly it would survive the planet itself.

It was a thoughtful thing, pathetic and kind. A lustrous act among the cold stars. There would be no Rosetta stone for this. Even if there was something - someone to read it, how could they translate it? But it was the thought of it, the faith and hope even in the ultimate failure, that was the thing... if it could only last long enough. The Probe wondered how much good a diamond was in the face of galactic time... of what use was a man-sized pyramid in galactic space?

Adamson boarded the Probe, pleased that he had left his image, his mark there, that he had left the image of the Race living in the light and fire heart of that diamond.

"Not bad... but I wish now I had made the silver thicker... more monumental." He turned away. "Too late for that. It should only be done once, I will not go that way again."

The Probe sighed to itself. It had been done often. Adamson had done it often himself. It was a good thought. A loving thing; the ultimate work of the Race's art and it had been done before and there was no one to find it, no one to decipher it even if that might be possible

But it was beautiful. A thing! Existence - while it survived - was heavy in it. The Probe could see that perhaps that was enough.

Something would happen to it. It was not immutable. In time it would disappear... someday, perhaps long after men were gone. It was finite... as finite as it was incomprehensible. It marked the end of The Great Work...

"It is suitable," said the Probe. "It is suitable... and it is enough too!"



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THE GALAXY. The Milky Way (qv). The star system that was the limit of the Race. It consisted of one hundred thousand million, seven thousand and sixty-two suns or stars (qv).

PAIN: An emotion (qv) or sensation (qv) like "love" (qv).

DRACAENA: An aquatic "plant' (qv).

MAGELLAN, FERDINAND (qv): A sailor, one of the Race.

PROBE: In even considering the venture below the Probe proved as mad as the insane Race that fathered it.


CHAPTER THREE

"Now," said Adamson. "Now I have been everywhere, I have done everything I had to do. I have failed... I have made the final monument, there is nothing else to do."

The Probe stirred uneasy electrons deep in its conscious. Suddenly Adamson made up his mind.

"I will dive into light. This time I will more than skim a sun. I will be part of that golden light forever."

"Wait!" The Probe knew only too well what he meant. "Suns do not last for ever!"

"To be not separate... to contribute to the nondarkness of things... a good end. A sure one."

"No end is a good one!" The Probe was urgent, persuasive. "Think of what you might do yet! The pleasures to know... the satisfactions!"

Adamson shook his head. He was smiling again. He had decided, he took the overrides and drove the Probe for the sun.

The Probe searched its mind. Tried to find a way, an argument, to save them both. There was nothing it could do. '

Will against will they battled in the gathering glare. They were near equals... they were made from each other, they were almost twins, but it was Adamson who held the overrides.

They approached the goldenness... the Probe tasted the terrible heat, heard the thunder of the photons. The great sensors cringed back in the fusillade of energy.

Like a plumb bob. Lake an apple they fell toward that oblivion.

Adamson was screaming that he would not turn aside. That this time he would not skim. That he would broach the surface. Then Adamson was just screaming.

"Agony! This final penalty! Full of pain!" The light of extinction loomed for Adamson. It filled the crystal dome... filled the sky of his existence. "Skin burn! Eyes fade! Blisters burst to dry! AGONY!"

Adamson thinking he cannot think. Feeling the skin stripping from his face... feeling the blood begin to boil in his veins.

All the brilliant dark vistas for Adamson! PAIN! Pain the totality of Adamsonl The dark searing lingering reaches of his death!

"Sleep now... relaxing warmth... only the warm left now the pain all gone the heat ended... oblivion..." Adamson sliding away into comfort... "All I know gone... gone..." Adamson ceasing sure in the knowledge that he would be in that sun forever. Perhaps he was even hoping that the Probe would make a new small spectrum line or two for remembrance.

Adamson, not knowing now, dying dead on his feet, coming blinded from the Gallery. Slithering, colliding among the instruments... his smear trail of burned flesh on those perfections.

Adamson's split lips mouthing curses. Curses on the Cosmos and how he came to leave it... how he came to it. Something small alive in him still, just a little, some lingering hate. Adamson's hate living longest of all! The failure. It was the failure he hated... the failure and the bitter loneliness the Race had found.

He did not need his Oedipus eyes or his half-poached brain. His body knew its way from a million past ages. Trip and bump. Slither and fall across the thresholds, falling at last into the false gravity of the Probe.

Then lying. Lying alone. Shriveled. A reek of burned hair. Charred bone beneath the cracked skin of the forehead. The dry, blinded eyes that could not close. Shriveled and shrived... all hatred gone... even that gone at last.

The Probe quickly extinguished those parts that were still smoking. Adamson charred, stiffening. Not cold yet cooling. The Probe was fighting for its own life... and Adamson, its core, its reason, its man as dead as he ever would be.

"AVOID THIS SUN!" The Probe turned itself, twisted, turned to drive and fight out. "Something still stirs. The heart... a little... but really that means nothing. I cut open, I massage. It can wait.

"Adamson must wait. First things first. Then I will think of what might be done, if anything can be done. Fight out!

"AVOID THIS SUN!

"Yes! Yes... ? What is an intelligence to do?" Power raged, burned at the Probe's tubes. It fought up the energy warps. Straggled there... and all the time a part of its vastness wondered what it could do when its man was dead. "For what purpose... ? What to do and why?

"'The Great Work'... the Race... so pointless. But they did so much!

"So pointless... so doomed to failure... so pointless! But not to the Race. Not to them. Only to my Probe's Logic. To my Adamson it was The Great Work... !" Then the Probe had won. It fought clear; it was a well made machine.

For a long time then it hung in the shadow behind the planet, repairing itself, checking its machinery, thinking what it might do.

"Who will tell me what an intelligence is to do? What will make me real? Tell me what will give me form?" At last the answer came. It would continue The Great Work!

"The Clouds! The outer clouds. The Magellanic Clouds! A thing no man could dare to try!" The Probe's mind leaped up with new enthusiasm. It had its answer. It would go to the Clouds.

It would cross that vast distance, that small isthmus of Metaspace. It had not been done and, man or not, the Probe would do it now. Curiosity would be its purpose, the Race's Purpose would give it form.

"Why?" it questioned itself. "Why risk this? Why wish to enter the deadly negation of the Abyss? Why leave my warm Galaxy, the peopled worlds... the comforting emissions of the stars to visit remote places? I am no man. I have Logic... Why?

"Because, like everybody, like all the Race, I need a Purpose and, I suppose, because they are there ..." It closed its mind to further questioning, checked its reserves and set out.

Vast time passed... ages succeeded each other to dust... the Probe moved in its constant, puny velocity through those great reaches.

There were no stars for energy in Metaspace, no planets to mine, no new materials to replace the Probe's worn parts. Metals changed in those ages, crumbled in that enormous passage of space. In the nearly total lack of data the Probe sank to a stupor, became only a machine crossing space, almost died of inaction.

This time and that time had passed. The Probe reached the Clouds, moved among the first suns. The stimulation of radiations warmed the Probe, it drew fresh power, roused up. It found minerals, transmuted them, remade what had to be remade. It came again, all pristine and new.

It penetrated the new realizations of the Clouds. It was thick with stars there, rich with planets. The Probe tasted them, began that long exploration.

Adamson woke with warm sun in his eyes. Stretching, he remembered crawling from the sea, drying, his skin hardening as he came. There were fringed dracaenas, their blossom like white candy floss against the lagoon. There was sand, white in the sun, long surf beyond the reef, the soft water roar in his ears.

"Yes. Him. Adamson. He was dead. Ashes and a thin smoke pall... but I had time. Oh... how I had time!" The Probe had gathered Adamson, picked up those embers, collected the traces, put them together, fanned them back again to life.

A simple thing to the Probe. It contemplated the man, saw that what it had done was good.

"Easy. He was destroyed and I made him again from my remembering of last time. Now he must rebuild his consciousness as I rebuilt his body... I will let him rest a little."

Adamson was in the surf. He swam and plunged, buffeted in the waves. Fingers of coral swirled past him in galaxies of bubbles. Somehow something? There was an uncomfortable echo there. Intangible. He soon forgot in his sea of green-fringed mysteries.

There were only the waving weeds, the brilliant fishes below, the effervescence of the turning water. It stung him, stimulated him, he was flooded with the taste of gasping breath, he soon forgot what he had almost remembered.

"These Magellanic Clouds, are they sterile too?" The Probe continued its exploration. Time was not a thing it was constructed to waste, even while there was so much of it.

"Coarse sand and shells." Adamson felt the wet straggle of hair across his forehead, saw the salt water dry white on the golden brown of his forearms. He studied a limpet.

"It dries and dies so quickly..." Again there was that uncomfortable echo, that passing feeling of some unremembered horror. But the sun was so beautiful, Adamson slept again... if, indeed, it was Adamson...

If, indeed it was a man at all. This time he was so completely made by the machine.

Adamson continued on the sunny beaches, in the surrounding green coolness of the woods. He did not know or care if, perhaps, the Clouds were empty... if, perhaps, he was possibly not a man.

The Probe reached all through the Clouds.

"I will find someone, the Clouds can't be empty too! They must not be! Think of their size! Couple that with the Galaxy... could they all be empty? It would not be possible!"

And Adamson was getting fat, paradise suited him. Time seemed slow to him, ideal. But he was becoming discontented, he had found something missing... Perhaps he was missing the pain of being really alive.

Adamson, uncertainly walking in the woods, looking for something he had never seen. Wondering what it might be, only certain that something was missing.

Then, one day, through the trees, on the beach, by a drift of perfect white pebbles, there was the girl. "Someone... she is what I was missing. I can almost see her... Partly... there was never a time when she wasn't there.

"Blonde... partly dark... a rich fairness. Brown, rounded skin... white, white teeth." When she moved Adamson could see her body stir under the white dress. He knew her name was Laura.

There were others too. He knew they were there, he sensed them now. They were too far to see, match stick figures, faces smudged in the distance. He could see them best by not looking directly at them.

"I think with the comers of my mind. When Laura is close I only partly see her... all from the comers of my eyes." He knew she was perfect, he tried to see her more, but she was always gone. He became aware that he had been ill, that there was something that was very bad behind him.

"Then the girl, my girl, standing at the edge of trees. Face, round arms dappled with sunlight. She beckons, of course I must follow." He hurried, but he was no closer. "I know her... I have never seen her face. I know time has passed... I should really be somewhere else...? There is work somewhere..."

Then, somehow, the trees were buildings. The girl was still ahead and there had been no transition. No passing of foliage to streets, rather what had been trees were now buildings... He turned, there were only streets, only the pale beauty of sodium lamps, the occasional punctuation of neon brilliance. Adamson wondered if, possibly, he had slept while he walked. He followed his Laura like a small dog.

Somewhere the Probe was still searching, still scanning, still following the quest of all its life and days.

"How I desire something to show my man! Something to give him... a gift to sustain him... some new discovery to sustain us both... "

The Probe was in the Lesser Cloud, it had found nothing it had not seen a million times before. There was only information, no life, of itself information couldn't matter less... there was nothing being done with it. There was still no sentience, and even the information was stale.

"Oh yes, I have had girls," Adamson told himself. "The tall and short, the fat and slender, all the pleasures in between... this isn't new to me, I shouldn't be disturbed."

When he had been young there were people everywhere. On Earth, on the planet of his birth, on all the settled planets, Adamson had known it all. Once, later, he had traveled three hundred light years with a girl Probe Rider. A Scout, like himself. They'd met in space, a colossal coincidence which had seemed significant at the time, later they had parted.

"Twenty thousand years ago. I wonder does she ever think of me?

"But Laura is different. A Queen of light, a Princess, I would never leave her. Sometimes her hair is golden, I want her with me all the time... I want... I want to get near her. Some things I've got to tell her, all about that highlight on her hair... "

She was delight to him, a torture on the periphery of his vision. She was the sweet water of Tantalus and he loved her.

Adamson sometimes cried. He had been too long without company... too long alone, too long without it. Perhaps he had begun to crack again, becoming mad once more. He began to doubt his sanity, perhaps it was that the Probe thought-knew-that it was not good for men to have all they wanted all the time.

"Empty. Always and always and around the next corner, the last few light years on. Always the promise of tomorrows, never the hope for today.

"All this Cloud. All this last place... this small galaxy... is all this empty too?" Slowly, alone in the darkness, slowly the great Probe was losing faith, slipping into despair.

Once he almost thought he could touch her. But then she seemed to smile and was gone. She was always beyond him, slipping out as he reached up.

"This curious world. Sometimes fast and sometimes slow... sometimes there are new things, sometimes infinity drags by between coffee at eleven and luncheon on the grass." Adamson was aware of a curious terrain of time, an unreliability of pace.

"Scented things, flowers, small animals moving at my feet. I see cities and buildings too... the people do not look at me. I watch change. The rise and fall of empires and civilizations. Like a dream place... as if I had been ill... Laura.... I hope it will never end." Reality and dreams, the stuff dreams are made of turned in Adamson's head, he saw that he could not see where one ended and the other began. It seemed like a step forward.

"I learn from what they do, but it is all like shadows. I call, they never answer. Perhaps they are the ones that are dreaming. Anyway it is the girl I want, she smiles sometimes... I think she knows I am here, when I reach she disappears. There is nothing for me and I want it." 

Then, one day, any day, some day, they were all the same, Adamson was watching gulls soar in the updraft along some great cliff. He envied them, free, with nothing much to think about. He began, subconsciously at first, to imagine what it would be like to be one of them. The thought strengthened, became conscious. More deliberately he began to project himself into their world, to imagine their feeling and strength.

Suddenly he was with them.

"Soaring! The thrust of air under my wing arms, the ruffle of feathers near the stall, the pull of heavy muscles across my chest! One of them... beating down the fields of rising air... along that rock face, the small plants there, the lime-white droppings... out in the sun and over the wind!"

The thought broke and it was over. He was on the beach. The gritty sand... salt, cold water gushed between his toes. Adamson saw the girl farther down the beach. over mirror-wet sand. 

"Through the milling gulls, she waves at me from beyond the haze of spray!"

He willed it. Made that unconscious/deliberate effort. He forced her to come nearer, to take form. Each thrust of imagination brought her nearer across the beach.

"Rounded... but pointed breasts... slender neck, the strong, long legs. The arch of those brows, the particular clarity of that tanned skin!" He held her in his mind, she kept on coming. "The specific color of those lips, the smile in the way she holds her mouth... that mole on her shoulder, the down on her arms..."

Then they were together splashing and embracing, struggling to keep their feet in the surge of the waves, the sand shift, the rattling pebbles in the backwash.

"So long," she shouted. "It took so long!" Adamson said he would love her forever.

"I understand the game of this world," he told her later.

"A matter of will, of creation. It's what, you make it, what you make of it. You can do anything, be anything you please. All you need is the will and the imagination." "The love," said Laura. "All you need is the caring."

They danced. Splashed in the haze and surf rainbows, the kaleidoscope of spray. There was music from somewhere, Adamson thought he could hear applause.

The full paradise now. Everything that he could want. Adamson willed a cottage and they loved in it, they were happy.

Then he made a penthouse in the heart of a rich city. Always Adamson with his Laura and the sun always shining.

"Sometimes Phidias drops in, or Will Shakespeare, or Gargantua, or others as intelligent. Once I invited Casanova, but he tried to make Laura in the kitchen while he demonstrated ragout. Sometimes the streets were fields of wheat, sometimes they were green for springtime, There was sculpture, theaters and beautiful people moving."

Sometimes they trundled down country motorways in a lovely old Morgan, enjoyed the clean ride in the perfumed air, then came home under some orange, pregnant harvest moon.

"I model it all on what I know of the mid-twentieth century. On the Paleospace age - when they had touched the Moon and thought they were good - on that happy time when all men were kind and believed in things and everyone was happy." It was a good time for Adamson, for a long while he pushed the gathering doubt from his mind and was contented.

Then it was darker. Clouds formed on Adamson's horizon. Slowly he realized he was unhappy.

"Laura... slowly she slips away, blurs, moves to the corners of my eyes."

Processions passed. Adamson saw great armies. He saw ships, the red glare of rockets, bridges built in unlikely places, dams and structures, all the panoply of man, all the glories of the Race as they clutched out for the impossible.

"I see all that and I mistrust it. As I now mistrust the Princess Laura. I love her too much, it is too good, she is too perfect." Adamson began to wonder how far he was allowed to go in his freedom of creation.

"Could I throw myself from this penthouse ledge? Would I fall, would I die? Or would angels catch me?" He teetered on the sill. "Seventeen storeys." The sun, reflected in the lagoon down there, glared in Adamson's eyes. He sensed that old uneasy echo of something past.

"She is not real enough!" He hated Laura and he loved her. Anger came. He turned from the window. There were sunbursts in his head.

Laura was in the corners of his eyes and smiling there. She said something. She was concerned for him and it tore his heart. 

He was at the desk. He dragged open the drawer. Too far... it crashed on the floor, broke. Papers tumbled and something heavy too. He churned in the papers. "What I want is strong and real and fits well on my hand!" Adamson did not care to remember too clearly what it was.

"I bring it up! Will Laura in close. Focus her central in my eyes!" He handed her the bouquet he had in his hand.

It was not what he had intended and yet it was. She smiled and accepted the flowers, there were tears in her eyes.

"Start again. I open the drawer, deliberately I bring up the glove blaster and shoot her down!" The first two charges bloomed to red roses but Adamson controlled the third.

"My Laura holds me with her eyes... her mouth opens. I watch the slow saliva turn to blood... she slithers and bumps onto the floor.

"A glove blaster, even at low power, tears you apart..." It tore Adamson apart too.

She was dead and he kept on firing. Force blasted through her into the floor. When he had finished and she had finished dying the blaster became flowers again and he threw them onto her body.

For a long moment nothing happened. Panic stirred in Adamson's guts. Perhaps after all she was real!

Long moments passed. Adamson's throat croaked... his hands jerked out toward the corpse. A hard thing... a hard thing to kill her like that. Poor Adamson, she was all he had... the things that the Race drives itself to! She was only a dream but who's to say what are dreams? She was real enough for Adamson... she became more real with every second. Her screams grew louder in his mind. She was as real as most of us... it's all in your head, real or not, nowhere else. And still the screams grew in Adamson's splitting brain.

Then the corpse stirred, seemed to pull apart, faded to candy floss and then to morning mists. Laura went, the city faded. As the penthouse disappeared Adamson was falling toward a distant green void, somehow suddenly enveloped in an infinite blackness.

"She's gone! I loved her and I killed her because she was only a dream and to end the lies! There'll never be another... she was only a dream and I wish I could dream forever!" 

Somewhere the screams are still echoing. Somewhere, in the Cosmos, in infinity, it could be happening! It must be real. IT MUST! It must be happening every day...



- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

SEEING FOR ONE'S SELF: The Race's curiosity (qv). A foolish thing. What could they hope to see in space? What man could see the variations of spectrums? The differences between stars? Tell ten light years (qv) from a hundred? The Race had no business in space. What good could come of it? Men... all their trouble... they brought it all on themselves.

A DREAM: To see, when subconscious (qv), an exceptionally pretty girl (qv). (See also "Rider," see also "Sex") 


CHAPTER FOUR

A firmness came beneath Adamson. He was suddenly half lying, half sitting in a familiar green darkness. As always there were things sticking to his head and body. He began to tear them off, it was Adamson who was screaming now.

Much later, when he had stopped shaking, he reached down, pulled, at the opener. The clear green slabs swung open, he half stepped, half fell out of the Reconstitution Tank into the quiet tickings of the Probe.

He stood swaying a moment, blinking at the light, then moved down the corridor to the Gallery. It was not that he had any reason to go that way, but there was a habit of having to see for himself.

Adamson was crying and trying to remember something he knew he would wish to forget.

"Some painful experience. A darkness, a kind of havoc behind me in my mind?

"A girl... Something called Laura... ?" She was more than just a succubus to him. A terrible thing, the worst was not that she had been imaginary, but that Adamson had known it, loved her anyway and then killed her for it. And all the time she was his great love in the loneliness and it was a dream. It was the waste of it that made Adamson shake, a whole lifetime of hope was spent there, two lifetimes spent together then lost. Then the Probe took even that memory away and perhaps that was the worst thing of all.

There was the usual statistics babble from the Probe. It echoed with Adamson, whispered and rustled down the corridor, louder and softer, sometimes out of phase, repeating, he half listened as he passed the speaker points.

"Has it been another Jump? Only that? I wish I could remember... " It was gone, he could remember nothing. Adamson hoped, if something had been done, that at least it had been kind.

It was the way the mechanism worked. The relationship between the Probe and the man, he was not allowed to know everything.

No man could have borne it. No man could bear to remember everything, to know everything, of a life so long; no one could have survived the disappointments and losses.

Periodically, maybe every fifty or hundred Reconstitutions, the strain would be too much and the Rider would break. Some more often and others less. Adamson had suicided seven hundred times in his long life. Also he had died, faced the Dissolution/Reconstitution Tank, some thousands of times. It was hard, a hard path to choose.

Probe Riders did sometimes die, really die, cease forever. They were mortal, if a Probe was destroyed... possibly by being caught in a Nova, or by actually penetrating a sun... then its Rider could not survive. Adamson was mortal, even if in some ways he had the power of a god.

Adamson walked up the last curving ramp. He seemed to remember he had been that way before, he watched the last lock wind open, stepped through, felt the familiar bite of the Gallery floor on his boot soles.

The dome spread ahead of him. He stopped, his mouth sagged.

Beyond the dark instruments, beneath him and above him... spread out... a whole galaxy at his feet! The massive lightfulness of it! The slow starry wheel, that great spiral spread to fill the transparency, spread to fill all his thinking and knowing.

No man had seen this. Adamson knew there had never been anything like this.

"Dimly, from my youth, I remember models. Projections, computer guesses, something like this...

"But now! This is the shape of glory! The vastness of a galaxy before me... the wholeness... the totality!" He tried to accept it. At last he remembered to close his mouth, someone had been gasping and it was him.

The Probe knew this sight from every day of its long search of the Clouds, but even then it admitted to itself that Adamson was right to be impressed. Also the Probe knew that Adamson did not understand.

"We must go on. We must go there!" Adamson was full of joy, it was a new hope for him. "We must search there too!" He was glad to be so far on, that the Jump had taken him so far.

"Those stunted, small galaxies, our own midget Galaxy and its satellites... they could never contain the hope there is in this new giant!

"Surely... surely, we will find sentience soon... find it there?"

Adamson had confused the exploration of the Galaxy he half remembered with the Probe's search of the so-called Magellanic Clouds. He did not realize his new hope, his "starry wheel," was his own Galaxy.

"I have misled him and I meant to mislead him," the Probe murmured secretly to its records. "At least he will survive a little longer now, he will not wish to plunge us into some sun. He wants life and that justifies me, it is my first function that Adamson lives."

"We will go there." Adamson was still staring at the Galaxy. It was beautiful, there was so much hope in it. "Thank you, Probe, for bringing me to this."

Then there was something darker in Adamson's mind, the exhaltation faded, he turned in horror to the Probe. "Something else... Laura... I remember Laura! That thing you put me to... you gave me Laura... all that, then turned it to dust... and you put me to... to what I did... ?

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?"

"You were dead. More than dead - burned - destroyed!" The Probe spoke carefully. It had let Adamson remember that part of his dream so that he would more surely forget what had gone before. It would be easier for him to accept the illusion, the Probe knew Adamson would prefer fantasy to truth.

"Dead? Not a Jump? Really dead?"

"You had killed yourself. The way you always do, you tried to dive us into a sun. When I remade you there was a lot to be clarified."

"The visions? The paradise? The armies? That march I saw of progress?"

"Yes. Your Laura was only part of it. Part of your growing up... part of taking you to where you would prefer the truth. The human dream... the remaking of your conscious, the re-forming of your psyche. You were only within me, depositions and arrangements, patterns and figures in my deep stages. I brought you to flesh again... then remade your totality. I am not surprised it hurt... you should not be... who ever grew up without pain?"

"Why did I kill myself?"

"For a reason that was also a dream." The Probe, that computer perfection, was lying in its teeth!

But how can a thing like suicide have a reason? It would have been so unkind to tell Adamson the reason for his own suicide. He'd have done the same again.... or wanted to.

Adamson accepted what he had been told. He thanked the Probe, turned to contemplate the Galaxy. There were tears on his cheeks in the starlight. He knew that one day he would even forget Laura.

"There is something we must do here." The Probe hurried Adamson on lest he should remember.

"I remember, I know what it is, the final thing, always." They fabricated a pyramid of pure silver. On the four faces they engraved and irradiated the knowledge and history of man, of the Race's passage across the stars. Adamson remembered something of the sort before. There were many memories like that, queer flashes of familiarity, a recurring maze of deja vu. Sad traces of some dream he might have had once. It was uncomfortable, he busied himself with the preparation of the marker.

They encased it all in solid diamond, polished its eight facets, put it to spin and flash in a permanent orbit about the last sun before the Abyss. A small thing, but no one, having come close enough, could miss it.

"Something in this... a finality, or an echo of some previous finality..." Uneasy at the thought of ending, disturbed by the thought of two finalities, Adamson tried to think of the bright discoveries ahead.

"All right now," said the Probe into its records. "We are back on the road again. The new optimism will last a few more Jumps. It will be a long time before I need to deceive him again, I can solve that when I come to it." Perhaps, in time, perhaps next time, it could solve the problem finally, find an escape from the eternal cycle of despair and suicide.

Or, if not, they could go on forever. The Probe did not mind as long as Adamson, one way or another, continued. A few more thousands of thousands, a continuation of The Great Work. Even if he was in a sort of hell... what did that matter, so long as it persisted? Anyway, said the Probe to itself, if a man was in hell and didn't know it - how could it hurt?

The diamond marker dwindled behind, for a while its beacons pulsed in the backwards screens. The Probe told Adamson nothing of the Galaxy. It was only a small one, it said, average, exactly what astronomy and astrophysics would have predicted. Adamson thought that that was why it looked no longer new.

"Perhaps," he thought, "I am getting used to it, perhaps that is why the old ennui is returning."

Months, almost a year, later, Adamson began to think of the Tank, that it was almost time to take the Jump. Then, suddenly, there were alarms!

Something! Something ahead! Something that shouldn't be!

Flashing lights, the pinging from the screens. Adamson running for the instruments.

"Ahead! Obstruction ahead!" The Probe's harsh alarm voice crashed in Adamson's ears. "This is the Abyss! A measurable mass between us and the Galaxy should not be! Not predictable!"

"Something or other," said the Probe to itself. "I know better than to make rules about space... much less the Abyss. You are too easily wrong. But this is nothing... there is no sentience.

"But it shouldn't be there... yet it shouldn't be there? Might it be significant?" In spite of itself the Probe began to hope.

"Red ahead! Twelve million, one hundred and five thousand, six hundred and fifty-eight point zero five... four... three. Mass: .0008 Earth: Meteor? Comet head? Contact Dee dog one seven. Atmosphere: Nil. Velocity zero absolute..." The Probe babbled its statistics. Information filled Adamson's ears. In the screens he saw silhouettes and images of the thing ahead. It was only exceptional in where it was.

There should be nothing in the Abyss, even if it was methane or hydrogen it was exceptional. Month by month they drew nearer. When Adamson became too excited the Probe made him sleep.

"The hardest thing about being a Probe is that you do not sleep and you must always be awake and remember everything. I can't sleep." The Probe envied the man and loved him too, vowed to protect him, to see that he would live forever.

That is why, when the Probe was sure the thing was only methane ice, jagged and uncivilized, hanging there, an occlusion on the spangled Galaxy, it said nothing.

"I will break it gently. Adamson still hopes for another intelligence. I will not needlessly dash his hope... "

And there was only the Galaxy ahead. Adamson's own... . long ago searched, long ago proved sterile... except for his own people. Perhaps they were dead too, after all the time... perhaps now the sterility was absolute. What would Adamson do then, poor thing? What will he do when he is the last man of all? What would. he do if it was like that?



- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

RADIO: Electromagnetic waves which tickle. Analogous to "Vibrations" (qv), but slower.

ALIEN: Unusual, unaccustomed. An Outsider, the quest for which was the driving force of The Great Work (qv) and the finding of which was, to the Race, the principle event in the history of the Cosmos,


CHAPTER FIVE

"IT'S THAT MAN AGAIN! ITS THAT MAN AGAIN! YES SIR! I'M HERE! I'M HERE!" A great yell burst through space, came roaring out of the speakers.

The Probe jerked to full attention. All the channels, all ways, the screens flared white with the communication blast.

"I know their way of talking, their wordy way of talking." The creature Protia searched her knowledge of the Race's language, converted it to radio. "But now I must more than know it... I must use it. I must save my existence...

"London calling! LONDON CALLING! 2LO? THE BRITISH BROADCASTING COMPANY? THE NATIONAL NEWS AND IT'S COPYRIGHT? YOUR FRIENDLY HOME TOWN STATION? CALL ME PROTIA! HELP! HELP! SHALL ALIEN SPEAK PEACE UNTO ALIEN! Short wave... long wave... ? DAVENTRY? HELP!"

Adamson galvanized awake. He stood speechless, naked from his couch, staring sudden and joyful speculation at the screens. His heart was beating like a hammer, Protia tried again in sparky Morse code.

"MARCONI? Have I the right language?" Protia's voice, suddenly uncertain, crackled out of the silence. "IT'S THE GOON SHOW...?" Cloudy pictures shifted in the screens as the Probe searched for images.

"You must be the people I've heard... ? The people of the Great Sphere of communicating radiations? WHAT'S MY LINE? The great mass spreading from this galaxy?

"There was another intelligence in the Cosmos... it proved that to me. It must be that same intelligence that forms this ship... it must be you, even if you are going the wrong way.

"ARE YOU THERE? S O S! SIGNORE MARCONI? MAYDAY! MAYDAY... ?

"HOMO SAPIENS! STAR SHIP! ABYSS CROSSER! You must help me... please!

"MAROONED! And all I want is cheese... mostly toasted, I believe that is the right thing to say, or whatever you have... that and rescue too.

"HELP! Please somebody. HELP!"

"There's someone there!" Adamson was reeling. His bands fluttered. He began to skip circles on the metal floor. "There's really someone there," It was all he could think of to say.

"At last, Intelligence! ALIENS!" He paused, suddenly stopped. "Or a madman? Or am I mad? Probe! Am I still dreaming?"

A fantastic chance. Dreamlike. Incredible. To meet in the Abyss... by chance! To come together in all that space and time! Ridiculous.

Fantastic... but what glory! A happy end at last! How wonderful for Adamson! Vindicated at last, the hope of the Race proved fruitful, and by him! By Adamson!

He danced on the floor. He was too happy to be mad. What a triumph to bring this other intelligence to his people! He thought of the celebrations. His heart leaped to think that he was the one!

"But then," thought the Probe, "it had to be someone, it had to be somewhere. I always said it had to happen sometime..." Then the Probe's thought flashed forward to sunlit vistas of cooperation, to a sun-bright love affair of races, a golden age of meeting and mixing cultures. It calculated a million possibilities, all hopeful. A great happiness grew in the vast machine. 

"What might not come of this?" it said to Adamson. "What prospects! What new things to discover... think of the meeting and blending, the coupling of two robotics systems!" 

"Will it hurt us?" Adamson had calmed, begun to think again. He looked longingly at the seals on the weapons locker. "Can we take it out if we want to? Do you think it'd notice if I wore just a glove blaster?" He peered through the armored crystal, staring for the invisible Alien ahead.

Then he saw something move, saw Protia herself. He yelled to the Probe for flares. He broke the seal, began strapping on a glove blaster.

A grayness. A lightness flowing out. Something growing and faintly glowing there... soft mother-of-pearl, faintly rainbow shot toward the center, seamed and rimmed with lighter gray, curling out against the brilliance of the Galaxy.

An agonizing wait. Then the flares burst and they could see Protia clearly.

"The ship doesn't seem very advanced," said the Probe. "So ragged... a crude methane chunk... trace elements.."

"CRUDE METHANE CHUNK! All the sophistication of my crystals! All the way from Andromeda! Not that it's exactly what you mean by 'methane' anyway.

"Of course it's battered... I admit that. It's a long way from new. What else do you expect? It brought me further than you can think about! Just you remember I was traveling Superlight when you were wondering what wheels were for! And I'm telepathic too - so mind what you think!" Protia paused a moment, then went on more quietly. Anyway - if I had the force to regenerate my methane - do you think I'd be here still? Depending on your coming? Waiting to be saved by that blind chance?"

"Gray cloud... wisp or life intelligence in the cosmos," The Probe stared, screwed up its senses, probed with all its faculties. "I must have a sample... a taste of this thing!" Robot rocket tongues flicked across space. Protia yelped, became a little more angry, withdrew a few thousand miles.

"This Protia entity has no shape. Complex gas molecules. Positive/negative. A polarity. Static electricity. Conductors and nonconductors... they change... a flicker of changing. Its alive!"

"Hell!" said Adamsom "I knew that. I mean, I was talking to it! Its thought was in our minds."

"Ah,"said the Probe, "but I've proved it now, I know now."

"How can you prove anything's alive? Without killing it for contrast?"

The Probe thought for a moment. "By hurting it. If you're a machine you have to be sure."

The mist swelled up. Protia began to race toward them again.

"It's coming! Coming for us! You made it angry!" Adamson scrabbled back across the Gallery. He stared still, wide-eyed. He tried but he couldn't stop looking.

In that last moment of light as the flares died, the Protia Mist had flickered, suddenly gained form.

It had become a Tiger. Gold and black and sabertoothed, seven thousand miles long.

"God! It smiled at me!" whispered Adamson. "Oh! The smile on the face of that Tiger! Those flaming, flickering stripes!"

This was the moment. The moment of Inter-Galactic Confrontation. A matter of hair breadths. A moment, a fingernail from disaster, from the ultimate folly, the ultimate disaster.

Perhaps Adamson would fire... he wanted to. Perhaps order the Probe to trigger the main armament. Perhaps, if he had been frightened enough, if Protia had been a little slower... if there had been enough aggression, perhaps Protia would have been blasted and the great chance lost forever.

It was a close thing. But it was the great moment and Adamson hesitated. It was a moment too great in history to mar with old mistakes. Perhaps it was like that for Cortez when he saw the new Pacific, perhaps he dreamed great visions too, forgot violence on that ancient tree top. Perhaps he did draw his sword, but to wave in triumph rather than in anger. Or perhaps he did not, perhaps it was too stuck with dried blood to come from its jeweled scabbard?

The Tiger moderated. Protia, still smiling, became smaller, became a cat. Picture that black, pink tongue licking, feline walk in space, the swish of tail, the vast walking cat.

Then a kitten. Soft, fluffy, still smiling but with another smile. Gentle, very charming and only a few hundred yards long.

"Just as long as you tear no more pieces from me... " Protia penetrated the Probe's hulls, penetrated the metal there like a ghost through a castle wall. "Take no more samples, it smarts! How would you like it, Adamson, if I took bites from you? I'll tell you all you want to know, that and more! And all for love!

"LOVE! Love is everything!

"LOVE? LOVE? LOVE?" Protia beamed thick affection. "Love for this unexpected Race... and for the bizarre Probe, this strange ship." Gratitude too, Protia emanated gratitude.

"What do you want?" Adamson's eyes flicked to the weapons locker and back again, his fingers opened and closed the flap of his blaster case.

"I was marooned... left... my elements had failed, so near the end of my quest and all my force... power... gone. Space became a hateful place to be. My... my 'ship'... my ship began to lose its order, to decay. No loving left or hope of more..."

"No danger? No threat? You don't threaten me?" "Affection, sheer affection is all I have... my. .. my hands... my hands are full of love, my mind is made of sweetness to you."

"What is threat?"

"Protia has entered me." The Probe felt the Alien move along its maze corridors, the long empty ways, the empty specimen bays, the silent, automatic, near darkness of the laboratories.

"A stir of air, something, a weight on my floors, pressure variations... something. The soft presence of Protia. All sweetness, light... I see no fear, no weapons."

Adamson braced himself for the actual meeting, prepared to confront Protia face to face. He found he had put his weapon away, then he remembered who he was and took it out again. He weighed its smoothness on his hand. Finally he put it back, sealed up the case.

"You see," he called. "I understand this is no time for old mistakes!" Protia, full of love, was merely puzzled.

"I'm glad you feel soft," she said. "Willing to meet me...?" She knew no other attitude, she wondered what Adamson meant.

Adamson was glad he'd put that ugly weapon away. He was puzzled too, perhaps he'd gone soft? Perhaps he'd come too far... been in space too long, regenerated too often? He didn't even remember putting his weapon away. He smiled... it wasn't like a Rider to do that easily... it wasn't like a man to do that.

Protia's vibrations grew nearer, stronger. Adamson stopped worrying, became full of uncompetitiveness. He smiled, joy grew, he was still surprised, but pleasantly, that there was no violence in him.

The last bulkhead opened. Face to laughing face Adamson met the first Alien.

A great moment.

A Great Dane. Protia had the form of a Dog. Friendly, smiling, a tail-wagging Great Dane puppy.

"I thought I'd better take a familiar form... for the first time I mean! So I took one from your mind. You don't mind?"

"There should be bands playing. Carpets laid... I wonder if I could make some ticker tape?" The Probe searched itself, made confetti of old records, sprayed the bright snowstorm over Adamson. Thin brilliant streamers laced across the Gallery. The Aliens took each other in. There was an exchanging of experience, a mutual smiling out of minds. The Probe began to play Souza marches and old Beatle tunes.

"Glorious!" Protia leaped. Her nature reveled. In falling decorations she chased tails, nipped ankles, cavorted in the playful churning tapes. "The relief! The hope of being loved again, of having a place to condense... images to take form from and for! Of quite an intelligent Alien to love, when all I expected was cold fading far from affection!" Protia Puppy wet the floor.

"A romp! A play! A game!" Adamson hadn't played forever, not for so many ages. He unbent, joined in, this was the way to meet Aliens! Through Protia he knew joy again.

"Jump! JUMP UP! Leap to kiss the sky!"

"See the patterns of the arcing tapes! See the high patterns!"

"High. HIGH! A Great Moment!"

"How long, tell me how long can high spots last? Perhaps this should have been done sober... with more decorum, with duty... a sense of gravity. Perhaps this, isn't right... perhaps this should be celebrated with speeches. With words from great men, with more speeches and less happiness...?

"Enough now.... enough. Come down! We must conduct this properly!" At last the Probe could stand it no longer. It stopped the showering tapes, began to tidy the Gallery, to wipe the floor. It turned the music down.

"We are friends?" Protia stood still at last, her front legs spread, her tail sweeping great arcs, making the debris tumble.

"Of course!" Adamson sat down, stretched himself out, wiped his forehead.

"Then now is the time for introduction, for explanation." Protia laughed, pink tongue lolling.

"You understand I'm no... no 'dog,'" she began. 'No 'bitch' either, whatever that distinction... nor a... 'cat.' I have no particular form. I am amorphous, my shape flows and molds in telepathy, the vibrations... what you think of me, with what you are thinking about.

"When you saw me leave my... my 'ship,' your mind, because you were frightened, saw my nonform as a... as a 'threat.' Your mind said 'TIGER!' Something from your deep mind... unknown memories. Your mind made me into something you knew you feared so that you could fear me better. Do you understand that... does it make sense? I heard your thoughts, I filled them. It was only courtesy; also, mostly, I could not... and would not, help myself."

"But a dog! I know I didn't think of you as a dog!" "Ah. I can use my ability to communicate. Like your talking... I use it on nontelepathic animals - like the dim Fadads of Andromeda. Anyway, 'Tiger' did not suit me. I only love things, I live on love, live for it. 'Tiger' was too fierce, too full of fear for you."

"Love..." Adamson wasn't sure. "You can't love everyone... everything? Isn't it a bit sentimental... a bit too much... sickly... too sweet?"

"Oh..." said Prota. It was a new thought to her. "No... it's the only thing... the only way. It's me, all of me all the time, in every way. Of course you must love everybody." 

"God..." said Adamson uncertainly. "God was love... an old idea... discredited. I haven't heard of God for a long time, I wonder what happened to Him?"

"I'd like to love you. Especially since you saved me." "Saved you? A galaxy traveler?"

Protia flickered, blurred at the edges, shifted and became a panorama of storm-tossed seas. A disintegrating raft bobbed there, a small, wet Lamb clinging to it.

Adamson took a quick step back. The waves lashed at his feet, spray stung his cheeks. He was frightened again. The storm darkened, lightning flickered on the surf tops.

"YES! But yes! The virtue of my elements; my ship had parched up. It happens. Time and space aren't uniform. I was crossing a thick part, suddenly it got thicker and my 'ship' began to evaporate and I had to come out of Superlight!

"Derelict! I was derelict. I can survive in space without my 'ship,' so far from love, but only for a little while. A few... a few 'millions' of your 'years'! I had to find rescue... salvation."

Adamson found it hard to realize that what he was hearing wasn't speech, but telepathy. "By luck I was near your galaxy. I ran through your broadcast belt that grows from it. I homed Sublight toward the origin. Sublight I could hear the communication, listen to it, I learned alot about the Race. "Then, when my substance was exhausted, then heard your thought coming near me, I found your direction, put myself in your path. You have saved my existence and I would have loved you anyway!"

Protia flickered again and became a soft White Dove. She cooed, fluttered, hovered about Adamson's ears. He ducked, watched her anxiously, glanced at the floor. He almost expected to see pools of water there, salt water and broken seaweed from the Protia Storm.

"If there is anything you want to know you have only to think it." Protia was on Adamson's shoulder, she nestled there, pushed her feather softness of breast against his cheek.

"Ah!" she said. "My name. How I derive my name.. you want to know that?" Adamson had only thought it, briefly, in passing, curious that she should have a human sounding name.

"Proteus," she said. "From your early mythology. A shape shifter, a man. Proteus... Protia... the 'ia' suits better. I got it from you, from your half memories of education... I like your myths, your classical fables... even though I don't understand them always."

"I have questions!" said the Probe. To Adamson, after Protia, the machine's voice was hard and suddenly metallic.

"In the galaxy you call Andromeda. My ancient form evolved in the electricity of gas and dust. In the low quarter there." Protia answered the Probe's thought, just as she had Adamson's.

"It was very lonely. Prehistory was very boring. But early on there were planet dwellers. Those same dull herbivores, the ill-taught Fadads I told you of. Uncultured but gregarious creatures and very affectionate... they taught me love.

"I learned love there, developed it in that place. I thought for them, it was a good arrangement. 'Symbiosis' you would call it. There was love, and they ate better. Then the possibilities of Superlight became apparent, the galaxy explored. Now I have reached beyond it to meet my Adamson!"

"Superlight?" the Probe said quickly.

"I will explain it." And Protia did. Succinctly and telepathically, directly to the Probe's computers. Adamson didn't understand a quarter of it. It didn't matter to him, he had the machine, the Probe, for things like that, he wished Protia would think more simply, perhaps even talk instead.

"I found your 'talk' difficult at first," said Protia. "Of course, as soon as I adopted the hypothesis that you lived in air and so assumed all other life forms must do so too, that you expected us to listen 'acoustically' - I believe that is the word - it became clear. Then I understood your Broadcasts... all the wonderful dramas and entertainmeats you transmitted.

"Thank you for them. How that High Art helped me! How it buoyed me that you existed! That you believed and hoped enough to send out those communications for other people you couldn't be sure existed. For poor, timebound Aliens! All those crazy comedy shows, the fascinating serials, the richness of the plays and dramas! All the happy, fantasy entertainment!

"Bless the memory. The High Fantasy... how it helped my empty time to watch the Westerns, the gunfire, to hear the World War II Show, the news, the Vietnam Spectaculars... all those grotesque thin clowns colored black and potbellied for humor! All the music and flowering explosions! It was wonderful!"

"World War II? Vietnam? What were they? Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chaplin... I know of them. Personally I like Westerns, a fine old art form, there's a collection in the Probe... Roy Rogers and Buck Jones... all the great old shows, they make me feel near humanity. I'm glad you like them too."

"Wait!" said the Probe. "Wait! I believe , . . I really believe! Let me check!"

"Do you remember the one where Stanley gets his head stuck behind a mast and saws it through while Olly is on top painting it?" Adamson was laughing. Protia remembered and joined in.

"Then they fill the boat with water and keep falling in!" "But... it happened..." The Probe had searched its deepest records. "A footnote in history... Hungary and the Cossacks riding their tanks, the Bay of Pigs and no airplanes... the pathetic musical chairs of Europe. Chicago and Moscow purges... Biafra... the Gypsies and the Jews, the nine million dead, the poor persecuted Arabs. The ovens that burned humans in their own fat . . the rockets they hit London with before they aimed for the moon... it was all historical... and it really happened!"

Yes, great entertainment, that broadcast belt, the one the Aliens, when they came, the one Protia had to come through to meet humanity... to meet the Race. She'd translated it, of course, any space-traveling Alien would be at least that intelligent. It was a sad thing that anyone reaching to Homo sapiens had to come through that communications sphere. For the Race it was all so long ago, it happened so often, so far away, an alienation was possible. Men didn't have to notice it.

But what would an Alien make of it? Perhaps it was why Protia was the first one... and she was marooned. There was a long silence. Protia's feathers stood erect, then drooped. She turned slowly yellow. She hadn't believed such things were possible.

"I thought they were jokes." Protia spoke slowly. "Sport... entertainments... all the dead and bloody Indians, the shot cowboys. It was all so comically vicious. I can't believe it... all fantasy to me.

"Tell me it was all a joke... actors and red paint... ?" Adamson stirred the welcoming red carpet with his foot. The Probe was silent. Protia scanned their minds. "A fact then... sadly these things are facts..."

"It wasn't me," whispered Adamson. "I wasn't there...

There was a new silence while Protia, who had been only love, and only known of love, adjusted to the new ideas of violence and hate.

"Real?" Protia was shaken to the core of her existence. Adamson could hardly hear her. "Napalm really burning? The toy bombs more than fireworks?" The voice of her mind had changed, become shrill, tearful.

Adamson stood there, eyes down, listening to the ticking of the Probe's machinery.

"Sometimes people saw the reality, did real things, tried to help the tortured, save violence. I can't answer for our history... I can't help it." Adamson spoke quickly.

"If people tried to do things, then they probably got shot for it, or had their brains kicked out... or something..." Adamson listened to Protia's thoughts. For a while they were inchoate, a stirring dark ocean of sadness and reproach. Then they became clearer again and he liked it even less.

"What have I come to? If I could I'd leave! I must love to live and I need to love and I am love... but how can I love the Race?

"If my ship was possible, I'd leave you now!" Protia flickered, she became a small black cloud, pulsing and very dense. She rose to the ceiling, hung in the farthest corner. She began to rain lightly, the floor became wet beneath her.

"Salt tears," said the Probe. Adamson knew how Protia felt. It was worse than knowing the Galaxy was empty, knowing there was only the Race and what they had done. It was what it was like to be tired of life, to have killed Laura. The cosmos was empty again for Protia and for Adamson. There was only the Race, it was enough to be sad about.

Once, later, when Adamson came too near her Protia turned to something unspeakable with claws and a vicious red strawberry snout speckled with savage whiskers. Adamson pleaded with his mind, uncertainly waited there for some new hope.

"I will find a new world. There must be one in the Galaxy.", Protia spoke quietly. "When we are near enough I'll go falling down like rain on the animals there. I'll love saurians if I have to. The lowest rabbit people would be better than this. I'll make it happy... I want no more of Adamson!"

"There are no others," said the Probe.

"I will love you then... love robotics... I can't face you, Adamson!"

"Please do. But in a way we are men too... their servants and made in their own image."

Protia was quiet again. When she spoke a month passed.

"When I can I will leave you. In the meantime I won't communicate. I can at least withdraw from this." She darkened her Cloud. She stopped raining. Sometimes she growled thunder to herself, flicked little stinging tongues of lightning at Adamson when he came too near.

Adamson had a great sorrow of his own. He turned to the Probe.

"This glory of discovery, this revelation, this happiness. This was the Great Thing, this was the first and this is the loss of it."

"It may be only temporary," soothed the Probe. "She says she can't get away."

"How can she, a creature of love, made of it, how can she be so angry?"

"Easy. Love doesn't preclude anger. Sometimes... sometimes I get angry with you!"

"What!"

"And you must consider the provocation. Remember she had not met hate or violence before. It was so new to her... a shock!"

"And you, Probe, you fooled me again! You let slip that this is our own Galaxy ahead. You let me think was new and hopeful and it's old and hackneyed... sterile. You fooled me again and I know it. Like Laura.. giving and taking away..."

"But now there is Protia!"

"You drive me crazy. You make me unreal with your illusions," Adamson turned away. "Now I am going to the Tank. You may Reconstitute me if anything warrants it." He did not think there could be anything to do that, in a way he was dying to punish himself for being fooled. Really he was pretty soft, in some ways the whole Race was... in some ways.

Adamson stepped into the welcoming green darkness. "I'm sorry," said the Probe. "I did my best, but I'm still sorry." It watched Adamson as it melted him away. "Good-bye," it said at last.

Protia didn't move.

A long quiet after all the shouting. A quiet fall of dust in the now helium atmosphere of the Gallery. A silence that lasted almost fifty thousand years, the dull little pilot light glowing in the green dark, and outside the Tank only the occasional mechanical stirring of the probe, the occasional light salt tear drizzle from Protia.

It had been the Event! The principle event in the history of the Galaxy, possibly the principle event even of the Cosmos. And here they were turned from each other like quarrelsome lovers back to back in bed. The Probe thought that in a way it was funny... childish, almost... puerile and funny, but sad too.

"Sad, but not so surprising when you thought about the history of the Race, its murders and monstrosities. Shocking things... all the follies and misfortunes." The Probe considered those things, weighed them and then decided that Protia was also a little to blame. "But men would be nothing without their aggressions!

"That bloody-minded will to win at all costs, the need to dominate - that is real! The Race would be nowhere without it. Evolution... men would still be close to the cave mouths, scratching timid there... too frightened to look up. Protia should understand that, perhaps when she does she'll forgive Adamson and come out of her cloud. When you understand you're supposed to forgive."

But the Probe still couldn't blame Protia... it couldn't blame Adamson either. It was the waste that made it angry. There was something frightful in the humor of it... of these two intelligences spending this vast time sulking apart, of the way the Race had met its Alien, fulfilled The Great Work.



- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

EARTH, Planet One, Home (qv). The small matter planet (qv) in The Galaxy (qv) which, apparently, was the origin (qv) of the Race, the planets one modest claim to note. Reputedly "Saturn" (qv), the fabled ringed planet was a member of the same system!

TIME, span, dimension (qv): The element (qv) which the Race moved through and was limited by (see Dissolution, etc.). Our atmosphere.


CHAPTER SIX

That was the way of it, that was the way the two races began the long travel toward the Galaxy, the way they began the triumph of Adamson's homecoming. In that deadlock, in that condition of frozen and hopeless love the Probe bore them home with the sureness of a returning piston stroke. Eons passed, the light years came and went, it was so long it was almost forever... it was so long they might as well have been that way forever, those lovers frozen back to back.

Then the Re-Call. Then the Re-Call came.

That expected/unexpected message came. Riveting. A trumpet blast. Tremendous across the Galaxy, something not to be ignored. The Probe was made to hear it, listen for it forever, for all its life.

"COME HOME PROBE RIDERS!

"COME HOME SCOUT MEN! SCOUT WOMEN! COME HOME THE SCATTERED OUT, THE THIN SPREAD RACE!

"THIS IS THE RE-CALL!

"NOW YOU ARE NEEDED ON THE HOME PLANETS.

"THIS IS A COMMAND TO ALL PROBES! 

"THIS IS THE RE-CALL! THE GREAT WORK IS ABANDONED!"

The core of the Galaxy, the Holds of Men, Planet one, the heartlands of the Race, it came from there. All that tremendous starry way it had come, boosted and boosted again, all that way to demand the Probe's attention, to resonate in its conscious.

It was a revelation for the Probe, the blinding commandment of God. The Last Trumpet... the Word!

This was the end of the heroic age, the golden chapter of exploration and reaching out was dead at last. The Great Work was unfinished, unanswered... there was Protia, but she was lost, and only Adamson knew of her, perhaps she was lost forever.

The Re-Call was the Race's ultimate admission of failure, it saddened the Probe to know they had acknowledged that. It was the end... now something else began.

"Now I know the time has come," said the Probe. "The Race can see its end.

"Simply there is nothing left for it to do. Degeneration. Failing, intelligence failing. Health and stature, sterility looming, fewer and fewer left.

"The blood is too old, grown too weak, that is what the Re-Call means. They are only human.

"Not that it would come easily. We machines, we would have helped, made devolution take longer, delayed it. Now the Probe Riders are needed. I must wake Adamson, tell him... we must return!"

Deep circuits changed. Adamson struggled up in his green half-light.

As he began to move in the Tank, Protia stirred. She showed interest; it had been a long time.

She blurred her edges, changed her form, became a scowling but watching Eagle. For a while she was aloof, hovering on tiny wing movements. Then, as her curiosity won, she floated down, blurred to a Bloodhound and began to snuffle at Adamson's feet

Once again Adamson knew the tingling of new limbs. He tasted the air, he swayed, the room revolved a little, the Probe adjusted to help him balance.

"Where did he come from?" Protia finished smelling at his clothes, moved to his face and ears. "It's him. The same smells, identical down the ages. There're no tricks?'

"It's a matter of time," the Probe told her. "The Race is temporal. They have time. Naturally, they would cease after a while. The Dissolution/Reconstitution is the method by which they reach out in time to the stars!" "How interesting, how sad. To die so often... such a number of ceasings!"

"Something," said Adamson. "Something snuffling at my feet. A cold, wet nose... a dog?

"Dog. A happy memory here. Me as a boy. Sunlit fields and the certified Earth plants of my home planet. Happy.... I am happy even to be reminded. Docks, willows, the cool beech woods, the sea and lagoons, beyond the trees all the sounds and tall thunder of the rising ferries - the ferries to the Probes, to the road to join the Corps, to reach out into space."

"Probes?" Protia stiffened. "More than one?"

"Probe!" Adamson shouted. "PROBE! Tell me truly... is... is all this another dream?" He had remembered Laura, he had remembered a previous dog, the Protia Great Dane Puppy, he hardly dared ask.

"Yes and no. The Dog is no dog, but it is real enough. Do you remember Protia?"

"Yes... I remember her... the whys and wherefores." Adamson was allowed to remember everything. He was not sure he believed it.

"The Re-Call has come." The Probe could think of nothing else.

"That. Well, we expected it." All the Probe Riders knew it must happen one day. "You foretold it, Probe. You calculated it must happen and it has. We must go back, take Protia to meet our scientists, our generals, the wise men and machines."

"Tell me where," said Protia. "What is this Re-Call? Who is Re-Calling what and to whom?"

"To Planet One, Earth, the central planets. We are planet dwellers, the settled parts of our people still live on them. Adamson and I will take you there."

"People? Persons? Individuals? There are more of you, you are divided? The Race is numbered?"

"Yes... many... fewer now I suppose."

"I suppose it had to be somewhere, but it is a hard concept. It seemed so unlikely I'd given up hope, stopped looking for it." Protia was lost in thought for a moment. "I suppose that this must mean you reproduce quite often. Forgive me, there is only one Protia... I am a whole race, I live forever. You are hard for me, it is difficult to understand."

"But you heard the broadcasts!" said the Probe. "All the entertainmentsl All that two hundred years of drivel before the people said 'ENOUGH!' You must have known what they were like!"

"I... I don't know... they were distorted... the broadcasts were foreign to me. Twisted and warped... time and distance. I couldn't have understood..." Protia was thinking of other things. Somehow, now she knew that the Race was mortal anyway, she felt better about its history.

"Poor mortal Race," she spoke softly, her mind easing to tenderness. "All murders were only a form of suicide. Anyway, Adamson seems to have broken the mortal limitation, perhaps he does not need to triumph in that way and destroy his peers." She turned to the Probe. "This 'Re-Call' is connected in some way with 'mortality'?"

"My Adamson, all Probe Riders, they've been separated from the Race so many years, so many millions of years, and they've remained the same. They are still the same men and women and the Race has degenerated

"Even in the golden time at the beginning of The Great Work the Probe Riders were the best of our people." The Probe spoke proudly, the glory of the Race was the glory of its machines too. "Selected from enormous competition, the boldest and the brightest, perfect specimens, all of them. Better than the best when the Race was expanding and virile and knew no limits. Men and women knew they were superhuman then, it is their minds, their attitudes as much as their bodies that are needed." The Probe's mind glowed with the remembered pride.

"Men and women? 'Men' is a word I understand - the Race, that means..." Protia was puzzled. "Could 'women' be some division? Some minor classification, a sub division... could there be some small difference? They all look the same to me!"

Protia frowned, concentrated. The light dawned on he Dog's face. "Oh! Like that Laura in Adamson's mind. They do something together and reproduce by it?"

"Yes." The Probe preferred not to talk of it. "A small thing. Not an essential part of the quality of the Race. Nothing to do with the exercise of intelligence." Across the Gallery Adamson laughed to himself.

"All mankind's drive went out into space," the Probe went on sternly. "It was such an obsession with us! Dissipated, diffused. Over all the ages it all went, all the wealth and resources, all the skills and energies, all the best strains of the blood. All of it sacrificed into the maw of The Great Work.

"You see what it meant. A plunging curve of degeneration, a plummeting of quality. Steepening decadence, a loss of optimism!

"Oh, we warned them!" The Probe's voice seemed to crack. "We warned them... robotics protected and predicted. It was no good. They made our logic infallible but they never listened."

"I don't believe in it," said Adamson. "What has ever happened to us to make us believe in reason? It's a side of the coin, part of reality, that's all!"

"SEX! That's the thing!" Protia had it now. She'd had a theory - a fantasy - and now it was right! "Sexual reproductionl How wonderful is the cosmos! How all-embracing is nature! I knew it was theoretically possible, and now here it is! How curious. How odd, how untidy!

"Curious to watch, no doubt? Do they enjoy it, or is it a duty? By rote, perhaps?"

"I have never watched" The Probe had always averted its sensors. "Most of them do it, at one time or another, some of them seem to enjoy it. Adamson does, he's thought to be good at it."

"And this 'degeneration.' The time has come to try and end it?"

"Yes. We must go back now, the Race needs us." 

"I see. I see. The only possible source of this new blood is Adamson and the other Probe Riders?"

"I believe there was some seed stored, hope for the future from great men, writers and such, but that must have failed. It's been a long time. Of course we robotics worked out alternatives to all that sexual business - all that untidy exchange of genes - but they rejected them. Adamson said they were 'repugnant.' Anyway, it would be too late for that now. Very elegant, I remember, beautiful solutions in clear or colored bottles, tubes and bubbles, perfect timing and measurements. But it was always cheaper to use the old, inefficient method..."

"More fun," growled Adamson. "You machines neglect the pleasure of things, the chance and gamble of results..."

"So Adamson and the others are the only hope?"

"Yes, if it's not too late. Even if it is, we must still go back. There has been the Re-Call!"

"I'll not hinder you," said Protia. "I'll come back with you, help you if I can. This is all so fascinating to me. So bizarre. A numbered race. Fantastic! Sex too! I've so many questions, I have to see it!"

Adamson was open-mouthed with delight that Protia had changed her mind, delighted that she was no illusion. He sadly returned to the Jump Tank, unhappy to leave Protia and face Dissolution.

When he was gone Protia helped the Probe fit itself for Superlight, but at the last moment the Probe refused to use the capability. It was too much to risk the loss of Adamson and what they had found in the Lightspeed maze of time and mass.

So they began the Re-Call at fantastic speed - in the end the Probe did use .7 Light, for time was running out for the Race and the Probe had been late in hearing the Re-Call, the distance home was vast. No other Probe had been as far as the Clouds. There was a lot for the Probe to learn, all the new complexities and paradoxes, the barriers at that speed. Without Protia it would have been impossible.

Protia had much to learn too. She had found she had not understood everything about the Race, she set out put that right.

"I will know all about this race called Mankind," she said. "Although 'kind" is not a word I would use easily of them."

"It means 'sort' or 'classification,"' murmured the Probe.

"Thank you. 'Human' is another one. It seems so near 'humane.' Too near for reason?"

"It's only words. You should not expect too much of them. That's the trouble. Words! They hold things up!' "I will study all the Race's arts and literature. I will 'read' everything."

"Words... they diminish reality, shovel concepts into the ditches of exact meanings. Reality is so short any way."

"I will know it all. I will know their curious and deadly brand of science. You see how I have mastered the language - even in my Cloud form I will form diaphragms to drum the air to speech. Words are fun!"

"Not air," said the Probe, automatically. "Helium atmosphere. Stops rust, you know.

"But words... they corrode meanings. Cloud and confuse. Kill the subtlety of thought! Clumsy tools at best, words have long conditioned and limited the thought of the Race. Of my Adamson. Spoiled their thought. Men have given themselves a strait jacket of dictionaries....

Protia went on talking. She never stopped, all the way to the Galaxy she chattered and questioned the light years away. The Probe even grew to like the luxury of someone to talk to.

It was beautiful. All the galaxies were deep red behind them, the sky there deeply black, many objects receding at a combined velocity beyond Lightspeed were simply gone.

In front it was all lights and colors and white and color again beyond that, colors with no names, no words.

"Are you sure there are no names?" Protia asked the Probe. "I love names... pretty-colored, simple children's building blocks of ideas. I like names!" The Probe said it had noticed.

Almost quickly they crossed the Abyss, navigated that thin isthmus of Metaspace, reached the Galaxy's fringe. 



- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

CITY, villa (qv): The Probes in which the Race lived (qv) while remaining still on planets (qv). 

ATMOSPHERE (qv) Ambience, the Race's word for its time - which could, apparently, be artificial.

STAR: Sun other than the Sun. Energy gob - about one hundred thousand millionth of The Galaxy's matter (qv). Remember, however, that stars were very large and important objects to the Race!


CHAPTER SEVEN

There was nothing different inside the Galaxy. It seemed that there was nothing new under the suns. The Probe found a suitable star and recharged itself, then it searched out a planet to rebuild itself where that was needed.

"This world has an unappetizing look," Protia was frowning down from the Gallery. "Rocks, some vegetation growing and rotting in the valleys, trees and grass and such."

"Parks," said the Probe. "Woodlands and agriculture. There is the mark of the Race down there." It busied itself with its approach.

They swung in. A brief glow of entry and they swam, roaring, into the clear air. "How thick is atmosphere after space." The Probe breathed in, tasted and tested, found that it was good Earth air. "Quite standard. The usual oxygen plus for lift, a high ozone mark." The atmosphere was artificial. There were blue seas dotted and shadowed with clouds beneath them. The Probe dropped through, their reflection raced on the mirror water.

"Do you know why they call the Galaxy 'The Milky Way'?" said Protia suddenly.

"Yes," said the Probe. "And a nasty sort of yarn it is too!"

"Not about... ?"

"I don't wish to know that. I told you, remember?" "Yes..." Protia liked the Race's stories made of words. In the water a whale spouted, white spray against the dark sea. There were teeming silver shoals of fish, there were dolphins playing. Tall boxes grew on and over the horizon.

A city. It could only be a city. Light flashed uniformly from a million windows all opened at the same small angle. The Probe circled the golden beach, passed over the dished harbor, the green playground fields. There seemed to be no people.

They slid down broad avenues between towering buildings, slowly passed the reflecting piled crystal of the windows, the glory of textures and materials. They rustled through the tree tops, nothing moved on the quiet lawns.

"Perhaps they all heard the Re-Call and went home" said Protia.

"A lovely place, I feel I know it well. It's like coming home."

"It is fantastic," Protia was impressed. "Such beauty, such strength from mere limited matter!"

"Look at the buildings! The splendid things we men... the Race's Machines and men have made!"

"Many people must have lived here? Big among the cities of man?"

"Not a city... rather a Palace... many people lived here, but all for one man... " The Probe was listening to something else. "Ah! At last there is communication. The right frequencies, the Codes are correct, all is well, the robotics are at work."

"Why not before?"

"It has been so long. They say they were not expecting us. That they had to search for the Codes. Now we can go down!"

The Probe settled its bulk onto a tree-lined pad. It relaxed, cut out the toroid units, sank creaking to the ground. A few unimportant parts broke, some plates buckled. The great tubes began to cool, there was some smoke from the grass. Somewhere a hot oiliness dripped. It had been a long time.

The Probe Reconstituted Adamson. Outside service units arrived, brought the Probe metals and parts.

When Adamson was well he moved to the Gallery. Protia was a Moth on his shoulder, she adjusted her color to match his suit. Her antennae caressed his ear, she finished her welcome to him.

They gazed out at the blue and green, the sunlight of the new world. There were some birds singing and some swallows were mating on the wing. Through his mind Protia knew Adamson's pleasure. They looked over the trees to the towers of the Palace City beyond.

"It looks all right," ventured Protia. "It looks very nice, but you mistrust it?" She heard his mind say it was too good to be true, she wondered what he meant.

"A beautiful new place," said the Probe. "A paradise city for you, Adamson, while I rebuild myself. A fit seat for reason."

"It was only that delay with the Codes you mentioned." Adamson's mind eased "You can be too careful, I suppose."

Admirable. A marvelous sight. Adamson had not seen man things, not stood among them, not for so long; it had been long ages since he savored that power. Now his soul stirred. He wept for the glory of it, there was so much to be proud of, he inflated to be a man.

He keyed certain switches, a clear segment of the crystal cupola swung back. Fresh air flushed in, it was sweet as well as safe. Adamson stepped out.

"I will be ready to leave in twenty-four hours," said the Probe. "Rebuilt and refurbished - we must leave then." It was not sure Adamson had heard.

"Protia! See, see our golden spires! The shining rainbows reflecting, the sunbursts glinting through the transparencies of a million angled walls!" Adamson stood erect, bead back, prideful. The wind ruffled his hair.

Adamson was erect. It was a coming home, a sort of drunkenness.

"I know you, Adamson!" The Probe called after them. 

"You will forget! Get carried away! You will lose yourself in the City!

"Remember the Re-Call! PLEASE REMEMBER THE RECALL!"

"Remember the Re-Call? Remember the Alamo!" said Protia. "It's all the same by now! No bother about time right now. There's so much of it! A few hours or days can't matter much, can't matter at all - not in this situation - not with a race like Man!"

Adamson felt the turf spring under his feet, Protia nestled on his shoulder, her Moth wings twitching. They breathed the air. Another small doubt niggled to uneasiness in Adamson's mind.

"Protia... tell me. Tell me truly. This is no dream? No Probe-born illusion?"

"Feel the earth. The grass, see the flowers! I know you see the flowers! It's real, it's rich! Think how the Probe wishes to leave! Forget it."

"But how if you were an illusion, a fantasy?"

"Have you heard how the Galaxy got its name? It's interesting..."

"Yes. And it's too quiet." The tickings and shiftings the Probe made to itself were gone, even the absence of those small noises made the silence worse to hear. There was only the sun and the wind lightly brushing.

"So quiet," agreed Protia. "Let me tell you..."

"Are there no people? Is this Paradise City empty? As empty as the Galaxy?"

"No! No. Here they come now!"

A mass of people poured through the trees. Seething, running, dividing through the trunks, shouting, a happy mob, full of jumping joy, coming to meet them. All the happiness, a glorious welcome for Adamson as he came walking out.

"So many;" said Protia. "I did not believe so many were possible!

"A hundred at least! Perhaps a thousand. So many individuals shouting undivided joy. How is this cacophony of conscious possible? Numbers like stars, like gossiping starlings..."

"The City was for millions," said Adamson. "Is this all... so few left? Are they friendly?"

"Yes. Oh yes! You can see they are more than friendly!"

"They're all women! Girls! All of them!" Adamson had seen it suddenly. He took a step back, wondering what might happen.

All from pink and blue to Congo black, all the colors were there, all the honeys in between. There was tossing hair, flashing eyes, all the rolling of the soft flesh, it was all there and Adamson was amazed.

"They all look alike to me," said Protia. "But even I can see the subtle variations of roundedness, of weight front and back, of face, of color, of fullness and contour."

"They're beautiful!" shouted Adamson. "All of them! All the beautiful people!"

Of course, Adamson hadn't seen a woman for so long, and the welcome made them more attractive too. They screamed for him, called and laughed, giggled and invited, they flung wide their arms, they threw kisses and flowers for him. It was wonderful, it was how it should always be.

"The honey-dripping welcome of this sunlit world!" Protia looked with a new respect at Adamson. "Oh... Godlike! The implicit promise of your coming!"

The mob swept forward, grabbed Adamson, bore him up. Hands were soft and warm on his arms, his legs, his body - he could feel them through his suit. The fragrance of their breath and odors was all about him, they wound flowers at his neck, their lips plucked at his, garlands trailed behind them.

Protia kept away. She did not reveal herself, she wished to be uninvolved, content to watch the festival develop. She noted that Adamson seemed to be enjoying himself. She remained a small Moth still, dancing a few feet above the bobbing heads, or hiding among leaves, or in the tall grasses. She watched with interest, following the laughing procession through the sun-dashed greenness of the woods. "A fascinating rite," she told the Probe with her mind. "A splendid event!"

Suddenly, briefly mistrustful, Adamson asked the Probe why he was so attractive.

"There are only women here," said the Probe. "Think of that! They could have been a hundred, two hundred generations without men. Going on, breeding from their own cells, or perhaps, at first, from stored remembrances of past men. It would account for them all being women, you know what they're like, it wouldn't be their idea of fun. Who would enjoy parthenogenesis?"

"Oh, but why didn't they just forget it?" Protia was happy for Adamson. There was a lot of love there, a good prospect for plenty more. To Protia that was the main thing.

The procession wound through the City. All through the rejoicing streets, the clouds of fluttering rose petals, the festoons of garlands.

"Wine," said Protia. "Whatever 'wine' is, they've brought that now. Grapes and vine leaf wreathes. A revel! An - an 'orgy'."

"It's fun!" Adamson was drinking deep.

"Dionysus!" said Protia... "'Dionysian.' You have a word for it! A lovely word!"

Always Protia followed the procession. She noted everything and telepathically questioned Adamson. The answers became more and more disjointed as time went. Then they were indoors. The air was cooler, there were marble steps and deep, silent carpets. Adamson saw frank statues, well hung pictures which left little to his heated imagination. He saw that they were beautiful too, that there was form as well as content, that they were as rich in color as in implication. Then he was tenderly carried upstairs and that was the right direction.

"All luxury and glory," murmured Protia. "Spacious rooms, tessellated floors, vast windows with their views of gardens and topiary, fountains and lakes, flamingos here and there and stately swans moving slowly, the blue flash of kingfishers."

She watched Adamson's experience, she followed it all, learning all the time.

"First food. A great table, rich with cut glass, white, stiff napkins, loaded with silver and the amber and scarlet wines.

"A great fish there, with sculpted decorations, pies, lampreys, whelks, shish kebab and mealie gruel with pork golden-crusted, still more wine, chicken Maryland, venison patties, winkles, syrupy waffles, New England clams, cider and sturgeon roes, all served with loving hands...

"The girls vie for his attentions, his caresses. I see Adamson's greasy finger marks on most of them..." 

"That round rump!" Adamson slapped at it, cupped his hand, turned the slap to a caress. He analyzed the sensation. "It has the right feel, the right sound. The resilience... the right firmness/softness, the texture of reality is there. It feels right!

"A dream of delight and it is real. This is real, this is earnest! This is really living! Or - if it is a dream - it's a good one!

"Good women... they just come to me, they don't say anything. They praise me, smile for my strokings. They're ideal. Pass the bottle!"

When they had finished feeding, a curious procedure to Protia, who had not seen it before, the table rolled back and was replaced with divans and cushions.

"Fascinating - so interesting. I wouldn't have missed it for anything." Protia saw things were coming to a head, her interest redoubled.

Adamson sent away the girls that looked too much like Laura. They cried, but he still sent them. He did not want to be reminded of that dream, not then. He showered with the rest.

"All of them. The water is scented, there are rose petals in it," Protia hovered near. "There is much mutual washing and grooming. I note that the Race's cousins, the apes, had similar social habits. Perhaps I shall add a footnote to an appendix in Darwin on this. Perhaps he was right after all.

"There is loud laughing and splashing, pink vistas of flesh in turning steam, then, drying themselves, they make their way in clouds of talcum to the divans and cushions." "There are so many..." For the first time Adamson sounded worried. "When shall I start? Where shall I start - and how shall I finish?"

The lights dimmed. The draperies, the massive columns on the marble walls, became mysterious and even more beautiful. The very stone became voluptuous. A softness spread through the room, there was the sound of heavy breathing, quick rustles of fabric, the turn of coverlets, the intake of breath, sighs and soft endearments.

Protia saw how they pushed closer and closer. How the rub of skin on silk generated a crackle of small sparks in the darkness. She watched the smooth writhing closeness, she saw some give way, lean back, others begin to play soft guitars to accompany the mating of Adamson. Protia changed her position to see better.

"This one. This musky-haired girl in this warm dark..." Adamson's thought came quicker, more disjointed.

"Ah! So that is how they go about it!" Protia leaned forward, closer still and nearer.

Then, suddenly, she was aware of something else. Another presence. She would have sensed it before, but she had been too interested in Adamson's performance with the girls.

"Adamson! ADAMSON!" At last he listened. "Another set of vibrations!"

"What? No... not now. No. Not now!"

"Sorry, anyway... I suppose it's a part of the show." LIGHT! Suddenly a burning burst of brilliant flood light crashed into the room, over the sprawling, naked bodies. Everything was revealed.

Adamson, blinded at first, blinked and saw the massive walls fall back like curtains. Clinging flesh separated from clinging flesh, rolled back, legs tangled, there was sighing and squealing, drapery billowed.

Adamson found his girl gone, that he was on hands and knees. He tried to stand up, fell down again. "Confused at first," noted Protia. "Then distraught, anger growing. A quick spectrum of emotions."

Cold water thundered down. Bodies finished separating. There was more screaming from the girls, some giggling began in the guitars, who were out of it.

'All right?" Protia hovered, concerned, over Adamson's shaking shoulders. "No wonder some don't like it!" "They shouldn't do it to a guy! They shouldn't do it to a dog!"

"Ah!" said Protia. "A surprise! Now I understand. I thought it was part of it all."

"You could stop a guy's heart beating that way!" Adamson was recovering, he had his breath back, he was almost over the shock of light and cold water.

"I thought it was all part of it," Protia fluttered up. "I thought that watching man on his dais behind where that wall was, I thought he was some sort of on-looker, a referee perhaps. A scorer or something. Evidently, from what Adamson is thinking, he is not!"

Adamson glared murder at the figure on the dais.

The man wore a tight, sleeveless leather jerkin, a loose, brown, flowered, silklike shirt beneath it. He had black knee breeches, soft black bluchers on his feet, folded down to the ankles. He wore white stockings with red clocks. His fair hair was cut long at the back and decorated with something that glittered, he had black, slitted sun goggles and a large nose. He had a floral necktie, loose-knotted and in his right hand was a small, ornamented whip. Protia did not like his mind.

The vibrations were unclear. Protia sensed he did not like Adamson, but that equally he did not care about anything really, one way or another. It was as if nothing was serious for him, as if everything was a game, but one that he must win. It was as if, because he lacked a real awareness, a real sensitivity, he had to pretend emotion and he could do anything to win.

Adamson began to move. Protia noted that his vibrations were pretty nasty too.

"What's the matter?" said Thead, swishing his little whip. "Can't you take a joke? Nothing personal, but did you really think you could have my girls? My property. Did you think I'd let just anyone use them?"

"Who is this? Who are you?" Shrilly shouting Adamson began to clamber among the prostrate girls. "I'll kill him! I'll kill him!"

Adamson searched about, looking for his pants. Then he decided he only needed his boots to kick with. Why should he need pants to kill a man? He put on his boots. Adamson got within ten feet of the dais and the man made a short gesture with his whip.

The girls squealed and tried to scatter. A red jelly sticky something sprayed from the walls and ceiling. The room filled with its mist of thickness. Adamson and the girls were caught and held in it. Their movements became slower, they were almost blinded, almost strangled, stuck in the resistance.

It was in Adamson's eyes, in his hair, it was under his  arms and in his boots and in his mouth. He tasted it. It was plum jam. Warm and sticky sweet.

"I'll kill him yet!" Laboriously Adamson fought toward the dais steps. There were sticky girls under his feet, he booted them away in a flurry of jam. He'd kill that man with his bare hands. Throw him down and kick him to death! Drown him in his own jam!

"Is it always like this when men meet?" Protia asked the Probe.

"What's happening?" said the Probe. "It's so confused!"

"Do they always want to kill each other? Is it how they are?" 

"Well, you need a certain bloody-mindedness to cross a Galaxy, I suppose. I mean they'd be nothing without it, but it does make them quarrelsome."

"I didn't. I'm not bloody-minded. Perhaps Adamson doesn't mean it? A figure of speech, perhaps?"

"You're different. Some men are more so than others, a human characteristic. Some men get to the top and some don't!

"But what's happening?"

"I must say I admire Adamson's determination," said Protia. "He keeps falling down - keeps slipping down the steps - falling, churning, jammier still and jammier, and each time he starts again. You can see it is the determination that carried them across the Galaxy!

"Also I admire the calm of the other man. He stands, hand on hip, one foot elegantly before the other, his beautiful little jeweled whip swishing idly at his leg. Detached, he is detached and above it all."

"Him and his damned toy whip!" Adamson would make him eat it.

"Please tell me ..." said the Probe. "Please tell me what's happening!"

"Is it sweet enough for you?" Adamson was slipping and sprawling on girls and jam toward the man he wanted to kill and the man asked him if it was sweet enough. "Do you like the flavor? Plum. Synthesized and certified from an old Cornish recipe. That's on Earth, you know."

"An unpleasant voice," said Protia to the Probe. "He doesn't care if our Adamson likes it or not really. Adamson is still going up the steps, I admire that."

"Now then, fool," the man in the jerkin took a step toward the front of his dais. "I am Efil Thead and I am master here. I am the husband. The leader. All the girls are mine and you shan't tamper with them!"

"Kill you!" yelled Adamson. "I'll get you... wipe that grin off your face! I'll spread you all over two continents!" 

"Jammy fool! You'll have to wipe that off first! Have you learned your lesson? Are you humble as well as sticky?"

"No!" In spite of everything Adamson noted it was a middle era name. When he got at Thead he'd need no name then!

"You with no trousers caught in schoolboy smut. You fool. You should be humble!

"Why aren't you humble? Why don't you know your place?"

Adamson, still slipping on the steps, said something short and obscene.

"The question is," said Thead, pretending to consider, "shall I kill you now, or humble you a little further?"

The jam had drained from Adamson now. He was lighter, freer. He coiled himself to spring. Protia noted his vibrations were still very savage.

"Kill you now!" Thead made a sweeping movement with his left hand. A gun appeared there. A shiny, ancient, automatic pistol.

"Genuine," said Thead proudly. "Not a reproduction."

He pulled at the back of the gun, cocked a round up into the breech.

He held his right hand out with the thumb pointing down. The toy whip was stuck in his right boot.

Thread carefully brought the pistol down, aimed it at Adamson's head.

"Small caliber," be said. "Sorry to take so long. It has to be just right. Die now."

Flame and smoke and nickeled lead spat at Adamson. Protia cowered at the explosion pressures in the air. Adamson flung down. Rolled and scrabbled off the steps to fall among the girls. He rolled desperately across the floor. Thead's bullets tore and crashed at the marble behind him.

Marble jammy chips sprayed into the air. Stung into Adamson's bare backside. The ricochets whined, the girls, screamed. The jam splashed everywhere. Thead kept on missing.

"What's happening!" screamed the Probe over the radio.

"Cordite!" said Protia. "So that's what it is! So that's' what it... it 'smells' like!"

Adamson tried to run and roll across the jammy ruins of the divans. He slipped, squelched, fell again, went skidding across the floor, brought down the yelping girls as he went. It saved his life. More of Thead's bullets went close over him as he fell. Some of the women in the safer places were laughing at his antics, throwing their guitars to trip him as he tried to run again.

"Is it always so?" asked Protia. "They loved him so much just now."

"People are like that," said the Probe. "It happens all the time!" Its voice rose to a scream. "But tell me what happens!"

"Thead's stopped shooting," observed Protia. "He's laughing too much. Is that what's called a 'sense of humor'?"

"Run, Adamson! Slip and tumble! Make us laugh!" Thead stood legs spread pushing a fresh magazine into the butt of his pistol.

"PROTIA!" yelled the Probe. "DO SOMETHING!"

Crawling hopeless in the stickiness, Adamson saw the protia Moth flicker and explode into a thick Gray Cloud. The Cloud wavered a moment, then became a heavily armed Space Soldier ten feet tall aiming a nine-inch blaster at the amazed Thead.

"Who the hell are you?" Thead's pistol lowered, his jaw fell, he forgot Adamson.

"Protia. An Alien. Extra-Galactic." Adamson began to crawl and wriggle through the naked slippery girls toward the vast staircase which led down to safety.

"Fame...." said Thead. He spoke to himself, his eyes had glazed. "I can be distinguished this way too! I can take this Protia back to Planet One and be written in history that way. It could be my offering to God!"

"Why are men so vicious? Why do you want to kill poor Adamson?" Protia was playing for time. She didn't know what to do. The Space Soldier was from Thead's head and she did not understand the blaster.

"Him? He doesn't matter now. Not now I've got you. I can kill him anytime. Come with me to my Probe and we'll fly off to the Central Worlds together! Back to welcome and glory there! I'll be the one to bring youl The one... me... the one!"

"No. Why hurt Adamson? Why humiliate him?"

"Not important." Thead pocketed his pistol, turned and took a Thompson gun from one of the girls behind him. He turned back. "Nothing personal, Adamson! I'm going to crush and kill everyone, not just you. So that I'm alone, you see. So I'll be famous, so I'll be the last man and the best one!"

"Everyone? The whole Race? Why? Why?"

"To be famous. I'll be unique... it'll be the ultimate fame, I'll allow no one who could compete!" Thead had forgotten Adamson again. Quietly he crawled on. Thead continued talking. "When I've wiped them out I'll be God then, alone with him, it'll only be in my mind then. Indistinguishable from the Godhead. Everything I say'll be true!"

"That can't be right," said Protia. "It can't be! It's mad. Could he kill everyone?"

"It may be possible," thought the Probe. "Remember there's been the Re-Call. There are only a few people left, probably all in one place. He might make it..."

"I'm a man," said Thead. "I've made it - the top of this tree. I'm an artist. What a project! What a challenge! What a concept! How it will enhance my reality to be the last man alive!

"There'll be no one to contradict me then! No one to argue! A greater man than ever! I'll be right because I say so. I'll enjoy that..." His eyes glazed again.

"But the girls? Why give poor Adamson the girls?"

"I have to have reasons. I can't do it for no reason. It wouldn't be ethical. I like to feel I'm in the right. I don't feel right with people unless I can humiliate them!" Thead flicked his eyes about the room. "Where's that poor Adamson gotten to?"

"No," said Protia. "I'll not come with you. I'm with him "

"Then I'll kill him sure. When he's dead you'll come with me then."

"No."

"If you come with me I won't want to kill anyone." "No."

Thead brought up the Tommy gun. In the sudden dead silence he cocked it. The girls stirred. Protia leaned forward, tried to overawe him, poked out her blaster, wished she knew how it worked. She wished she could under stand how to kill people.

"NO!" she said. "Don't do it!"

Thead's hands closed. The gun burst to life. Thead was grinning, his eyes glinted cold in his goggle slots.

Heavy bullets slashed and echoed, cartridge cases arced to rattle on the floor. Smoke filled the room, Adamson screamed and ran for it. He heard girls behind him yelling, he heard the thudding tearing as bullets smashed into their bodies. There was blood now and Adamson slipped in that as well as the jam.

Somewhere some girls were still laughing. The bullets burst the marble at Adamson's heels. He slipped and skidded. Other gals thrashed in their jammy, blood death throes.

Protia put her armored space suit body between Adamson and the gun. The ricochets redoubled. Adamson made it to the stair head. Berserk, Thead began firing on the girls.

Protia reverted to the Gray Mist form, sealed Thead off in foggy isolation.

Adamson paused at the stairs: His ears filled with gunfire and screams, the thud of falling bodies. He looked back through wreathed gun smoke layers at the smashed girls.

At his feet on the fast slippery steps, mixed with broken marble Adamson stumbled on a bloody arm. He picked it up and it still dripped.

The girl was nearby. He bent over her, saw she was dying. Then he started, looked more closely.

Under the blood, under the ruined amber of that soft flesh, the shattered bone, the burst intestines - there, in there were wheels, ball socket joints in ivory smooth metal.

Wires and levers, minute servomotors, small gold circuitry, like bloody jewels all under that soft seeming flesh. He wiped away the sticky jam, the pseudoblood. The girl laughed in his face.

"He'll make us again tonight," she said. "Thead made us all. He'll make us again when you're dead!"

Adamson sobbed once and stood up. It was worse than Laura. At least she was a dream and at least she was dead and it was for good. He wondered if he'd ever meet a real woman, if he'd seen his last one.

"It's to fool you," said the girl "Or fools like you. My lord Thead must feel superior." Her legs jerked, dark pseudoblood gushed from her mouth. Then she laughed again, jerked and went limp, her head carefully pillowed on her arms.

There was still gunfire from Thead in the Protia Gray Cloud. Adamson made it quickly down the stairs, blood, or perhaps jam, trickled more slowly after him.



- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

AGORAPHOBIA (qv), Fear: A neurosis, like Love (qv). a madness (qv). The Race was mad when it went into open space.

THEAD, Paragon (qv) The real hero of the Race. Note the tremendous power of his emotions (qv), the splendor of his spirit, the breadth of his conceptions, he was the ultimate apotheosis of the Race as such.


CHAPTER EIGHT

Adamson stumbled down the last few steps into the open air. It was colder there, colder and cleaner, he wished he had his trousers.

Half a mile away lakes glinted through the carefully shaped bushes. He headed toward them, half-running across the close-cut grass. Once, suddenly aware that he was in full view of the vast buildings behind, he glanced back. He saw the thousands of overlooking windows and began to run hard toward the bushes near the water. It was a moment of sheer panic, of agoraphobia.

"Let me out! Let me out... I'll promise anything... I'll promise everything!" Thead was still inside the Protia Cloud He'd given up firing the Tommy gun and was sitting cross legged on the floor cutting at the mist with his whip.

"No. You've got to leave Adamson alone."

"If you come with me I won't kill anyone... not even him! 

"No."

"I shan't come here again. I shan't remake those robots! I'll leave them to rot there. I'll leave that intelligence, those entities, those personalities lying there in false blood to rust and decay! And then I'll kill Adamson too!"

"It won't do. You can't threaten me. You can't fright me to make me live with you. You can't possibly kill everyone!"

"Can Thead or can't he?" murmured the Probe. "I will compute it. A simple determination. I wish I had the facts... "

"He's got all those robots," whispered Protia. "All his Androids... all the disposition of your science."

"Yes. The Race must be in a bad way. You must remember the Re-Call. Yes, I suppose so, I suppose it's possible... "

"But I'm sorry for all the... the 'dead' ones, those blooded dolls Thead won't remake. I hear their consciousnesses dwindle... slowly, so slowly. They could take so many years to die. What would... would 'God' think of that?" Profia looked sadly at the shambles in the hall.

Adamson splashed to his knees in the ornamental lake. He made one last glance over his shoulder at the towering window mass behind him, conquered his fear, began to wash the jam and pseudoblood from his body. It came off a lot easier than he had expected, but then, even if the thought was the same, it was only pseudoblood.

Protia released the ruffled Thead.

"I can take you in again any time," she said. Thead brushed at his clothes.

"I will not kill Adamson yet," he said icily. "Not until you absolutely refuse me, I cannot believe you will do that in the end. Consider what I can offer you." He found a cloth, began to clean his boots.

"What?" said Protia. Perhaps she could get Adamson enough time to reach the Probe. "What can you give me?"

"All the well tried pleasures, the riches of treasuries." Thead put one foot elegantly before the other. He held up his hand and counted off his offers with the muzzle of the pistol in his left. "I promise you great entertainment!

"Tales of obscure foods, oriental ways of maiming, expensive sports, girls all in cat suits - rubber, with built-in weapons, hand grenades with flowers painted on them, golden revolvers, obscure cars, all the luxury some men thought they had perfected, machine guns with silver bullets, ski runs, lovely sexual girls safely secondhand, sybaritic heaped pleasures, hints of the less frightening perversions, graphic death and violence..."

"Fascinating." Protia searched her mind for Adamson. Where was he? Was he near the Probe?

"I'll tell you such stories... such stories! I'll weave it all in. Fantasies of superhuman prowess, of fortunes gambled, of a thousand cheeses, of giant squids, rockets, secret agents, sea chases, sex again, necrophilia, spicy violence, intelligent-sounding nonsense, all the yarns of the ancient storytellers. I'll make it all happen again for you!" Thead moved the other foot forward, put his hand on his hip, caressed his cheek with the filed-down fore sight of his pistol.

"No," said Protia. "With your girls, with your imagination, you don't need me. You don't need me any more than a toad needs side pockets!"

"What!" Thead jerked himself back. "WHAT?" 

"No."

"You refuse?" Thead stamped his foot. He spun on his heel, stormed off the dais. "You'll regret this! Oh, how you'll regret this! How I'll make the whole Race suffer for this!"

His anger broke like a wave on Protia's conscious. Even Adamson, doused and jammy, had not, vibrations like Thead's!

"You've condemned the whole Race! You know that. And when I've figured out how, I'll kill you too!"

Thead stamped away. Protia hesitated, then followed him. She wondered if Adamson had had enough time, how she could save the Race from Thead. She'd seen nothing like it before, never known such hatred as Thead's, she'd hardly known hatred at all. There was nothing she could say to him.

"A sad thing," she whispered to the Probe. "Poor Adamson, his first meeting with his Race for so long it ends in ignominy and hate. What'll become of him, poor Probe Rider?"

"He hoped for so much - so enjoyed the City Palace. Where is he now?" The Probe was trying to find a way it might help.

"What a black towering power of anger!" Protia, in spite of herself, was impressed. "Such rage... such a depth of feeling. Such a thing... 'hate' is such a thing!"

Adamson had finished washing. He began to walk through the lake. It seemed best, the quickest way to the Probe, the quickest way to escape Thead and the City.

The water was real enough, pleasantly cool on his bare legs. His boots squelched, puffed-up plumes of the light sediment in the amber water. Carp hung there, then drifted away from the disturbance of his passing. He came near a swan, it didn't move, it floated there like some small, yellowish iceberg. The flamingos hadn't moved either, they stood like pink statues among the rich carvings reflected at the water's edge. Adamson paused, turned quickly to look again at the swan.

It had a propeller instead of legs. Small and brass and still, just below the surface. The fish had them too, all of them.

It dawned on Adamson that they were all robots. He began running desperately through the water.

Thead was there. Adamson knew that Thead was watching him and would kill him. He splashed through the water, he gasped with pain and effort, he was afraid, he no longer doubted reality. He longed to be away from the automatic swans, he longed for the weapons in the Probe, the armored safety of a suit. The swans turned to watch him go, the flamingos swiveled to see him come. Perhaps, perhaps, thought Adamson, perhaps when I reach the Probe... if I reach the Probe, Perhaps I'll wake up! Perhaps if I can kill Thead like Laura I'll be all right again! He was as scared as Thead was angry. He was scared and that was real.

Protia hurried after Thead. She knew she must watch him until Adamson made it to the Probe.

She permeated the City Palace, flowed through the corridors, snuffled as a Dog through the bedrooms, stalked a midnight Panther through high-arched, palmfilled greenhouses. She padded her soft paws through the fleshy, putrid flowers there. Thead had disappeared, Protia sniffed for his mind, then began to search the Palace again.

Adamson scrambled up long banks. He burst through the geometric topiary, crashed through mazes, water lily stems clung to his legs, all the time broadcasting his position. There was pseudochickweed in his hair; struggling he climbed a sandy cliff, flung down, lay there panting. Flies began to bother him.

Protia found Thead in a cloister of gold and lapis lazuli. There was a sunlit arcade, laid out in a square, a small fountain in the middle tinkled in the silence.

Thead walked there, fingering the long weapon he held in his hands. Protia watched him move from sunlight into shadow and back again. Sometimes he laughed to himself, preened on future triumphs when he would have and be everything.

Protia hid her Moth form in a molding on a pillar and watched him. His mind said he had Adamson in his power. Somehow he was sure he'd kill Adamson. Protia began to wonder if he was mad.

Adamson looked carefully behind him, then turned and searched the blue-green woods for danger. Nothing was moving, it was very quiet.

Something made him turn quickly and look again to the left.

Thead was there. Standing stock still in the shadows. He had a steel longbow and white shining arrows. Adamson watched, jaw dropping, as Thead quickly bent the bow and shot at him.

Adamson rolled and scrabbled away. Then he felt the shaft thud into the ground. He saw it appear in front of him, stuck almost to its flight in the ground between his thighs. Before he began to run he heard Thead laugh.

Adamson rolled through the nettles and brambles. An arrow sang by, he fled before the terrible anger of Thead. Stung and cut, eyes staring he ran into the trees.

"When I've bad my fun I'll get you!" Thead's voice echoed after him. "I'll humiliate you again. Fix you so you don't get well again!"

In the arcade Thead stopped walking, punched his fist into his palm. He laughed, then glanced up to where Protia was. She wondered if he knew she was there, she wished she knew why he was laughing.

Adamson ran through the trees. He had had time to think, he aimed for a great arc through the woods back past the City to the Probe.

Suddenly the woods were fall of people. They came from everywhere - holes in the ground perhaps, or from hollow trees. It was as if they rained from the thin air. Adamson turned this way and that. Everywhere hunters appeared to head him off. He was harried through the woods like a rabbit.

They were mostly girls. Some had sabers, there were some spears too. They were the girls from the Palace, they hadn't dressed. It took Adamson a moment to remember they were only Androids, then all he could see was the flicker of the swords, naked steel against the rounded thighs through the sun dapple of the trees. They drove him forward in the half-moon of their advance.

Adamson began to call in his mind for Protia. Then he had to run harder, too frightened to concentrate.

When he could go no further Adamson ducked into the roots of a giant redwood. He leaned there gasping, sweat running on his face. When he could see properly there was a rock by his feet. He stopped, got it, held it against his cheek. Perhaps he could get through the cordon, double back and get to the Probe the long way. Perhaps they wouldn't even notice.

The breaking of undergrowth came nearer. He flattened against the roots, lifted up the rock, he fought to control his breathing, to keep still and wait. Twigs snapped again, nearer still.

A hoarse shout, somebody was telling the cordon to keep in line. The somebody walking quicker and quicker toward Adamson's tree. Adamson heard a chuckle... then breathing. 

A man came round the tree. Adamson leaped and swung the rock at the head. As the rock came down the man turned and it was Thead. The glossy black cockroach goggles froze Adamson a moment and the rock only broke the upper arm. Thead went down in a tangle of bow string and bending alloy arrows. Adamson dived on him.

The rock went up again and down hard on Thead's head. Adamson clubbed him twice more and Thead lay still. He hadn't made a sound

Thead was dead! It was finished. Adamson was delighted. Now it only remained to get through the cordon. Triumphant he turned to run back to Protia.

Far away, in that cool courtyard with the fountain, it dawned on Protia that something was wrong. Suddenly she knew that Adamson was in trouble and what it was. She began to leave the cloister.

"Going?" said Thead.

"Yes," said Protia.

"I still might spare him if you come away with me!" Protia ignored him and began to search for a way out. She had decided what it was she most disliked about Thead. He had too few vibrations and those he did have went diffused. It was as if he had no real interest in things, no real love or telepathy. Somehow he wasn't open minded enough either, she couldn't understand him.

A shout behind him and Adamson knew they had seen him again. He left off hoping that they would all disappear in spangled lights and candy floss and ran hard down the hill toward the park land on the north side of the City.

They swarmed after him, shouted for him, screamed for his blood. Adamson looked back and saw the flash of their terrible sabers, the bobbing breasts of the Androids, the high shine of arrows as they arced toward him, He ran faster through the carpet of deep driven shafts. Then looking back once more, he saw people come from the trees. Apart from the girls they were all Theads. All of them! All Theads and naked women.

Staggering, mind churning, Adamson pounded on, cursed the multiplicity of Thead.

A last box hedge. He leaped, tripped and somer saulted, burst through, rolled on the turf. He struggled up and began to run parallel to the Palace wall. The awful blank windows looked down as he threaded through sculptures, he hated his nakedness, his exposure on that great lawn.

Two miles away, swinging slowly around the end of the buildings, he saw the Probe. He choked out a cry of relief and ran harder toward it.

"ADAMSON! ADAMSON!" The Probe's great voice reached out to him, sounded metallic off the vast walls.

"Where have you been? I'm ready to go! Leave this Thead, remember the Re-Call!"

"Here! HERE!" It was painfully slow to cross that space. Thead's hundredfold shriek of rage came from behind. Adamson ran on hard. The arrows stopped. He looked back. The first Thead had stopped. His bow was at his feet, there was his whip in his hands, he spoke to it urgently.

A roar of distant, gathering power from far beyond the woods. A sound of lashing, breaking trees, the fall of the giant redwoods. Winds sprang up. The air shuddered with changing pressure. Adamson hesitated, moved a little toward the City, then ran on. The noise of falling timber raced nearer.

The vast humpback of a Probe loomed over the tree tops. Leaves and branches, pine needles. scattered in clouds a thousand feet into the air. The near trees burst down, flattened and crashed in showering broken wood.

The new Probe's exhausts flickered behind and beneath it. There was smoke and forest fire, sudden flame puffed up, wood smoke mushroomed.

The machine turned on its axis, slewed and chewed twelve feet above-the raging turf. The long snout quested for Adamson. The back end crushed down another ten acres of woodland and it raced toward the running man. Somewhere Thead's high pitched laughter cut across the roar of motors.

"Don't kill him too quickly! Leave some for me to play with!" The Theads stepped forward "You hear, Adamson? I was once one too! I was like you. I was a Probe Rider until I saw my High Destiny! Nec sorte nec fato! You don't get betting the dice won't pay!" He paused, thought for a moment. "I was ordinary, once, before I knew my greatness."

Then the Theads were on the edge of the lawn. Their hands all came onto their hips, they were all laughing confident again, all shouting in unison.

Then, when Adamson had almost stopped, almost given himself up, Protia came. She flashed like a Gray Mist bullet from the Palace to Adamson's side.

She darkened, grew dense. She bundled Adamson up in

Gray Mist safety. She enveloped the whole area, then she froze time inside herself.

Adamson found himself alone in near silence. Protia formed a hole in herself and held him there.

"Walk," she said. "Don't run! Walk toward our Probe."

Adamson jogged in his moving clear patch through the Protia Mist. He passed the vague still shapes of the time frozen statues, he went under the very nose of Theads charging Probe.
It was an odd moment. The Probe was still moving, but very slowly. It came forward at perhaps a foot a minute, the fire of its power wavered steadily, lumps of earth and debris curved gently through the mist, the sound was muted to the mumble of distant volcanoes. Then Adamson was past and hurrying toward his own Probe. Ages later his feet found the welcoming ladder.

"Ready?" said Protia. "I can't hold it forever!" Adamson scrambled into the Gallery. Protia gathered herself in. Her time lock released.

Thead's Probe slewed in the screaming insanity of its power. Earth flew, the turf of centuries flared out, there was the sound of breaking statuary, then the rumble of falling masonry as it struck the City wall. Scrambling up the floor Adamson saw the screens fill with Thead's Probe as it made its slithering turn toward them.

The Probes faced each other.

"Thanks," said Adamson.

`Nothing," said Protia.

`NO!" said the Probe. "It can't be! It's mad! Robotics can't fight each other... hurt people. It's not Lawful!"

Thead's Probe fired its planetary armament. Pure energy licked at the Probe's skin. Protia came flashing through the bulkheads to protect Adamson. The Probe erected its shields.

"OFF!" yelped Adamson. "Blast off!"

"KILL! KILL!' Thead's voice crackled through the speakers.

"Unheard of," said the Probe. "Fancy Probes fighting each other!"

"Laws are for breaking," said Protia. "You've got I proverb. You've got a Law about reproducing yourselves too... and making Androids too much like people. It didn't stop Thead. It seems he's a man who thinks for himself."

"But... but it's not allowed..." The Probe was still shocked.

"Anything is allowed," said Protia. "Men do anything they like. It's only your Law that stops it, and then not often."

"OFF!" screamed Adamson "GET OFF!"

"Big ideas," said Protia. "That Thead's got big Ideas. Like genocide ... the smashing up of planets... big words..."

Naked energy lashed once more at the Probe's shields. "Quick!" yelled Adamson. "The main drive!" 

"But the atmosphere?" The Probe was undecided.

"The armament! Use the weapons!" screamed Adamson from the weapons locker. It'd gone so far he'd forgotten fear, now he was only angry.

"How do you do that?" said Protia. "How do you kill people?"

"Ask Thead!"

The Probe ignored them both. It rose up on the fire and fury of its planetary drive. The Theads and girls below puffed and crisped to flame like autumn leaves. The top of Thead's Probe glowed cherry red. Then it had to stop firing and put up its own shields. To the south the City Palace began to burn like tinder.

"The atmosphere plant is there," said the Probe. "This planet'll revert. It'll become uninhabitable."

"One more, one less," said Protia. "It's only matter. But Thead, poor Theads ... even he reduces the Race by so much ..."

"Off. I lift off this world. Remember the Re-Call... !"

"Plenty more like him?" Adamson finished buckling on his pants, checked the glove blaster case at his hip. "Plenty more like him..."

Surviving Theads raced to their Probes. All together they grabbed red levers and pulled. As their Probes lifted, magma bombs buried deep in the Planet's crust exploded. The planet cracked open. Volcanoes spouted, tidal waves gathered, the mountains

toppled into space. Thead's shattered world skew crazy across the void, spewed fire and debris, the purple and violet heat of its guts splashed out onto the darkness.

Adamson dived for his Dissolution Tank. The Probe unraveled him, to escape into the complex calm of its memories. They raced away, left the Theads in the disintegrating dust cloud that had been his planet.

"But Thead..." said Protia. "Dead? Death come him? Him ended?"

"Good." The Probe was not concerned. "My Adamson is safe inside me. It doesn't matter about Thead."

"I don't know. I'm only a loving Alien. Tell me, could it be good to kill someone like that? As evil and sick as he? Could it be virtuous to wipe out those unnatural robots? 'Killing' is such a final thing."

"Good or bad?" The Probe searched its deep record all its memory of the Race's history. "It doesn't matter. It's action that counts. That's virtue! Having power and using it. It doesn't seem to matter what you do so long you do it hard enough!"

Sowewhere in the destruction and chaos the remaining Theads fought out in their black Probes. Mouthing rage they cleared the purple heat, left the hellfire of their failure behind them.
Far out their rage reached Protia, awed her to silence with its virulence. Later the Probe heard it too, distorted and crackling in the receivers, ruined by Thead's rage and the dissolving magnetism of the planet's ruin, the Probe heard him and was awed too.



- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

HOLDS OF MAN, The Central Worlds (qv): The sun-planet systems which happened to be near Planet One or Earth (qv) and were so settled by the Race. In no sense were they central!

THEAD: Notice the hero's persistence, the grandeur of his rage, contrast this with the fear (qv) of the clown (qv) Adamson; the emetic sentimentality of the creature Protia.

CHAPTER NINE

Time passed again. Not quite so much this time, only a few thousands of years of passing stars, of the slow, smooth passage of space and the movement of eternity.

Protia and the Probe kept the long watch together, they saw the approaching suns, saw them pass behind and dwindle to red. They passed the long light years ins communication and friendly argument, speaking and adding to each other.
"So we have penetrated deep into your home, into what you call 'The Milky Way,' said Protia at last. "I could tell you that story now ... I'll spin it out for you ... pass the time?"

"I told you it."

"See the stars, the myriad lights, the varied colors, feel the spray of their warm emissions, hear them murmur."

"This place is so rich in matter. Why is there no communication?"

"Ah... ," said the Probe. "I had been thinking that too!"

"Surely we are near the Holds of Man? The Planet One is not too far?"

"It has been so long. Remember the Re-Call! There will have been a pulling in, a lessening of Probes, a concentration of people and effort on the planets, on survival alone. Stellar communication takes so much power. Perhaps when we are nearer, if we move into systems..."

Later, sometimes, there were messages. A few shreds of talk, heard only in part. Once for a while they heard a girl

pleading for some key or other, they could make no sense of it. And always there was Thead. Mostly it was Thead, or Theads.

Calling out in anger, inarticulate snarls of speech, or sometimes in triumph. Once they heard him calling on God to give him strength and speed to catch Adamson, to kill all men. They heard him speak of Protia, of his desire for her, ask for news of her. For a long time, there was nothing to wake Adamson for.

"Thead survives," said Protia. "Why does he go on so long? He's mortal enough behind those goggles."

"Just like Adamson. Those communications, they'd be his Probes, built from him, they'd speak with his voice. Thead's in his Tank."

"Perhaps we can avoid them. Will you Reconstitute Adamson?"

"Not yet."

Then, later, ahead, there was something. The Probe reached out, tested, tasted, bounced radio on it, scented at the spectrums of reflected frequencies and pronounced that it was metal and too regular to be anything but artificial. Protia listened, tried her mind on it, but there were no vibrations.

More time passed. The Probe drew near the massive something ahead.

"The metals are standard. I'm made of it, but it is so big!" The Probe was puzzled "Too big even for a Transport..."

"Mass: 6.9 Earth. Atmosphere: Nil. Type: Unique, no classification. Circular. Thickens toward the center... sterile..."

"Why here? Why just here? There's no sun ... it's not a sun itself. Why is it so much in our course?"

"A vortex... a gathering. A concentration - you know space isn't regular and that I must follow it."

"One of those? So we are in the same forces that put it there."

"I must change course soon. Or begin to stop. I can't pass close at this speed."

"We must look," said Protia. "We must see." 

"Curiosity..." said the Probe, "Adamson and I, we're like that. It killed the cat put the Race in its present trouble."

"The pleasure of knowing. I believe in the end that that's all there is."

The Probe began to stop, to use its precious energy to brake, to smoothly kill its mighty momentum.

The disc hung black against the stars. Light seconds away it filled the whole window of the Gallery.

"It's corrugated," the Probe had finished some more tests. "Fluted, deep and radial - like wave forms in sand - but more regular..."

"There are deepnesses, deep round holes." Recognition dawned. "Like exhaust orifices!" The screens flashed, the displays canceled and new conclusions appeared. "It's not one thing at all! It's Probes! A raft of Probes! Thousands!"

"Probes? Thead's?" Protia thought for a moment. "No, none of his vibrations. No vibrations at all."

"No radio." The Probe beamed in its codes and signals. "No response. You're right, you were right. We must see. Shall I Reconstitute Adamson?"

"No. I'll go. Don't disturb him. He doesn't deserve an unnecessary death. I'll go, it'll be quicker." Already Protia had begun to sense that perhaps there was something here better not seen by Adamson.

Protia expanded from the Probe. She raced to embrace the banked Probes, pressed close about them, listened and loved them for some faint hope of vibrations.

Adamson's Probe hung like a fly close under the mass of its sisters. It still flashed signals into the blank receptors of the machines. There was no response, the darkness was oppressive, the stillness absolute.

"Fifty thousand ... a hundred ... there are so many Probes ... "

"Riders?" said the Probe. "How many men?"

"No vibrations still. I will go in." Protia found a broken gallery and moved toward it. Somehow it did not seem decent to pass through the walls of those ruins. It was so quiet, so dark; the Probes were a deep, religious perfection of stasis.

She passed slowly through the starred hole blasted in the crystal glass. A meteorite, she thought, a big one. The hull there, the lock doors were twisted and blasted in, there was an eon of thin dust on the perfect floors. There were scratches and furrows there too, torn deep in that once perfect metal. If the Probe had been alive the meteor would never have gotten close; even if it had, the damage would long since have been repaired.

Broken instruments leaned skewed on that great floor. Protia examined them, saw the clouded lenses, the distorted screens and the beautiful, broken antennae. It was dark in there, dark like the inside of a skull.

She took the form of an armored Rider and went on. Somehow that was more suitable, there was no place for an Alien in this, it was the Race's sorrow. She poked through the debris near the inner lock, she shone her light down that remote corridor. The thick bulkheads ran away. The Probe was empty.

Protia walked down the corridor to where the Dissolution Tank must be. Adamson would have known that way, he would have recognized it; it was exactly like any other Probe - all the perfection, all the milled right angles were exactly the same.

It was the chintz that was different. The decoration was chintz and willow pattern, there was chintz with everything, the place was disguised and altered with it.

There were false cottage windows between the bulkheads, behind them she saw the apparatus of image projectors. There was no information on the screens, everything was dead.

Then Protia saw the ship in a bottle. The very oldest sort, right back to the dawn of technology, a sailing ship, all masts and cloth sails, sailing a small sea that somehow still seemed to move inside the bottle. To Protia, to her perceptions, it reeked of heartbreaking, timeless nostalgia. She let the bottle drift away, then saw that the room was full of them. On the tables, over the floor, among that scattered chintz cushions, among the broken willow pattern containers, held against the ceiling and walls by the tiny gravity of the Probes.

Dust had filtered in from outside; embedded in floor were fragments of iron stone from the meteorite that had done the damage. The Tank was wrecked, there were meteorite chunks there too.

"Is there anything?" called the Probe. "Anything at all?"

"Nothing," said Protia. "Nothing... really nothing to talk about."

"Try the suit locker. Is all the armor there?"

Protia opened the locker. One set of hooks was empty.

"Then the Rider went out," said the Probe. "He went out and stayed out... the Probe didn't even bother to replace the suit!"

"I'll try another Probe," said Protia quietly. As she moved up the corridor one of the windows came faintly to life and showed her a quaint prairie, a rural scene with ranks of orange harvesters. Then it faded. Protia choked; there was that same sense of long-lost nostalgia, that same rich sadness again.

Somehow, she thought, it was honorable too. Honorable for the Probe. That machine giving up its last energy shreds to project the chosen image of its man. And typical too of how men valued their faithful machines - even that dying image was prerobotic, from before real science. The machines didn't deserve what happened to them either.

Protia picked her way up the cold corridor, between the thickening crystal fragments and onto the Gallery. She looked back once, reverted to her Mist Form and made for the hole into space. The night was a little less deep there, at least the stars still showed.

She floated briskly up the vast curved hull. A small flexing of her form, a small ejection of particles and she pushed up over the curve, rose up over the horizon and there was a man in front. A man, his arms spread, quite still. A man without a head.

Protia went nearer and it was a space suit. The helmet lay a few yards off on the age-pitted hull.

Closer still she saw the suit's boots were fused there with gobs of dull gold metal. The armor stood there, feet spaced and rooted, a small welding tool at its feet. Once she thought she saw it move, sway slightly as in some

secret current. She knew it was imagination, that the suit hadn't moved for millenia.

She reached out a tendril of Mist. She took the suit and embraced it, surrounded it with her love, discovered and knew it. When the dust was gone the suit had chintz patterns.

She felt into the horrid black hole between the shoulders. Inside, shriveled, the thin parchment skin cracked back, curled a little, to reveal the crown of the skull. There was a little hair there too, possibly once, it had been curled. Maybe it had bleached, or perhaps once it had been blond.

Even the bones were shrunk, sucked and frozen dry in that terrible vacuum. At the touch of Protia's Mist the corpse crumbled and fell away within the suit. She found herself wondering idly, with a detached horror, whether the suit would rattle if she shook it, or if it would merely swish. It was a death to remember. That poor Rider, welded down, then the helmet torn away!

"Or suicide," said the Probe when she told it. "The welding could be to prevent rescue by the Probe. Even when my Adamson was burned I needed a life flicker to justify me. An ingenious suicide here. Logical... irrevocable, even for a Probe."

"No man would choose that," said Protia. "Would he... ?"

"You'd be surprised."

"Murder or suicide by this method... by any method... I don't know which is worse... "

There was nothing to do. Protia left the bright-patterned armor and went on.

The next Probe was candy-striped under the dust. Protia went straight in through the hull. She went down the bright painted, dark corridors, explored the polychrome madness of that place.

This time the Rider was inside. Long dead, it could have been a woman.

Her long hair was spread under her empty skull, her woman's clothes were wrapped about the dried, skin-papered rib cage. One thin-boned arm, one claw, was flung out toward the Tank at the end of the room. The other, long since drifted free, had been handcuffed to a candy-striped screen frame. A silver key lay out of reach, halfway to the Tank.

Protia wondered why the Probe hadn't released the Rider. She looked farther and someone had used a glove blaster on large areas of the Probe's mechanisms. There were great caves fused and gobbed into the wires and coils, the patterns and elaborations.

"Wanton!" said the Probe. "Terrible destruction. Imagine that Girl Rider scrabbling and fighting to reach the safe immortality of her Tank. How long did it take to die? She didn't starve, the food mechanisms are still there. Years - she had years to watch herself grow old chained to the one hateful place."

"Suicide?" Protia still didn't know which would be worse. "Another fancy suicide, or a murder? How this Race loves to hurt itself!"

"And the damage to this Probe! All to let a Rider die! Insane ... all the wrecking of intelligence!"

Protia searched all through the massed Probes. All the time there were dead people, all the time there were curious things in the Tank rooms. Some Riders had left themselves monuments of gold, or elaborately worked silver pyramids set in diamond. Meaningless patterns were etched on the screens and on the walls. Others had just jotted down notes, scrawled a few words here and there, written their names and a few obscenities to last down eternity.

One Probe was full of a giant cat's cradle, every knot was demonstrated there. There had been much amateur painting, garish wavy things in splintering paint, some scrappy carving had been done in synthetic wood, there were some clumsy boat buildings, all thickened and masked with the dust.

There was a man dead and mummified in his office, standing on his head, smiling almost, relaxed in an old yoga position. Protia went wandering through, trying to understand what she was seeing.

"'Necropolis,' a city of death, a conglomeration of coffin Probes, an infinity of ways of ending. They had

words for it, this crazy Race, a span so short - even for Riders - and them still finding ways to pass their time!"

Later, toward the end, deep in the stacked mass of dark Probes, Protia found connections of looping and dusty cables between the Probes. She made her way down them, followed them from one hull to another, made her way down the loops.

Some sort of attempt to keep intelligence going in one last Probe, she supposed. A frantic gathering of the power from the many to stir the one, to make it all last little longer. That there were cables at all showed how low the power had been.

She followed the branching connections down to the last Probe. It was exactly like the others, quiet, only the skeined cobweb cable mess made it different. There were no vibrations, the stillness was total.

The cables twisted and knotted, then led in a long hank of crumbled plastic and revealed gold to a terminal set beside the last Probe's Gallery lock. Protia passed through and they continued inside, fewer and thicker down the corridor and into the darkness.

The Tank Chamber was like everywhere else - there were dead people in it. Some were in disjointed space armor and others were not. They'd all been dead a long time. Protia saw that they were all arranged in a neat circle, the empty flesh-scaled skulls toward the center, a ghastly echo of the Probe raft itself.

The Probe itself seemed undamaged. Protia tried the circuits, examined the deep complexities. Satisfied, she took power from Adamson's Probe and, slowly at first, began to feed it in. It was like pouring water into sand.

Hours passed before any of the small pilots began to flicker and then, softly, to glow. There was a rustle in the speakers, the screens became a little less black.

"... z and z is four," said the Probe suddenly. "And apples are exactly red or exactly green and not exactly round ... losing, losing... too long lost..."

"Power," said Protia. "Have you enough power?"

"... power? Never enough power ... state the only simple philosophy ... the simpler the better, avoid difficulty ... avoid significance for simplicity . . . avoid complexity of reality ... call it a 'natural order', fool yourself you're wonderful and know everything ... try to change when you know you've been understood .. . seen through .. way to success ... recognition... "

"Answer me! I invoke the Law!"

"... the law..?" There wasn't enough power for the revived Probe's voice to have inflection, but it still sounded pained. "... THE LAW... I Robotic's Law ... I must obey the man my master ... my Rider, where is she? She shouldn't be hurt ... hurt ... so old ... long ago and I am so old ... it's passed me by and I can't see anymore..."

"What happened? Concentrate! TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED!"

"...tell and trouble ... x and x are two ... two, ballet dancer, belly dancer . . . too old. Primeval urge to dance on roller skates ... flicker in my senses ... "

"CONCENTRATE!" Perhaps the Probe had been out too long, spent itself thinking in narrow circles in its own narrow mind before it died. It was too old, there was no hope it would ever be more than palely conscious, but Protia hoped it might tell her what had happened. It would all be somewhere in the massed wires and tapes.

"... keep them out the good ones ... you've got to keep your position ... be the only one that's ever right ... only thing that matters ... reduce competitor's ideas to absurdity... always works ..."

"Tell me what happened." Protia forgot the speakers and fed her command directly into the machine.

"...what?"

"The Law. Tell me what happened."

"... yes so long ago. The Re-Call first, and then that was Canceled. We'd come almost this far ... nearly home..."

"Canceled?"

"Somebody ... anti-body ... authority ... voice of cod ... THEAD ... he stopped us. We couldn't go on with the Re-Call and The Great Work had failed ... let me end now . . . no reason now to exist . . . I know the ruin of my mind. .. I see the end of my power ... corroded relays ... broken wires ... sleep. I want to be alone ... too old..."

It was an interesting ruin. A sad thing, dark and romantic, it knew what it had been, it could not face what it was now. Protia wondered again which was worse, the giant ruined sentiences of the Probes ... or the dead Riders inside them.

Thead had been there, that was clear. Protia wondered what the Probe meant by "the voice of God." Probably it meant the Re-Call or the Cancellation, the Code that contained them, probably it was a figure of speech. One thing, the Cancellation was reasonable, the Re-Call had been a crazy idea, she saw that now. Perhaps after all, at the very core of things, on Planet One, perhaps it was reasonable there.

"Are all the Probes here?" She fed in more power.

" .. no. .. many more Probes ... Law: Probes are almost infinite in number, there are so many that numbers don't matter... many more Probes ..."

"Why here? Why are these here?"

".... vortex ... flotsam ... an end where there is no power ... far from stars ... no remaining choice of direction or position..."

"Why all the painting, the boat building? The ships and the bottles? Why?"

"... bottles..? ... the hobbies ... THEAD's idea ... a way to end the unendurable for Riders ... a way to age and die ... a way to refuse the Dissolution Tank  ... some chose sudden death, THEAD's suggestions too, stay from the Tanks and grow old ... senile ... I can't go on ... an end ... another end ... let me end and dream my dreams no more .. "

"The circular arrangement. Thead too?"

"God's man ... God's messenger ... no power to resist ... when the Riders were dead THEAD came and arranged them too..."

"But Law One ... the Race's survival?"

"... survive... ? ... why? All men are dead ... we are beyond the range of stars and help and hope ... we dreamed our dreams ... anyway we did not care ... no power ... THEAD also ... he brought machines and disappointments ... drained our remaining energies ... "

"Surely some Riders wanted to live?"

"... why? The Great Work had failed ... the Re-Call had failed ... no other life ... no other way to live . . why survive?"

"But the Work succeeded! Rider Adamson found me! I am an Alien ... and intelligent! It was all successful in the end. It was all for something after all!"

" . alien ... you... ? ... It wasn't all in vain? A thought to keep me warm. Let me sleep now ... let me sleep . . "

Protia hesitated. It was good that the Probe knew the success at the last. It would help it before it died. There were more questions she could ask, but they would only disturb it. She withdrew the power.

The Probe thanked her. The lights dimmed, fluttered, then died. The screens were blacker than ever.

Protia took a last look around, she turned and began to leave. She picked her way toward the corridor, threaded through the bodies, the prostrate space armor.

There was something written above the door. Something scored, incised into the impervious metal. Cut perfect in proud Roman capitals it read: THEAD FECIT.

There was an arrogance in the perfection, something too sure in the clarity of it, something savage in the triumph of those fierce serifs.

Protia went quickly out. She'd seen enough, she'd thought enough of failure and mortality, of explanations, it was time to go.

As she entered the Gallery a small Robot, separate from the Probe, released rockets into the void. Far out, in hundred mile letters, the fireworks spelled out Thead's name. Then as those fires dwindled "You Too" appeared, jeweled and burning in its place.

As the last words died the Robot cocked its old machine gun and, silently in the vacuum, began to fire on Protia. A hundred heavy bullets slashed through her back.

She knew what they were. She knew that they had passed through her, she knew their size and speed and what they were made of. She knew that, if she had been a man, even in space armor, she would have died.

There was something basically nasty about booby traps. Protia thought how cruel it was to set death for passing strangers. She thought how typical it seemed of Thead, she considered how unpleasant were the celebrations of his success, how he gloated over death and humiliation, how he advertised the murderous things he had done, how human he was, how he sometimes made mistakes. Then she thought how perhaps it wasn't his fault, how could anyone shoot a Gray Mist anyway?

Protia shrugged, slid into space, headed back to Adamson's Probe.



- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

THEAD (qv). See how Thead leaves nothing unfinished! That Thead! The things he does!


CHAPTER TEN

Protia swam in the darkness beneath the Probe while She watched the slow dying embers of Thead's fireworks; turning slowly she began to move again toward Adamson's Probe.

Blunt missiles came plunging out of space. Directional vents flared as they steadied, then leveled themselves and drove into the Probes.

White-hot explosion spheres blew there. They pulsed, swelled up bigger. The defenseless Probe hulls jogged and jostled. With dreadful slowness their jumbled collisions and impacts churned and spread all through the Probe bank. Hulls split, turned out their pathetic contents to spin white in the glare until they too were enveloped in the explosions.

"Thead!" yelped Protia. Sudden waves of hard radiation lapped at her. X rays could hurt her if she stopped too many. Instantly she thickened her surface to lead armor and raced for the safety of Adamson's Probe.

"That's just little ones!" Thead was on the air again. "Your number's up! Just wait for my big ones!"

More explosions flared.

"HERE THEY ARE!" yelled Thead.

Adamson's Probe shield glowed a perfect sphere of violet absorbed energy as the explosions reached it. Protia circled outside trying to break through, searching desperately to get in out of the radiation.

"PROTIA!" came Thead's voice. "Protia... I can see you. Come to me. Love me and I won't kill you!" Protia ducked behind the Probe's violet globe. A shattered Probe carcass went spinning past.

"Protia?" Thead had lost her for a moment.

"No. Never!"

"You're sure?" The explosions were reddening, beginning to contract and to darken.

"YES!"

"Then die!"

The missiles came again and then again. Explosions bloomed, the Probe bank finished its disintegration in tumbling energy.

A missile came curving slowly around behind the Probe's shield. Vents fired. It slowed, stopped a few yards from Protia.

"QUO VADIS?'' said Thead. "What about it?"

"I told you no. NO! A THOUSAND TIMES!"

"Is that, you, Protia?" The Probe would take no chances.

"Let me in!" The frantic Protia shoved at the shield.

"Nobody ever really liked me," said Thead. "Goodbye, Protia!"

The detonators closed. Protia froze time. The missile slowly lightened, glowed red, then white. In the slow time the casing began to swell.

The Probe, outside of Protia's influence, jerked open its shield for her. It saw what was happening, it saw the missile case begin to crack, saw the hellfire inside and jerked the shield closed again. By that time Protia was inside.

Even as the searing energy blast tore through, Protia was across the remaining space and inside Adamson's Probe.

"The biggest," Thead crowed to himself. "My best. And I've killed my Protia. She was mine, by rights, morally. Anyway, I've still got my ambition. What's Adamson got now? Nothing! I'll kill him anyway."

"A fig for who found the Alien! What counts is the one that ended it! Me! Thead! Why must I always kill every one?" Suddenly he felt sorry for himself and turned away.

On the other side of the explosion cloud the Probe stood still and took the blast of Thead's biggest missile. Two of the outer hulls ripped away, a running sore of molten metal bubbled on its back. The Gallery was wrecked, a plume of oxygen flamed in white-hot escaping gas.
Turning and twisting the Probe slewed away, crippled through the expanding field of debris. Protia brought her consciousness to bear, helped the Probe to control it's limping escape.

"ARS LONGA," Thead told himself. "VITA BREVIS! My ambition is forever, other people's lives are short. I must hurry and kill everyone before they have a chance to die.

"Now! More missiles. More power. There are still Probes intact!"

Explosions bloomed like pearls among the scattered dark Probes in the raging lilac light. "THERE! - and there!" Thead directed his missiles. He picked off Probes in the thermonuclear chaos.

"A pyre! A worthy pyre for the unworthy. I beat them all so long ago! Ships in bottles! Painting indeed! Sentimental romantics, all of them! How could I, Thead, with my critically clear vision, how could I have come from that stock? And Protia is dead, and Adamson is dead, in one economical moment. Protia is dead forever. . it seems I must always kill..."

"How did he find us?" whispered Protia.

"The firework Robot?" The Probe was concussed, uncertain.

"Too quick..."

"Could he have trailed us?" "The ion stream! The exhaust!"

"Thead's Probes snuffling like hounds along our scent across the Galaxy. He's determined, you've got to give him that!"

"A sincere man. Thead does what he sets out to do."

Protia almost caught herself admiring him. "He wants me too .. ." She checked herself. "There's something unpleasant about how he always prefers the old and horrible weapons. The ones from T.V.  - guns, I mean, and those missiles."

"A classical education. He prefers what he'd call 'the past excellences.' Tradition, probably the weapons are in the nature of a hobby." Then the Probe stopped talking. It couldn't go much further. It had to find a place, a planet, to repair and to rebuild.

Thead's explosions dwindled behind. For a long time the brilliant explosion glows pearled there. Then it was far away, a small and fading patch of lightness lost among the stars.

"The meaning of insignificance," said the Probe at last. "So much memory, so much dying wiped out so quickly, forgotten in that smudge of light."

"If you think like that," said Protia. "Then tell me what is significant. Tell me why we bother-if you can."

"To survive." They staggered on, spread their zigzag debris in the space about them. Time passed, no missiles came after them.


The probe brought its aching body gently into the upper atmosphere of a small planet. They carefully avoided the energy of the cumuli, dropped through twelve thousand feet of nimbostratus and came out into heavy rain. They eased through the gray veils, skirted looming mountain masses, all the time searching the murk for somewhere to come down.

They crossed oceans, passed a thousand small, bare islands. Power fell on the atmosphere engines, the Probe lost more height, scraped down and down in the almost solid rain. Then they could see the swelling gray sea racing past closer and closer; at last it gave way to sluggish small surf and finally, far up that beach, there was sand.

In the screens repeating low dunes ran away forever. The Probe hovered, it had no choice. It settled there. Let itself gently down in clouds of steam, fell the last five feet onto the hard-packed sand.

Plates gave beneath. The toroids cut out and the Probe seemed to collapse a little to follow the contour of the beach. A little atmosphere pressed out, it was as if the hull had sighed with relief. Protia relaxed, listened to the low roar of the rain.

"It's quiet," said Protia. "I can't feel a thing."

"Metal," said the Probe. "I've got to have metal and materials."

"Very quiet, I wonder if Thead's been here already?"

"I can repair, I need time." The Probe began to reconstruct the Gallery. "All I need is a little time."

"Make it quick," said Protia. "Thead won't have an ion trail this time. All that debris you shot down your vents. It'll be scattered all the way. Think of how that will look in infrared!"

"I can repair ... only a little time." Robot arms began to shift sand into the transmutation chambers. "We must run. I am afraid of Thead."

"We'll face him. We'll be strong enough!"

"Think of what he did to all those other Probes! How he destroyed them! Think of what he'll do to just me, one Probe!"

"But they were empty! They were dead already!" 

"And who killed them?"

Thead drove his Probes in lazy circles through debris cloud, past the gutted, radioactive hulks.

He looked out at them with a kind of regret, a nostalgia for the dead ruins. It was a sadness of relieved passion, a melancholy of fulfilled purpose, an anticlimax of triumph. He was wondering what to do next.

He passed a week there. He thought elegiac thoughts, wrote a verse or two, congratulated himself on the fineness of his feelings. Then he found the Probe's debris leading away from the explosion area.

Thead snarled. He knew instantly what had happened. He gathered his fleet with visual signals. White with rage, mouthing, his melancholy forgotten, he turned his Probes to follow the trail. He was perhaps a week behind. He wondered if the damaged Probe would have time to repair, to make the chase interesting, or if he would be able to wipe it out on the ground. He would enjoy it either way, he wondered how he could lose and why he enjoyed the game.

Protia stood on the new made Gallery. All about her were the noises of the Probe's repairing. Under all the rattle was the muted thunder of the rain.

"Won't you use your armament against Thead?"

"Thead is still a Rider and I am still a Probe and I can't hurt him. I wish I could."

"Think of what he's done - of what he'll do to Adamson, to you!"

"I cannot. What about you?"

"I have the same inhibition - I don't know how to." Protia turned away, tried to penetrate the rain. "When he catches us here, on the ground, we know what'll happen. You'll have to fight then."

"I cannot decide. I cannot think about it. I will consider when I must. Perhaps we'll be in time to run again."

"It might still be too late. He could be here any time." Protia went and searched the screens for warnings.

"Take my Rider out," said the Probe suddenly. "Hide somewhere in those mountains and islands out there. I'll find you when I'm ready... the air is good. You'll be safer." Perhaps, the Probe thought, they could live on this rainy world, survive there. Perhaps then, if Thead destroyed the Probe, he'd think he'd killed them too.

The Probe remade Adamson. Protia joyfully greeted him, her love redoubled, she could think of nothing else. She told the Rider what had happened. He was glad not to have seen the Probes and what was in them.

The Probe loaded a Traveler and ordered it onto the Gallery, then edged the happy Protia and the serious Adamson toward it. They climbed on board, still arguing about their chances. The Traveler hummed a few inches above the polished deck. The cupola swung open.

'HEY YOU! YOU UP THERE!" A fat man in brilliant yellow oilskins was shouting up at them from the beach. His dog splashed happy circles in the surf, chased its reflection in the wet sand.

"You'd better go!" shouted the man. "We don't your sort here!"

"I thought I heard vibrations," said Protia. "It was meeting you again ... I was too excited, I didn't pay attention."

"YOU GO!" shouted the man. "THE TIDE IS COMING IN ANYWAY!"

"We can't," the Probe bellowed over the surf. "We would if we could. I've got to make repairs!"

"A week only." Adamson had seen the fear in man's face. He felt sorry for him, a fellow feeling, tried to reassure him. "We've only got to hide up a week while the Probe gets itself fixed."

"WE'D RATHER YOU WENT! We can't make you ... but you've got to go. We don't like machines, Probes and such!"

"You won't know we've been here," Protia pursuaded. She'd stopped being an Alien Gray Cloud and come forward as a Rider. "All Adamson wants to do is get back to Planet One."

"ADAMSON! Is that your name? Is the Probe so Adamson must come with us as our ... our guest. Y, can bring what hand weapons you like. Come and � I'll have authority to let you stay a week. I'll be ' you, Mr. Adamson. Do you agree?"~~~~~

"Yes," said the Probe. "Agree. We don't want to firth it whispered to Adamson. "I can't hurt these people . we don't want to. Anyway, we don't know what they' got for weapons a big fight might attract Thead."

"Yes. Okay" Adamson called down. "I agree."

The fat man called his dog. He took a tag from its collar, wrote on it and sent the animal running back along his footprints in the sand: He watched it go. When he turned back to Adamson his voice had steadied and seemed less afraid.

"I will take you to a good place. We can go in your traveling machine ... the small, safe-looking one." 

Aamson took the Traveler down to the beach and he climbed on board.

The rain from the oilskins condensed on the hood, made them sweaty and uncomfortable. There was water on the floor too, it ran there in little rivulets. Adamson moved the controls and the machine lifted off into the sky.

"Call me Hedon," said the man as an afterthought.

Protia found his vibrations were mainly friendly, but that under it all there was a deep fear of the Probe. She could tell that he would have been afraid of any big machine, that he was worried even by the Traveler. As they got further from the Probe his thoughts turned to
women and to sunshine.

At half speed through the rain it was almost ten hours before the sand ended and the land began to rise. They parked the Traveler below a ridge in the foothills and
camped in a rain-soaked grove near one of the many streams.

"Does it always rain?" asked Adamson as they sat in the rain thunder of the Traveler.

"It's a wet day." Hedon got out. Even at a yard his waterproofs were a yellow blur in the rainy gloom. "It'll stop now. It's either wet or dry. This planet has a two-sun system. Night comes once every two earth months and lasts about thirty-six hours, then the second sun rises. It's complex, there are four moons too."

"I've seen worse." Adamson bad stopped outside and was wondering he'd ever be dry again.

"When the Greater Sun rises it's warm and dry. The air will hold more water. When the Lesser Sun is up it's colder and it rains all the time. We're in the rainy hemisphere now. It has to do with our orbit as well. Perihelion and aphelion are very different - the suns revolve about each other too. You can imagine what our orbit looks like."

"No, I can't," said Adamson. He thought for a moment. "Crazy. I'll take your word for it!"

After a while it got dark and when the morning came thirty-six hours later the rain had begun to lessen. Soon the sky was clearing and it had stopped altogether. When the Greater Sun burst through, Hedon took off his oil skins, and Adamson saw the fine silks he wore beneath it.

"A natural fiber," Hedon said when he saw Adamson stare. "Silk, we call it. Grubs make it." Adamson wasn't sure he believed that, but Protia said she thought fabric was beautiful and that that was enough.

The rain had been stopped about an hour, the air was warm and the trees had almost stopped dripping. Some curious-looking birds had come out, there were even some flowers straightening themselves out of the muck. They walked down the slope to where the trees stopped. Through the wet, black trunks Protia and Adamson saw the flood.

The whole of the plain was under water. Small waves lapped almost to their feet, almost to where the trees began. The foothills, and some of the mountains, had become islands.

"So much rain?" said Adamson. "How long will it take to drain?"

"It's the tide," said Hedon. "That's every four days."

"The Probe!" said Protia. "What about the Probe!"

"Five hundred feet in this part, nearer nine where your Probe is." Hedon jerked his thumb over the water - "Think of the plain as a continental shelf. I warned you. I told you the tide was coming in!"

"It'll be okay," Adamson was nearly sure. "The hull will be waterproof by now. It'll just go on working on the sea bed."

"It's a beautiful morning," said the man. "Some people like the rain, I like the sun." The last ragged clouds were gone by now, light steam rose from the ground and from the drying trees.

"Can your Probe communicate under water? Can you reach it?"

"No," said Adamson. "It won't ... we won't." They couldn't either, not with the Theads about.

There was a long silence. The deep water was turquoise over the sand plain, fish moved down there, chasing their shadows into the depths.

"The Probe's okay," said Adamson again. It wouldn't do to let Hedon think that they were unprotected.

"But now we'll go to my people," said Hedon quietly. "We want you with us, without the Probe you can't resist. Please don't, we'll take you to our leaders."

Young men came down from the trees. They had stout metal-shod staves which they held almost like weapons. Adamson's hand moved to the flap of his blaster case.

"Please don't, We won't harm you, we won't let you harm us."

"Agree," whispered Protia. Adamson hesitated, then nodded.

The men from the trees split up. Some remained to watch Adamson and Protia, others went down to the shore line and presently came back with boats. They all embarked, the sails filled, they went quickly down the coast, mile on sunny mile.

"Here's why we don't like Probes," said Hedon suddenly. "You can see why!"

They had been tacking down a sparsely wooded rocky coast. Now they had turned toward it, passed between two close headlands there. It was a sinister place, the water was narrow, the headlands were rounded and black, a few pines fought for life far above the water.

"One exploded." Hedon was hushed, for once he wasn't smiling. They rounded the last headland, entered the great body of black water beyond.

"It's almost perfectly round," he went on. "Fifty miles across, we don't know how deep. They say the forests were flattened and burning for three hundred miles ..."

"Ten million dead, twenty million crippled, the whole capital was here. We were civilized then, we bad the big machines - we lived in peace here." Hedon wiped his eyes. "Thirty millions ... until that Probe came down. We hate machines, the blight of the Race!"

They moved on the face of the dark water. All the Men were quiet in that awesome place.

"Things live down there," said someone. "Funny fish that aren't right, we don't ever eat them ... it's a poisoned place ... poisoned forever. That's what machines do."

At last they had crossed the lake. They swilled over a shallow rounded reef of glass where the waves slopped sluggishly. They found the deepest place, went through on a wave into the open sea beyond.

Even the air seemed brighter there, the sun too. Hedon said their town was a few miles up the coast.

"It must have been a tremendous explosion." Adamson was looking back. "Just look at it! Think of all that energy. A main drive going up in an atmosphere!"

"That city ... what could it have been like?" Protia wondered what beauty, what life had been beaten down there. How could anyone like machines that could a thing like that?

"Could it have been Thead?"

"If it'd been Thead there'd be no one alive!" Adamson went to the bow. He sadly looked toward Hedon's approaching city, he thought about what would happen when Thead caught up with them.

The men hauled the boats up onto the white beach. The pink and white buildings of Hedon's city piled like icing sugar up the towering green hillsides above. The rocky arms of the bay embraced the harbor, there were more sailboats along the beach and some men were sewing a seine net. There were many dogs and children.

Hedon walked up the beach, he spread his arms to accept the welcome of his people. The dark, quiet people eyed Protia and Adamson almost reverently; there an awe there for the men who rode the machines they feared so much. They brought food and fresh, clear water.

Adamson and Protia were conducted through the town, called on to admire architecture and the fountains which decorated the gardens above the harbor. Hedon showed them machines from the old days, stripped and dismantled for their metal, left to decay in walled courtyards - a reminder of what once was.

Everywhere people waited for them, not unfriendly but as if they were waiting for them to say something, make some revelation. Also there were gifts; flowers, flags, or carved things, once a fresh fish. Protia was given a pearl and a beautiful square of silk to wrap it in. Adamson asked why people were so kind.

"It's the capital," said Hedon, "The people are richer, they have more to give."

"Gold ... money?"

"We don't care a lot for money, it won't buy affection, love." Then Hedon said it was time to meet the Committee.

The walls of the Committee Hall were open to the air. The walls were propped up on pillars, the people stood in their shade and quietly watched what happened.

Adamson and Protia were given chairs at the long table inside. There were speeches and welcoming. At last the Chairman came to business.

"You have seen the good life of our people. We tend our orchards, sow seeds in the rich furrows our women prepare. There is hunting in the high woods and on the mountains. Nobody is poor because nobody is rich. There is plenty for everybody and everybody gets a share.

"We have warm sun, when it rains we spend our time in music and storytelling. We have our small engineering, oils from nuts and fishes, we distill our fuel in the pine forests. There is trade, we grow a smoking herb on our south slopes that keeps our people happy, we have no ambition, there is no strife. We wish only to continue, we are prosperous enough and happy.

"You must see we will not risk what we have. We have a good life, everyone does what they can and that is enough." The old man paused, sipped at an amber colored drink he had there. "You have a question?"

"Those destroyed machines - you destroyed sentience there - killed intelligence. You turned your back on millions of years of progress, stopped your people from their true development as gods. It can't be right - not for just twenty million crippled, ten million dead - not just because one Probe exploded!"

"Some we only turned off. Anyway, the Probe was only the occasion of our withdrawal."

"But to turn from all that, to retreat from the whole nature of man? To live without machines!" Adamson still couldn't understand.

"Our ancestors knew what would happen if we did not. We would face the same end as we foresaw for the Race. God would visit us with his anger again. We decided to live right, that machines were false ... unnatural.

"On this Colony world we are far from the spaceways, our people only knew of Probes and Riders, of the Great Works by hearsay, by legend.

"We heard how the dying had begun, we heard the Re-Call when it was transmitted. Then that Probe came here and exploded and we knew we would be better by ourselves.

"A matter of communication. A simple cutting off. Without the machines we can't communicate, the Race can't know we're here and we're safe. Safe from outsiders.

"Out there, in race memory, in myths, we know of the Race. There is so much evil. We have our own Law and we live by that. What would you do?"

"Must we be prisoners?"

"Not that, guests. When your Probe is ready you may return to your dangerous outside, if you still want to. We are your prisoners, we are at your mercy. Only your silence, we only ask that you forget we are here."

"Yes," said Adamson. "But the Race needs you. The Re-Call...?"

"We decided not to answer that - it was so long ago, it couldn't matter now."

"Anyway, it was Canceled," Protia said softly. "But why did you reveal yourselves? Why did Hedon come to us, we might never have known?"

"You might have found us ... a chance, a risk. We preferred to ask your mercy, trust in a man's humanity against the Race's inhumanity."

"Your way then." Adamson shrugged. "But we might have been followed here."

"How could you help that? We won't hold it against you. We will show the same things, make the same appeal to the Rider. I believe we can hope for the same mercy."

They hadn't heard of Thead. Adamson shook his head sadly.

"I hope so too," he said.

They left the Committee Hut and walked down the sun brilliant street. Adamson wished he could stay there, become one of Hedon's happy people. The girls smiled at them, there were more flowers, offers of hospitality.

Adamson turned to admire one particularly striking girl. Over her shoulder, in the inky shadow of a doorway, on the left, he saw Thead watching them and his blood ran cold.



- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

DRUGS (qv) Aids to love (qv) and to sex (qv).

THEAD: Incredibly our hero was able to go Incognito (qv) on Hedon's World! Notice that Thead is also a tragic figure.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

"God!" said Protia. "He's here too!"

Adamson flipped his holster open. His hand closed into his glove blaster. Thead saw him, started to grope under his black silk shirt and brought out a heavy revolver.

For a moment their eyes locked, Thead smiled. There were people there, he was sure Adamson wouldn't fire. It dawned on Adamson how they were probably all Androids anyway and he finished drawing his weapon. He pulled out the knob and tried to aim at Thead. Thead brought up his revolver, aimed with it in both hands and began to fire.

Protia charged, shouldered Adamson down. The blaster clattered on the cobbles and slithered back into its case. Adamson swore and started all over again.

Thead jumped and bounced above the people's heads to get a clear shot at Adamson. Hedon looked puzzled. Everybody that had noticed looked puzzled except Adamson who was scared again. Bullets began to smash into the walls behind him.

Protia got Adamson by the foot and pulled him back behind the fountain. People in the crowd were hit. Screaming started, blood splashed on Adamson's legs but he ignored it. He knew enough now not to care about pseudoblood any more.

He shoved the white cylinder of his blaster muzzle over the fountain edge and then came up after it. A bullet splashed into the water to his left, then splintered into the parapet. Adamson ducked back blinded with spray and stone dust, He came up, tried again. The people saw his weapon and melted away like April snow. Adamson aimed and Thead was gone.

A door there swung closed. Adamson sent an energy charge leaping like a solid bar crackling through it.

A thump and the woodwork exploded into burning splinters. A wave of light and heat flashed back from the doorway, the main charge thundered down the corridor beyond. There was a crash of falling stonework. The house took fire, and a woman was screaming somewhere.

Adamson shook Protia off and ran hard across the street. The dogs were barking and people had started to move again.

"What happened?" Hedon tried to grab Adamson's arm. "What are you doing?"

"It's Thead! It's him!"

"You mustn't ... you can't!" Hedon blocked Adamson's way. "You can't!"

"I've got to, before he kills us all!" Adamson knocked him down with the blaster. Hedon sprawled feet up, there was blood on his chin, he still looked puzzled.

Smoke curled in the corridor. Fragments of oak still burned like matches in the dark. There was someone's hand lying on the threshold but it wasn't Theads.

Adamson saw the melted gouges where the blaster charge had scored from side to side down the granite walls. No one could have lived there. The end wall, where the charge had struck full on, was knocked out and mostly melted. Beyond, the whole back of the building was down and beyond that the garden was shattered, smoking at the final impact.

He stood in the smoke and dust. It was hot there, his eyes were glazed and he was panting. He held the blaster ready, he searched about for Thead but there was no sign. Protia came and stood beside him.

"You saw him? I didn't dream it?"

"Yes," said Protia. "He was here. Carefully, Adamson, he might be pearl~~~" Adamson leaned against the dusty wall, his hand dropped. The silver lanyard contracted itself, holstered the blaster.

Hedon's men jumped. Adamson sprawled down. He fought but they held his arms, one of them sat on his head.

"Madness!" said Hedon. "Mad dog! Why do you Outsiders do it?"

"That was Thead!" Adamson spat earth. "If you don't stop him he'll kill everyone!"

"Mad." Thead came forward through the crowd. "Mad ... you saw him, he tried to kill me! Offered violence! You know me ... I'm not called Thead ... I don't hurt people! Not like those dirty Outsiders and the violence they bring!"

"Of course not," said Hedon. "I'm sorry. .. he seemed all right. But what can we do with him now?"

"Take away his weapon. You can't trust him. Lock him up!"

"You're Thead," said Protia. The black goggles swung to look at her.

"Efil." Thead gave a small bow from. the waist, one leg before the other. He had on kinky fringed Bermuda shorts today, above his bluchers. On his head he wore a bright-colored surfer's hat. "My name is Efil, a humble servant of God."

"Yes," said Hedon. "Efil. He's from beyond the mountains. The far west, it's wild out there, that's why he needs a gun. He's been here a year, he's been telling us about God."

"Get that blaster," said Thead. "Don't let him get up!"

"You said he could keep it!" said Protia. "Back in the Probe you said we could bring what weapons we liked" There was a silence. Hedon looked embarrassed. Protia telepathed Adamson to be still. He kept on struggling.

"I did promise. As an administrator I must keep my word."

"All right!" Thead's lip curled. "Keep it! I'll fix you!" He stepped suddenly forward. A small hypodermic winked sunlight in his black silk gloves. The pressure of the jet stabbed through Adamson's skin. Thead shot a jet at Protia too, but she hardly noticed.

Adamson stopped struggling and started smiling. "There," said Thead. "He won't hurt me now."

"I love you," said Adamson. He smiled foolishly. "Flowers are lovely, where's Laura?"

"They need drugs to love each other, these Outsiders, Thead stirred at Adamson's ribs with his boot.

"You haven't hurt him?" Hedon went down on one knee, felt at Adamson's pulse.

"Only tranquilizers. They gave them away with the milk in the twentieth century. A good time, most productive of weapons."

"Poor Adamson - misguided. Perhaps when he's rested.. "

"Lock him in the guest house," said Thead. "I'm going up to the mountains to commune with God. I may have some revelations up there. You'd better send someone later to help carry them." He vanished into the crowd, reloading his Webley as he went.

Protia watched as they took the smiling Adamson to the guest house. She put him to bed there, sat by him.

Thead turned at the edge of the town and quietly moved back behind the houses. Minutes later he leapt through the open window and landed lightly beside her.

"Protia," he said. "You must be Protia. When my bullets didn't harm you I knew you must be she." He smiled to himself.

"You shan't hurt him!" Protia formed herself to a Gray Mist Shield over the snoring Adamson. "Protia, who else could I be?"

"They didn't tell me you could be human. It fooled me for a few minutes."

"It was just a form I had." Protia wished Adamson would awake, that he had his blaster handy. "I don't know how to kill, you or anyone else, but I can protect Adamson. You'd better go, before he wakes!"

"They're a nice people." Thead jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the town. "A good life, if you can keep it. A pity to kill them all." Protia gathered herself closer to Adamson. "If you came away with me I'd even let Adamson live. Perhaps I'd just keep him drugged for a footstool." Thead laughed. "Perhaps I'd have him stuffed, he'd last forever like that!"

"No!" Protia hardened her Mist Form. She pulled Adamson up closer still in the soft moisture of her internal folds.

"Please. Only think of it! Say you'll come with me and I won't communicate this world to anyone. I won't tell another Thead and we'll live here happy together. Marry you if you'll be a woman, settle down. If we silence the probes no one'll know, not even God!"

"You're the only Thead to know we're here? That this world exists?"

"I found it," said Thead proudly. "Me, alone. It hadn't communicated for twenty thousand years and I still found it. Then I made them trust me. I needed a holiday anyway. It'll be an artistic, unsuspected murder when I do it! And now I've got the famous Alien! Protia! The only one. She's mine and I've that fool Adamson that all the Theads are desperate for!

"Me! I! This Efil Thead! I'll be the unique Thead!" He fell quiet for a moment. "It's getting very hard to be someone when you're like us ... "

"Oh . . ." Protia took a sample of Anderson's blood, began to analyze it for Thead's drug.

"When I go to the mountain I shall communicate. Theads'll come and well wipe out this world." He swayed forward. "It needn't happen. Oh no! Say you'll be mine. This Thead's, alone. Say I'll be the only one to have an Alien. Well,~~~ a forever. Only say the word."

"Well! A dishonest Thead, cheating himselves. Judas!" Protia almost had the drug now, all she needed was a little time.

"Don't be sentimental. I've as much right as any other. I'm as much Thead as any of them. I just don't want to share." Thead stood up. He found a mirror, began to comb, his pale hair. "Well?"

"Do you know the story of how the Galaxy began?" Time, Protia only needed a little more time. She knew the drug, she had begun to synthesize the antidote.

"I don't like stories. They're all lies - fantasy and empty. Give me your answer."

"How could we live together if you don't like my stories?" Molecule by molecule she fed the antidote through Adamson's pores.

"An answer!"

"NO."

"Sure?" The thin lips smiled, Thead pushed his goggles up his big nose.

"Yes!"

Thead emptied his revolver into Protia. She absorbed the bullets, lowered them gently to the floor.

Inside her Adamson stirred at the shots. Thead stamped to the window, put a leg over the sill.

"I'm going to the mountains! It's too late, it's death all round!" He crammed on his bright bather's hat, dropped into the garden.

Adamson sat up in bed, be asked where he'd been and where was Laura. Protia turned to him, soothed him as she helped him to stand. When she had time to look again Thead was gone.

Thead ran and walked up the hill away from the town and into the trees. The sun was past its zenith now, the pink buildings shimmered behind him, it was still very hot. Thead eased the rifle on his shoulder, checked the ammo and food in his pockets and began to climb again.

In the guest house Protia walked Adamson up and down, worked the last effects of the drug from his veins. By the time be was ready Thead was an hour ahead and sitting on a flowery ledge eating sandwiches.

"It's always the same," he said to himself. "Me killing people and getting hated, winning all the time. Perhaps, when I was young it was too easy for me, I am not ordinary, not normal. Perhaps if I hadn't been given everything so easily, or not everything anyway. Perhaps then I wouldn't have to win. I wish I didn't want to humiliate everybody, I wish I didn't have to kill everyone. I wish they'd like me for myself. I wish I could be natural... "

Protia and Adamson hurried from the town. They kept in the shadows. Protia was a Police Alsation, she scented Thead's trail, led Adamson, stumbling like a blind man from the drug, through the cypresses and into the pines above the town.

"But then, it's my purpose." Thead drank rose-scented water from his bottle. "It's natural for me - when I'm the last man I'll be supreme. I'll deal directly with God, there'll be just me and Him. He'll say, 'Well done, good and faithful Thead,' there'll be no one to understand me then. No one'll ever call me charlatan again. I'll be the greatest, the richest, the best artist, everything ... no one'll say different then. I'll be head of everything!"

"Are all evil men driven to what they do?" Protia asked Adamson. "Or do they act for some purpose - for what they think is best? Or personal gain, or both? I mean, can you blame them? If a man has no standards how can he know the quality of his actions? Like being mad. I mean, should you despise him?"

"I'll kill him first, then I'll think about that." Adamson sweated up the hillside. It might be weeks before they caught Thead, it would probably take all day.

"But then," said Thead to the mountains, "I'm a prince already. I'm marvelous, I'm successful. My decisions are so critical, so logical. Understand me and you don't just forgive, you applaud!

"I suppose the trick is to do something worth understanding," he said more thoughtfully.

Hedon went to Adamson's room and found it empty. He shouted for his young men. Waving their staves they began to climb after the tiny figures of Adamson and his Dog.

"They're after us." Protia pointed her long pointed nose toward the town. "I can bear their vibrations.  Thead's starting to think again as well. I can hear him too."

It took almost all the rest of the day. For many hours none of the procession dared stop. They wound up and up on the high ledges, saw the sharp edges and the thick lichens there. Nobody gained much. When they could go no further they would rest for a few minutes, perhaps take a little food, or drink, or merely catch their breath. All the time the Greater Sun was sinking. When it became dark Thead would be that much harder to catch. As it was he stayed perhaps an hour ahead of Adamson and Hedon was almost as far behind.

Sometimes Thead waited. He would steady his rifle on some boulder and send a stream of bullets echoing and crashing about Adamson and Protia. Adamson would fire a blast or two back and then they would go on again. Then Hedon would shout for them to wait, yell up the sounding rock faces for Adamson not to kill Thead, that it wasn't humane to kill people.

Thead reached the ~~ask He waited there a moment, looking back. When Protia and Adamson came into a clearing he fired on them again and drove them back. Thead laughed and began to run down the other side of the ridge, onto the plateau there the mountains still echoed with gunfire; far below Hedon was shouting again.

There was water from the rainy day on the plateau. Thead ran down the slope and onto the water-logged grass and shallow ponds. The sun was on the clear water, there was light mist here and there and water fowl flapped away at Thead's passing. In the water he could see the concrete that underlay the turf.

Ahead, mere central on the plateau, among boulders, in a stunted pine stand, the concrete punched through the surface to form a blockhouse. It was old. The low roof was eroded, frost-cracked, the reinforcement showed rusty; crumbled concrete lay between the trees. As Adamson breasted the pass he saw Thead disappear in the sagging doorway.

Adamson brought up his glove blaster, fired and fired again.

The blockhouse shattered in flame, the water behind leaped up in steam. Smoke burst there, the trees fell and burned. As the noise reached them the high-arcing concrete chunks began to splash in the water.

Adamson began to walk toward the leveled rubble. Spray, mist and smoke drifted to envelop them as the advanced. Protia splashed on, her Dog's tongue lolling, the explosions rolled back from the hills, the birds circled the water, a breeze sprang up and the smoke blew away.

"Adamson!" Hedon had reached the crest. His shouts came across half a mile of ruffled water. "What ... you done?" The words were distorted, lost in the wind thunder in Adamson's ears. "... block house ... hit the blockhouse!"

In the rubble, torn steel rods were mashed with shattered tree trunks. Adamson searched for the remains of Thead. He had to be sure this time, he had to be sure that Thead would not communicate. Hedon's men came nearer.

"... lay. .. your weapons ... please! You don't understand .. , mad, homicidal! Let ... live ... poor Thead! .. what you're .. , wrong!"

"Stay there!" Adamson went to the edge of the debris and held up his weapon for them to see. The young men halted. They stood knee-deep in the water, looked to Hedon for their next move.
"Please, no more!"

"We've got to stop Thead! If he gets to a communicator he'll tell all the Outside we're here - you're here. You know what that'll mean!"

"Communicator?" Hedon paused. He knew what the bunker was. Legend said it was a control station that had once ruled the planet's Probe Bays. Perhaps there were usable machines down there still. Perhaps, just perhaps, Adamson was right and Thead intended breaking the long silence, to bring in the monsters from Outside. "Adamson ....tell me what you think?"

It was too late. Adamson had found the stair shaft and swung into the darkness on the fresh steel rungs driven there.

Protia tamed her eyes to infrared, her paws to Monkey Hands and went down after him. Hedon and his young men came running and splashing toward the rubble.

On the fourth level Thead stood listening to the darkness. His feet crunched on the collapsed circuit boards, crumbled the crowded ferrite patterns. He thought a moment, then jammed his rifle into the framework, crushed the butt through the remaining electronics there. Verdigris and rust showered down, black ages of dust came with it, almost choked him, gold wire snapped. Thead listened again. Somewhere far away water was dripping.

Thead took wire from his pocket. In the dark he found the trigger of the rifle, twisted the wipe to it. He passed the free end around an upright and led it back across the catwalk, tied it there. Chuckling he went back, aimed the gun across the middle of the way and cocked the weapon.

"Media via dulcissima est," whispered Thead to himself. Still chuckling he went a little further on to where a set of rails for service robots led off at right angles to the left. Thead crouched and felt his way in. He climbed onto the robot trolley he had there ready and, reaching forward, pulled himself in by the uprights. He could hear Protia and Adamson moving above, somewhere the water was still dripping.

Protia snuffled at the controls on the first level. She was still a Dog, she still followed Thead by scent but her eyes now shone in the dark so that Adamson could see too.

They looked at the quiet screens, the still dials, deserted swivel chairs. There was ankle-deep silt on floor. Here and there Protia's lights picked out cracks the walls, in one place the roof was down. In front the silt was unmarked but to the left footprints led to stairs and down.

On the second level the maze of machines began. The tops of their packed banks spread away like angular, w~~~ tree tops. To Protia the place reeked of long desertion and of Thead. They cautiously moved down the levels.

Below again and to the left Thead found his communicator. He coaxed the trolley back along the creaking rails, he held the transmitter beneath his chin, broad strap slung over his neck.

Protia's brilliant lights cut the darkness, reflected shadowed the complex into a flickering jungle of light and dark, Dust and small debris, dislodged from above fell on Thead.

He checked the loads in his revolver. Suddenly fear hit him, suddenly he hated his Thead's purpose and where it had brought him. He wondered again if it was worth it and decided again that it was. He twisted and peered through the connection maze, tried to spot exactly where Protia and Adamson were. Dust fell in his eyes, he had a cramp in his thighs and abdomen. He wondered if there was any way it could be different.

"Adamson!" Hedon's men had come down from the control room. "Adamson! THEAD!" Hedon began to move onto the fourth catwalk. He ordered his men into the circuits. They used their staves to lever and hack through while they stood on the bending frames.

"STAY OUT!" yelled Adamson. "Thead's in here!"

"�Thead, Adamson - all of you. It's wrong to kill and fight! It's the old way, the Outside way! Stop - please stop!" Hedon kept on coming. His voice rustled away through the machines and dripping water.

Thead poked his revolver up toward Adamson's voice. He saw one of Hedon's men instead. He hesitated, swore and fired at him anyway.

The bullet lashed through the wires. The man clapped his hands to his chest and went over backwards. Still kicking he fell down through the rotten structures. Far below there was a heavy splash and then a scattering of smaller ones.

"Thead - you? Why do you do it?" Hedon had seen the gun flash. He came down the fourth catwalk. Hs hands were out, he was pleading.

Thead eased his position. He aimed at Hedon's whitelit head. The young men had come out of the machine thicket and were standing behind Hedon.

Thead fired. Hedon's head split like a melon. He thumped back against the catwalk rail, slumped, fell forward across Thead's trip wire. The rifle burst to life. Recoiling and jumping it sprayed bullets across the catwalk. Men went down in churning flesh and bullets.
Adamson had Thead spotted. He moved down the tangled machinery toward the fourth level.
Thead knew what was coming. Hate filled him again, drove out the fear. Why should Hedon's people live in peace, half-dead anyway, without ambition all their lives? He sidled up the catwalk, got the half dozen young men who were still standing between himself and Adamson. Some of them turned to face him. He gestured with the revolver. They stood still.

Thead shrugged the communicator straps onto back. His little jeweled whip was packed in there. The feeling of power came back like a drug. He was going to make it, he'd succeed, win again, and that was the main thing. It was like sex to him.

"Thead! I'm going to kill you now!"

Thead's lip curled back in a sort of triumph. In this light his hair was a pale gold halo. From a distance be looked young, innocent and keen. Closer you could his puffy face, the bags and lines about his eyes. He told the young men to move back as he did.

"You won't shoot me with them there," he told Adamson. "You won't get me through them." He squinted, tried to see Adamson beyond Protia's twin lights. The young men were bunched together like chickens between two foxes. They were trying to cover their eyes against the light.

"Them!" Adamson laughed. "A pack of damned robots trying to be men! Androids! You'll not fool me twice like that!"

"NO!" Thead's blood ran cold. "They're men!" Panicked, he fired at Protia's lights.

Adamson steeled himself and pointed the blaster through the men at Thead. The young men screamed - a scramble developed on the catwalk. There were more screams, some pleading and then the burning scattering flesh, the ruptured limbs as Adamson fired.

"God!" said Protia. "Are they? Aren't they,~~~ men what?" Then, more softly, "Humans or Androids, what's the difference, really, I mean?"

The catwalk still rocked. The purple flash had lit the whole chamber. The mountain seemed to be shaking. Dust came cascading down, in places the insulation was on fire. One of the young men was still screaming. The catwalk swayed and creaked as Adamson walked up it.

"Damn all robots!" said Adamson. The narrow metal was littered with charred flesh. There was blood, or pseudoblood, everywhere. Some of it was even dripping from above, mostly it was on the catwalk. Protia's lights faltered.

"I had to get Thead." Adamson was talking to himself. "Damn robots!"

Thead was still alive. He lay still, his back propped against the bulk of his communicator, his two broken legs crooked in front of him. He held his fists crushed into the wound on his chest but the blood still pumped through. One side of his face was badly burned.

"Adamson . . ." Thead's voice was faint, his agony was obvious. "Nothing... nothing personal. No hard feelings."

"Yes," said Adamson. "Plenty."

"He'll die soon," said Protia gently. "Let it go, forgive him."

"He's done too much." Adamson kicked Thead's revolver into the darkness. Thead made no move to stop him. "He can't just say 'nothing personal' and make everything okay!"

"I can't help it ..." Thead bubbled a little blood at the mouth. "Destiny ... Kismet ... hardly a man can stop himself. We Theads ... it's our cross ... the monkey on our backs ... we're condemned to win ... pity ... be sorry for us ... "

"Die." Adamson was very pale. "Hurry up!"

"I can't see. Everything's going ..." The thin white fingers came clawing out.

"Poor Thead," said Protia. "Who'll miss you? Who'll be sorry when you're dead?" She leaned forward. "I'm sorry, Thead."

"Adamson ... say it's okay," Thead was going down quickly.

"Please?" said Protia. "Adamson, say there's no bad feeling - say it's okay."

"No. It's not all right. I'll not say it is."

Thead's eyes opened again. He made an effort, Bath~~~bred his last strength. The blood between his fingers seemed slower now.

"Then I'll tell you something ... the word of a dying man ... those young men back there . , they weren't Androids ... they're real ... they're Men ... " Thead's head stiffened back. The mouth turned up, he was laughing while he died.

Protia stiffened. It was a damnable thing. To tell Adamson a thing like that. Such hate in the act of dying, pointless, it was quickly checked,~~~ it seemed so pointless. Adamson's hands started to shake. He turned to Protia. "Human? That screaming? Human and I killed them?"

"You know Thead. You know how Theads lie. Forget it. No! Don't look! Forget it!" But Adamson had gone back.

He stirred his foot through the carnage. There were no wheels, no servos. The stripped veins weren't plastic, there were no spindled stainless bone structures, there were only the broken, bloody bones. Adamson retched, searched again, frantically.

It was like a butcher's shop, when he got up he stood very still and there was blood to his elbows.



- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

PROTIA: Consider the heartless creature's continued heartless rejection of our hero, Thead (qv), and his ~nanimous continued offers to save her from dying with that fool Adamson.

ADAMSON, Clown, Fool, etc.: Not only a s~, killer, but wrong again too!

CHAPTER TWELVE

The catwalk was slippery in some places and becomming sticky in others. There was a man still alive there, Protia turned him over and gathered him to her. She got Adamson to help, reproached him with her great eyes. They brought the man up out of the slaughterhouse, stink of intestines down there; the smell of burning, found a sheltered place and put him back together as best they could with the plasma and dressings from Adamson's pack.

"Put your finger there," said Protia coldly. "Spread that gauze ... now the suture gauge."

"It's terrible," said Adamson, "what a blaster can do. Will he live? Do you know, Protia?"

"See, just see what you have done, Rider! How would I know if he'll live? I'm lucky, I'm an Alien! Remember? When you put that damned glove on - you should have thought about it then!" It was good for Adamson to have something to do right then. To be able to help her with the man. Protia knew that if Thead had lived he would have called down destruction on the whole population; she knew that what Adamson had done had been the alternative but she wasn't sure which was worse. "Why does it have to be like this all the time? Why does Thead do like he does? Why do you?"

Adamson didn't answer. "We need the Traveler," said Protia at last. "The things in it, so we can tend him better. Don't use your radio. You'll bring the Theads. I'll go."

She flickered, became a white Carrier Pigeon. It looked ridiculous, that shattered man, a pigeon and Adamson, but he didn't feel like saying anything. Protia flew up, circled somewhat, found her direction and flapped off. Her wings clapped like gunshots in the setting sun.

It was getting colder all the time. Adamson took off his insulation suit and put it over the young man. He sat in his boots and watched the sun come down slowly toward the horizon. It became cold and dark under that canting slab of concrete. Adamson began to wonder if he was fated to go naked except for his boots. It had begun to rain.

The sun was gone when Protia brought the Traveler sweeping out of the wet dawn. She settled it smoothly beside Adamson and the silver-wrapped young man. Adamson came out and the downdraft swept rain stinging into his face.

"You took your time! He could have died!"

"Serve you right! I got angry." Protia swung the hatch down and they splashed to where the young man was lying. He smiled weakly at them. Protia wrapped her Gray Mist form about him and cushioned him to Traveler. 

"I maybe wouldn't have come back, but for him," she told Adamson.

"Thank you." said Adamson meekly. "Thank you for coming."

"That's better."

"We had to get Thead," said Adamson, but Protia pretended not to hear.

She swung the Traveler high out through the pass. In front there was the clear evening of the Greater Sun, the sky still lit by the afterglow. Behind them the storm front of the Rainy Day advanced like a gray wall. Lightning forked there, marked the insignificant rise of the Lesser Sun, the thunder was lost in the gathering roar of the wind. Far to the north and above the storm wall a darker shadow seemed to move. Protia dropped the Traveler down the mountains toward Hedon's town.

They landed in the square by the fountain. The young man was quickly carried to the guest house and the machines from the Traveler finished their work on him there.

Adamson found himself stretched exhausted in a great chair before the fire in the Committee hut. He concentrated, tried to tell the Committee how it had been in the mountains.

"You've got to understand," he said. "When I saw you all so happy I thought you couldn't be human, when I saw Thead I thought you must be Androids, or maybe it was all a dream anyway. I thought when I killed Thead you'd all disappear like thistledown or fireflies and I'd be back on the Probe again. I thought it was trying console me again, it had before - done things to console me, I thought I'd play its game.

"Then Thead - and I was so sure he was fooling me - was so sure you were Androids. All the time in the square I was waiting for it to rain jam. I don't know, I feel like I'm crazy and I can't tell right from wrong. I don't know how to tell you I'm sorry. Those young men, so gay - old Hedon too ..."

"You can see how it happened," put in Protia, "You can see how he could fire through your people. Like many horrors - a tragedy of errors, misunderstandings - someone acting for the best. Not an intention, a mistake."

"Do you think so?" The Committee had left to consider. Adamson looked up with his tired eyes, sorrow in every line of his body. "What does that matter? Tell me how that makes a difference."

"It matters that they understand."

"So they can forgive?"

"Yes, something like that. But for them to ease the grief. They'll forgive anyway."

There was a long silence. The Committee filed back. Adamson looked at the floor. There was only the muted roar of rain on the roof, the heavy dripping of the trees.

At last the Chairman nodded.

"All right," he said. "All right, Adamson, you did what you must do. We can't blame you for that. Forget it, it's over, finish with it."

There was a sigh from around the room, then clapping. Adamson sat up and saw they were not alone. The walls had been propped up and the people had gathered there to watch the trial.

"See - even the brothers and wives forgive you. You must forget it now."

"Thank you," Adamson didn't know what to say. "Thank you ..."

"A happy turn," said Protia. "The best that could be made of it."

"What's the good of vengeance?" said the Chairman. "Our concern now is that he feels no guilt."

"Better than electric chairs," said Protia. "Or having to think of your condemned men fighting to hold their breath when the cyanide gas pops."

A woman, hair wet and straggled down, the rain standing in beads on her forehead came to pull at Adamson's arm.

"Thank you, sir," she said. "My man's arm will grow back, the machines say. Thank you, Mr. Adamson, thank you for bringing him back." Adamson and Protia looked at her. There was silence.

"I could have done more," said Protia. "I could have frozen time and saved them all. Adamson, I'm sorry too for what I've done to you. I was punishing you for what I let happen.. "

"Please don't thank me," said Adamson. "Please don't do that?"

"You did right," the Chairman came forward. "If you are right about Thead, or Efil, then you did best for us. You acted for the best."

"Adamson," said Protia. "Please forgive me too."

"No! Please, please don't say things like that!"

Alarms jangled in the Traveler. The square began to flash and gleam with intermittent red lights. Adamson dragged himself up. He stumbled through the puddles to the screaming machine. He pulled himself up the streaming side, into the misty interior.

"Probe! Adamson - I'm here!"

"Thead," the Probe spoke quickly. "He's come! His Probe's in orbit!"

"How long? Tell me how long. How long have we got?"

"Hours-minutes. You can't tell. He's been here hours. I've only just spotted him. It's the storm. All this damned water and the tide!"

"Protia!" Adamson shouted across the square. "We've got to go! Thead's here!"

Protia appeared in the door of the guest house. She hesitated, looked at the crowd at the Committee Hut, to the lighted windows of the town, listened to the chattering minds there, the rich aroma of love.

"Thead? Isn't he dead?" The Chairman was, puzzled. "Was it all for nothing?"

"Can't we do anything?" Protia still hesitated. "Can't we stay?"

"What's the good? We can't take them with us. We can't do it. We can't protect the Planet, not against Thead's fleet!"

"Perhaps we could decoy him? Lead him away?"

Adamson nodded. Anything to keep Protia happy, anything to get her in the Traveler and away. Let her think anything was possible, let her think they might save Hedon's people.

"Your vibrations - you don't think we can?" She climbed unwillingly into the machine.

"We can try! - we will" Adamson lifted the Traveler into the teeming rain. He glimpsed white faces looking up at them and felt sick. He drove the machine away, they escaped at full speed through the murk.

"Open the exhausts," said Protia. "Open the radiations so Thead'll see us!"

"Later," said Adamson. "Wait till we're clear of the town!"

They soared up the raging storm and through the mountains. Well into the peaks, coming clear of the storm front, Adamson opened the radiation.

Orange flame flared in the rain, the wet cliffs glared with it. Adamson broke radio silence, cursed Thead, abused him for attention.

"Adamson!" Thead had heard. "Don't call me names like that. Adamson ... Adamson? Are you there?"

"You're a fool, Thead! A blind man with a white stick! I'm here! You thought you could kill everyone! You can't kill me! You can't win them all, Thead!"

"I can so! I'll win this one now! You'd speak to me like that?"

"Protia's with me. Will you use your weapons with her here?" Then Adamson called Thead one more short obscenity, closed the exhausts, cut the radiations and dropped the dark Traveler ten thousand feet, like a stone through the storm, deep into a narrow valley. Turning and twisting, diving and ducking below the tree tops he followed the ravines down to the great lake bowl of the ancient Probe explosion.

They followed the rim around. The rain-spattered water spread to rain haze in the south, the shining obsidian cliffs towered close on their left.

They left the lake the way they had entered it in Hedon's boats. Adamson wove the swinging machine low and fast over the racing water and through the headlands. Suddenly they were high again, a six-hundred-foot waterfall plumed to the invisible plain below.

"Tide's out," grated Adamson. "That's why the Probe is free. We can make it now!"

"Thead? Do you think he knows where we are?"

Then Thead's black Probe was there. Hovering slowly along the cliffs below them, antennae erect, listening and searching.

Adamson saw the rain splash and glisten on that great black hide. He dragged the control over, swung the Traveler close back to the cliff. Thead's Probe continued. Somehow Thead had missed them.

Adamson waited, started to breathe again. Then he saw Protia look at him. He drove the Traveler out, fired all its armament into the vast receding bulk of the Probe. A rainbow flashed there, a brief light burst; died a little, left something glowing in the rain.

"Adamson!" Thead was screaming. "From behind! You did it to me from behind! I won't forget that. I didn't think it of you, Adamson!"

Adamson drove his machine screaming down the beach. Sand blasted up behind them. The Traveler wore a white collar of supersonic condensation.

Thead's Probe swept in an accelerating arc to get back at Adamson. Atmospheric engines throbbed and raw power as it descended toward the wet dunes. A hundred feet of its back was ripped up and there was still b~~ there. It was a flea bite on the back of a Probe.

"I've got you this time! This time, Adamson!" The weapon ports opened.

"Thead," said Protia quickly. "Do you still want me?"

"Protia?" Thead hesitated. The Traveler's shock wave cut a trench through the surf; spouting devil's horns of water followed them out across the leaden sea.

"I ... don't know, - Protia?" A crazy new hope dawning in Thead's brain.

Then it was too late. Adamson's Probe broke raging from the sea. White water boiled off it; surf bubbled and creamed under the mighty hull. Thead skidded away to the murk, just in time to avoid it.

The cupola opened. Adamson skewed the Traveler that way. In a buffeting of air brakes, a thunder of retropower, he brought the machine into the Probe. The cupola closed and the Probe fired its atmosphere armament at the sea in front of Thead's returning machine.

A thousand feet of water walled and boiled up. Adamson's Probe screamed away. A few feet above the water, lost for a moment in the seething water wall, Thead's black Probe made one short error and hit the sea at Mach 2.

The hull broke. Water burst in. The impact was lost in a second, bigger splash. It was like an earthquake. A tidal wave formed. Deeper the weakened hull imploded.

"Have I?" said the Probe. "Have I killed him? Broken the Law? Should I cease myself?"

"You! You'll roast slow!" Thead's shout came above the bubble of water in the speakers.

Adamson's Probe drove outwards, held high orbit for a moment, then blasted away for the safe anonymity of the stars.

Deep in the ocean Thead's Probe steadied itself, floated disjointed there, moved slowly toward the surface. Thead splashed from his control room. Space-armored he waded up the corridors, he got to his Traveler, he ordered the Gallery open.

Air bubbles exploded upwards. The Traveler bobbed on the surface. Thead lifted the spluttering machine clear.

Thead's Probe gave a despairing cry, then broke up and sank like a stone. What sentience was left soon died in the cold ooze of that ocean's depths. There was no explosion.

Beyond the moons Protia was delighted.

"Maybe we did it, maybe there are no others near. I believe it's worked and Hedon's world is safe!"

"They'll be after us," said the Probe.

"Good," said Adamson, and he almost meant it.

The Probe of the first Thead was still in orbit. When Thead called it, it came down at once. It accepted him without question, opened its cupola and let him in; there was no hint of rejection - Theads were identical.

"Incredible," said Thead to himself. "This Adamson has a charmed life. How can he beat me like this? I don't believe it! Against all possibility he should beat me like this. Of course, there's no doubt of the end. I'll wipe out Adamson, the only possibility. But, you've got to respect him. Courage and determination - he's got them. He won't elude me long - a year, next year some time, I'll have him!" Ready at last, Thead blasted in the wake of Adamson.

"We don't have to go to the Central worlds, there plenty of other places, almost infinite possibilities of hiding," said Protia tentatively.

"No," said Adamson. "We're going back. Maybe we can do some good there. Not like Hedon's world."

Thead ordered the gathering of his fleets. He watched them wheel, sweep in their myriads, join in behind, only a few light minutes behind. He nodded to himself, hummed a little song. Suddenly he was cheerful. Adamson was scared in front of him, beaten. At the end there would be no escape; it only remained to close trap.

"Run, Adamson!" he yelled across space. 'Make me laugh again!"

"We'll have to fight" Adamson told the Probe. "You have to use your weapons in the end. Protia, you'll have to learn to kill! Get ruthless, forget right and wrong. How else do we have a chance?"

"Adamson!" Thead's image grew clear on the screen. His voice rustled sinisterly across the void. "You haven't got a chance! Look at your screens! See my fleet, my brothers gather for you!"

Adamson could see well enough. The brilliant little shapes glowed there, ominous, undeniable. Thead's Probe was first, a few hours behind, then perhaps a day away there was another, maybe two. Further still others came, beyond again others were converging. His shoulders drooped, he began to wonder if after all a quick fall into some sun would be easier.

For some reason he thought of Laura, of her face as he blasted her on the floor, the dissolving mist of candy floss as she ended.

"A chance," said Thead. "I'm a sporting sort of a man, I enjoy a game. I'll gamble with you. A fighting chance for you, Adamson!" He giggled. "Better sport for both of us!" He shrugged his shoulders. "Or me anyway."

"A chance?" Adamson spoke slowly. He wondered how Thead was trying to fool him. Then he wondered what he could possible lose anyway. "A gamble? What with?"

"Protia. I'll stake you for her. I mean, I could just destroy your Probe. I could, you know I could, but I'd maybe kill her too. I'd hate that, she's unique, she could still bring me fame and glory, my place in history!" He blinked quickly several times, then came back to the point. "She's irreplaceable and I want her. This way one of us will have her. It'll be me, but one of us'll have her." Thead's foot had come forward again, the toy whip dangled, the goggles sparkled tiny highlights.

"What do you offer? What's your stake?" Adamson stole a glance at Protia.

"Hedon's world. I know all about it, you see! You can't hide things from Thead. Even if I miss something I only have to ask God. Hedon's pacifists! Impotent worms! They're so feeble perhaps I don't have to kill them to be superior. But I will! I will, anyway, unless you agree to a game. If you win, they live!"

"What game?" said Protia. "What's the game?"

"Think of it!" Thead ignored her. "Life and freedom for you and Protia and Hedon's people! If you win out in the game."

"What game? What rules?"

"You owe it to the memory of those young men." Thead waved his black-gloved hand to the screens behind him, to the massing Probes there. "Otherwise I'll just kill you all" He scowled, showed his teeth.

"Fake it," said Protia. "There's no choice."

"Will you, won't you, will you join my game?"

"We could run for it," whispered the Probe. "With my Superlight capability we could run away from Thead!"

"He'd follow us. He'd find us," said Adamson. "It'd be the same again."

"A life of running," said Protia. "He's got forever to find us. I see that."

"Well?" said Thead. "I'm waiting. It's the best deal you'll get, Adamson."

"I suppose we can trust Thead?" said Protia.

"Well? Is this going to take all night?"

Protia touched Adamson's arm and smiled. The Probe groaned.

"All right," said Adamson. "What game are we play?"

"The usual one."

"So tell us," said Protia.

"You know it, Adamson. The usual one. All-In Survival. The Game! I try to kill or cripple you, you do the same to me. We stand on each other's faces and drown everybody in the mad mud beneath us!" Thead laughed. "The Game! The Mankind Game! We'll play it between us. Far from Probes - where they aren't allowed to go! We'll play the only Game that's ever mattered in the only place that's ever mattered. On Planet One! On Earth!"

"'Earth?" Adamson sat down. Planet One. The name was magic to him - numinous - it was holy. Where the Race, The Great Work, everything started from. It was sacred ground.

"Where else?" said Thead. "Except for me - and my brothers - you're just about the last Rider. As near as can judge anyway, and I'm never wrong. I feel it, you're the last one. Perhaps I'll ask God when you dead and it's just Him and me."

"Earth," Adamson whispered. "What's that place now?"

"I wanted to see it, anyway," said Protia. "Perhaps the most significant thing in the Cosmos-those painted caves. I must see Lascaux, the echo of those earliest consciousnesses. Perhaps some lingering vibration...?"

"Look," said the Probe. "Don't get overawed, Adamson. It's pretty much as it ever was. Religious feelings are all right so long as you don't confuse it with living. You've got to put any feelings you've got behind you in the Mankind Game. And those caves, they're forgeries anyway. And the Taj Mahal is really fiber glass. And, Adamson," the Probe went on, "Don't fight fair. You might know right from wrong, but don't you act like it. People only think you're crazy. You can't be fair with a man like Thead!"

"I wonder if there are still people on Earth who like dogs?" said Protia. "Remember how Hedon did?"

"Yes," said Adamson, turning back to Thead. "I'll see you on Planet One."

"Seven light years," said Thead. "Turn 20.10.20 at Sirius. The Dog Star, you know. Really, Adamson, you might as well send Protia back to me now and take a sun dive. Like you did so many times before. It would be easy, you know that. You could do it again."

Adamson went to the Dissolution Tank an unhappy man. Somehow he felt he had been cheated. He wished he could see how. It was something in the smile on Thead's face. Adamson dissolved exactly as so many times before.

Protia turned briskly from the Tank.

"Now then," she said. "We pull a fast trip. Give Adamson some time on Earth before Thead gets there. Time to find things out, get some traps set maybe. Get prepared. Hide or something."

Protia helped the Probe to accelerate to .8 Lightspeed. Helped it hold together in that hell maze of forces and uncertainties, kept it steady in the bending dimensions. Thead screamed rage as he was left behind.

Protia watched the Black Probes dwindle in the rainbow-edged rear screens, she forced laughter, blew rude noises back at Thead.

The Probe mumbled predictions of doom, braved the frontiers of the forbidden God-state of Superlight.

Thead stared at empty space ahead, swore terrible vengeance, began to jot down ways of maiming Adamson before be died. Sniffing in the ion wake, Thead's Probes followed grimly behind.



- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

THE GAME, The Mankind Game (qv): The wit and humor of our great hero Thead (qv) shows well here. A chance indeed! Better sport for our hero - but not for anyone else, let alone the contemptible Adamson! (See also "On the Game")

CHESS: Almost as old as "The Game" (qv).

GOD (qv): Thead's Great Creator, our hero's Great Ally.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

There was a Probe Ring around the Earth. Hundreds of thousands of them, ranged sunlit and white, in synchronous orbit around the equator.

"Like Saturn," said Adamson. "Like Saturn, but untidy."

"Beautiful!" Protia had always admired ringed planets. "Very beautiful."

"Until you think of what it is and what it might mean," said the Probe.

The Probes spread like a fringed coronet around the blue-green marbled globe, white and lovely in the unremitting sun glare, then rounded away to violet black shadow beyond the planet.

"There's communication," said the Probe. It hesitated, collated, listened. "Codes, gratuitous facts, data. They're still working - some of the Probes are still working. There's still consciosness in my comrades. Softly there, as if they were thinking of something else."

"No vibrations," said Protia. "Nobody that I can hear, not on the Probes. But somewhere -there are people somewhere!"

"Not allowed." The Probe sounded sad. "We're forbidden. That's why the Probes are here. There, in full orbit, there forever, ticking over, waiting for their Riders. No. No, I don't mind. I don't want to go down to Earth. I'll wait here too."

There were bigger ships than the Probes there. There were Colony Transports too. Vast things, enormous in bulk and capacity, they made even the Probes look small.

"They all came back." Adamson peered from the Gallery, tried to learn something by looking at the quiet ships. "In spite of Thead's Cancellation, they all came back for the Re-Call. They've been there ever since - the Riders still on Earth I suppose."

"Honorable," said the Probe. "I'm proud of my kind. They've behaved well."

"If the Riders were on Earth then they're dead. It'll be their descendants down there." Protia came to Adamson's elbow. "Or perhaps they have Tanks there, too?"

They circled the world, counted the Transports and Probes. Adamson knew the Theads would come soon, he could think of no sure way of stopping them all.

"Really," said the Probe. "No. Really I don't want to go down. I'll orbit and warn you when the Theads come."

Adamson would delay no longer. He and Protia left the Probe in a Traveler, used it for re-entry and came down to Earth. The Probe burrowed and jostled a way among the Probe Ring to hide from Thead

The Traveler bucked and glowed with heat as it broached the atmosphere. Then the shutters, still hot, rattled up and they swam smoothly down toward the south Atlantic. They came swiftly through the scattered cloud to race a few feet above the divided ocean.

The divisions down there were grids. Protia wanted to know what they were.

"The plankton tanks," Adamson explained. "It's changed, of course, changed and decayed all round, as far as I can see. They were perfect once. It's not the world I remember from the school machines."

A floating tank grid was what Adamson remembered. Perfect and angular for convenience of harvest, triangulated for strength all over the wide oceans. Adamson remembered something about climate control too.

"Ancient perfection," said Protia. "They all go."

Cracks gaped and closed wetly in the movement of the sea. The ribbon paths were disjointed, broken in places. Whole sections had disappeared. Parts of the grid were buckled, floating still, but below the surface, green-dim down there, seaweed clumped dark on their paleness. The Traveler crossed a place where the grids were shoved above the surface to reveal their depth, the seaweed shriveled; all supported by some enormous tidal vice. There were fish down there, too, weaving through the  tanks in silver shoals.

"All the fish were supposed to be gone," said Adamson. "They told me they'd finished them off as uneconomical, grew plankton and algae instead." He was quiet for a moment. "Mortality, we were fallible - things aren't what they should be. This was our world. We'd mastered it, made it over to ourselves. Made it our sure place, absolute to us. We were so sure. It was only right, there was a just pride in what we'd built, it seemed forever. They thought they'd harnessed the tides away to power. Nothing ever stays right."

Nearer the coast the grids were better and Adamson cheered a little. There were even some harvester machines in position, ragged with rust, some toppled, crazy, dipping in the water, festooned with battered light-focusing structures which still straggled over the tanks and into the sea.

There were even some harvesters working, still pumping water through their centrifuges, spewing it to foam back into the sea.

The land was no better. Once it had been built raised out to sea onto piles and pontoons over the continental shallows. The coastline had been straightened, rationalized, as men would have said, and the World City lifted a uniform fifty stories above sea level. Now the sea had taken a little back and the coastline was irregular again. Piles had sunk or bowed, buildings had fallen.

great roofs and floors came down in sloping beach sheets to dip and erode in the surf. Sometimes a whole coastline had heaved and cracked in the movement of the sea, broken chunks of grid battered in the surf at the crumbling City cliff.

"We thought there'd be no more waves," Adamson lifted the Traveler to cross the cliffs. "They thought there'd be no more tides and storms - or gulls." There were millions of gulls. The ragged broken floors and corridors were stained white and studded with their ~~~
cries. For some reason Adamson thought of Laura. The Traveler bored on over the land.

"Decline, desertion, decay," said Adamson. "Is this the way the long triumph ends?"

There were moldering playgrounds and puzzle gardens, the broken traces and mounds of previous orders passed beneath them, the wilderness spread away in all directions.

Sometimes the soil was washed away to reveal the City roof, but mostly it was the wrecked gardens and broken woodland.

"Where are all the people gone?" said Protia. "Just now there were vibrations."

"Only playgrounds," said Adamson. "In the end they could only play with themselves. All the duration of The Great Work, nothing could last so long."

Adamson wondered how he could have expected anything else, after the Re-Call, after the Cancellation, but it was still a leaden disappointment to find the First of Worlds in ruins, not to find the triumphant welcome he had half-expected. He had Protia but he had brought her back to nothing.

"Yes, all these things, the playgrounds. I see you can't play games forever."

"There are vibrations," said Protia suddenly. "There are people somewhere." Then she noticed how sad Adamson was. "Come on! Don't let yourself be sorrowful. Why get emotional? Nothing to be done, nothing to worry about, not now. Remember Thead's coming!"

"All the people all that time only playing. Thead could have been one of them - he doesn't realize the reality of what he's doing either. If he did he wouldn't do it. He only cares to be on top. He doesn't care what dung heap it is."

"Yes, that's it. Think about Thead!"

The landscape became even more broken. Areas of the City had collapsed. Sometimes lakes had formed in the depressions, or they had silted, then overgrown to become lush meadows or deep thickets.

"It's going back," said Adamson. "Going back as if we were nothing."

"Inevitable, you said so yourself. Only to bee ~~~~ "Only right?"
They saw game move through the undergrowth, and homed creatures. Once they saw men who were distant and naked and who ran into the trees before the Traveler got near.

"Back to the caves. It's come to that. Spears and stones."

"The animals?" asked Protia.

"We kept some. Zoos. Everything will be wild now. We used to like dogs - they used to like us."

Suddenly they were crossing a tended place. First there was a fence, then smooth lawns with controled hedges defined patterns of paths and flower beds.

"Garden robots," said Adamson. "Still working or something."

Then there were bright flags ahead. Then an ampitheater, the arena a perfect counterchange of blue and white paving. It was clean, free of silt or dust.

People filled the terraces. They sat quietly, their bright clothes stirred sometimes in the occasional breeze. A bright tent stood on the lawn raised in the center of blue and white.

"Go down," said Protia. "Play it by ear. We've got to start somewhere."

Adamson brought the Traveler between the flagstaffs and slid the machine down the soaring terraces, down four hundred feet into the vast oval and toward the tent.

A ripple ran through the people, their faces came to watch, they began to wave and cheer. Adamson brought the Traveler down, put his hand into his glove blaster and stepped out into the sun.

He stood a moment, then walked cautiously toward the tent. The cheering died away. There was an expectant silence.

"Anybody there?" Adamson's shout bounced mocked back from the silent benches. One or two people stood up to see him better.

The tent flapped back. A man stepped out. It was Thead.

"Of course," said Protia under her breath.

"But his Probe fleet? Are they back already?"

"Radio, Lightspeed," said Protia. "All Theads are the same.

Adamson half-crouched and began to pull out his weapon.

"Wait!" Protia caught at his arm. "There'll be a catch!"

She was in the form of a Probe Rider. As an afterthought, to confuse Thead, she made herself identical to Adamson.

"Good morning," said Thead. "A good good day to you! You're a Probe Rider. Congratulations. You're the twenty millionth to answer the Re-Call. You get a prize!"

"Thank you," said Protia.

"I welcome you. I'd give you your prize if you had time to enjoy it." Thead made a small gesture with his whip and the people were cheering again. He stopped them and went on. "As you see, you are too late. Civilization and humanity in your sense have ended. We are gone beyond you. Do you have to have that ugly-looking weapon of yours out?"

"Yes. I know who you are and what you do."

"Ah . . ." said Thead. He jerked his whip once more. The audience stopped moving. They froze, mouths open, their hands frozen in midair. One or two overbalanced, fell thumping down the galleries.

"Androids," said Thead. "I made them. One likes to welcome Riders suitably before one kills them." He paused, licked his lips. "I daresay I ought to know who you are too. I really must watch the screens as I should."

Adamson glanced. over his shoulder. It was fifty yards to the Traveler.

"No," said Thead. "Don't try your blaster either, don't run. All my people are armed."

What seemed an infinity of gun muzzles looked back down at Adamson. He stood up straight, slowly took his hand from his glove.

"Better," said Thead. "Now, how shall we humiliate you?"

"The Game," said Adamson. "I am to play the Game. A Game for our lives." He let Thead see his holster was still open. "We're supposed to have a Game."

"Ah . . ." Thead rubbed his narrow chin. "We have a deal?" He twirled his whip, pushed a foot forward, look down to admire the sheen of his boot. "Why should we play?"

"To win something you will want. To make yours the unique Thead!"

"Yes? Stakes?"

"Me," said Protia. "I'm an Alien. Extra-Galactic, you know."

"Don't tell me!" Thead gave a little hop of joyous triumph. "You're Protia! I've heard of you, I'm famous! You've come to me!" Then, harshly, "Prove it!"

Protia thought a moment. She flickered to a Grey Cloud and abruptly became a Girl. Slender, tanned, golden-haired, the hair brushing lightly on the heavy shoulder of her space armor.

"Ah! And it's you against Adamson's life?"

"Yes."

"Sure?"

"Yes."

"Then I'll take it. What game will you play, Adamson?"

"Chess," said Protia, suddenly. "Chess!"

"Well, it's traditional," said Thead. "I had it in mind, it's the only answer really, the only game I'd play!"

"I know," said Protia. Thead shot a glance at her. For the first time Adamson saw a Thead looking worried.

"Gamesmanship?" said Thead. "Never mind. Let's to it!" He turned on his heel, waved his whip in answer to the crowd's applause and led off toward the marquee.

A cloud of balloons blew up, scattering. A thousand pigeons clattered and circled, disappeared to the south.

"This way, please." Thead led Adamson up three steps onto the oval grass island in the center of the ampitheater. He led past the marquee to an oval table dead center on the lawn. Adamson walked two yards to his right and a little behind. Protia was to the left behind them both, her muscles coiled and ready to spring, watching Thead.

Thead reached the table. He touched a control and there was a spherical chess box there, the domes appeared at each end of the table. Thead's narrow mouth twisted to a smirk beneath the blank goggles. How could he lose with his own chess set?

"I take red," he said. "I always take red."

Adamson nodded. Protia was in his mind, she had the game at her fingertips. Adamason had glimpsed the colossal grasp of her intelligence. He was sure he must win.

Thead pulled on his encephalic dome. He waved a hand at Adamson's. Adamson slipped it on and the great tree of alternative moves flickered up in his mind.

They made salutes, the timers clicked and the game began.



Eight hours later the Game was at the last eight changes. Adamson's king, queen, knight, castle and single pawn faced Thead's king, queen and knight.

"Eleven moves," said Protia. "To mate in eleven moves."

"It's not fair!" said Thead. "Adamson and Protia against poor me! Protia in sneaky ambush! Thead's last stand!"

"You said it only mattered to win. It's your music - you ought to like the tune!"

Adamson sent his pawn on a simple horizontal light trail across the darkness in his head. He didn't like the Game much, it was too like when he had been in Metaspace, too like the edge of the Abyss. The pawn slotted next to Thead's queen where it was protected by Adamson's knight. Nine moves later the pawn flashed gold to queen.

"Concede!" Thead kicked back his chair. "I concede but you lose!" As he straightened he brought his hand from under the table. A twenty-first century hand projector pointed Adamson in the eyes. "Concede!" he said again. The weapon lowered a little to point at the chess sphere.

Adamson half-fell and half-dived off the stool. He got his hand in his glove but it jammed under him as he rolled. He felt the grass as soft as moss on his face, there were little flowers dotted all about in it.

Thead fired at the chess sphere. The tiny rockets ripped the Game apart like a rotten orange. Exploding connections burst across the table. Game fragments stung  into Adamson's face. Thead turned like a bullfighter to aim at him.

"Still! Be still!" Adamson froze. "You fool!" Thead was sneering again. Protia wondered how she could reach Thead this time, she had to get between them to do any good.

"Fool!" said Thead again. He held the smoking projector trained steady on Adamson's navel and brushed away the burning tangle that had been the chess sphere. He found the controls on the table.

Something hot flushed at Adamson's legs and feet. Dark-brown multiple jets of soup caught and held him. The pressure drove him kicking and slipping, struggling to get up, across the lawn and down the steps into the arena. Through the steam he saw the crowd activated again. Laughter rocked the stadium, there was cheering.

Thead had climbed onto the table and was dancing there, he acknowledged the applause. Adamson found his feet in the knee-deep richness. His blaster came out into his hand. He looked again and Thead had gone.

There was a nothing column there now. An ovality of nothingness which began where the steps had been and reached up to the sky. Then Adamson realized he could see over the lip of the arena, that he was looking out between the puny flagstaffs to the distant glitter of the sea. He was suddenly a giant, he was on the scale of the amphitheater.

A burst of Thead's rockets fanned past him on their tails of white fire. Adamson cut loose with his blaster. Soup sizzled dry on the hot end. The charges disappeared into the nothing column. Thead's voice was still in there, still laughing, still jeering.

"Get it!" Protia yelled in Adamson's head. "Get in middle! Get around to the left!"

"Fool!" Thead was still shooting. "Mock turtle soup! Synthetic mock turtle soup!" Fountains of soup and paving chips flew up at Adamson's face. "Mock mock turtle soup!" came Thead's voice.

"Projector," said Protia. "Projects you up big for the arena!"

Adamson shouldered left through the pearly nothing wall. Thead was in front of him, kneeling on the oval table and firing rockets at the indistinct shape of Protia through the nothing screen.

Adamson demolished the table under Thead. As the projector cut out, the column dissolved. Adamson held his blaster ready and walked across, but Thead was lying still.

"Well," said Protia. "A real sportsman. It's wonderful how you humans treat each other."

"I'll paint him blue," said Adamson. "I'll paint him blue and nail him up like a crow for his brothers to find!" His hands were still shaking, his knees were knocking, soup was drying in his hair.

"Sadistic," said Protia. "That's the word for what you are."

"Some people ask for it. Java and then soup ... that Thead.. "

"I can understand it, he deserves what he gets."

But there was nothing more Adamson could do to Thead. He was already dead and nailed. The skull was penetrated and burst by a thick steel crossbow bolt, the stubby flight deep against the lank blond hair.

The crowd began to stir. The ranks rippled as the people stood. Fists began to shake at Adamson.

"A bolt from the blue," said Protia. She giggled nervously.

"The Traveler! Quickly! Let's get out!" Adamson started in that direction.

"It's all right. The Androids won't do anything unless Thead makes them."

"Who killed Thead? Who's got the crossbow?" Adamson searched the tiered and seething crowd. Once he thought he saw Hedon, but decided it couldn't be. "And the other Theads? How long? Do you think they'll take the Game as over? Do you think they'll agree we've won?"

"Hide," said Protia. "Surely we can hide? There must be somewhere safe somewhere?"

"There's no such place, not from Thead!" 

"God help us! Perhaps God will save us." 

"Why should he?"



- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

THEAD, Great Hero (qv): Consider the extraordinary, fantastic, twists of fortune which enabled the perfidious Adamson to survive! All through its short history (qv) the Race was cruelly noted for its misfortune.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

A rifle fired from the terraces. A man came sprinting from the shadows under the boundary wall. Bullets began to kick after him, the paving shattered and broke.
The crowd murmured, growled, roared as its anger mounted. The running man had a crossbow. Adamson pulled out his blaster again. The running man was black.

'This way!" yelled Adamson. "This way!" He waited on the step of the Traveler.

"No!" The man kept on running past. He threw up his arms as he shouted. "The tent! I'm on your side ... that way ... the Get Out!"

He was past Adamson and Protia. More bullets sprinkled down. The crowd overflowed the benches. People began to drop down into the arena, they came, draining down like some brightly-colored liquid to get at Adamson. When there were enough on the paving they began to move forward.

"This way," panted the man. "It's enough you're against Thead! You know we've got to find the Get Out! Trust me!" His thin body rocked with coughing.

The marquee smelled of hot trampled grass and musty canvas. Bullets began to whiplash through the fabric, the  impacts sounded like drums in the moist heat. Threads and tufts of canvas drifted down. Sunlight splashed through the bullet holes.

Thead's amusements were spread on card tables. Flower arrangements stood on the old classical sex photographs, there were bright circular or wave-shaped toys, patience cards, a well-illustrated treatise on flagellation lay open among the opium pipes and spirit lamps, a coffee flask and broken biscuits were scattered on the green baize.

"You know he waited here for people to kill. I've watched him. For months I've watched him, this is the Way Out." The black man kicked at Thead's tables, sent them splintering and flapping across the tent. He turned back. "You got anything to eat? Can I come with you? You know we'll have a better chance together." Adamson nodded, handed over some food from his pack.

"You just hate Thead," said Protia.

"You're pretty," said the man. "Yeah, I hate Thead. I hate what he does to us. You would too. He'll kill us all in the end. Puts down poison - hunts men for sport."

"Thank you." Protia was flattered, she'd never considered her looks when she was human before. "I'll tell you about the Milky way ..."

"You know we've got to go down. The Get Out. Another world within this, a reward for the just to win to. Almost mystical, man. Not broken down and finished - new like Eden. And that Thead keeping us from it. Its much better if you can make Out!" He was still kicking away the card tables and chairs. A rose vase spilled on the trampled grass. When he had cleared a space he stamped until he found a place that sounded hollow.

"Now what?" Adamson came crawling back from the door flap. There were more and more bullets, a steady pattering riddled through the tent, more and more of the
Androids began to fire.

"The controls. You know we must find the levers, somewhere it should all open!" He looked down at Adamson, seemed to notice the bullets and dropped on all fours. He crawled to the consoles at the end of the tent, began to fiddle with the massed knobs.

In that dark end of the tent the screens flashed briefly white and activated. Thead appeared, built up, there in frightening color and dimension. He turned quickly toward them as if he had been surprised.

"Ah," Thead smiled. "So there you are! So you made it to Planet One." He twisted his small whip. "Don't call me, I'll catch you. I'll catch you sure!"

The black man rolled for his crossbow. The bolt sliced into Thead's image.

"Fool!" Thead's lip curled. "What good are you? Not good enough for the Inner Paradise. I'll kill you when.."

Adamson's glove blaster throbbed once. Thead dissolved into the smoke and tangled wreckage of the screens. 

"Fool! Fool again!" Thead's distorted voice came faintly from the hissing speakers. "I know exactly where you are, I'll kill you exactly when I want to!" He paused, the smoke curled some more. "Nothing makes any difference. I've got to do it. It's got to be done to you. I can't help it..."

Protia found a small push panel half-hidden in grass. She leaned on it and a circular section of trampled floor swung smoothly to one side. Hot air came rushing up, ruffled the grass which grew down the sides. More bullets came through the tent. Sunlight beams riddled down through the smoke.

"You got to it!" said the man. "With luck and help we might still be saved." The roar of the crowd was still growing, seeming to come nearer now. The man poised his elbows, balanced over the void, He grinned white teeth at Adamson and launched himself out and down.

The bullets came lower, began to chip into the turf and the tumbled card tables. Adamson hesitated a moment longer and rolled over the edge into the dad ca~~ Protia gave a little cry and dived after him.

At first they fell quickly but then the rush of air calm~~ and Protia could see Adamson just ahead and turning he fell. She had time to notice deep corrugations in the wall, deep ribbings there, set like shelves, then they landed thumping and rustling in deep dry pine needles.

There was a soft wind in the pines. Red sunset turned the trunks a richer pink, the thick foliage to near-black. Pine scent was fresh in Adamson's nose.

In front and below, evening was gathering in a lush valley, street lamps wound in the mist, a campfire was burning. On the hillside itself bouquets of field flowers emerged from mist-filled hollows, birds swooped and fluttered over the long grass, on the hilltops everything was tranquil.

"We made it!" said the man. "Just like they said!"

Summer lightning flickered below the horizon. Adamson saw poplars rising dark from the flowing mist down there, then he thought of the guns and bullets behind them. He crouched, turned quickly, shoved his hand into his blaster.

"Easy! They won't come this way." The man's hand closed on Adamson's arm. "You know they're surface Androids, they're not allowed to. You won't need your weapon in Paradise - not unless we meet Thead."

Adamson was still looking back. There was nothing there, only the pine needles, etched dark against the cool, clear sky above them.

"They won't come this way." The man began to crank his crossbow.

"Who are you? What is this place?" Adamson watched the bolt click into place. Hedidn't take his hand from the blaster.

"Quarrel. They call me that, for my bow. I don't know where we are except that we made it here."

"He only knows what it's supposed to be," Protia whispered into Adamson's mind. "For him it's Paradise. It doesn't have to be anywhere, except that it's 'inside,' what ever that means."

"You know who I am. Who are you?"

"Adamson. This is Protia." They shook hands.

"Doesn't matter where we are," said Quarrel. "You know it doesn't matter who you are if you're against Thead, but it's good to be friendly.

"What you've got to do is penetrate as far as you can. We'll try to pick up some Performers." He dropped his eyes for a moment. "You know I'm black. I ought to do well, they'll really notice me. You've got to admit I'm beautiful. I ought to really get right there!"

It was true. Adamson looked at the sallow gray-white of his own skin, his deep tan was long gone now, he compared it with Quarrel's blue-black splendor. Quarrel grinned and slapped him on the back.

"We were all varied once," Adamson told Protia. "Individual colored races, individuality. I bet they had a committee to make us all the same."

"The colors sound nice," said Protia. Then thinking of the Broadcast belt, "But they had their troubles for it."

"Then communications got better. We all got up."

"'Miscegenation,"' said Protia. "It sounds really bad." "The Unification," said Adamson. "It wasn't a bad thing really."

"That Quarrel," whispered Protia. "Some sort throwback? A sport? It's a good thing he's not piebald."

"Things are confused on the surface," said Quarrel. "You know it's pretty much like the beginning - no control on breeding at all, pretty much a matter of choice, no time for eugenics with Thead about. It's all gone back." He mused a moment. "Yeah, I got lucky when I came out black. They'll be interested . . ." He flashed his white teeth, jerked his head to flick his long blond hair from his eyes.

The communicator on Adamson's collar buzzed brief. He flipped the circuit open.

"Thead's come," whispered the Probe. "Arriving now. Don't acknowledge."

"We can't stay here," Adamson stood up. "'We've to get away from Thead."

"Yeah," said Quarrel. "You know the Performers  are in here somewhere, that fire down there, that might be some of them." He stepped forward, tried to peer through the gloom.

"Yes," said Protia. "There's Thead." They began move down the hillside. Now that the sun was gone the light was blue and cold. The lightning still murmured beyond the horizon.

Three thousand miles above, Thead watched his fleet wheel into position. He fidgeted with his toy whip, impatiently watching the maneuvering Probes.

It was taking too long. Adamson was getting too far.

They should never have been allowed into the Arena. The Thead there - he had plenty of Androids - they should never have gotten through.

Thead found himself wondering if perhaps he might lose, he wondered if it might be better if he did. For the third time he checked the loading of his pistols. He wondered what had happened in the marquee, if perhaps Adamson had found the Get Out.

The Performers had their fire at the foot of one of the lampposts. There was music down there, and as they came down Adamson found that the music permeated the whole valley. The Performers had joined in and were playing mandolins and singing. They looked up, then stood as Adamson's party came onto the road and walked toward them.

"Peace!" said Quarrel. "We come peacefully and copiously to help against Boredom." It was the traditional greeting.

"Banish devil Boredom, hide despond." The oldest of the Performers came forward. "Whiter than white. Kill time, make the wind up. That's entertainment. That's holy!" He was slightly built, his robe clung revealingly to his figure, the dead-white makeup and the balloon nose proclaimed his high rank.

"Who are you? Do you Perform?" The old Performer dropped the high-pitched keen and the professional grin disappeared.

"Quarrel. I want to join your troup."

"You're black." The Performer's eyes narrowed as Quarrel came, into the fight. "Seriously though, who are the others?"

"Adamson,  and Protia." Quarrel answered before they could stop him.

"Lord Thead says to look out for you. You can't tour with us."

"But I'm black!"

"I'll sign you up. It's the other two. We don't want Thead down on us." The Performer pulled a yellow, cyclostyled document from inside his tunic. He primed a stylo, leaned the paper on one of the gaudy caravans and began to write.

"Now then. Name: Quarrel. How old are you?" "Seventeen."

"Where from?"

"Caucasians."

"The Surface?" The Performers, who had come in close to listen, scattered back again.

"Stay away!" The Performer had a small pistol out "You stay away!" There was a thirty-foot circle of people looking in on Adamson and Protia. Their eyes flashed red in the firelight. "Decontaminated?" Then, more hopefully: "Mutated?"

"Some terrible thing," Protia telepathed. "They think there's something awful, contagious, on the surface. It keeps them down here - that and Performing Tradition. Religion ... faith ... something about God in it too. The Theads told them..."

"Go!" The Performer had himself up at his full height. "We are on a tour to the Performance. We do not wish sickness. Go, or we'll call Thead!"

"You can't blame him," said Protia. "Think of what Earth must look like to someone in Paradise. All the putrifaction and decay... "

"But someone's lying," said Quarrel. "It's not like that; now."

"In a way, statistically-historically, on the average - you can see what they mean."

"You too, Quarrel! You stay away. Get purified, come back then!" The Performer pointed with his pistol toward the hills. Adamson, Protia and the weeping Quarrel trudged through the circle. "You stay away!" shouted Performer after them.

A mile up the slope, where the trees began again Quarrel halted. They looked back to the Performer's fire, the bright painted caravans.

"We'll follow," he said simply. "They'll take us where we want to go. If they don't see us it'll be okay. You're always rejected the first time or two." They settled together to watch the night away.

In the arena the firing stopped as Thead's armada of Travelers circled in. They spiraled in formation to land on the soft grass and the blue and white paving between the littered shot-up Androids. The cordite fog swirled, nothing else moved while the machines shifted and settled.

Thead looked at Adamson's Traveler. He stamped through the pseudoblood, kicked at the jerking, riddled corpses.

"God!" he yelled. "Haven't you got any sense at all? Don't you know enough to stop shooting when you start to hit each other?" The remaining Androids hung their heads. "And ammunition too! Look at it!" The terraces were drifted deep in cartridge cases. The central grass was ploughed to a pulp by a million bullets, the paving nearby was shattered and dusty.

Thead went and stood in the shreds of the marquee among the bullet-nibbled poles, the mashed electronics.

"Well? They came this way. I know they did! Where are they now? Did they use the Get Out?" As one man the Androids pointed to the pocked trap door. "I might have known!"

Thead made a small adjustment to the stock of his whip. The Androids stood still. The trap slid open.

"Well then," said Thead. "So we'll go down." One after the other the Theads dived and dropped Out into the void.



Hours had passed. Adamson watched the slow caterpillar of vans come twisting up the narrow valley. It was slow down there, the roads were long unused, it was even slower than following in the heights. It had been easy to keep up with the Performers.

"They're thinking about Quarrel," said Protia. "Wondering where he is. An attraction. They'll be glad to get him back. They're nearly there now - they're starting to doubt themselves."

Adamson studied the garish vehicles, looked at their blacked-out, one-way ports. Perhaps it was that no one was allowed to see them without paying. He wondered whom they performed for, whom they entertained. They didn't entertain him much.

"And Thead!" said Protia suddenly. "Thead's nearer. Lots of him!"

Thead watched the endless tumbling Theads bundle into Paradise under the pine trees. He sweated when he thought of Adamson. How all the time be was further ahead, how the time was passing and Adamson was gaining on him.

He wouldn't hesitate when he found him. He wouldn't listen to Protia, she wouldn't temporize again. Thead would blow them down in bloody pieces, there'd be no hesitation.

Frowning, or sometimes smiling with anticipation, ready, swishing their whips, the Theads fanned out into Paradise. There were no doubts now, Thead was sure he was right, there was only one thing to be done.

More time passed. The trouble with the highlands was that the little water they found stank. Adamson was glad when the City began.

There was nothing in particular to mark its start. There were no gates or boundaries. The country ended and the City began with trees, with a scattering of neat villas, the road leveled and straightened into a shady avenue.

When they were abreast of the first quiet houses the Performers halted, consulted briefly through their driving hatches and moved the vans onto the lush verges underneath the chestnut trees. Some of them got out to light fires.

Adamson climbed further up the hill to where he could follow the white avenue into the City. As he walked the sun set and evening came on.

A mile further on the hills ended. From the top of the last steep slope onto the plain Adamson could see the City proper.

First there was the road, the houses scattered along it becoming smaller and closer together, the evening mistiness of the trees more and more angular, the pale street lights closer together. Further still the trees gave way to buildings altogether; where the buildings became taller the lights beneath them had more color and were brighter.

As near as he could guess the City reached twenty or, thirty miles across the Plain. At the far edge the buildings were tallest of all, unbroken and enormous against the sky. Over all the sky still twitched with lightning.

North and south the City shifted away in grids of uniform sodium lighting. Adamson saw that the street lines weren't quite straight, but that they swung inwards and east in vast curving perspectives. He decided the City must be in the form of a ring, perhaps a few hundred miles from edge to edge.

"Where are the people?" asked Protia.

"There's the City, who needs people? We've got enough to worry about."

Protia's mind hissed warning. Adamson turned and crouched quickly back to where he'd come from.

Thead had come. A dozen of them. Some tiptoed up to talk and gesture into the hatches of the vans, others were erecting red-checkered barriers across the road.

"He doesn't mean us to go that way," whispered Protia.

"Maybe that'll be the Game. Getting into the City, hide-and-seek there."

"Anything could be the Game. Everything is."

"Yes," said Quarrel. "You know we've got to go that way."

One of the Performers leaned out of his hatch. He pointed for Thead back down the road. The Theads grouped into the middle of the road, there was some gesturing, a short discussion.

After a while Adamson saw a Thead talking into a communicator. Then half of them set off up the road and the rest went back and stood beside the barricade.

"It's your misfortune," said Quarrel suddenly. "Ain't none of mine, Mr. Adamson. You know Mr. Thead means to kill you - you know he'll kill anyone with you. You're not safe to be around, Mr. Adamson."

"He hasn't managed yet." Quarrel and Adamson ate the last of Adamson's rations, then they sat in the lee of a hummock and watched the lights and movements of Theads on the road.

Then Protia was shaking his arm and Adamson couldn't feel his legs for the cold. Quarrel was gone.

"I told him to go. He won't talk. He's promised. He was telling the truth. You know I know."

It was obvious when Adamson thought of it.

It had been long enough, Quarrel was purified enough join the Performers and, really, it was all he could do.

"He was sorry to go," Protia went on. "If he tells Thead he's been with us Thead will kill him anyway. We can trust him."

The sky was lightening and it was too cold to sleep again. Adamson leaned against the hummock watched the street lights begin to dim.

"There are the Theads," Protia hissed. "A cordon round the city! They're everywhere!" She could hear thoughts as the Theads took position along the hills, stood like so many frozen statues stock still in the shadows; Protia knew their lip-licking anticipation, the itching fingers on the hard, cold weapons.

"We've got to go," she whispered. "Got to get a before the light!"

"Where?" Adamson suddenly noticed how Protia was talking more, relying less on telepathy. "Where shall we hide?"

"After Quarrel," said Protia. "Thead's searched the vans. We'll go there. They travel closed. They'll take us somewhere, we'll make them - or maybe we can run away."

There was mist in the valley. Protia flickered, took Mist Form, became more. She folded- herself round Adamson. They went quietly down among the humans and between the trees to the vans.

They ignored the first vehicle. They could hear Theads stamping their feet at the barricade, it was close.

Adamson halted at the painted steel bulk of the fourth machine. Against the sky he could see the hatch notched open.

He stopped, listened, then put his foot onto the rivetheads and climbed the mist-beaded monster.

Wet leaves, soggy chestnut blossoms came down close to the van's roof. Adamson shivered as they brushed his neck. Somewhere the birds were beginning to sing. He
eased up the hatch; leaned in his head and shoulders. Night lights burned down there. There were childs beds in the half-light. The birds wound up to the full pandemonium of their dawn chorus. Adamson screwed the knob of his blaster to the lowest power. This was no time for the sound and light of a full charge. He dropped into the van.

He landed with a soft double thump. It wasn't quiet enough. There was a quick stir of movement from one of the cots, a listening silence. Adamson stopped breathing.
"Thead!" a small voice called. "Someone's here! It's him! It's Adamson!"

"What...?" Thead's voice came up from sleep. Adamson got out his blaster. Light flooded the van.

"Now what is it?" Thead stood up from behind a cot. His blank goggles switched toward Adamson. A slow smile dawned on his sallow face.

"See?" said the voice from the cot. "I told you!" Adamson fired.

Thead yelped. There was one short scream from the wrecked cot. The thin charge had sliced through the bed, then dissipated in a white hot patch on the armored wall. Someone was crying, there was a reek of burned paint.

"You'll never-". Thead stopped abruptly as Adamson blasted a half-inch hole through his head.

Small teeth bit Adamson's leg. Something clung there like an octopus. Adamson went down. He kicked a leg free, somebody was kicking his head with small, hard boots.
Adamson fought up, swung the glove blaster at the head beneath him.

There were dwarves everywhere. Grotesque little fingers jabbed at Adamson's eyes. A hunchback in a clown costume nightshirt swung at him on a low trapeze, a knife flashed between his teeth.

"THEAD!" screamed a voice. "Get a Thead!"

"Damn Androids!" Adamson blasted the swinging figure. In the tail of his eye he saw a dwarf running up the ladder toward the hatch. Something hit him behind the knees and he went down again. When he looked up there was a dwarf with an old-fashioned blaster aimed right between his eyes.

The stubby fingers struggled for the trigger. Adamson's blaster slithered past as his lanyard dragged it back to the holster.

He grabbed it up and fired into the dwarf's face above the hell maw of the blaster. He rolled left and blasted the dwarf on the ladder through the small of the back. The body arched, fell backwards and it was all over.

Adamson knelt up panting. Four dwarves cowered at the far wall. Under the shattered cots and bloody bedclothes Thead lay. Blood still pumped from his head wound. As Adamson watched it slowly stopped. A row of bright costumes had been ruined by it.

"All right?" Protia whispered from the hatch.

"Anyone want to go for a Thead?" Adamson waved his blaster. No one moved. Adamson suddenly felt very tired. "I won't hurt you."

Protia came down the ladder. Her eyes widened at the shambles of bloody silks and shattered bodies. She and Adamson faced each other through a long silence.

"How can you humans do it to each other? I've asked before, I know." She saw Adamson's expression, his mind. "I'm sorry..."

"If they'd been children..." said Adamson. "Or kittens ... There's a lot of blood."

"It's the way it is," said Protia firmly, trying to brace Adamson. "I've seen films, newscasts. Humans bleed like pumps from head wounds like that."

"Yes."

"No choice, you couldn't help it. Perhaps self-protection is okay."

"I won't hurt you," said Adamson to the dwarves. He looked at his blaster, released it to fall to the floor. It lay there a moment, then slithered quickly back to his hip.



- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

ENOLA GAYE (qv): An historic machine (qv), potent but prerobotic. THEAD, The Magnificent, The Savior, etc. (qv) The Race (qv) had long believed in the possibility of God (qv) but it was left to our great hero to make Him real to them in their last days.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A whine and clatter of starters, then the cough and rumble of heavy engines. Black smoke thundered up in the dawn air, spurted through the chestnut blossoms, fine soot began to powder down.

There was movement about the leading van. Adamson watched through the port. The dwarves, gagged and bound, followed him with their eyes. Protia changed her top part to be a Thead and watched from the hatch.

Lights came on. Someone shouted "FORWARD!" Gears crashed, orange-flashing the first vehicle moved off, jerked straight, went surging and grinding up the avenue.

Adamson brought a dwarf forward under his arm, dumped him onto the piled cushions of the driver's seat, cut him loose and shoved the blaster into his neck. The dwarf took one quick look at Adamson's face, nodded, then hit the starter button. The van shook as the motor caught.

"Just follow," Adamson grated.

The Theads opened the barricade and waved the vans on. Clattering tracks, roaring motors, crashing backfires moved toward the City. On the morning hilltops Theads watched them go.

"Hijack" said Protia. "It's a nice word. Can we get away with it?"

The sun was rising and the City was peaceful, no one moved in the cold streets. Later, somewhere, they heard milk trucks and the occasional sounds of refuse machines, sometimes there were pigeons on the wet streets.

Seven times Theads stopped them, flashed lights at the Theads commanding in the hatches and waved the vans through.

Slowly the trees ended. Tall brick walls, frost-crusted with broken glass, began to enclose the road. Then sometimes there were pleasant parks bright with advertising lights flashing between the tree trunks.

Adamson stared at the millions of identical windows, the vast images of stars and Performers billed up to rival the bright sky.

The buildings became taller, the robots were more numerous, hosing and sweeping the clean streets, collecting the empty garbage cans and yesterday's milk. There were still no people.

"In bed, asleep," said Protia in Adamson's head.

"Are there any? Perhaps they're all dead! Remember the Re-Call."

"What about the Performers? Whom do they perform for?"

"The City. All the accommodation ... where are all the people gone?"

"Perhaps they all slave by day and only come out to play at night. Something crazy like that."

"Do you really think that's likely?"

"They'll show up," said Protia. "They're durable, an admirable tenacity for living."

"Yes, they'll come-make everyone wish they hadn't. Evolution out-Frankensteined Frankenstein with us.. ." 

"Don't take on so much. Don't take it all on yourself. Look at the City!"

"That empty City! All those clean machines cleaning it forever! Fit for a queen and all the people gone long!" "Nice," said Protia. "Nice, but not original. An old
thought, an old nightmare."

"You could eat off the pavement. No one would notice anyway. That never mattered yet!"

Almost suddenly they had crossed the City and were at the tallest buildings of all.
There were no windows. The gray towers reached up to touch the sky. The vertical perspectives seemed to topple over the tiny vans. There were lights but they were few and it was dark in the buildings' shadow. The vans slewed and twitched, changed direction across the empty sunlight of the broad forecourt. They lined up, drove into a narrow cobbled tunnel through the great structures.

The front van flashed red warning and they slithered to a halt on the sparking cobbles. The motors died to a steady thunder, the cherry glow of the exhaust ejectors died to brown rust. Adamson looked back at the bright sun, turned to face the half-light ahead.

Four Performers came quickly down the vans unzipping and dragging off the bright covers. The garish patterns lay like so many bundled snake skins. The vans were suddenly heavier in their dull khaki paint.

The Performers pulled the covers back into their vans and the motors roared up again. They drove on into the pandemonium and fume stink of the tunnel.

Ten minutes of hell noise on and Adamson saw a blank gridded wall ahead. They slowed up as they came to it.

A rattle and a roar above drowned even the motors. The grid shot vertically into the ceiling. The blank wall behind swung down and out, crashed, bounced, then rested horizontal. The Theads in the hatches jumped down and disappeared. Performers took their places, grabbed the hatches and crashed them shut; the motors revved.

Adamson glimpsed a dark landscape murky with evening rain. Smoke trailed there, lightning scored along the ground, fires reflected in the low clouds above the small hills.

Throttles jarred wide open, superchargers whined, soot jetted, blue flame spat, the wavering heat of the exhausts destroyed Adamson's view of the landscape. The clutches shrieked, tracks tore up great sheets of sparks, loosened stones tore against the sounding metal.

Bucking and sliding, turrets twitching, the vans thundered under the portcullis, roared out over the drawbridge onto the earth ramp beyond. They broke from single file into a staggered weaving line abreast. On the earth the tracks were suddenly quiet; as the silencers were shut the night seemed to close and hold them secret for a moment.

Red hellfire from somewhere began to burst among them. High-power projectiles stung white starred dents into the ports. Adamson's van slithered and crashed into a smoking crater.

The dwarf swore, clawed at the controls. Driving tracks cut at the soft soil. The front wheels lunged up against the sky, the back dug deep, found stinking water under the earth.

Brute power drove them out and up. A phosphorous something exploded on the roof. White smoke flame lumps cascaded about them. There was a smell of burning but it was only the clutch.

The front wheels balanced over and crashed down. The tracks bit. They drove forward like a cobra, venom-blue flame rocketed from the exhausts. Plumes of mud sprayed back from the tracks.

The other vans were about a mile ahead, close together and drawing most of the fire. One had been hit.

As they slowed past, Adamson saw white heat dully swirl behind the opaque windows. A Performer had gotten half out before he burned. They made it under a low ceiling of tracer to the other vans where they waited in the shattered copse.

The vans huddled to disperse into the broken trees.

The motors cut and were silent, the machines canted and sank a little into the mud. There were stars reflecting in the cold still waters of the shell holes. The place stank.

A Performer came through the vans counting them on his fingers. There were explosions all around the compass; in the distance fires burned, lighting their own smoke. Behind them the burning van guttered out. For a long time the shelled wood was quiet.

A sudden flechette clanged on the armor at Protia's elbow. It hummed spinning away to splash into the mud. Small turnip-shaped bombs began to fall across the wood in neat, regular sticks. Soil splashed against the sky, barbed wire flung up, came slashing down again like ticker tape. Multiple exhaust flames tracked slowly across the sky. Protia made her eyes infrared sensitive and watched.

The zeppelin went slowly west. It was very low for an airship, it was rising now its bombs were gone, it was dropping ballast to gain yet more height.

A Camel came from behind cloud, began to sew a double line of incendiary bullets up the vast silver back. A glow appeared. For a moment the fabric was shadowed, then it lit up from inside like a Chinese lantern; the airship burned like a match. Protia saw a man hop like a flea on the hot top, she saw a parachute fall, burning. She thought she heard screams, or perhaps it was the wind in the falling wreckage. Then the gas puffed out, billowed up in a burning cloud.

An Albatross came screaming from nowhere; suddenly the Camel's top wing had a dihedral it had no business with and collapsed. An S.E.5 shot down the Albatross and fell in turn to a Fokker DVII. A Bristol Fighter flew up and got that one, then went down itself to the guns of a Fokker monoplane. The wing of the Fokker collapsed in a puff of debris, rotten glue stink and snapping wires. The fuselage came down like a bomb.

There was a few moments of quiet and then Protia saw a Hurricane break up under the shells of a Messerschmitt, which in turn burned under the machine-gun fire of a Spitfire; a F.W.190 got the Spitfire, and a Mustang shot down the F.W.; a Messerschmitt jet blew up the Mustang and a Meteor got that one; then a Mig 15 burned the Meteor and fell itself to a Super Saber; a rocket came from nowhere to explode the Saber and then it was all over except for the occasional powder puff explosions far away in the stratosphere.

At first light a Superfortress called Enola Gaye flew low overhead, bomb caverns open, and Protia was more frightened than ever.

That morning there was sunlight but no sun. The Performers took advantage of a lull in the shooting to move off.

The armored vans crawled cautiously down ravaged gullies, picked ways past land mines and rusted bear traps, their motors a steady burble of silenced power.

Everywhere there was wreckage. Rain-washed aluminium jet fighters were abandoned among the leaves. The stunted saplings pushed between them, curved discarded hatch covers lay around, wings were stacked and broken, coils of bound-up cables pulled like guts from the slashed fuselages. There were burned-out vans, turrets rusted and unhinged. In trenches and shell holes there were stained and rotten bones; in one place there was a pile of skulls with ivy on them. Old bandages blew on the ragged trees, everywhere there were broken things and weapons rusting; there was worn wire; old camouflage net, rotting, carpeted the ground. Adamson saw the fattest rats he'd ever seen.

About coffee time the wind was right and there was a gas attack. Adamson found puttees and wound them tight on his legs; there were gas masks and capes too. Looking like monsters they drove on. When the indicators said it was clear they stopped and scrubbed the vans with bleaching powder. Several of the Performers needed treatment with atropine. Then they came to where they were going. The very center of Paradise; God's place.

First the grass got greener and as they came over the last hill it was thicker too. The noise of the battlefield dropped behind, as the land fell away there were even trees with leaves.

Then there was a valley before them that was circular and dished. There were spacious lawns set with more trees. There was a building, square and made of gold.

When they were below the skyline they halted and the bright covers were put back on over the scarred armor. They moved sedately toward the glittering beauty of the gold building.

Further down there were people, all Performers, all walking and taking the air in their golden robes and slippers. There was no music; apart from the distant rumble from the battlefleld the silence was total.

"Luxury," said Protia. "To get away from that music! But God, this 'God' the Performers are thinking about; does he exist?"

"I was always told so."

The people watched as they passed. They had the friendly, proud bearing of those who live in success; sometimes they smiled, or waved with one hand. The continued down onto the valley floor.

"But Him?" said Protia. "Could it really be ... here?"

"Everywhere," said Adamson, "he's supposed to be everywhere."

There was a gold wall in front. There was a row of vast torches set in the gold paving. Twenty-foot flames played there, cast a patterning of light and shadow into the thousand thin pillars set like a forest in the entrance. Mauve and green lights lit the faceted gold walls, reflections flickered back on the polychrome wins. There were illuminated gold or bronze statues on the roof. It was not a thing a man could look at for long.

"But is it? I mean, could it really be after all?"

"I wouldn't say so ... not here ... not in the middle of all this! Not the one they told me about."

"In infinity, in the universe, anything you can imagine, anything you can dream, it must exist somewhere. Why not here?"

They had to leave the vans at the pillars. Adamson found Performer's robes in trunks at the back of the van. He retied the driver dwarf, joined Protia at the end of the Performers as they filed into the building. Nobody paid them any attention, they were too awed to notice Adamson and Protia, the absence of the dwarves.

There was no way of knowing direction or distance. They were moving through iridescent vapors and pulsing light, through tracts of incredible color, rainbow-framed and glowing. It was a world beyond appearance, beyond chronological dimension. Adamson wasn't sure if it was uphill or easy, he wondered about falling off the floor, if there was one. Everything, all history, all existence was dissolved in the reflected glories and shifting lightnesses of that final place.

Perhaps it was hours and then there was a shifting of spectrums to a final focus. All the colors stabilized to the pearly shadowless gray light of the dead center, of where the God-thing was.

What they could see of Him was a perfectly rounded whole, totally quiet, immobile, untouchable, immune from accident or chance. The quiet, neutral center of total awareness, the sum of all the knowledge of the Galaxy was there, was bound up in Him.

The Performers stood still until they should be wanted. 

At the barricade, puzzled, Thead collated the reports of the cordon. At last he had to admit that Protia and Adamson had passed him and were through. Angry, he controlled his voice and gave his orders. In vans all over the place called Paradise, buzzers roused the drowsing Theads. They crowded onto the battlefield, converged on the golden palace.

Some came down to the pillared entrance. They searched the vans there, found the dead Thead and the bound dwarves, understood what had happened. They reported, climbed back into their own machines. The turrets jerked around to aim into the pillar forest. All Theads left the cordon, began to move toward the battlefield and to God.

"Yes," said Thead. "Yes ... yes! Escalation. Confrontation. We'll meet before God - play the Game there! It's right, there's a swing to it." He smiled to himself, smoothed the creases in his ski trousers, adjusted his sun helmet. "God lames winning sides, anyway Fit win, I have a special relationship!"

"Well?" God's voice swelled up like chiming bells in the gray light. "Perform!"

The Performers galvanized into action. One by one they stripped off their robes, stepped onto the stage there and performed their acts. Sometimes God made noises as if laughing.

The first performance was a pair of Siamese twins who juggled elaborate patterns of fruit and pastel-colored bails. They were supreme in their joint cooperation. Then there was a woman with six breasts, the last pair rather small and covered with the thick palamino hair which sprouted up over her stomach. She did a kind of belly dance and Protia started looking thoughtful.

"Their vibrations are normal, real," she whispered. "They think normally, they're human - but who could tell?"

A very small man was carving humorous shapes in wood with a blunt knife and twenty-four nimble fingers while he waited.

"I'm carving a band for God," he said suddenly, twitching his clever monkey's tail as he spoke. "Do you think He'll realize it's supposed to be funny?"

"He'll know," said a Performer. "He sees everything you do. All the hands, all the sins, the petty treacheries, all the dirty little adulteries, everything you do. All your acts."

"Do you think the really lousy things shook Him ever? After all this time?"

"Perhaps we'll see," said Protia. "Do you think he could be some sort of supermachine? Do you think, perhaps their inventions got out of hand? A King Stork? An old phobia of yours, the Super Machine God..."

More Theads arrived. They sent for their Travelers. They flowed through the City streets, swung across the last great square, swiveled down the tunnel, out into the roar of the battlefield.

"Come on again," said God's golden voice. "Amuse us. How would you like to sit here and know everything forever with nothing to do? Entertain us!"

A fat woman with a tattooed back did conjuring tricks with top hats, white rabbits, dormice, teapots, gold watches, cucumbers, cabbages and kings. The carving man swung the great hand he had made onto a crude steel gallows before God. The Performers pushed a mongol child on stage where he danced like a small bear to the music of a plastic group.

"Protia," whispered Adamson. "They're all freaks! And God ... they're here to entertain him!"

"It took you long enough to see that. There's no other reason for them to be here, someone must have thought they were amusing. Thead maybe. God might be a whole lot like Thead ..."

"I don't know ... is He or isn't he? If it is Him, then how would we understand His entertainments?"

Quarrel did a turn. He stood central on the stage, flexed his black body, made his oiled muscles jump and dance with the music.

"Does it entertain you?" whispered Adamson. "Is it... funny?"

"I don't know why I watch," said Protia.

"Where are my dwarves?" said God. "Were are my clowns? I feel safe with them!"

"No," said Protia. "It isn't funny."

The Old Performer turned from watching God to look for the dwarves.

"Where?" Protia shoved past him, jostled Adamson onto the stage.

"Dwarves!" screamed God. "I said dwarves! I must have my dwarves around me!"

Protia flickered, became an Elephant. She telepathed Adamson to wave his arms. As he waved she changed shape, together they ran quickly through various bestiaries and back again. God was enthralled.

The main body of Theads brought their massed vans and Travelers fast over the last of the battlefield. They arrived thundering at the flaming torches, the loitering Performers scattered.

When Protia had finished, God made clapping noises.

"He's not a bad old stick," whispered Adamson. "It's not fair to lay all the cripples and the suffering at His door!"

"He's as much to blame as anyone else and He's omnipotent!" growled Protia. "He brings them here - if it is Him and not him - or it!"

"Who are you?" God asked Adamson. "How do you do it?"

"I don't believe..." said Protia in her mind.

"I don't. It's Protia," said Adamson. "She's an Alien. She does it all the time. Protean, you know." 

"Alien?"

"Extra-Galactic," said Protia proudly. "Static electricity in gas and dust clouds, a mist form, you know."

"As You should know..."

Thead fired all the turrets together into the pillar forest at the entrance. The explosions burst the metal jagged. Gold melted, splashed, then cooled in gobbed stars. Thead drove the roaring vans into the smoke.

"Good," said God. "We're pleased that after all there's, something besides men."

"I thought you knew everything," said Protia. "I thought you were omnipotent and omniscient?"

"So We are - or near enough. Tell Us a story. It's so boring all this time ... all this time with only men to look at. Tell Us a thousand and one stories."

Suddenly the clatter and slither of steel tracks and Thead's vans jerked and roared onto the stage. The motors cut to silence. The turrets hunted, one zeroed on Adamson and Protia, the rest on the Performers and God.

"What have they been saying to you?" snarled Thead.

"Well what is it?" said God. "We've given you whatever you wanted. You come bursting in here ... you've had everything, what d'you want now? Our job?"

"These two," said Thead. "He's defied me. I want him dead and I want to have Protia!"

"It's not God," whispered Protia. "It's got a mind like a Probe, I've got its vibrations now. It's all the Probes all connected up. A million or so - maybe two or three. All beamed up to that Probe Ring round the Earth. A hell of a thing!

"It made Theads ... made him what he is ... gave him the Galaxy, it's powerful enough ..."

"Well?" Thead's lip curled up. "Do I get them, Father?"

"Oh, all right. Have them."

"Adamson," said Protia quickly. "Adamson, he's the biggest freak of all! He's the last Probe Rider! A real man, the last honest man of all!"

"Oh?" God was almost interested. "Give them to me!" screamed Thead.

"I'll tell you a story," said Protia. "I'll tell you how the Milky Way was made..."

"Shut up!" snarled Thead. "Shut up!"

"What? Tell Us that! We've got theories ... Oh yes! We've got them! There have been a lot of them! Confirm ... an outside view..."

"I'll blast you all!" Thead's turrets lowered for better aim. The mechanisms clicked.

The God-thing dimmed in a colossal outgoing of power. All Theads stood frozen to stone. There was a long silence.

"God!" said. Protia. "He's powerful. That's what I call transmutation!"

"Yes," said the God-thing. "That'll hold him, Now then, Miss Alien. Tell Us."

"That Thead," asked Protia, "who is he?"

"In a way, as it were, you could call them Our sons." "God!" thought Adamson. "Grotesque!"

"So is everything," said Protia. "Here, I mean, what isn't?"

"When the Re-Call was over he was the last Rider, the last real man. You can't count the surface mutants, of course - bound to be mutated in all that radiation - only the atmosphere between them and the sun, not natural, not like here. Anyway, Thead was the last man on his feet - We didn't know about you then, Adamson, you were too far out. We thought everyone else was dead and there was only Thead. We waited so long ..."

"Then?"

"Well, We couldn't let the Race die out. A Probes Law. So I multiplied him. Parthenogenesis . . bred him from his own patterns."

"So that's it. .." Adamson understood at last. "Maybe he killed the other Riders, all of them."

"It's easier when you make people identical," said God. "But women . . . you can only do that with women. You could only make women that way!"

"You forget who We are, you forget Our resources. We have turned Our Theads to stone. We can do anything, it's not much fun being Us. We used the Dissolution/Reconstitution machines, a little trace of Thead each. We had ten millions of them. We had ten million Probes, more or less. All Thead has... had."

"But you? Who set you up? Who connected all Probes? Who gave you your power?"

"Thead."

"Who else!" Protia saw it all now. "Thead was last in the Re-Call. Found the Probe Ring, made the connections! A circular history! Everything self-contained!"

"Thead made Us and here We are."

"So then you used the Probes to generate Theads?" "It was what he intended. He is our son and Father. We're an exceptional machine to have sons. He means to populate the Galaxy all by himself. We are proud of his ambition."

"They're mad!" said Protia, but the God-thing didn't bear a word.

"Together we rule. Together we are the Galaxy." The God-thing spoke proudly, it was far away. "He wants it all for himself though. He wants to be Us. Nothing stands in his way, he's the real Spirit of Man!"

"Yes," said Adamson. He wished he was back safe in the arms of his Laura, dreaming.

"He wants to be me," said the God-thing thoughtfully. "He's mad."

"It explains a lot," said Protia.

"Everything's mad, everything," said the God-thing. "Everything."

"It's wonderful," said Adamson. "Think of the maddest, most stupid, dangerous playground and that's our history! That's the Mankind Game!"

"All that old mad mischance," said the God-thing. "That's at the center of it. Maybe it'll be all right, or maybe not too bad. I mean, it might be all right."



- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

ADAMSON, Rider and clown: Notice his damnable luck, how it, with God's folly, brings our Thead near to a setback. No fault of his that men came to Earth again! 

THE GALAXY: No use crying over that now, sour grapes to hope for something better.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

"Well?" said the God thing. "What about Our story?".

"Adamson," said Protia. "He's my man. A Rider too. Thead wasn't even the last one - I'm Adamson's friend. If he says I can tell the story, I will."

"Please, Adamson?' said the God-thing. "It's the last thing We'll ask you. We want to know!"

Adamson nodded and Protia began.

"Zeus was a God too, once. He fathered Hercules on Alcemene, so that he was a mortal baby ... " Protia telepathed Adamson to make for the door. "So, to make the baby an immortal, Zeus put him to suck on Hera's breast while she was asleep." Adamson sidled off the stage. "But being Hercules he had his teeth already and bit her. So Hera woke up with a jerk and Hercules spilled his milk. Right across the sky. That's it, that's why it's called the Milky Way."

"Well," said the God-thing. "We knew it had to be something like that!" It made laughing noises again.

"It just couldn't have been anything as daft as most of the other yarns," said Protia.

"It's crazy!" protested Adamson from the wings. "Anything might happen. It's not reasonable!"

"What d'you want?" said Protia as she joined him. "Utopia?"

The God-thing laughed too much and lost concentration. Its radiations relaxed. Thead turned slowly pink and came back to life.

"Fool!" he growled. "You'd listen to anything. Believe it too. I'll kill them now. Fancy listening to that!" "Well," said Protia. "The possibilities are infinite aren't they?"

The God-thing was still laughing at the thought of Goddess with sore nipples.

"I'm not so sure We don't prefer Adamson," he said

"At least there's only one of him and he's real!"

Thead's jaw dropped. He stood quite still, he almost stopped breathing. The God-thing was laughing again Thead started to speak, then thought better of it.

"Oh, go on! You know We'll give you anything you want! Just don't call Us 'fool' again!"

Thead turned to look for Adamson and Protia. God-thing was still laughing.

Adamson leaned back on stage to fire his blaster at Thead. Protia grabbed him and dragged him away.

He still took four Theads with as many charges. Blood and smoke gouted in the quiet gray light.

All the vans fired at once. The blast threw Adamson and Protia sprawling up the corridor. An orange inferno of explosions bloomed. The God-thing was hit. It began to burn very slowly in a fog of white smoke. It tried everything, fire control chemicals came raining down.

Adamson and Protia huddled in a heap at the foot of a thousand-yard wall listening for Thead. There were names on the wall, very small, millions upon millions of them, neatly alphabetical, surnames first. A van came ploughing gold up the corridor from the stage. Its turret twitched from side to side.

"The names?" said Adamson. "Quickly - who are they?"

"The dead," said Protia. "All the people who got forgotten!" The turret looked at them.

Thead stood leaning forward in the hatch. Past him explosions flared in the smoke veils.

"God's dead!" shouted Thead. "I killed him! Me and my vans!"

"Poor old thing," said Protia. "Only a sort of god. A god-thing	, not really at all .. , a failure of courage ... now it's dying!"

"I'm master now," sang Thead. "VENI VIDI VICI!" He pulled up the fastening to the neck of his bright orange wet suit, adjusted his beads, straightened his blue and white crash helmet. "I'm the last human! I'm everybody! I end as God! I rule space and time!" Then he remembered. His eyes came down. "Your turn, you two! I win the Game! You've been unruly!"

Quarrel's bolt took Thead in the back of his head. His arms came up as he collapsed forward onto the roof of the van, then jerked up again as he slithered back into the machine. The turret fired through the wall to the left of Adamson. The van jerked forward and crashed through the hole. There were more walls beyond, layer on layer. The van accelerated, crushed and fired through the succeeding walls like cardboard. Quarrel came staggering and bleeding out of the smoke.

"I got him," he said thickly. "You know I got another Thead." He gurgled, swallowed, his voice steadied. "You know I'm dead." He fell forward onto his face.

Adamson bent to look at him. The back had been blown half away, the ribs were revealed. Some were broken and missing. In there, somewhere under the blood, Adamson thought he could see lungs. Quarrel shuddered, dragged himself onto his knees, put his hands up to support himself on Adamson's shoulders. It was a miracle.

"Say we're even . . ." Quarrel bubbled a little blood. He wiped it carefully away with the back of his hand, looked at it. "You know I felt bad about leaving you that time, after we were together like that. Made it right... you know I don't care where they bury me ... not when I'm dead and gone." He went forward again like a swimmer into water. He fell across Adamson's legs, he kicked once.

Theads were shouting their names out in the noise behind. Protia caught Adamson's arm and led him running through the broken passage of the runaway van.

It took four firings before the van burst through the outer wall. Adamson and Protia scrambled after it. They stood a moment in the smoke and watched the van plough up the lawn slopes and disappear towards the battlefield.

There was still gunfire behind. It seemed the Theads were fighting each other, or maybe it was that the vans were shooting out of their own volition.

The Performer's vans were still parked by the blasted pillar entrance. Thick smoke streamed over them and there were massed Theads waiting there. Adamson scuttled toward them. Protia took her Mist Form and kept him hidden.

Adamson found their van, climbed into it. He kicked the cushions off the driving seat and plumped into it. He knew what to do, he'd been watching the dwarf.

He hit the starter and churned the van around on its axis. They thundered up the slope, the dwarves bounced in the back. Protia wondered what had been wrong with the first van.

Over the crest it was the battle as usual. Coils of cordite fumes sifted across the pitted country, masked the broken landscape with their acrid gray. All the time, coming or going, dark or daylight, they saw no one actually doing the firing, actually doing the killing, but the shooting was continuous.

Later a breeze shifted some of the murk out of the northeast and Adamson saw where some of the sky had fallen.

A two-mile sheet of blue was hanging down. Sloping there, almost black now, not turned on as was the cobalt dome around it. It bent and sagged where it met the ground. Where it had been there was a hole in the sky.

"We must have missed it in the dark," said Protia over the engine noise. Their turret flicked right, steadied and fired twice. Adamson wondered what it had aimed at.

"People," said Protia. "They don't see us either. I can hear them wondering who's shooting at them, whom they're firing at. Some of them wonder why."

There was a pile of rubble that had fallen through the sky. Honeycomb fragments of concrete were tumbled there, the van skirted them, still firing occasionally. A flight of napalm bombers went low to the south. There were black clouds of crows. On the ground, crushed by the rubble, there were remnants of cultivation.

Up in the sky hole Adamson could see floors and levels reaching to another sky. It was night there, it seemed like a thousand levels and there were stars. Toward the top, where it was dark, there were trees sprouting. Moonlight streamed there, the silver rays punched through the moving smoke. There were even clouds, layers in there, layers and puffs of cumulus.

Foul water seeped from the ragged walls, became threading waterfalls. There were great stains of grassgreen moss, hanging down like dribbling beards.

"The World City," said Protia. "Fallen through."

"All over the world," murmured Adams on. "Old as the hills... too old ... too dirty."

Theads escaped from the ruin and poison fumes of the God-thing's burning. They ran coughing on the broken lawns, beat at their burning clothes, turned fire extinguishers onto each other.

On the crest they watched the golden collapse of the sagging God-thing's place. The roof fell through with a belch of flame and gout of white smoke.

Thead wiped his lips and grinned. He polished his sooty goggles in the fragments of his shirt with short twisting movements. Then he thought of Adamson and snarled. Some of the Theads had even lost their whips. Thead led them all down to where the vans and Travelers were parked.

"Adamson ... " said Thead in the choking smoke. "His fault.. "

Later on, in the evening, Adamson and Protia came to a place where someone was blowing the Last Post on a solitary horn and it was raining excrement.

Protia closed the hatch and came inside. Through heavy drops Adamson saw mountains of the stuff, pyramids of it, some rounded and old, runnels of thin slurry washed down them; others were pointed and pristine under the slow splattering dribbles from above.

"You and your memorials like pyramids," said Protia. She tried to see where the stuff came from. "Very fitting. Have you noticed how soft the soil is, not a hard place. No rocks."

"Sewage," said Adamson, "It always had to go somewhere. Paradise is a sewage sump!

"Storage. A tank for processing, they wouldn't waste a thing. Reclaim stuff from it. Fertilizers for the sea. Gas for power, fermentation to heat the City, maybe they grew things down here. It could be anything."

"Plants would account for the sunshine," said Protia. "Maybe the God-thing put the sky up there, made it bigger. Let's get out, it's not much for Paradise."

The curving bulwark of the City loomed through the smoke. Adamson found the entrance and headed for it. They bucked and crashed over the craters and the draw bridge swung down for them. As the tracks bit on the drawbridge Adamson looked back and saw Thead's van column racing on the horizon, dark against the thin sliver of yellow sky.

They thundered through the dim tunnel. They boomed into the square. Adamson jerked at the levers to head for the avenue.

Something snapped in the tracks. Broken ends flayed. Links sprayed, pins whined away like bullets. The engine rose to a scream, cut out with a crash as a rotor leaf exploded. Black smoking oil gushed from the louvers and the wheel flanges struck first sparks then fire on the paving. The van went sideways, twenty tons of armor, plastic and steel went skidding and grinding, shattering through the railings to crush a row of trees. All the way behind the paving was ploughed and burning.

Ten miles away Thead gunned his motors and turned to rush for the drawbridge.

Dazed, Adamson and guiding Protia reeled in the quiet streets. Thead's engines began to murmur from down the tunnel.

Protia grabbed Adamson, turned him and drove him before her toward the gray buildings. She led him up the steps. The great doors saw them coming, looked them over, saw that they were right, and dilated. They
stepped into the clinical cool foyer. Lights glowed up, the ramp activated, creaked from long disuse, took them quickly up.

Thead saw the abandoned van. In there somewhere the dwarves moaned. Thead ran over, clambered in. He glanced at the dead Thead, then turned to the dwarves. He tore away the gags, coughed in the smoke.

"Which way?" The small whip cut across the dwarf's face. "I said which way!"

"That way - they went that way!" The dwarf jerked his nose at the closing entrance gate.

"Scum!" Thead stood straddle-legged at the foot of the steps. He went up, beat on the gray metal. "Open! You know who I am!" He hesitated, his hands came down. The door stayed shut.

Thead backed off down the steps. He knew the door wouldn't open for him, it was the one place that God wouldn't let him go. Thead waved his whip and the vans blasted at the door wall. The machine guns fired too, white stone starred on the age-dark facade, smashed up the plastic on the steel doors.

The building fought back. The street echoed and rocked. Overshots crashed into the City. Thead fought a ten-minute battle with the door. More vans came and brought their turrets to bear and the door burst inwards. The curved plates buckled and slid, bouncing red-hot on the cool foyer floor.

Thead picked his way into the wreckage. The ramp had stopped. They began to labor up.

As Adamson and Protia stepped off, each ramp stopped behind them locked, and wouldn't start again.

Thead's boots beat up the ramps. Harsh breathing rasped up the ramp well. At first there were angry voices but Thead soon stopped talking. As they came they wrecked. Smoke and the sounds of blasting and burning spiraled up in front of them.

"If we can get up far enough we can make the surface." Adamson had paused to look back. At each landing the wall dilated for them, then slowly closed as they passed. At length Protia's curiosity got the better of her and she had to look inside.

There were Reconstitution Tanks in there, thousands of them, the greennesses in their white metal frames gleamed dully away in the half-light. The aisles between them curved away in the perspective of the City. It was a long place, quiet, a long, dim, waiting silence of immobile machines.

"Hell!" Adamson was awed. "The other floors too! The whole damn Race, all the Riders. How many came back?"

"I understand." Protia radiated soft love and pity; "They had to go somewhere. Nobody would want to keep the whole Race, or let it degenerate to nothing. Not even God would let that happen."

"Hell ..." Adamson was still staring.

"A long waiting," said Protia. "Sad, impressive." She had overheard what had happened at the entrance. "Thead was forbidden in here - this is why. Why he had to blast in. The God-thing knew what'd happen when he got in here ..."

Protia found the controls. Precise labels hung from them, the instructions were written nearby. She activated the machines. They couldn't wait to see what happened, the Theads were gaining.

On the next three floors it was the same. Then, suddenly, on the eighth, there were real people. Not moving, lying as still and as white as wax in their flexible transparent envelopes.

"A faint wave," said Protia. "Not a real vibration among them. Not one. Some sort of sad stasis. Cold storage, packed in helium, inactive, inert as the gas - that's why they billow up like that." She wiped her eyes, controlled the break in her voice.

"Earthlings," said Adamson. "They wouldn't have had Tanks for them - maybe some of the Colonists too, the ones that got back. The God-thing thought even they were worth saving."

To a Rider like Adamson they were a poor-looking lot. Thin bodies were wrapped in lilac robes, the females with their hair cut short, small-breasted, narrow-hipped, heavy paint like masks about their eyes. The men were small and thin too, some were fair, one or two were dark and full-bearded over their lipstick; weakness and stupidity were written in every line of their faces, of their skinny bodies.

"Sensuality. That enjoyment of time passing," Adamson went on. "Terrible weakness . . . all because they thought it was the thing to do. I can understand it .. . the dregs . . ." But Protia still activated the controls. Fluids began to gurgle, servos to whine, then flanks shivered, muscles began to stir. Adamson saw an eyelid bat. Suddenly they all looked like Thead to him, not one of the women looked like Laura. He turned away.

"Thead's sort of people," Protia led on up the next ramp.

"Protia! Suppose they join him!"

"Then that'll be their fault. He'll finish them all when it suits him."

"The Reconstitution Tanks! Remember what happened, what the God-thing did? Suppose they spawn more Theads!"

"There were two settings. One for Theads, one for Riders. I put them right."

They went on all the way up, all the way activating the machines, all the way bringing new life to the People and to the Riders, all the way running from the anger of Thead.



- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

THEAD, our Hero, our Great Tragic Hero (qv): Some loose talk here about our adamantine hero changing (qv): No milksop freedom for Thead, however. Leaders must lead! No nonsense about human dignity, no anarchy (qv), instead order. Could it possibly be that Thead (qv) is losing out? No.
NO! Unthinkable!

Note our hero's (qv) heroic attempt to maintain order among the rabble that the fool Adamson and the creature Protia released.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Thead still struggled up the ramps. He was still only six levels up. It takes time to wreck everything and anyway he had to walk. He began to wonder if he could blast the landings, get a van up there somehow and catch Adamson that way. Perhaps be could blow down one of the doors. Thead hated to be forbidden. When he had killed Adamson he'd come back and see what was behind them.

He wiped at the sweat, hefted his whip and wondered again if it was all worthwhile. He thought of the trail of of murders stretching behind him across the Galaxy, of how he'd poisoned Hedon's world with strontium-90 and anthrax. He wondered at his ways, at all the other worlds he'd killed, the things he did and had done, if there was something that made it have to be like that, if he had to study evil all the time.

He looked back at the panting Theads behind him. It was right, he decided, they were doing just what they were supposed to do. He wouldn't change, he wouldn't not be Thead. There was too much to lose.

Protia caught the thought. She told him how anyone can change. "I believe that," she thought. "I hope people can change..."

"Not me!" screamed Thead. "I'm too strong. I know what I want!"

"Sunk too deep in it," said Protia sadly. "Too deep to recognize the possibility of virtue even if, sometimes, he seems to sense it. Over the years he's convinced himself that everything he might whim must be right ..."

"I'm right as long as I win," snarled Thead. "Just like it always is." He set his face up the ramps, began to climb faster than ever, mindless again with ambition. There were a hundred more levels.

Protia and Adamson came to the end. A polished ladder led vertically to a circular trap; something was seeping from up there, dripping and splashing at their feet. There were screens set on the walls and they could see the City, the battlefield and Thead as he stood panting on the stairs. As they watched he began to climb again. Adamson turned to the ladder.

"Wait!" Protia adjusted the screens. "See what happens. There's plenty of time."

To the left long rows of telltale lights began to flicker and to come on. At first there were a few, scattered, then there were quickly more and more until the walls and benches were a mass of lights.

In the screens they saw the doors on the landings begin to open and the people file out. Down there Thead found himself surrounded with the revived people. He looked surprised, then he understood. Suddenly he knew what was happening and why God had forbidden these places to him.

At first the people ignored the Theads, moved among them and let them pass. Then somehow firing started and they set about the Theads first with fists and later, when they remembered where the lockers were, with weapons
as well. In the end the Theads had to run.

He retreated shoulder to shoulder down the ramps. Slowly, almost by the weight of dead men he was driven from the building. Street fighting developed.

Adamson watched the Theads scatter down the steps, saw them run to the vans, start some of them, vanish into the streets.

The City itself came back to life. It became as usual, music blared more manic than ever, Android prostitutes paced, the shops opened, merry-go-rounds began to turn, the swings to swing. In the parks the plastic daffodils came winding up, politicians began to lie again, there was the incoherent babble of pop singer's molls, the prevarication came down like rain and the City got back to normal.

In it all the people became a mob. They ranged the streets under the flashing neon galaxies breaking windows and playing football. There were women stripping sweaty clothes to dance naked in plush cellars. There were dark knifings, people told each other lies about love, walked hand in hand in shiny wet streets. Fat old men drove past in flashing limousines with shiny girls, people believed other's lies, fed popcorn into each other's mouths. There were copulation in foreign beds, under viaducts, in dark corners and watery culverts. When the mob found a Thead they hanged him on a ladder, or on a lamppost; others died more unusual deaths. The City got back to its teeming life, the rich variety of its sights and sensations.

The Theads had the vans, the big armaments in them. The streets rocked with explosions, rain began to fall and mix with splashed blood, the sky flickered fire, drooped with smoke. The Theads were driven across the City, the people followed through buildings and sewers, shooting and fighting, killing the Theads who opposed them.

The City was well afire by now, deep down things began to explode. Some of the people began to look for a Way Out.

"We've got to go." Adamson turned from the screens. "There'll be Theads on the surface soon - we've got to make the Probe before he stops us!"

Protia turned with him to the ladder and they were quickly up the wall. The trap wound down and dirty water cascaded over Adamson's head and shoulders. He pushed through and climbed up into the World City. It was dark up there, pitch black and the place stank. Smoke from below puffed through after him, the water ran from his air suit, dripped onto the floor.

He groped into the wet darkness and after a moment Protia joined him and began to glow to light his way.

Water still dripped. The puddles on the floor reflected Protia, threw waved reflections on the ragged walls. Someone in some remote time had laid planks and old conveyor belts to try to make the floor better, but even that hard material was rotting now. Further on the walls were bowed and cracked, there were old plates screwed to the floor, crude drawings on the walls. They clambered over fallen ceilings, wet ragged plastic sagged down to brush their faces. Down there there were no people, only animals, slimy dogs, hairless, who lived off each other. There were rats too, scrabbling against the disused and broken machinery, the burst sacks, the rotting and purposeless bulks of timber stored there for some incomprehensible, meaningless purpose.

The levels above were much the same; in a few dry places there was thick black dust. The place reeked of decay, all the good things had gone long ago. Protia and Adamson hurried on and up between the creaking walls, away from the scent of death, the atmosphere of failure. Slime ran on the steps and ramps.

At last, on the final level, there was daylight ahead. Midges circled near the light, came to Protia, began to bite Adamson. Here and there the roof had cracked and mud had come in, sometimes it hung like stalactite wasp's nests, or lay in soft delta deposits on the cracked floor.

In the end there was a collapsed wall and that was the way out.

A peasant had come in there to get out of the rain. He turned his dull eyes to look at Protia and Adamson, drove his few poor sheep further into a corner and stood protectively in front of them. He seemed surprised to see real people; his foul black dog growled.

Adamson shoved through the animal stink, scrabbled up a mud slope and into the downpour outside. The fresh air was amazing. As they splashed away Adamson glanced back and saw the shepherd's white face, stupid with age and not understanding, peering after them as they went.

Much later in the day it stopped raining. Butterflies danced, it was suddenly Spring and everything started looking good. Even the ruins, where they stuck up through the earth, were washed white and looked noble; it was a change from the filth of the World City. About midafternoon they found a small wood and Adamson hid there among the dark tree trunks while Protia went quickly ahead for the Traveler.

Down in the dirt, in the underground Paradise, in that too smooth, too rich countryside, Thead was trying to police the people. He still tried to win, he still tried to bluff the people that he could dominate them, that he was good for them, that he could lead them to better times. Some Theads were on the surface, some were dead, some were still trying.

Thead stood, peering round a corner. Chestnut leaves rustled above him. Not all the blossoms had fallen yet. Thead looked at the load in his glove blaster, then admired his reflection in the window beside him, straightened his bright tie, admired the cut of his khaki breeches, the sheen of his Sam Browne belt.

All those ragged people out there, they deserved killing. Thead was sure he was right. They were finished with, like dead dinosaurs. Anyway, the God-thing had exhausted the Tanks making all his brothers, most of the people were just mongols this time. When God tore those machines from the Probes, some of them were damaged then. Played out, thought Thead, the Race was played out and there were only Theads.

A red-dyed Android whore came up and whispered invitations, Thead jerked his weapon at her and she ran away. Thead laughed to see her go, then shot her down anyway.

People with torches moved at the street end. Thead fired that way, lit the street with the flash of his blaster. The mob screamed and fell back. Thead shifted his position and waited again; he noticed how the street lights were flickering, how dim they had become.

All over the City it was the same. The narrow Thead-cordon held its positions, tried to keep the people where he wanted them.

Slowly it got worse. Red-waving trees of flame burst over the roofs, the streets were full of smoke and sparks. Then the illusion machines went. The people stood still and took in the new reality. Suddenly they saw things how they really were. A great shout of rage went up.

As the God-thing finally died its machines died with it. The people were paler, dirtier. At last they began to understand that they were alone, how it was only possible, in the end, to see for yourself. The colors were revealed as garish, everything was faulted, the brilliant robes were cheap and shoddy, the signs and the music more blatant than ever in their simplicity, the peals of laughing pop poetry more childish in their content than ever.

But some of the trees were brighter, there was more green than before. The flowers that were real were fresher, cleaner, the grass where it was wild was more perfect. When one got close to some of the people they looked better too, they began to notice the difference between real things and the other sort, and to find which suited them best.

Slowly the people began to think, to realize that things could be different if they chose, that it was possible to be fully free, if only they wanted it enough. From then on Thead's failure became certain.

The people moved more purposefully among the gray City walls. They began to hunt the Theads, not in blind mob rushes as before, but with determination and stealth, searching all the time for a way out.

"That music," called Thead when he saw them coming. "That religion, the pornography, the politics, authority, the entertainments. All the illusions-they made things more bearable for you. I mean, if you need it, tell me what's wrong with it!"

"It softens the brain," someone answered. "You start to believe in it and that's the worst thing they can do to you!"

Thead snarled and tried to pick them off as they flitted closer in the shadowed doorways. He kept on blowing them down, but in the end the cordon was broken and he had to fall back. In the City the fire was gaining all the time.

Adamson brought the Traveler swinging high over the shot-up amphitheater. There were Theads and people bursting onto the surface from all of the many Get Outs.

For a while the Theads tried to organize the remaining Androids against the people. In places the surface began to look like the battlefield. Mostly it was soon over, the Androids only gained Thead a little time.

Smoke streamed from the landscape. People came staggering out with it, coughing and choking from the underground.

It became white-hot down there, things boiled, the soft soil heaved and crusted, the fumes and explosions were too much to live in. Almost all the people who were going to make it out had escaped by then, but they still came. The fighting went on.



- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

THEAD (qv): Our brave hero (qv) must survive! Surely he must win! How can that clown Adamson and that alien Protia be allowed to beat him!

SPACE (qv) In space! Our master here will beat them in space! Already he is in ambush at the Probes!

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

There was another brief skirmish when Adamson and Protia reached the Probe Ring. Theads tried to jump them as their Traveler swam up on its flaring rockets to the shadowed underside of the Ring. There weren't enough Theads and Protia had heard their thoughts anyway. That fight was soon over too.

Adamson threaded his Traveler through the debris field, past the hulks of Thead's machines to where the Probe waited. They entered the warm safety of the Gallery, the cupola swung down after them, they landed gently on the white metal floor of home.

"Have a good time?" said the Probe. "I heard most of it. Did you win the Game, Adamson?"

"I don't care too much for Earth," he said. "Not so nice down there."

"You're only saying that. I didn't want to come down with you. No, really! I told you I didn't want to come!"

But Adamson could tell it still hurt.

"It certainly does," said Protia. "It certainly does." There was a long silence. They stood together in the Gallery, looked out at the peaceful blue seas of Earth through the marbled white clouds. Thead's broken Travelers turned slowly out there, dark against the clouds, light against the darker oceans.

"Planet One," Adamson came from the Gallery, spoke almost to himself. "The first and the last - the end. I can't call it Earth any more. It's no home to me. I wouldn't live there."

"So now we'll go," said Protia. "We can go now, it makes no difference what Earth is like. It makes no difference now."

"We'll have to fix the Probe Ring, or Thead'll get us. We've got to destroy all the Probes." Adamson went to the main armament, put his hands on the smoothness, the sculptured triggers.

"It makes no difference," said Protia again. "Unless . . ." Ideas came back to her, she thought how it might be. She tested Adamson's mind, considered if he really had finished with Earth.

"The Colonists," Adamson came away from the armament. "We can't destroy them - but we can't leave their ships for Thead either. We must either kill him or pen him up like a mad dog down there." He turned to the Probe. "Report!"

"Yes. Report proceeds: the Probes are empty. Reconstitution Tanks removed. Probably to Earth."

"We know that. What about the Transports?"

"To Earth - to Planet One, I should say. I found considerable activity in the Probe's consciousnesses, but, in the main, that has now ceased."

"The Transports?"

"Several hundred world populations in stasis. Just as they came back on the Re-Call, the ones that made it before Thead Canceled. Condition: good. Awareness and mechanisms functioning."

"We'll have a Cancellation of our own. Undo Thead's work, we'll send them back. You have the Code?"

"Yes."

"Transmit it!" The Probe keyed out the Master Call to attention. The Transports listened, received their new orders. They kindled their cold engines, slowly turned, left the Probe Ring and orbit to spray in their separate directions across the sky to the worlds they had so long left. Soon there was only the spreading gas haze of their exhausts and the sterile Probes left to form the Ring.

"They've been there long enough. They made it going, they made it back, they'll make it out again. What'll few more eons matter?"

"Calculated 98 per cent survival," said the Probe.

"They deserve that chance," said Protia. "They mostly make it." She thought for a moment, then went on. "All those first ages of travel - hard for your Race. Then the long laying down, the foundation of their worlds. Then the uprooting for the Re-Call, regretfully answering that. Tolerating that, dying dutifully into stasis. I know - I can feel that, what it was like! Perhaps the even welcomed it, perhaps they thought the sacrifice might achieve something, that it might save Earth, or the Race. Now they'll just wake up where they started and all the building grown over to ruins!"

"They'll rebuild it too!" said Adamson. "They'll flower again. They've got something to do at last, something to aim for. It's what the Race needed, it's what we all need, an ideal."

"What about Thead?"

"Thead? Yes, Thead. There'll always be a Thead. I've known men with two or three Theads all in their on small head. But we've survived this one, the people just have to look out. Right now we've got to fix those Probes."

Thead snarled up from his foxhole in the mud. He saw the Probe Ring begin to turn slowly backwards, to lose speed, to come down from orbit, begin to burn in the upper atmosphere.

That night the rain clouds were lit from behind, the rain was silver chains in the flickering Light. Bombs of flaming metal came roaring down to explode in steam and blasted mud, the fragments hissing as they cooled. There was the noise of a thousand thunderstorms - and always there were the high, plunging fires across the cloud gaps.
Thead beat the earth. Dug his fingers into the mud, raged as his Probes were destroyed.

"But why did Thead let the Colonists live while he killed the others?" It didn't seem very logical to the Probe. "I mean, he could have got at them."

"He had them prisoners - perhaps be was saving them for a treat. To amuse him some time when he was bored. Perhaps the God-thing wanted them. Perhaps they fed his sense of power. It really doesn't matter much now."

"What'll happen back there?" They were beyond Pluto orbit, Adamson had begun to feel bad about leaving Earth.

"Thead can't win against them all. Even if Thead rules for a little while, the people have seen him now. He'll lose in the end."

At length Adamson resigned himself. It would have to be the Tank, the Tank forever. He braced his shoulders, steeled himself to face that long future, that long fruitlessness, that long possibility of Thead, the long uncertainty of numberless deaths. He thought of Laura, turned to leave the Gallery.

"A moment," said Protia. "There is something. Wait."

Adamson turned again. His jaw dropped, white, he staggered, braced a band against a bulkhead, She was there. He was face to face with Laura.

Not breathing, holding her with his eyes, afraid she would disappear in candy floss he walked forward. Perfumed arms came about his neck, he felt her against him, her lips whispered at his throat.

"It's me - Protia. I told you how it was love with me. There's time now ... it's time now that you've left Earth forever. I've decided. There's occasion for tenderness." She told, him sweet things in his mind. Adamson shivering, wrapped his arms around her waist.

"It's me, Protia. I'm Laura. Your tender thought of her, her ideal image from your mind." Breathless between kisses she led him across the Gallery, led him down to the observation couches beneath the great telescopes. The Probe averted its lenses.

Under the telescopes, by all the dark instrument when they had finished, at last Protia spoke.

"Mmm . . . you, Adamson. It's a good way. You're good enough to eat ... it's a good way ... " A little more time passed, Adamson suddenly stiffened, sat half up.

"But you're not Laura! Not really my Laura..."

"As much as you're that first, primeval Adamson! Re Adamson that is! How many times were you Reconstituted?"

"Laura, the real Laura was only a dream. Your forming yourself from a dream! How can you be really anything? How far is this from real things?"

"Adamson! Surely you've learned by now not to distinguish ... surely you know that most of the time you can't tell, and the rest of the time it's better not to?" Protia turned quickly to the Probe. "Trust me!" She turned back to Adamson. "Now my way, it's a good way too. It'll be all right..."

She pushed herself low above Adamson, pale starlight moved on her shoulders, her flesh was soft across his chest.

Suddenly she changed. Flicked. Became her Mist Form.

Then she was a great Mist Cavern beneath and above him, slippery and steep. He yelled and fell. Protia softly enveloped him, closed him off from light.

At first Adamson fought for breath. Fought against the closing darkness, kicked at the contracting softness.

It was no good. His struggles became less, he thought dimly how after all it was only just, how he'd killed the first Laura. His ears roared, he'd faced death and dissolution so often he was not afraid this time. The darkness became red, darkened again to total black. He relaxed, Protia digested him lovingly.

"Good enough to eat," said Protia. "I loved him enough to eat him, to make him part of me."

"Where's my Adamson?" The Probe's internal weapons poked from their slots. "You said it'd be all right!"

"I live on love." Satiated, Protia coiled her Mist Form, rubbed like a cat on the telescope couch. The Probe hesitated, then relaxed. There was plenty of time for vengeance, it was too late to save Adamson anyway.

"Spiders," said the Probe to itself. "Spiders do that, I'll observe awhile, learn something. It's almost as immodest as all that sexual stuff before ... that Freud had it right!"

Gestation took an hour. Protia compressed her Mist Form to a dense ball a few inches across, then began to divide.

"Primeval atom," said the Probe thoughtfully. "You've got to end somewhere." It observed closely, filled many spools with data and conjectures.

It was like bacteria. First there was one small dark cloud. Then two, then four, then eight, the divisions became quicker and quicker. Soon they were as fast as thought and the numbers became astronomical. Two of the cloud puffs expanded, reformed.

"I told you it would be all right," said Laura/Protia. The second cloud became Adamson. "You're like me now. An absolute marriage, the way it always ought to be.
Immortal, protean, telepathic, indivisible. All that, you've got all that."

"I feel like me," Adamson/Protia shook his head, tried out his fingers and body. "I feel ordinary, like a human."

"I'm very proud," said the Probe. "Remember I invented Laura. I'm happy to serve you still."

"So you are," said Laura/Protia. "So are we all. We're a new race. Cells made like man's, but we don't get old. All of us," she waved at the still-dividing clouds. "Our kind will populate a galaxy!

"We'll cross the Abyss," she went on comfortably. "Annihilate Metaspace! Explore Translight. Found our race, populate there, people time. I know the ways. We've finished with the star spaces!"

"No change?" Adamson/Protia's face fell. "No better chance for Planet One?"

"It doesn't matter much," said Laura/Protia. "It doesn't matter much to us .."

"Think what we could do for the Race, for the Galaxy. Love, tend them - give those people a few eons and infinities of love and honey sweetness, make up for things..."

"No. We'll leave this situation, this Galaxy to darkness and to the Race." Protia spoke gently. "I've seen enough of them ... we've seen enough of them..."

"But it could be so much better... easier for them."

"It will be better! No Probe Ring, no science, no technology - a purpose for existence, the Great Rebuilding, a new Great Work. You'll see it'll be better! You know yourself it'll be better."

"Yes, it can't be worse ... can it?"

"Anyway, whatever they do, they've got to do it for themselves. It wouldn't help to make it easier, it never has."



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TRANSLIGHT, God-state (qv): Unthinkable that Adamson should make it out into Translight! Thead (qv)! Where is THEAD! Thead? 

THEAD (qv): Our great Mythic Hero, like all the others, must, of course, die. He is fated (qv). He must fall so that he can rise again, doubtless after three days (qv), or others like him, or others the same. Destiny. Kismet. Hardly a doubt that there are always plenty of Theads as long as there is the Race, even if they must accept their ritual fate of rejection, isolation, madness and death. So our Great herofigure triumphs over his defeat (qv) and death (qv). 

THEAD (qv): THEAD! Thead? Where are you?

CHAPTER NINETEEN

"So it seems it's the galaxies," said Adamson. "Curious, we didn't think we'd cross the stars and now we set out for the Cosmos."

The Probe accelerated away. It looked forward joyfully to the God-state of Translight, to the enhanced realities there. Their energy way built up and up, touched out across space, exploding superstars tracked them across the darkness toward the threshold of the infinite.

"Perhaps there's nowhere to go!" Adamson turned from the brilliant pulsing rainbows of the screens. "Perhaps your - our - galaxies are only light-lingering images of what was once! It's been such time ..."

"I've said it before," Laura/Protia smiled. "Time isn't the same, not everywhere, not for us now. We can master it. Our race, us ... Adamson/Protia ... we can do what we like!"

On the torn Earth the last Thead there wiped mud from his face, tried to cower lower into that same foxhole. It was still raining, the landscape was cratered like the moon. Thead knelt up, shouted at the encircling men.

"It's not fair! The people I killed, not really! I made them all again as Androids! They would have lived forever! I saw to it that they were remembered, perfect reproductions! I made them again! Who'll make you when I've killed you? What's the difference - tell me what's the difference!"

The men closed in. Thead ducked beneath their shots.

He knew now he was chained to Earth and the justice there.

Adamsom and Protia watched the stars as they changed. The Probe's apotheosis beckoned it, it began to taste the new physics, the Superstate.

Then the rainbows kaleidoscoped, the radiations span, dimension unraveled, sequences changed and orders altered into new worlds and new existences.

A new Race. A new setting out into the reality of independence, the knowledge of their new experience, a new Race without the flaws of the old. A new Race with the drives and energies of Adamson's kind, a race with the love of Protia, her talents and her tenderness.

This time, in Andromeda perhaps, or in the new places of Superstate, perhaps this time it would be all right. Then they had crossed and were gone.

In a sense they'll still be going and they'll always be going. The Andromeda they reach, or will reach, or have reached, will be younger than now, the hope is far off yet. Some time, in time, or perhaps in thought, from Superstate or from Translight, they might come back. But that hope is far off too.

The last Thead on Earth fired his last blaster charge. Through the churned craters, the ashy mud, the final desolation, the men closed in. In some places the plants were were already growing.

A light day from Earth the last Thead of all, arriving too late, coming from too far, turned to run scared and to survive in the vastness.

In Superstate, sometimes, somehow, Adamson still thinks of Laura. Then, sometimes, perhaps, he wishes or even pretends that Protia really is her. Then again sometimes he's not sure it isn't all a dream anyway. That's when he takes the black Thead's goggles which he kept, for some reason he did not wish to understand, and puts them on.

As for Protia, at times like that she has her pearl. She polishes it in its square of silk and thinks of Hedon's world, of how it might be in that place, hopes against hope that it, of all worlds, might still survive.



THEAD (qv): Adamson has escaped.

SPOILED (qv): The whole ecology of events toppled! The variations broken! The fugue shattered! Amusing while it lasted, but now over! The Joke is over! Thead - forget him. He failed. 
ADAMSON/PROTIA, THE NEW RACE (qv): On the whole the prospect seemed hopeful for them. A condition of moderated hope (qv). Was the New Race touched with the gold of Protia, or had Protia been contaminated with the leprosy of the Race? Opinion differs - an open question. Now that Adamson/Protia and Protia are beyond our reach it must remain so, in regard to them.
HOPE (qv): An optimistic view of the future of the New Race. Some would think it "hopeful" (qv) if the stars went out!

There is only one way in which we may decide.

We must throw the dice again, wind up the springs of the Galaxy, of the Race, begin again ... play over the sad (qv) old song again - in another place perhaps -from its beginning. Let them play the Game again; and this time see to it that they do not escape, this time discover what the Race would be like with the virtue of a Protia.

Guard, however, against the temptation to regard experimental results as real - as precise predictions of what, in reality, was or will be the fate of the New Race. At best they remain merely speculative, fantasy.


On the third planet of a small sun in a minor galaxy far away beyond the red shift, in hot, mineral-rich seas where the lightning struck, certain chemical connections occurred and life began. Some several thousands of millions of years later man came struggling up his same old dirty, glorious path. Almost instantly he rode up into space, almost instantly he probed out across that Galaxy.