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The Sun Saboteurs
by Damon Knight

I

The Sun had set half an hour before. Now, through the window of Laszlo Cudyk's garret, the alien city shone frost-blue against the black sky: the tall hive-shapes that no man would have built, glowing with their own light.

Nearer, the slender drunken shafts of lampposts marched toward him down the street, each with its prosaic yellow globe. Between them and all around, the darkness had gathered: darkness in angular shapes, the geometry of squalor.

Cudyk liked this view, for at night the blackness of the Earth Quarter seemed to merge with the black sky, as if one were a minor extension of the other—a fist of space held down to the surface of the planet. He could feel, then, that he was not alone, not isolated and forgotten; that some connection still existed across all the light-years of the galaxy between him and what he had lost.

And, at the same time, the view depressed him, for at night the City seemed to press in upon the Quarter like the walls of a prison.

The Quarter: sixteen square blocks, two thousand three hundred human beings of three races, four religions, eighteen nationalities; the only remnant of the human race nearer than Capella.

Cudyk felt the night breeze freshening. He glanced upward once at the frosty blaze of stars, then pulled his head back inside the window. He closed the shutters, turning to the lamp-lit table with its clutter of unread books, pipes, papers.

Cudyk was a man of middle height, heavy in shoulders and chest, blunt-featured, with a shock of graying black hair. He was fifty-five years old; he remembered Earth.

A drunk stumbled by in the street below, cursing monotonously to himself; paused to spit explosively into the gutter, and faded out of hearing.

Cudyk heard him without attention. He stood with his back to the window, looking at nothing, his square fingers fumbling automatically for pipe and tobacco. Why do I torture myself with that look out the window every night? he asked himself. It's a juvenile sentimentalism. But he knew he would not give it up.

Other noises drifted up to his window, faint with distance. They grew louder. Cudyk cocked his head suddenly, turned and threw open the shutters again. That had been a scream.

He could see nothing down the street; the trouble must be farther over, on Kwang-Chowfu or Washington. The noise swelled as he listened: the unintelligible wailing of a mob.

Footsteps clicked hurriedly up the stairs. Cudyk went to the door, made sure it was latched, and waited. There was a light tapping on the door.

"Who is it?" he said.

"Lee Far."

He unlatched the door and opened it. The little Chinese blinked at him, his upper lip drawn up over incisors like a rodent's. "Mr. Seu say please, you come." Without waiting for an answer, he turned and tapped his way down into darkness.

Cudyk picked up a jacket from a wall hook, paused for a moment to glance at the locked drawer in which he kept an ancient .32 automatic and two full clips. He shook his head impatiently and went out.

Lee was waiting for him downstairs. When he saw Cudyk emerge, he set off down the street at a dog-trot.

Cudyk caught up with him at the corner of Athenai and Brasil. They turned right for two blocks to Washington, then left again. A block away, at Rossiya and Washington, there was a small crowd of men struggling in the middle of the street. They didn't seem to be very active; as Cudyk approached, he saw that only a few of the rioters were still fighting, and those without a great deal of spirit. The rest were moving aimlessly, some wiping their eyes, others bent almost double in paroxysms of sneezing. A few were motionless on the pavement.

Three slender Chinese were moving through the crowd. Each had a white surgeon's mask tied over his nose and mouth; each carried a plastic bag from which he took handfuls of dark powder and flung them with a motion like a sower's. Cudyk could see now that the air around them was heavy with floating particles. As he watched, the last two fighters in the crowd each took a half-hearted swing at the other and then, coughing and sneezing, moved away in separate directions.

Lee took his sleeve for a moment. "Here, Mr. Cudyk."

Seu was standing in the doorway of Town Hall, his bulk almost filling it. He saluted Cudyk with a lazy, humorous gesture of one fat hand.

"Hello, Min," Cudyk said. "You're efficient, as always. Pepper again?"

"Yes," said Mayor Seu Min. "I hate to waste it, but I don't think the water buckets would have been enough this time. This could have been a bad one."

"How did it start?"

"A couple of Russkies caught Jim Loong sneaking into Madame May's," the fat man said laconically. His shrewd eyes twinkled. "I'm glad you came down, Laszlo. I want you to meet an important visitor who arrived on the Kt-I'ith ship this afternoon." He turned slightly, and Cudyk saw that there was a man behind him in the doorway. "Mr. Harkway, may I present Mr. Laszlo Cudyk, one of our leading citizens? Mr. Cudyk, James Harkway, who is here on a mission from the Minority People's League."

Cudyk shook hands with the man. Harkway had a pale, scholarly face, not bad looking, with dark intense eyes. He was young— probably under twenty-five; Cudyk automatically classified him as second generation.

"Perhaps," said Seu, as if the notion had just occurred to him, "you would not mind taking over my duties as host for a short time, Laszlo? If Mr. Harkway would not object? This regrettable occurrence…"

"Of course," Cudyk said. Harkway nodded and smiled.

"Excellent." Seu edged past Cudyk, then turned and put a hand on his friend's arm, drawing him closer. "Take care of this fool," he said under his breath, "and for God's sake keep him away from the saloons. Rack is in town too. I've got to make sure they don't meet." He smiled brightly at both of them and walked away. Lee Far appeared from somewhere and trailed after him.

A young Chinese, with blood streaming brightly from a gash in his cheek, was walking dazedly past. Cudyk stepped away from the doorway, turned him around and pointed him down the street, to where Seu's young men were laying out the victims on the pavement and administering first aid.

Cudyk went back to Harkway. "I suppose Seu has found you a place to stay."

"Yes." He's putting me up in his home. Perhaps—I don't want to be in the way—"

"You won't be in the way. What would you like to do?"

"Well, I'd like to meet a few people, if it isn't too late. Perhaps we could have a drink somewhere, where people meet…?" Harkway glanced interrogatively down the street to a phosphorescent sign that announced in Russian and English: The Little bear. Wines and Liquors.

"Not there," said Cudyk. "That's Russky headquarters, and I'm afraid they may be a little short-tempered right now. The best place would be Chong Yin's Tea Room, I think. That's just two blocks up, near Washington and Ceskoslovensko."

"All right," said Harkway. He was still looking down the street. "Who is that girl?" he asked abruptly.

Cudyk glanced that way. The M.D.'s, Moskowitz and Pereira, were on the scene, sorting out the most serious cases to be carted off to the hospital, and so was a slender, dark-haired girl in nurse's uniform.

"That's Kathy Burgess," he said. "Daughter of one of our leading citizens. I'd introduce you, but now isn't the time. You'll probably meet her tomorrow."

"She's very pretty," said Harkway, and suffered himself to be led off up the street. "Married?"

"No. She was engaged to one of our young men, but her father broke it off."

"Oh?" said Harkway. "Political differences?"

"Yes. The young man joined the activists. The father is a conservative."

"That's very interesting," said Harkway. After a moment he asked, "Do you have many of those here?"

"Activists or conservatives? Or pretty girls?"

"I meant conservatives," said Harkway, coloring slightly. "I know the activist movement is strong here—that's why I was sent. We consider them dangerous in the extreme."

"So do I," said Cudyk. "No, there aren't many conservatives. Burgess is the only real fanatic. If you meet him, by the way, you must make certain allowances."

Harkway nodded thoughtfully. "Cracked on the subject would you say?"

"You could put it that way," Cudyk told him. He said after a moment, "He has convinced himself, in his conscious mind at least, that we are the dominant species on this planet; that the Niori are our social and economic inferiors. He won't tolerate any suggestion that it isn't so."

Harkway nodded again, looking very solemn. "A tragedy," he said. "But understandable, of course. Some of the older people simply can't adjust to the reality of our position in the galaxy."

"Not many people actually like it."

Harkway looked at him thoughtfully. He said, "Mr. Cudyk, I don't want you to take this as a complaint, but I've gathered the impression from your remarks that you're not in sympathy with the Minority Peoples' League."

"No," said Cudyk.

"May I ask what your political viewpoint is?"

"I'm neutral," said Cudyk. "Apolitical."

Harkway said politely, "I hope you won't take offense if I ask why? It's evident, even to me, that you're a man of intelligence and ability."

Everything is evident to you, Cudyk thought wearily, except what you don't want to see. "I don't believe our particular Humpty Dumpty can be put back together again, Mr. Harkway."

Harkway looked at him intently, but said nothing. He glanced at the signboard over the lighted windows they were approaching. "Is this the place?"

"Yes."

Harkway continued to look at the sign. Above the English Chong Yin's Tea Room, and the Chinese characters, was a legend that read:

"That's a curious alphabet," he said.

"It's a very efficient one. It's based on the design of an X in a rectangle—like this." Cudyk traced it with his finger on the wall. "Counting each arm or the cross as one stroke, there are eight strokes in the figure. Using only two strokes to a character, there are twenty-eight possible combinations. They use the sixteen most graceful ones, and add twenty-seven three-stroke characters to bring it up to forty-three, one for each sound in their language. The written language is completely phonetic, therefore. But there are only eight keys on a Niori typewriter."

He looked at Harkway. "It's also perfectly legible: no character looks too much like any other character. And it has a certain beauty." He paused. "Hasn't it struck you, Mr. Harkway, that anything our hosts do is likely to be a little more sensible and more sensitive than our own version?"

"I come from Reg Otay," said Harkway. "They don't have any visual arts or any written language there. But I see what you mean. What does the sign say—the same thing as the English?"

"No. It says, 'Yungiwo Ren Trakru Rith.' 'Trakru rith' is Niori for 'hospitality house'—it's what they call anything that we would call tea room, or restaurant, or beer garden."

"And 'Yungiwo Ren?' "

"That's their version of 'Chung kuo jen'— the Chinese for 'Chinese.' At first they called us all that, because most of the original immigrants were from China; but they've got over it now—they found out some of us didn't like it."

Cudyk opened the door.

A few aliens were sitting at the round tables in the big outer room. Cudyk watched Harkway's face, and saw his eyes widen with shock. The Niori were something to see for the first time.

They were tall and erect, and their anatomy was not even remotely like man's. They had six limbs each, two for walking, four for manipulation. Their bodies were covered by a pale, horny integument which grew in irregular sections, so that you could tell the age of a Niori by the width of the growth-areas between the plates of his armor. But you saw none of those things at first. You saw the two glowing violet eyes, set wide apart in a helmet-shaped head, and the startlingly beautiful markings on the smooth shell of the face: blue on pale cream, like an ancient porcelain tile. And you saw the crest: a curved, lucent shape that even in a lighted room glowed with its own frost-blue. No Niori ever walked in darkness.

Cudyk guided Harkway toward the door at the far end of the room. "We'll see who's in the back room," he said "There is usually a small gathering at this hour."

The inner room was more brightly lit than the other. Down the center, in front of a row of empty booths, was a long table. Three men sat at one end of it, with teacups and a bowl of lichee nuts between them. They looked up as Cudyk and Harkway came in.

"Gentlemen," said Cudyk, "may I present Mr. Harkway, who is here on a mission from the Minority Peoples' League? Mr. Burgess, Father Exarkos, Mr. Flynn."

The three shook hands with Harkway, Father Exarkos smiling pleasantly, the other two with more guarded, expressions. The priest was in his fifties, grey-haired, hollow-templed, with high orbital ridges and a square, mobile mouth. He said, in English oddly accented by a mixture of French and Greek, "Please sit down, both of you… I understand that your first evening here has been not too pleasant, Mr. Harkway. I hope the rest of your stay will be more so."

Burgess snorted, not quite loudly enough to be deliberately rude. His face had a pleasant, even a handsome cast except for the expression of petulance he was now wearing. He was a few years younger than the priest: a big-boned, big-featured man whose slightly curved back and hollowed cheeks showed that he had lost bulk since his prime.

Flynn's face was expressive but completely controlled: the pale gambler's eyes narrow and unreadable, the lips and the long muscles of the jaw showing nothing more than surface emotion. He asked politely, "Are you planning to stay long, Mr. Harkway?"

"That all depends, Mr. Flynn, on—to be blunt, on what sort of a reception I get. I won't try to conceal from you that my role here is that of a political propagandist. I want to convince as many people as I can that the Minority Peoples' movement is the best hope of the human race. If I find that there's some chance of succeeding, I'll stay as long as necessary. If not—"

"I'm afraid we won't be seeing much of you, in that case, Mr. Harkway," said Burgess. His tone was scrupulously correct, but his nostrils were quivering with repressed indignation.

"What makes you say that, Mr. Burgess?" Harkway asked, turning his intent, serious gaze on the older man.

"Your program, as I understand it," said Burgess, "aims at putting humanity on an equal basis with various assorted races of lizards, beetles and other vermin. I don't think you will find much sympathy for that program here, sir."

"I'm glad to say that through no fault of your own, you're mistaken," said Harkway. "I think you're referring to the program of the right wing of the League, which was dominant for the last several years. It's true that for that period, the M.P.L.'s line was to work for the gradual integration of human beings—and other repressed races—into the society of the planets on which they live. But that's all done with now; the left wing, to which I belong, has won a decisive victory at the League elections."

Again, thought Cudyk. I might have expected that this two-rumped beast would have turned upside down again by now.

"Our program," Harkway was saying earnestly, "rejects the doctrine of assimilation as a biological and cultural absurdity. What we propose to do, and with sufficient help will

do, is to return humanity to its homeland—to reconstitute Earth as an autonomous, civilized member of the galactic entity. We realize, of course, that this is a gigantic undertaking, and that much aid will be required from the other races of the galaxy— Were you about to say something, Mr. Burgess?"

Burgess said bitterly, "What you mean, in plain words, Mr. Harkway, is that you think we all ought to go home, dissolve Earth's galactic empire, give it all back to the natives. I don't think you'll find much support for that, either."

Harkway bit his lip, and cast a glance at Cudyk that seemed to say, "You warned me, but I forgot." He turned to Flynn, who was smiling around his cigar as blandly as if he had heard nothing. "What is your view, Mr. Flynn?"

The gambler waved his cigar amiably. "You'll have to count me out, Mr. Harkway. I'm doing well as things are. I have no reason to want any changes."

Harkway turned to the little priest. "And you, Father?"

The Greek shrugged and smiled. "I wish you all the luck in the universe, sincerely," he said. "But I am afraid I believe that no material methods can rescue man from his dilemma."

"If I've given any offense," said Burgess suddenly, "I can leave."

Harkway stared at him for a moment, gears almost visibly slipping in his head. Then he. said, "Of course not, Mr. Burgess, please don't think that for a moment. I respect your views—"

Burgess looked around him with a wounded expression. "I know," he said with difficulty, "that I am in a minority here—"

Father Exarkos put a hand on his arm and murmured something. Burgess was visibly struggling with his emotions. He stood up and said, "No—no—not tonight. I'm upset. Please excuse me." Head bowed, he walked out of the room.

There was a short silence. "Did I do the wrong thing?" asked Harkway.

"No, no," said Father Exarkos. "It was not your fault; there was nothing you could do. You must excuse him. He is a good man, but he has suffered too much. Since his wife died—of a disease contacted during one of the Famines, you understand—he has not been himself."

Harkway nodded, looking both older and more human than he had a moment before. "If we can only turn back the clock, he said. "Put Humpty Dumpty together again, as you expressed, it Mr. Cudyk." He smiled apologetically at them. "I won't harangue you any more tonight—I'll save that for the meeting tomorrow. But I hope that some of you will come to see it my way."

Father Exarkos' eyebrows lifted. "You are planning to hold a public meeting tomorrow?"

"Yes. There's some difficulty about space—Mayor Seu tells me that Town Hall is already booked for the next six days— but I'm confident that I can find some suitable place. If necessary, I'll make it an open-air meeting.

Rack, thought Cudyk. Rack usually stays in town for only two or three days at a time. Seu is trying to keep Harkway under cover until he leaves. It won't work.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw a dark shape in the doorway, and his first thought was that Burgess had come back. But it was not Burgess. It was a squat, bandy-legged man with huge shoulders and arms, wearing a leather jacket and a limp military cap. Cudyk sat perfectly still, warning Exarkos with his eyes.

The squat man walked casually up to the table, nodding almost imperceptibly to Flynn. He ignored the others, except the M.P.L. man. "Your name Harkway?" he asked.

"That's right," said Harkway.

"Got a message for you," said the squat man. "From Commander Lawrence Rack, United Earth Space Navy."

"The Earth Space Navy was dissolved twenty years ago," said Harkway.

The squat man sighed. "You want to hear the message or don't you?"

"Go ahead." Harkway's nostrils were pale, and a muscle stood out at the side of his jaw.

"Here it is. You're planning to hold a meeting of the vermin lovers society, right?"

As Harkway began to reply, the squat man leaned across the table and backhanded him viciously across the mouth. Harkway fell, his chair clattering.

The squat man said: "Don't." He turned and walked out.

Cudyk and Flynn helped Harkway up. The man's eyes were staring wildly out of his pale face, and a thin trickle of blood was running from a pulped lip. "Who was that man?" he asked in a whisper.

"His name is Biff," said Cudyk. "At least that is the only name he has been known to answer to. He's one of Rack's lieutenants—Rack, as you probably know, is the leader of the activists in this sector. Mr. Harkway, I'm sorrier than I can say. But I must advise you to wait for a week or so before you hold your meeting. There is no question of courage involved: it would be suicide."

Harkway looked at him blindly. "The meeting will be held as planned," he said, and walked out, stiff-legged.

II

The shop was empty except for young Nick Papageorge, dozing behind the long counter, and the pale bluish sunlight that streamed through the plastic window. Most of the counter was in shadow, but stray fingers of light picked out gem trays here and there, turning them into minuscule galaxies of brilliance.

Two Niori, walking arm in arm, paused in front of the window display, then went on. Like most of the major fauna of the planet, they were nocturnal, avoiding the full blaze of Palu's blue-white sun. To them, it was late "evening," just past the height of the Quarter's business day; the streets were full of Niori tourists and curiosity-seekers, pausing gravely to stare at displays of conch shells from America, Oriental pottery, hand-woven fabrics, souvenirs carved in the Quarter from discarded Niori packing boxes. There were other races in the Quarter too: spidery Oladi, squat Yuttis, even a hulking, four-footed Weg or two. They dwarfed and outnumbered the few humans on the streets. Even here, it was a Niori planet; the humans stayed in their shops, or in the dark-windowed rooms above.

Two youngsters raced by, shouting. Cudyk caught only a glimpse of them through the pierced screen that closed off the back of his shop, but he recognized them by their voices: Red Gorciak and Stan Eleftheris.

There were few children now, and they were growing up wild. Cudyk wondered briefly what it must be like to be a child born into this microcosm, knowing no other. He dismissed the thought; it was one of the many things that one trained one's mind not to dwell on.

Seu came in, moving quickly. He walked directly to the rear of the shop. His normally bland face looked worried, and there were beads of sweat on his wide forehead, although the morning was cool.

"Sit down," said Cudyk. "You've seen Zydh Oran?"

Seu made a dismissing gesture. "Nothing. Not pleasant, but nothing. The same as usual: he tells me what happened, I deny it. He knows, but under their laws he can't do anything."

"Someday it will be bad," said Cudyk.

"Yes. Someday. Laszlo, you've got to do something about Harkway. Otherwise he's going to be killed tonight, and there will be a stink from here to Sirius. I had to tell him he could use Town Hall—he was all ready to hold a torchlight meeting in the streets."

"Try again. Please. Your ethnic background is closer to his than mine. He respects you, I think. Perhaps he's even read some of your books. If anyone can persuade him, you can."

"What did he say when you talked to him?"

"An ox. A brain made of soap and granite. He says it is a matter of principle. I knew then that I could do nothing. When an Anglo-Saxon talks about his principles, you may as well go home. He won't accept a weapon; he won't postpone the meeting. I think he wants to be a martyr."

Cudyk winced. "Maybe he does. Have you seen Rack?"

"No. Flynn pretends not to know where he is."

"That's rather odd. What is his motive, do you think?"

Seu said, "Basically, he is afraid of Rack. He co-operates with him—they use each other—but you know that it's not a marriage of minds. Flynn is aware that Rack is stronger than he is, because he is only an amoral egotist, and Rack is a fanatic. I think he believes this business may be Rack's downfall, and he would like that."

He stood up. "I have to go. Will you do it?"

"Of course," Cudyk said. "I'm afraid it won't help, but I'll do it."

"Good. Let me know." Seu walked out.

Nick Pappageorge had roused himself-and was polishing a tall, fluted silver vase. Cudyk said, "Nick, go find out where Mr. Harkway is. If he isn't busy, ask him if he'll do me the favor of dropping around to see me. Otherwise, just come back and tell me where he is: I'll go to him."

Nick said, "Sure, Mr. Cudyk," and went out.

Cudyk stared at the tray of unsorted gems on the desk before him. He stirred them with his forefinger, separating out an emerald, two aquamarines, a large turquoise and a star sapphire. That was all he had had to begin with—his dead wife's jewels, carried half across Europe when a loaf of bread was worth more than all the gem-stones in the world. The sapphire had bought his passage on the alien ship; the others had been his original stock-in-trade, first at the refugee center on Alfhal, then here on Palu. Now he was a prosperous importer, with a business that netted him the equivalent of ten thousand pounds a year.

But the wealth was ashes; he would have traded all of it for one loaf of bread, eaten in peace, on an Earth that had not sunk back to barbarism.

Momentum, he told himself. Momentum, and a remnant of curiosity. Those are the only reasons I can think of why I do not blow out my brains. Burgess has his fantasy, though it cracks now and then. Flynn has the sensibility of a jackal. Rack, as Seu said, is a fanatic. But why do the rest of us keep on? For what?

The doorway darkened again as Harkway came in, followed by Nick. Nick gestured toward the rear of the shop, and Harkway advanced, smiling. His lower lip was stained by a purple substance with! a glossy surface.

Cudyk greeted him and offered him a chair. "It was good of you to come over, I hope I didn't interrupt your work."

Harkway grinned stiffly. "No. I was just finishing lunch when your boy found me. I have nothing more to do until this evening."

Cudyk looked at him. "You got to the hospital after all, I see."

"Yes. Dr. Moskowitz fixed me up nicely."

Cudyk had been asking himself why the M.P.L. man looked so cheerful. Now he thought he understood.

"And Miss Burgess?" he asked, delicately.

"Yes," said Harkway, looking embarrassed. He paused. "She's—an exquisite person, Mr. Cudyk."

Cudyk clasped his square hands together, elbows on the arms of his chair. He said, "Forgive me, I'm going to be personal. Am I right in saying that you now feel more than casually interested in Miss Burgess?"

He added, "Please. I have a reason for asking."

Harkway's expression was guarded. "Yes, that's true."

"Do you think she may feel similarly towards you?"

Harkway paused. "I think so. I hope so. Why, Mr. Cudyk?"

"Mr. Harkway, I will be very blunt. Miss Burgess has already lost one lover through no fault of her own, and the experience has not had a good effect on her. She is, as you say, exquisite; she has a beautiful, but not a strong personality. Do you think it is fair for you to give her another such experience, even if the attachment is not fully formed, by allowing yourself to be killed this evening?"

Harkway leaned back in his chair. "Oh," he said, "that's it." He grinned. "I thought you were going to point out that her father broke off the last affair because of the man's politics. If you had, I was going to tell you that Mr. Burgess looked me up this morning and apologized for his attitude yesterday, and breaking down and so on. He's very decent, you know."

He paused. "About this other matter," he said seriously, "I'm grateful for your interest, but I'm afraid I can't concede the validity of your argument." He made an impatient gesture. "I'm not trying to sound noble, but this business is more important than my personal life. That's all, I'm afraid. I'm sorry."

Another fanatic, Cudyk thought. A liberal fanatic. Now I have seen all kinds. He said, "I have one more argument to try. Has Seu explained to you how precarious our position is here on Palu?"

"He spoke of it."

"The Niori accepted this one small colony with grave misgivings. Every act of violence that occurs here weakens our position, because it furnishes ammunition for a group which already wants to expel us. Do you understand?"

There was pain in Harkway's eyes. "Mr. Cudyk, it's the same all over the galaxy, wherever these pitifully tiny out-groups exist. My organization is trying to attack that problem on a galaxy-wide scale. I don't say we'll succeed, and I grant you the right to doubt that our program is the right one. But we've got to try. Among other things, we've got to clean out the activists, for just the reason you mention. And pardon me for stressing the obvious, but it's Commander Rack who will be responsible for this particular act of violence if it occurs, not myself."

"And you think that your death at his hands would be a stronger argument than a peaceful meeting, is that it?"

Harkway shook his head ruefully. "I don't know that I have that much courage, Mr. Cudyk. I'm hoping that nothing will happen to me. But I know that the League's prestige here would be enormously hurt if I let Rack bluff me down." He stood up. "You'll be at the meeting?"

"I'm afraid so." Cudyk stood and offered his hand. "The best of luck."

He watched the young man go, feeling very old and tired. He had known it would be this way; he had only tried for Seu's sake. Now he was involved; he had allowed himself to feel the tug of love and pity toward still another lost soul. Such bonds were destructive—they turned the heart brittle and weathered it away, bit by bit.

The assembly hall in the town building was well filled, although Harkway had made no special effort to advertise the meeting. He had known, Cudyk thought, that Rack's threat would be more than sufficient.

There were no women or children. Flynn was there, and a large contingent of his employees—gamblers, pimps, waiters and strong-arm men—as well as most of the Russian population. All but a few of the Chinese had stayed away, as had Burgess. But a number of men who Cudyk knew to have M.P.L. leanings, and an even larger number of neutrals, were there. The audience was about evenly divided, for and against Harkway. If he somehow came through this alive, it was just possible that he could swing the Quarter his way. A futile victory, but of course Harkway did not believe that.

There was a murmur and a shuffle of feet as Rack entered with three other men—Biff, the one called Spanner, and young Tom De Grasse, who had once been engaged to Kathy Burgess. The sound dropped almost to stillness for a few moments after the four men took seats at the side of the hall, then rose again to a steady rumble. Harkway and Seu had not yet appeared.

Cudyk saw the man to his right getting up, moving away; he turned in time to see Seu wedge himself through a gap in the line of chairs and sit down in the vacated place.

The fat man's face was blandly expressionless, but Cudyk knew that something had happened. "What is it?" he asked.

Seu's lips barely moved. He looked past Cudyk, inspecting the crowd with polite interest. "I had him kidnapped," he said happily. "He's tied up, in a safe place. There won't be an meeting today."

Seu had been seen. Someone a few rows ahead called, "Where's Harkway, Mayor?"

"I don't know," Seu lied blandly. "He told me he would meet me here—said he had an errand to do. Probably he's on his way now."

Under cover of the ensuing murmur, he turned to Cudyk again. "I didn't want to do it," he said. "It will mean trouble, sooner or later; maybe almost as much trouble as if Harkway had been killed. But I had to make a choice. Do you think I did the right thing, Laszlo?"

"Yes, But I only wish you had told me earlier."

Seu smiled, his heavy face becoming for that instant open and confiding. "If I had, you wouldn't have been so sincere when you talked to Harkway."

Cudyk smiled in spite of himself. He relaxed in his chair, savoring the relief that had come when he'd learned that Harkway was not going to die. The tension built up, day by day, almost imperceptibly; it was a rare, fleeting pleasure when something happened to lower it.

He saw the mayor looking at his watch. The crowd was growing restless; in a few more minutes Seu would get up and announce that the meeting was canceled. Then it would be all over.

Seu was rising, when a new wave of sound traveled over the audience. Out of the corner of his eye Cudyk saw men turning, standing up to see over the heads of their neighbors. Seu spoke a single sharp word, and his hand tightened on the back of his chair.

Cudyk stood. Someone was coming down the center aisle of the room, but he couldn't see who it was.

Those who had stood earlier were sitting down now. Down the aisle, looking straight ahead, with a bruised jaw and a bloody scratch running from cheekbone to chin, came James Harkway.

He mounted the platform, rested both hands on the low speaker's stand, and turned his glance across the audience, once, from side to side. There was a collective scraping of chairs and clearing of throats, then complete stillness. Harkway said:

"My friends—and enemies."

Subdued laughter rippled across the room.

"A few of my enemies didn't want me to hold this meeting," said Harkway. "Some of my friends felt the same way. In fact, it seemed that nobody wanted this meeting to take place. But here you all are, just the same. And here I am."

He straightened. "Why is that, I wonder? Perhaps because regardless of our differences, we're all in the same boat—in a lifeboat." He nodded gravely. "Yes, we're all in a lifeboat—all of us together, to live or die, and we don't know which way to turn for the nearest land that will give us harbor.

"Which way shall we turn to find a safe landing? To find peace and honor for ourselves and our children? To find safety, to find happiness?"

He spread his arms. "There are a million directions we could follow. There are all the planets in the galaxy! But everywhere we turn, we find alien soil, alien cultures, alien people. Everywhere, except in one direction only.

"Our ship—our own planet, Earth—is foundering, is sinking, that's true. But it hasn't yet sunk. There's still a chance that we can turn back, make Earth what it was, and then, from there—go on! Go on, until we've made a greater Earth, a stronger, happier, more peaceful Earth; till we can take our place with pride in the galaxy, and hold up our heads with any other race that lives."

He had captured only half their attention, and he knew it. They were watching him, listening to what he said; but the heads of the audience were turned slightly, like the heads of plants under a solar tropism, toward the side of the chamber where Rack and his men sat.

Harkway said, "We all know that the Earth's technical civilization is smashed—broken like an eggshell. By ourselves, we could never put it back together. And if we do nothing, no one else is going to put it back together for us. But suppose we went to the other races in the galaxy, and said—"

A baritone voice broke in quietly, ""We'll sell our souls to you, if you'll kindly give us a few machines!'"

Rack stood up—tall, muscular, lean, with deep hollows under his cheekbones, red-gray hair falling over his forehead under the visor of his cap. His short leather jacket was thrown over his shoulders like a cloak. His narrow features were gray and cold, the mouth a straight, hard line. He said, "That's what you want us to tell the vermin, isn't it, Mr. Harkway?"

Harkway seemed to settle himself like a boxer. He said clearly, "The intelligent races of the galaxy are not devils and do not want our souls, Mr. Rack."

Rack ignored the "Mr." He said, "But they'd want certain assurances from us, in return for their help, wouldn't they, Mr. Harkway?"

"Certainly," said Harkway. "Assurances that no sane man would refuse them. Assurances, for example, that there would be no repetition of the Altair Incident—when a handful of maniacs in two ships murdered thousands of peaceful galactic citizens without the slightest provocation. Perhaps you remember that, Mr. Rack; perhaps you were there."

"I was there," said Rack casually. "About five hundred thousand vermin were squashed. We would have done a better job, but we ran out of supplies. Some day we'll exterminate them all, and then there'll be a universe fit for men to live in. Meanwhile"—he glanced at the audience—"we're going to build. We're building now. Not with the vermin's permission, under the vermin's eye. In secret. On a planet they'll never find until our ships spurt out from it like milt from a fish. And when that day comes, we'll squash them down to the last tentacle and the last claw."

"Are you finished?" asked Harkway. He was quivering with controlled rage.

"Yes, I'm finished," said Rack wearily. "So are you. You're a traitor, Harkway, the most miserable kind of a crawling, dirt-eating traitor the human race ever produced. Get down off the platform."

Harkway said to the audience, "I came here to try to persuade you to my way of thinking; to ask you to consider the arguments and decide for yourselves. This man wants to settle the question by prejudice and force. Which of us is best entitled to the name "human'? If you listen to him, can you blame the Niori if they decide to end even this tiny foothold they've given you on their planet? Would you live in a universe drenched with blood?"

Rack said quietly, "Biff."

The squat man stood up, smiling. He took a clasp knife out of his pocket, opened it, and started up the side of the room.

In the dead stillness, another voice said, "No!"

It was, Cudyk saw with shock, Tom De Grasse. The youngster was up, moving past Rack—who made no move to stop him, did not even change expression—past the squat man, turning a yard beyond, near the front of the room. His square, almost childish face was tight with strain. There was a pistol in one big hand.

Cudyk felt something awaken in him which blossomed only at moments like this, when one of his fellow men did something particularly puzzling: the root, slain but still quasi-living, of the thing that had once been his central drive and his trademark in the world—his insatiable, probing, warmly intelligent curiosity about the motives of men.

De Grasse was committed to Rack's cause twice over, by conviction and by the shearing away of every other tie; and still more important, he worshiped Rack himself with the devotion that only fanatics can inspire. It was as if Peter had challenged Christ.

The three men stood motionless for what seemed a long time. Biff, halted with his weight on one foot, faced De Grasse with his knife hand slightly extended, thumb on the blade. He was visibly tense, waiting for a word from Rack. But Rack stood as if he had forgotten time and space, staring bemused over Biff's shoulder at De Grasse. The fourth man, Spanner—bones and gristle, with a corpse-growth of gray-white hair—stood up slowly. Rack put a hand on his shoulder and pressed him down again.

Cudyk thought, Kathy Burgess.

It was the only answer. De Grasse knew, of course, everything that had passed between Harkway and the girl. There was no privacy worth mentioning in the Quarter: pressed in this narrow ghetto, every man swam in the effluvium of every other man's emotions. And De Grasse was willing, apparently, to give up everything that mattered to him, to save Kathy Burgess pain.

It said something for the breed, Cudyk thought—not enough, never enough, for you saw it only in pinpoint flashes, the noble individual who was a part of the bestial mob—but a light in the darkness, nevertheless.

Finally Rack spoke. "You, Tom?"

The youngster's eyes showed sudden pain. But he said, "I mean it, Captain."

There was a slow movement out from that side of the room, men inching away, crowding against their neighbors. Chairs creaked. Someone coughed abruptly, startlingly.

Rack was still looking past Biff's shoulder, into De Grasse's face. He said:

"All right."

He turned, still wearing the same frozen expression, and walked down the side of the room, toward the exit. Biff threw a glance of pure incredulity over his shoulder, glanced back at De Grasse, and then followed. Spanner scrambled after.

De Grasse relaxed slowly, as if by conscious effort. He put away his gun, hesitated a moment, and walked slowly out after the others. His wide shoulders were slumped.

The cougher broke into a renewed spasm, drowned out by the scraping of chairs and boot soles, the rising beehive hum, as the audience stood up and began to move out. Harkway made no effort to call them back.

Cudyk, moving toward the exit with the rest, had much to think about. He had seen not only De Grasse's will, but Rack's, part against the knife of human sympathy. And that was a thing he had never expected to see.

"At times like this," said Flynn, narrowing his grey snake's eyes in a smile, "I almost believe in God."

Father Exarkos smiled courteously and said nothing. He and Cudyk had been sitting in the back room of Chong Yin's since a half-hour after the meeting. Seu had been with them earlier, but had left. A little after twelve, Flynn had strolled in and joined them.

"I mean it," said Flynn, laughing a little. "There was Harkway, like a lamb for the slaughter, and there was little De Grasse standing in the way. And Rack backed down." He shook his head, still smiling. "Rack backed down. Now how would you explain that, gentlemen, except by the hand of God?"

It was necessary to put up with the man, who wielded more power in the Quarter than anyone else, even Seu; but sometimes it was not easy.

Flynn was particularly annoying tonight, because Cudyk was forced to agree with him. The riddle remained: why had Rack failed to finish what he had started?

It was conceivable for De Grasse to have acted as he did for reasons of sentiment; but to apply the same motive to Rack was simply not possible. The man had emotions, certainly, but they were all channeled into one direction: the destiny of the human race and of Lawrence Rack. De Grasse was at an age when the strongest emotions were volatile, when conversions were made, when a man could plan an assassination one day and enter a monastery the next. But Rack was fixed and aimed, like a cannon.

Flynn was saying, "He must be going soft. Going soft—old Rack. Unless it's the hand of God. What's your opinion, Father Exarkos?"

The priest said blandly, "Mr. Flynn, since I have come to live upon this planet, my opinions have changed about many things. I no longer believe that either God, or man, is quite so simple as I once thought. We were too small in our thoughts before—our understanding of temporal things was bounded by the frontiers of Earth, and of eternal things by the little sky we could see from our windows.

"Before, I think I would have tried to answer your question, yes or no. I would have said that I think Commander Rack was moved by a sudden access of human feeling, or I would have said that I think Commander Rack was touched by the finger of God. Perhaps I would have hesitated to say that, because even then I did not believe that God interferes with the small sins of men like Commander Rack.

"But now I would say that I do not think your question can be answered at all. I think that we do not understand enough, yet, to be able to answer it. In a few hundred or a thousand years, perhaps. The universe is so much bigger, Mr. Flynn, than we realized. We talked about eternity and about infinity as we talked about the time of drinking a cup of coffee, or the distance from our hotel to the nearest estaminet; for these were the touchstones of our culture, what Spengler calls the Faustian culture. And, in our appalling blindness and pride, we believed we understood the words. Now I comprehend that we knew nothing, and were not worthy to discuss the affairs of the Eternal. Nor, I truly believe, are we worthy yet."

Flynn smiled thinly. Well, Father, that's the best excuse for an answer I've ever heard, anyway." He dragged on his cigar, narrowing his eyes and pursing his lips. "By the way, are those the orthodox sentiments these days? How does your Pope feel about it?"

"The Patriarch," murmured Father Exarkos. "To be exact, the Ecumenical Patriarch—there are three others."

"That's right, the Patriarch: I keep forgetting. How does he feel about eternity and infinity, Father? Agree with you, does he?"

Father Exarkos spread his hands; his leathery skin wrinkled in a smile. "Unfortunately he does not, nor do the other Patriarchs, nor the Pope of the Roman Church. It is a pity, I think, that so tiny a fraction of our world's population left Earth in all the emigrations taken together. It is certainly true that, in a sense, we who emigrated took the culture of Earth with us, but we are numerically unimportant in relation to those who are left behind. So that although new modes of understanding have opened to us here, we are like sterile mutants—we carry the seeds of a greater fulfillment within us, but they will die with our bodies. And, alas, the Church upon Earth can no longer hope to serve as the vehicle of enlightenment. She is conservative, now more than ever: that is her role, to conserve, and to wait."

"In other words," said Flynn, "you don't believe that the big blowup back home was a judgment on us for our sins. You think it was a good thing, only more people should have got out the way we did. That right?"

"Oh, no," said Father Exarkos. "I believe that, as you say, the Famines and the Collapse were a judgment of God. I have heard many theories about the causes of the Collapse, but I have not heard one which does not come back, in the end, to a condemnation of man's folly, cruelty, and blindness."

"Well," said Flynn, "excuse me, Father, but if you believe that way, what are you doing here? Back there"—he jerked his head, as if Earth were some little distance behind his right shoulder—"people are living like animals. Chicago, where I used to live, is just a stone jungle, with a few bare-assed scavengers prowling around in it. If the dirt and disease don't get you, some bandit will split your head open, or you'll run into a wolf or a grizzly. If none of those things happen, you can expect to live to the ripe old age of forty, and then you'll be glad to die."

He had stopped smiling. Flynn, Cudyk realized, was describing his own personal hell. He went on, "Now, if you want to call that a judgment, I won't argue with you. But if that's what you believe, why aren't you back there taking it with the rest of them?"

He really wanted to know, Cudyk thought. He had begun by trying to bait the priest, but now he was serious. It was odd to think of Flynn having trouble with his conscience, but Cudyk was not really surprised. The most moralistic men he had ever known had been gangsters of Flynn's type; whereas the few really good men he had known, Father Exarkos among them, had seemed as blithely unaware of their consciences as of their healthy livers.

The priest said, soberly, "Mr. Flynn, I believe that we also are being punished. Perhaps we more than others. The Mexican peon, the Indian fellah, the peasant of China or Greece, lives very much as his father did before him; he scarcely has reason to know that judgment has fallen upon Earth. But I think that no inhabitant of the Quarter can forget it for so much as an hour."

Flynn stared at him, then grunted and squashed out his cigar. He stood up. "I'll be getting along home," he said. "Good night." He walked out.

Cudyk and Exarkos sat for a while longer, talking quietly, and then left together. The streets were empty. Behind them and to their left as they walked to the corner, the ghostly blue of the Niori beehives shone above the dark human buildings.

The priest lived in a small second-floor apartment near the corner of Brasil and Athenai, alone since his wife had died ten years before. Cudyk had only to go straight across Ceskoslovensko, but he walked down toward Brasil with his friend.

As they turned at the corner, Cudyk thought he heard a sound from behind them. He looked back, down the street of shuttered shops and blind entranceways. The spectral blue light from the Niori hives made the pavement shimmer like moonlit water; doors and windows were pools of blackness.

There came the sound again, faint but unmistakable: the sound of a blow, and then the groan of a man in pain.

"Astereos, wait," said Cudyk, and began to run across the street. Crime in the Quarter was rare, crime against the Niori nonexistent— Seu and the Council saw to that—but quarrels were continual; there were old enmities, even long-established vendettas, and at any time one of them might explode and destroy the Quarter.

As he ran, Cudyk fumbled for his pocket light—a tiny thing, Niori made, with a battery that had never had to be replaced since Cudyk had bought it nearly twenty years ago. Its blue-white beam lanced into a doorway—empty; another—empty; then down the stairs of a cellarway. Crouching at the bottom, one hand up to shield his eyes from the blue glare, was a boy Cudyk did not at first recognize.

"Who is that?" he demanded sharply. "Eleftheris? Gorciak? What are you doing down there?"

He shifted the light, and for the first time caught sight of another figure—dark, not moving—sprawled at the boy's feet.

In the dim wash of reflected light, the boy lowered his hand. Recognition came as Cudyk saw the square face, and heard the voice, raw with emotion: "Get out of here Mr. Cudyk." It was Tom De Grasse.

Uneven footsteps came hurrying up the pavement. The priest's voice panted, "Laszlo, shall I go for help?"

But Cudyk was staring at the dark form huddled at De Grasse's feet. Even before the light picked out the bloody face, he knew who it must be: James Harkway.

He shifted the light again. In Tom's raised hand was something blunt and dark. "You, Tom?" said Cudyk, feeling sick and weary.

"What's it to you?" the boy yelled. "Get out of here, you two old crocks, before I give it to you too!"

"Never mind, Astereos," said Cudyk without turning. "This young hero only fights in dark doorways." He handed his light to the priest, then slipped off his jacket, wrapped it around one forearm, and started down into the cellarway.

"Be careful, Laszlo."

Cudyk did not answer. Advancing on De Grasse, with his padded forearm half-raised as a shield, he said firmly, "Your father was a good man. He had hopes for you. And what are you now, an assassin? A coward who strikes from behind?"

De Grasse, still shielding his eyes from the light, bent suddenly and raised his arm to strike at the motionless form on the pavement. Cudyk was barely quick enough to blunder into him, throwing him off balance so the blow fell, with a muffled, soggy sound, on the stone beside Harkway's head.

De Grasse staggered and recovered himself. His face was wild in the blue light, eyes glittering behind half-closed lids, mouth savage. Cudyk said, "Today I was even proud of you, you did something that was actually human. Then what? Did Rack—"

"Shut up!" De Grasse shouted, clenching both fists. "Shut up about Rack, just shut up! You ought to be glad to wipe his boots, you old crock!" He paused, caught his breath through pinched nostrils, then stared down wildly into the pool of darkness between their feet.

Cudyk stepped across Harkway's body and moved up to De Grasse, forearm high. The boy struck once; the blow was too short, without force, and Cudyk took it on his padded forearm, deflecting it, swinging the boy's arm wide. With his other hand, palm open, he slapped De Grasse stingingly across the mouth.

The boy's head rocked. He made a choked sound and came at Cudyk again. Cudyk blocked the blow once more, stepped in and pressed De Grasse against the back wall of the cellarway. He outweighed him by fifty pounds; leaning forward, he held the younger man pinned helplessly. He seized the wrist of the hand that held the blackjack; with his free hand again, he slapped De Grasse across the face. He was coldly angry, and it was no light blow; the boy's head snapped around, and his knees bent.

Cudyk rapped the hand he held against the wall until it opened and the blackjack dropped, into the blue pool of light on the pavement. Then he swung De Grasse around, careful not to let him trample the body of Harkway, and propelled him up the steps.

"Laszlo, I was worried about you," said the old priest. The light in his hand was shaking with his excitement. "You should not have—"

Cudyk shoved the young man a few steps down the sidewalk and let him go. He stood reeling, dazed. Cudyk's anger was fading now, leaving weariness and a bitter foreknowledge. "Go and tell Rack," he said, "that an 'old crock' took your weapon away from you."

He turned to join Exarkos, who was halfway down the stairs anxiously holding the light for him, not daring yet to move it away from De Grasse. Glancing back, he saw the young man hesitate, then slouch away unsteadily down the street.

Exarkos knelt beside the still body, sucking breath between his teeth at the sight of the puffed, bloody face. His thin old fingers probed into Harkway's shirt. After a moment, he said, "He is alive."

"Any bones broken?"

"I don't think so…no. But he has been terribly beaten. We must get him to the hospital."

"No," said Cudyk. "Too dangerous." He thought a moment, breathing hard. The blue-lit street was empty. "Help me get him on my back, Astereos."

"You think they would attack him again in the hospital?"

"I am certain of it," Cudyk grunted, lifting the unconscious man upright. The old priest, propping himself against the wall, managed to take the weight and hold it while Cudyk turned. Taking Harkway's wrists, Cudyk pulled the body forward onto his own back. Half crouched, he began to toil his way up the stairs.

"What most appalls me," said the priest, following, "is that it should be De Grasse! When only a few hours ago—"

"I know," said Cudyk with difficulty. "But you see that was an anomaly, Astereos. The universe always smooths out anomalies, sooner or later." He shook his head irritably; blood, like a crawling insect, was trickling down the side of his neck.

They got Harkway into the back storeroom of Cudyk's shop, and laid him down on an improvised mattress of packing rolls. He was breathing stertorously, still unconscious.

"Concussion is what it looks like," said Moskowitz, half an hour later. "This isn't the place for him, but as long as he's here, leave him. Moving him again would be the worst thing you could do."

"You know better than that, Arnold," said Cudyk. "I have got to move him, and soon. Bringing him here was just a temporary expedient; it is the first place they will look."

"If you move him, he may die," said Moskowitz, closing his bag with an angry click.

"If I do not, he will die."

Moskowitz' broad, swarthy face was frustrated and angry. "It's ridiculous," he said. "We ought to have a decent police force, not a bunch of kids with pepper. Men, with guns."

He returned Cudyk's silent gaze for a moment, then sighed and picked up the bag. "Do the best you can," he said. "I have to get back to the hospital."

Cudyk let him out, first making sure there were no watchers in the street. Moskowitz was a dedicated man, one of the few really selfless individuals Cudyk had ever met. He knew as well as anyone that the Quarter could not take the risk of open conflict; but it hurt him, deeply and shamefully, that he should have to turn an injured man away from the hospital for fear of Rack.

Exarkos, weary and shaken, had gone home to bed. Cudyk looked in on Harkway again, then went back to the door and waited. He had called Seu, on the Quarter's tiny Earth-style telephone system, just before calling Moskowitz; what was keeping him?

In a moment, two slender figures came drifting along the line of shop-fronts; they were carrying something long and thin between them. Cudyk recognized them through the glass, and let them in: Robert Wang and little Lee Far.

"Sorry it took us so long," said Wang, sliding through the doorway. "When we stopped at the hospital to get a stretcher, two of Rack's men were there. We finally went down to the morgue and got this.

"This" was a seven-foot roll of canvas and leather, with straps and buckles to hold it together. "But that is for corpses," said Cudyk, revolted.

"I know, but it's the best we could do. We'll leave the head end open. Where is he?"

"In the back." Cudyk gestured. "Where are you going to take him?"

"My uncle Lin has a spare bed. Don't worry." The two, carrying their burden, threaded their way carefully through the crowded shop and disappeared.

Cudyk, abruptly depressed, stayed in the main room and Stared gloomily at the ranked showcases glittering faintly in the light of a distant street lamp. He believed very much in symbols and omens, and he did not like Harkway's being taken out in a dead roll. Lately, it seemed to him, everything in the Quarter conspired to remind him of death; there was a stink of decay about it… But he was tired and depressed; probably that was part of the trouble. Once he had got Harkway safely into hiding, he would drink a glass of Calvados and go to bed.

His fingers, without being asked, had found the tobacco pouch and pipe in his jacket. He filled the pipe and lit it, taking some solace in the familiar actions.

The match's tall yellow flame blinded him for a moment. When he blew it out, the door was darkened with moving shapes.

The door-handle rattled suddenly, viciously.

Cudyk's heart hammered with shock. Trying to blink away the afterimage of the flame, he made out that there were two men in the doorway, now joined by a third.

Trying to think, Cudyk mimed bewilderment, gestured in a helpless way with the burnt match in one hand and the pipe in the other. Finally he put the pipe in his mouth and dropped the match into a pocket. One of the men outside was Biff—his apelike shoulders almost filled the doorway. Behind him was the skeletal silhouette of Rack's other lieutenant, the one called Spanner, and a third man, a nondescript ruffian whose name Cudyk didn't know. Cudyk fumbled with the lock, taking as much time as he dared.

He saw Biff pull a gun out of his windbreaker, saw him swing the butt. Glass exploded inward, showering Cudyk and leaving a stinging pain across his right hand.

Biff kicked at the broken pieces left in the frame; they clattered to the floor. He reached in, turned the key, and slammed the door open. The three men crowded in on Cudyk.

"Where's Harkway?" The big man's face was unpleasantly close, and his breath stank.

Cudyk said nothing, but let his eyes flicker upwards, as if involuntarily.

"What's upstairs?" Biff demanded.

"Nothing," Cudyk said. "My living quarters."

"Yeah? Spanner, watch him. C'mon, you." He shoved Cudyk into the skeletal arms of Spanner and disappeared through the archway that led to the stairs, followed by the third man.

Spanner pushed Cudyk back against a display cabinet, hard enough to make the glass doors rattle—and smiled, showing pale gums. Cudyk held his breath, listening for some sound from the back room, but there was nothing.

Watching him, Spanner backed slowly away until he reached the waist-high display case in the middle of the room. There were some fine gems inside, pink opals from Dromid in carved platinum settings. Spanner glanced down, took a wrench from the back pocket of his greasy overalls, and smashed the glass. He replaced the wrench, then reached down into the case and picked out the largest opals. He watched Cudyk as he dropped the gems one at a time into his breast pocket, and his pale smile grew broader. Cudyk said nothing.

In a moment there was a clatter of feet coming pell-mell down the stairs, and Biff burst into the room again, followed by the other man. "Nothing up there," said the squat man. "Nobody been there all day, way it looks." He came close, gathered the front of Cudyk's shirt into his fists. "You joking with me?"

"It was you, not I, who said Harkway was here," Cudyk said impassively.

"What's that?" Biff demanded suddenly, looking at the broken display case. He glanced at Spanner, who grinned and patted the bulging pocket of his overall. Biff grunted. " 'Taxes,' huh? Okay, Cudyk—"

The third man, who had been drifting around in the shadows at the back of the shop, moved the screen aside and asked, "What's back here?"

Biff swore and followed him. After a moment's hesitation, Spanner went too, keeping a grip on Cudyk's arm.

They crowded into the doorway. The back room was dark at first, then glowed white as someone found the switch. Except for boxes and bales, the room was empty, but there was an unmistakable sense that it had not been empty long.

"Smart, huh?" said Biff, glaring at Cudyk.

Spanner scuffed a dark stain on the floor, smearing it. "Look at this here, Biff. Blood."

Biff swore again and made for the rear door, followed by the rest.

Outside, in the blue twilight, the blind courtyard was empty. The windows were dark, the spindling iron fire-escapes empty, the roofs empty. A mocking breeze lifted a curl of paper from the ground and dropped it again.

Biff turned to face Cudyk. "Where'd you send him to?"

Cudyk did not reply.

"Biff?" asked Spanner plaintively, showing the wrench in his hand.

"No," said the big man slowly. "All right, Cudyk, you were smart. You'll hear from the commander." He moved past Cudyk, with a certain dignity, and the others followed him.

When they were gone, Cudyk locked up again, feeling relief but no optimism. He looked glumly at the smashed and looted display case. There it was, and it was only the beginning, as he well knew. It was the price of being a fool. Harkway was a fool, and he himself was a fool for giving aid to fools.

He knew, with bitter certainty, that it had been a mistake to lift a finger for Harkway. But the circumstances had given him no choice: there were times when a man had to be a fool, or cease to call himself a man.

Harkway, in the back room of Wang Lin's apartment on Kwang-Chowfu, remained in a comatose state, cared for by Kathy Burgess and visited periodically by Dr. Moskowitz, who had to be smuggled in by a different route each time. Cudyk, when he looked in on the day following the attack, was struck by the rapt, almost hypnotized expression on Kathy's face as she sat by the bed. She sat with her eyes fixed on Harkway, hands in her lap, not moving, barely appearing to breathe. She was, Cudyk thought, less like a nurse at a patient's bedside than like a worshiper at a shrine; and the thought profoundly troubled him.

In the early morning of the second day, Cudyk was awakened by a crash from the shop below his garret. Hurrying down the stairs, he found the lower rooms choked by thick black smoke, so dense that the lights showed only as gray ghosts. He could see no flames, and there was no sensation of heat. Half strangled, he made his way through to the street door and found it broken again, the entranceway full of glass. He opened the door, what was left of it, for more ventilation, and in twenty minutes the shop was clear enough for him to confirm what he already knew: in the middle of the floor lay the black cylinder of a smoke bomb.

Walls, ceiling, floor, display cases, hangings, papers, everything was covered with a finely distributed coating of carbon. The place would have to be scrubbed from one end to the other; he would lose at least a day's business, more probably two.

Mounted gems displayed in open-back cases would have to be individually cleaned and polished; the cushions of purple velvet, the wall hangings, the clothing he had left in the shop would all have to be cleaned or thrown out.

Rack left the Quarter the next day, having stayed twice as long as usual. Cudyk, who had been up half the night, saw the ship take off from the spaceport north of the city, and watched the pale flame lance upward into the haze. Burgess, passing Cudyk's doorway at that moment, squinted up at the sky with his vague, watering eyes and said, "Ship leaving. Is that Rack's, by any chance?"

"Yes," said Cudyk.

"Good. A great relief to us all, I'm sure." He came nearer and blinked at Cudyk. "Now we won't have to worry about that young man any more."

Mistaking his meaning, Cudyk started to say, "I'm sorry I can't feel so callous about it as—" He checked himself. The expression on Burgess's face was bewildered and vague. "You don't know?" Cudyk said. "Kathy has not told you?"

"Told me what?" Burgess demanded. "I haven't seen Kathy since yesterday. Why, is something the matter?"

"Harkway died," said Cudyk wearily. "He died this morning."

III

One question of Harkway's kept coming back to Cudyk in the weeks that followed. "Would you live in a universe drenched with blood?"

Rack would, of course; for others there was a tragic dilemma. For them, the race had come to the end of a road that had its beginning in prehistory. Every step of progress on that way had been accomplished by bloodshed, and yet the goal had always been a world at peace. The paradox had been tolerable when the road still seemed endless; before the first Earth starships had discovered that humanity was not alone in the universe.

Human civilization was like a fragile crystalline structure, enduring until the first touch of air; or like a cyst that withers when it is cut open. The winds of the universe blew around them now, and there was no way to escape from the contradictions of their own nature.

The way forward was the way back; the way back was the way forward.

There was no peace except the peace of surrender and death. There was no victory except the victory of chaos.

As Father Exarkos had remarked, there were many theories about the Collapse. It was said that the economy of Earth had been wrecked by interstellar imports; that the rusts and blights which had devastated Earth's fields were of alien origin; the disbanding of the Space Navy, after the Altair Incident had broken Earth's spirit. It was said that the emigrations, both before and after the Famines, had bled away too much of the trained manpower that was Earth's life-blood.

The fact was that the human race was finished: dying like the Neanderthal when the Cro-Magnon came; dying like the hairy Ainu and the Australian bushman. It was true that hundreds of millions of people lived on Earth much as they had done before, tilling their fields, digging stones from the ground, laboring over the handicrafts which sustained the men of the Quarter in their exile.

Humanity had passed through such dark ages before.

But now there was no way to go except downward.

If the exiles in their ghettos, on a hundred planets of the galaxy, were the lopped-off head of the race, then the ferment of theories, plans, and policies that swirled through them symbolized the last fitful fantasies in the brain of a guillotined man.

And on Earth, the prelates, the robber barons, the petty princes were ganglia: performing their mechanical functions in a counterfeit of intelligence: slowing, degenerating imperceptibly until the last spark should go out.

Cudyk fingered the manuscript which lay on the desk before him. It was the last thing he had written, and it would never be finished. He had hunted it up this morning, out of nostalgia, or perhaps through some obscure working of that impulse that made him look out at the stars each night.

There were twenty pages, the first chapter of a book that was to have been his major work. It ended with the words, The only avenue of escape for humanity is

He had stopped there, because he had realized suddenly that he had been deliberately deceiving himself; that there was no such avenue. The scheme he had meant to propose and develop in the rest of the book had one thing in common with those he had demolished in the first twenty pages. It would not work.

Cudyk thought of those phantom chapters now, and was grateful that they had not been. He had meant to propose that the exiles should gather on some uninhabited planet, and rear a new generation which would be given all the knowledge of the old, save for two things: military science, and astronomy. They would never be told, never guess that the bright lights of their sky were suns, that the suns had planets and the planets people. They would grow up free of that numbing pressure, they would have a fresh start.

It had been the grossest self-deception. You cannot put the human mind in chains. Every culture had tried it, and every culture had failed. In ten generations, or twenty, they would have reached the stars again. It would have been only cruelty to breed them for that.

He pulled open a drawer of his desk and put the manuscript into it. A folded note dropped to the floor as he did so. Cudyk picked it up and read it again:

You are requested to attend a meeting which will be held at 8 Washington Avenue at 10 hours today.

Matters of public policy will be discussed.

It was not signed; no signature was needed. Everyone knew that Rack was in the Quarter again, after an absence of more than a month.

Cudyk glanced at his wrist watch, made on Oladi by spidery, many-limbed creatures to whom an ordinary watch movement was a gross mechanism. The dial showed the galactic standard numerals which corresponded to ten o'clock.

Cudyk stood up wearily and walked out past the carved screen. He said to Nick, "I'll be back in an hour or so."

Eight Washington Avenue was The Little Bear, half a block from the corner where he had first met Harkway, a block and a half from the spot where Harkway had been attacked in a cellarway. Two more associations, Cudyk thought. After twenty years, there were so many that he could not move a foot in the Quarter, glance at a window or a wall, without encountering one of them. And this, he thought, was another thing to remember about a ghetto: you were crowded not only in space but in time. The living were the most transient inhabitants of the Quarter.

Cudyk stepped through the open door of The Little Bear, saw the tables empty and the floor bare. The bartender, Piljurovich, jerked his thumb toward the stairs. "You're late," he said in Russian. "Better hurry."

Cudyk climbed the stairs to the huge second-floor dining hall, where the Russians and Poles held their periodic revels. The room was packed tight with a silent mass of men. At the far end, Rack sat on a chair placed on a table. He stopped in mid-sentence, stared coldly at Cudyk, and then went on:

"… or against me. From now on, there won't be any more neutrals. I want you to understand this clearly. For one thing, your lives may depend on it."

He paused, glancing around the room. "You all know that James Harkway was executed last month. His crime was treason against the human race. There are some of you here who have been, or will be, guilty of the same crime. To them I have nothing more to say. To the others, those who have considered themselves neutral, I say this: First, New Earth needs all of you and has earned your allegiance. Second, those of you who remain on an enemy planet in spite of this warning, will not live to regret it if that planet is selected for attack.

"You have two months to make up your minds and close your affairs. At the end of that time, a New Earth transport will call here to take off those who decide to go. It will be the last New Earth ship; and I warn you that you had better not count on galactic transportation after that date."

He stood up. "That's all."

The audience was over. Rack waited, standing on the table, thumbs hooked into his belt, jacket over his shoulders, like a statue of himself, while the crowd moved slowly out of the room. It was ludicrous, but you could not laugh.

Two months. For almost twenty years Rack had been a minor disturbance in the Quarter, no more important or dangerous or mad than a dozen others: appearing suddenly, at night, staying for a few days, disappearing again for a month, or two, or six. He brought, stolen goods to Ferguson—furs from Drux Uta, perhaps, or jewels from Thon— and Ferguson paid him in galactic currency, reselling the merchandise later, some on Palu, some on a dozen other worlds, for twenty times the price he paid.

Rack had a following among the younger men of the Quarter; two or three a year joined him. Occasionally there were rumors in the Quarter of skirmishes Rack had fought with the Galactic Guard. It had never been a secret that he was building military installations on some backwater planet. But now, for the first time, Cudyk realized that Rack was actually going to make war on the universe.

Whatever the result, it meant the end of the Quarter.

The stairs were choked. Cudyk worked his way down, to find the barroom filled with little knots of men talking in low voices. Only a few were drinking.

Someone called his name, and then a hand grasped his sleeve. It was Speros Moulios, the gray little tobacco dealer, whose two sons drank too much. "Mr. Cudyk, please, what do you think? Should we go, like he says?"

The others of the group followed him: in a moment Cudyk was surrounded. He felt helpless. "I can't advise you, Mr. Moulios. To be truthful, I don't know what I am going to do myself."

Nobilio Villaneuva, the druggist, said, "I've worked fifteen years, saved all my money. What am I going to do with it if I go to this New Earth? And what about my daughter?"

Someone came elbowing his way through the crowd. He signaled to Cudyk. "Laszlo!" It was Moskowitz. "Some of the fellows want to form a delegation, to go back and ask Rack some questions. They asked me to serve, but I've got to get back to the hospital. Same thing with Seu—he's got six things on his hands already. Father Exarkos isn't here. Will you take over?… Good. I'll see you later."

Cudyk sighed. The men around him were watching him expectantly. He stepped over to the bar, picked up an empty glass and rapped with it on the counter until the room quieted.

"It's been suggested that a delegation be formed to ask Commander Rack for more information. Do you all want that?"

There was an affirmative murmur.

"All right," said Cudyk. "Nominations?"

They ended up with a committee of five: Cudyk as spokesman, Moulios, Chong Yin, the painter Prokop Vekshin, and the town clerk, Martin Paz. Cudyk had slips of paper passed out, and collected a hundred-odd questions, most of them duplicates and some of them incoherent. Paz made a neat list of those that remained, and the delegation moved toward the stairs.

At the foot of the stairway Cudyk saw Burgess standing, blinking uncertainly around him. He dropped back and put his hand on the man's arm. "Hello, Louis. I'm glad to see you. How is Kathy?"

Burgess straightened a trifle. "Oh—Laszlo. She's all right, thank you. Feeling a little low, just now, of course…" His voice trailed off.

"Of course, I wish there were something I could do."

"No—no, there's nothing. Time will cure her, I suppose, where are you going now?"

Cudyk explained. "Were you at the meeting earlier?" he asked.

"No. I was not invited. I only heard—ten minutes ago. Perhaps it would be all right if I came upstairs with you? In that way— But if I would be a nuisance—" His features worked.

Cudyk felt obscurely uneasy. He recalled suddenly that it was a long time since he had seen Burgess looking perfectly normal. He said, "I think it will be all right. Why not? Come along."

Rack was sitting at the end of the long table on the far side of the room, talking to Flynn. Flynn's hatchet-man, Vic Smalley, was leaning watchfully against the far wall. Biff and Spanner were at Rack's left. De Grasse, pale and red-eyed, sat halfway down the table, away from the others. He stared at the table in front of him, paying no attention to the rest.

Rack looked up expressionlessly as the five men approached. "Yes?"

Cudyk said, "We have been chosen to ask you some questions about your previous statement."

"Ask away," said Rack, leaning back in his chair. Before him was a glass of the dark, smoky liquor Flynn imported for his special use. He was smoking a tremendously long, black Russian cigarette.

Cudyk took the list from Paz and read the first question. "What is the status of New Earth as to housing, utilities and so on?"

"Housing and utilities are adequate for the present population," said Rack indifferently. "More units will be built as needed."

Paz scribbled in his notebook. Cudyk read, "Will every new colonist be expected to serve as a member of New Earth's fighting forces?"

Rack said, "Every man will work where he's needed. Common sense ought to tell you that middle-aged men with pot bellies and no military training won't be asked to man battleships."

"What is the size of New Earth's navy?"

"Next question."

"Will new colonists be allowed to retain their personal fortunes?"

Rack stared at him coldly. "The man who asked that," he said, "had better stay in the Quarter. If by his personal fortune he means galactic currency, he can use it to stuff rat-holes. Any personal property of value to the community, and in excess of the owner's minimum needs, will be commandeered and dispensed for the good of the community."

"Will new colonists be under military dis—"

"Look out!" said De Grasse suddenly. He lurched to his feet, upsetting his chair.

Someone stumbled against Paz, who fell heavily across Cudyk's legs, bringing him down. Someone else shouted. From the floor, Cudyk saw Burgess standing quietly with a tiny nickeled revolver in his hand.

"Please don't move, Mr. Flynn," said Burgess. "I don't trust you. All of you, stand still, please."

Cudyk carefully got his legs under him and slowly stood up. The men on the other side of the table were still sitting or standing where they had been a moment before. De Grasse stood in an attitude of frozen protest, one big hand flat against his trousers pocket. He looked comically like a man who has left the house without his keys.

They must have taken his gun away, Cudyk thought, after that affair last month.

Biff and the aged Spanner were sitting tensely, trying to watch Rack and Burgess at the same time. Rack, as always, was inhumanly calm. Flynn looked frightened. The gunman, Vic Smalley, had straightened away from the wall; he looked alert and unworried.

"Commander Rack," said Burgess, "you killed that man Harkway."

Rack said nothing.

"I did it," De Grasse said hoarsely. "If you have to shoot somebody, shoot me."

Burgess turned slightly. Rack, without seeming to hurry, picked up the glass in front of him and flung the black liquor in Burgess' face.

The gun went off. Burgess stumbled back a step and then toppled over, with a knife-handle sprouting magically between neck and shoulder. De Grasse came hurtling across the tabletop, dived onto Burgess' prostrate body and came up with the gun. Not more than two seconds had gone by since Rack lifted the glass.

The delegates were moving away, leaving a clear space around De Grasse and Burgess. Cudyk heard some of them clattering down the stairs.

Time had slowed down again, after that one moment. Cudyk saw De Grasse kneeling at Burgess' side, looking up across the table at Rack.

Rack was leaning over the table, supporting himself with one hand, while the other rested at his waist. His attitude, together with his frozen expression, suggested that he was merely bending to examine Burgess' body. But in the next moment he turned slightly, lifted the hand that was pressed to his side, and looked at the dark stain that was spreading over his shirt.

De Grasse stood up. Cudyk went to Burgess and knelt beside him. The man was conscious and moving feebly. "Lie still," said Cudyk. Someone pushed his shoulder roughly, and he looked up to see De Grasse transferring the revolver from his left hand to his right. The youngster's lips were compressed. "Get out of the way," he said harshly.

"No," said Rack. "Leave him alone." He sat down slowly. After a moment De Grasse went around the table and joined him.

Cudyk lifted Burgess' jacket carefully. There was not much bleeding, and he did not think the wound was dangerous. Burgess said weakly, "Did I kill him, Laszlo?"

"No," said Cudyk. "No one was killed."

Burgess turned his head away.

There were footsteps on the stairs, and Moskowitz came into the room, followed by Lee Far and two men with a stretcher. Moskowitz glanced at Burgess and at Rack, then knelt beside Burgess without a word. He pulled out the knife expertly, pressing a wad of bandage around the wound.

"I'll take that," said Spanner, bending over with his hand outstretched.

Moskowitz dropped the knife on the floor and went on bandaging Burgess. Spanner picked it up, glared at the doctor and went back around the table.

Cudyk waited until Moskowitz had finished with Burgess and started probing for the bullet in Rack's side. Following the stretcher-bearers down the stairs, he went out into the blue-white morning sunlight.

There was never any end to it. The Quarter was like a tight gravitational system, with many small bodies swinging around each other in eccentric orbits, and the whole shrinking in upon itself as time went on, so that it grew more and more certain that one collision would engender half a dozen more.

And in the mind, too, each event went on forever. Cudyk remembered Burgess, in the stretcher as he was being carried home, weeping silently because he had failed to kill the man who had murdered his daughter's lover. And he remembered Rack, sitting silent and weary as he waited for Moskowitz to attend to him: sitting without anger for the man who had shot him, sitting with patience, filled with his own inner strength.

And De Grasse, tortured soul, who had once more shown himself willing to sacrifice himself to any loyalty he felt.

Even Biff, even Spanner, lived not for himself but for Rack.

There were all the traditional virtues, dripping their traditional gore: nobility, self-sacrifice, patience, even generosity. By any test except the test of results, Rack was a great man and Burgess another.

And the test of results was a two-edged razor: for by that test, Cudyk himself was a total failure, a nonentity.

He thought, We are the hollow men, we are the stuffed men . . .

When every action led to disaster, those who did nothing were damned equally with those who acted.

IV

Someone touched Cudyk's arm as he left Chong Yin's. He turned, and saw that it was Flynn.

"I've got something to say to you, Cudyk. I saw you were busy talking to Father Exarkos in there, so I didn't bother you. Besides, it's private. Come on down to my place."

The man was doing him an honor, Cudyk realized, in approaching him personally instead of sending an underling. And now, as Flynn stood waiting for him to reply, Cudyk saw that there was something curiously like appeal in his eyes.

"All right, if you wish," he said. "But I will have to go back to the shop within an hour—Nick has not had his lunch."

"I won't keep you that long," Flynn said.

They turned at the corner and walked down Washington, past Town Hall to The Little Bear. Beyond this point, everything was Flynn's: the dance hall, the casino, the bawdy house, the two cafes and three bars, and the two huge warehouses at the end of the avenue. But it was the casino that Flynn meant when he said "my place."

A white-aproned boy got up hurriedly and opened the heavy doors when they approached. Flynn strode past without looking at him, and Cudyk followed across the long, empty room. Dust covers shrouded the roulette table, the chuck-a-luck layout, faro, chemin de fer, dice and poker tables. The bar was deserted, bottles and glasses neatly stacked.

Flynn led the way up a short flight of stairs to the overhanging balcony at the end of the room. He opened the door with a key—a rarity in the Quarter, since ward locks were available only by scavenging on Earth, and had to be imported, whereas a mechanism used by the Niori as a mathematical toy could be readily adapted into an efficient lock.

The low-ceiling room was furnished with a blond-wood desk and swivel chair, a long, pale-green couch and two chairs upholstered in the same fabric: all Earth imports, scavenged from stocks manufactured before the Collapse. The carpet was a deeper green. There were three framed pictures on the walls: a blue-period Picasso, a muted oyster-white and" gray Utrillo, and a small Roualt clown.

Flynn was watching him. "'Just like my place in Chicago," he said. "You never saw it before, did you?"

"No," Cudyk said. "I have never been in the casino until now."

"Sit down," said Flynn, pointing to one of the upholstered chairs. He pulled out the swivel chair and leaned back in it. He nodded toward the glass which formed the entire front wall of the room. "Sittin' up here, I can see everything that goes on downstairs. I got a phone"—he laid his hand on it— "that communicates with the cashier's booth in every room. I can handle the whole place from here, and I don't have to be bothered by the goofs if I don't want to. Also, that glass is bullet proof. It's Niori stuff, ten times better than anything we had back home. They tell me you couldn't get through it with a bazooka."

Cudyk said nothing.

"What I wanted to talk to you about—" Flynn leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. "You understand, Cudyk, this is confidential. Strictly between us."

"I don't want any confidence that will be difficult to keep," said Cudyk.

"What do you mean?"

"If it is something that touches the safety of the Quarter—"

Flynn waved his hand impatiently. "No, it's nothing like that. I just don't want it to get around too early. All right, use your own judgment. Here it is.

"Rack's coming back in about three weeks with his cruiser, to pick up anybody that wants to go to New Earth. I'm not going, and neither are any of my boys. On the other hand, I'm not going to stay here either. It isn't healthy any more.

"I don't know what Rack has got, but I've got a pretty good idea he's got enough to raise a lot of hell. Now you can figure the angles for yourself. Maybe he won't bomb this planet, because he thinks he can still make some use of the Quarter—but that's a big maybe. Even if he doesn't, it's a dead cinch there's going to be trouble. The Niori know he comes here, even if they can't prove it, and when the war starts they're going to be sore."

"Tell me something," said Cudyk after a moment. "If you knew all this long ago—and you must have, since you have been so closely associated with Rack—why did you help Rack, and so force yourself to leave Palu?"

Flynn smiled and shrugged. "I'm not complaining," he said. "Rack never fooled me. I got mine, and he got his—it was a business arrangement. When you figure everything in, I can clear out now and I'm still ahead. Don't you see, you've got to figure that nothing lasts forever. If I hadn't played along with Rack, he would have taken his business somewhere else. Maybe I could have stayed here a little longer, but then again, maybe I would have stayed too long. This way, I've got my advance information, and I've got my take from Rack.

"As a matter of fact, he thinks I and all my outfit are going to be on that cruiser when it goes back to his base. He knows I wouldn't take a chance on staying here when the shooting starts. What he doesn't know is that I've got some place else to go, and a way to get there."

He sat back in his chair again. "I've got a Niori-built freighter hidden back in the hills. Had it for eight years now. It'll carry five hundred people, and fuel and provisions for a year, on top of the cargo. And I've got a planet picked out where nobody will bother me—not Rack, and not the Galactics."

He took a cigar box from the desk and offered it to Cudyk. Cudyk shook his head, showing his pipe.

Flynn took a cigar, twirled it between his lips slowly, and lit it. "You know," he said, bending forward, "there are plenty of planets in the galaxy that aren't inhabited. Some have never even been explored. They're off the shipping routes, no intelligent race on them, nothing special in the way of ores, so nobody wants them. Rack's got one—I've got another."

He gestured with the cigar. "But I'm not using mine to build up any war base. What for?" His long face contorted with violent disgust. "That Rack is crazy. You know it and I know it. If it wasn't for him, I could have stayed here, who knows how long? Or I could have moved to one of the other colonies if I saw a good chance. I like it here. This is civilization—all that's left of it.

"But"—he leaned back again—"you've got to take what you can get. If the odds are against you, cash in and walk out. That's what I'm doing. I'm retiring. On this planet I told you about, there's a big island. A tropical island. Fruit—all you can eat. Little animals something like wild pigs. Fish in the ocean. Gravity just a little under Earth normal, atmosphere perfect. And I'm taking along everything else well need. Generators, all kinds of electrical equipment, stoves, everything. It'll last your lifetime and mine."

He looked at Cudyk. "What more would you want?"

Cudyk said slowly, "You're asking me to go with you?"

Flynn nodded. "Sure. I'll treat you right, Cudyk. My boys will go on working for me, you understand, and so will most of the others I'm going to take. I'm going to be the boss. But you, and three, four others, you won't be asked to do any work. Just lie in that sand, or go fishing, or whatever you feel like. How does it sound?"

"I don't think I quite understand," said Cudyk. "Why do you choose me?"

Flynn put down his cigar. He looked uncomfortable. He said irritably. "Because I've got to have somebody to talk to." He stared at Cudyk. "Look at me. Here I am, I'm fifty years old, and I've been fighting the world ever since I was a kid. You think I can just cut loose from everything now and lie under a tree? I'd go nuts in a month. I'm not kidding myself, I know what I am. It takes practice to learn how to relax and enjoy yourself. I never learned, never had the time.

"When I get on that island, and I get all the houses built and the wires strung up, and everything's organized and I've got nothing else to do, I can see myself lying there thinking about this place, and all the other places I ever owned, and thinking to myself, 'What for?' And there's no answer, I know that. But just the same, I'm going to be wanting to start in again, making a deal, opening a joint, figuring the angles, handling people.

"So there I'll be, with all these mugs around me. What do they know to talk about? The same things I do. Things that happened to them in the rackets, here or back on Earth. You've got to talk to somebody, or you go crazy. But if I've got nobody but them to talk to, how am I ever going to get my mind off that kind of stuff?"

He gestured toward the Roualt, on the wall to Cudyk's left. "Look at that," he said. "I bought that thing in 1961. I've been looking at it for, let's see, twenty-three years. For the first five or so I couldn't figure out whether the guy was kidding or not. Then, gradually, I got to like it. But I still don't know why the hell I like it. It's the same thing with everything. I got a Corot that I'm nuts about—I look at it every night before I go to sleep. It's just a landscape, like you used to see on calendars in the old days, except that the calendars were junk and this is art. I know that, I can feel it. But what's the difference between the two? Don't ask me.

"You see what I mean? That's the kind of stuff I've got to learn about. Art. Literature. Music. Philosophy. I always wanted to, before, but I never had the patience for it. Now I've got to do it. My kind of life is finished. I've got to learn a new kind."

He frowned at his cigar. "It isn't going to be easy. Maybe there'll be times when you'll wish you had anybody else in the world around but me. But I won't take it out on you, Cudyk. I'll give you every break I can."

He meant it, Cudyk knew. For a moment he wondered, Why don't I accept? He could see Flynn's island paradise clearly enough: the tropical trees, the log hut—with electric light, induction stoves for cooking, and hot and cold water— the sand, the sunshine, the long, lazy afternoons spent in talking quietly on the beach. There would be no strain and no tension, if everything went as Flynn planned—only a long, slow twilight, with nothing left to fear or to hope for: forgetfulness, lethargy; lotos and Lethe; a pleasant exile, a scented prison.

"You won't need to worry about the others, the guys that work for me," Flynn said. "After they get through building the settlement, they can do what they want as long as they don't make any trouble. There'll be enough women to go around; they can settle down and raise kids. There won't be any liquor, and I'm going to keep the weapons locked up. About the ship—I'll disable that as soon as we land. Once we're there, we're there."

If it were not for Flynn himself, Cudyk thought, I believe I might do it. But Flynn, inside a year, is going to be a pitiable man. This is his own punishment, his lesser evil—he chooses it himself. But he is not going to like it. Even if nothing else happens, it will not be pleasant to watch Flynn suffer, day after day.

"I think I understand," he said. "Believe me, Mr. Flynn, I'm deeply grateful for this offer, and I am tempted to accept. But—I think I will stay and take my chances with the Quarter."

Flynn stared at him, then shrugged. "Don't make up your mind in too much of a hurry," he said. "Think it over. I'm not leaving for a couple of weeks. And listen, Cudyk, do me a favor. Don't spread this around."

"Very well," said Cudyk.

Flynn did not get up to see him to the door.

Seu was waiting at the doorway of Cudyk's shop. He said, "Let's go inside, Laszlo, where we can talk privately."

Behind the carved screen, pitching his voice too low.for Nick Pappageorge to hear, he said, "One of my assistants saw you going into Flynn's casino. Did he offer you a place on his ship?"

"Yes," said Cudyk, raising an eyebrow. "What is your source of information this time? Did he make the same offer to you?"

"No." Seu blinked at him solemnly. "I don't think I am on his list. Flynn dislikes me, as you know. But he did offer to take Louis and Kathy Burgess—and Louis accepted."

"Are you certain? How do you know?"

"One of Flynn's employees—in or out of confessional, I don't know and didn't ask—told Astereos and Astereos sent for me immediately. I came from there only half an hour ago; then I heard about you, and came here to wait."

The two looked at each other.

"He can't go," said Cudyk finally. "He isn't responsible. We'll have to stop him."

"Yes. It would be very bad. Not just a little bad, very bad."

"Did Astereos try to change his mind?"

"Yes, of course. But you know Astereos; he's too good a listener to batter anyone down."

Cudyk nodded and stood up. "Can you wait a little longer for your lunch, Nick?" he called.

Nick looked around. "Sure, Mr. Cudyk. About how long will you be?"

"Not more than half an hour, I hope. If it's longer, I'll send someone to relieve you."

The front of Burgess' shop was plastered with signs in English, Chinese and Niori announcing a gigantic sale—All Merchandise at Half Price.

"He might as well have told everyone in the Quarter," Seu commented.

The tables in the long, low outer room were heaped with bolts of hand-woven cloth: woolens from Scotland and England, silks from the Orient, cottons from North and South America. The aisles were nearly filled with customers, most of them human; Burgess' two clerks were both sealing parcels.

They found Burgess sitting behind the half-open door of his office. He rose nervously when he saw them. "This is a pleasure, Laszlo, Min. I haven't seen as much as I'd like of you lately, either one of you. Here, sit down, do."

"May we have this door closed?" asked Seu.

"Yes, yes, of course. May I ask—"

"It's about Flynn's ship," Cudyk said. "We've learned that you have agreed to go on it. We want to dissuade you if we can, Louis. We think it would be a great mistake."

Burgess frowned. "I thought it was supposed to be a secret," he said. "Unless you two are going. But then, in that case, why shouldn't I? I mean, I don't understand."

The mayor said smoothly, "Flynn approached Laszlo, who refused. The rest was not hard to gather from your signs, outside. We were sure you weren't planning to leave on Rack's ship. Therefore…"

"Oh," said Burgess. "Yes, I suppose it was obvious. Well, why shouldn't I go?" He looked at them with hangdog,defiance. "I'm as good as the next one, I suppose?"

Cudyk felt a faint stirring of nausea. Pity lives in the stomach, he thought abstractedly. We were always too polite to say so—we said "heartstrings" instead. But pity is a cold, heavy writhing in the gut, and so is despair, and so is terror when it becomes so constant that it is a thing to be lived with, and the heart ceases to take any notice of it.

Burgess had been a good man: intelligent, strong, considerate, humorous. Even when the shell of his prejudices had begun to close around him, he had never for a moment turned toward the relief that cruelty offered. Now the shell had closed entirely, but it was not thick enough, and never would be. Like Flynn, Burgess had built a world of his own; and like Flynn, he was not happy in it.

Cudyk said gently, "Of course you're fit to go, Louis. It's the others that are not fit. Can you imagine your living out the rest of your life with Flynn and his gangsters for company? Also, have you considered what life would be like for Kathy in that environment?"

Burgess' strong fingers were moving nervously, gripping and shifting to grip again. He scowled at them and said, "We'll be safe, anyhow. Safe from that madman Rack, and safe from the natives. You can't overlook that. Anyhow, Kathy isn't afraid to go. I've talked the whole thing over with her. Thoroughly. Our minds are made up. We want to go."

"Have you considered that Flynn's party won't even have a doctor—unless he can persuade Moskowitz or Pereira to leave the Quarter, which I very much doubt?" Cudyk turned to the mayor. "You don't suppose Flynn would go so far as to take one of them forcibly, do you?"

"It's something to think about," Seu said. "We may as well take precautions."

Burgess was shaking his head. "It's no good trying to frighten me," he said. "I know you mean well, but my mind's made up."

"Louis," Cudyk said after a moment, "do you know that Flynn intends to scuttle his ship after landing? If you go, you will be marooned there. You will never see any of us again."

Burgess stared at his hands. "We've been friends a long time," he said, almost inaudibly. "I haven't forgotten all you've done for me, Laszlo. And you, Min, of course. Almost twenty years… But you don't understand what it's meant to me to stay here, either of you. Among these Niori… beetles, really. They're nothing but talking beetles.

"You two don't mind as much as I do. I don't know why. I mind dreadfully. Living here, knowing that we humans are superior to them in every way, and yet—there are so many of them! Billions, to our pitiful two thousand. They could rise up against us, you know, any time. This hour, if they felt like it. What chance would we have?

"And what future have we got here? What's there for Kathy to look forward to? There are fewer of us every year. When she is as old as I am, she might be the last human being on the planet.

"No. I've thought it all out, and Kathy agrees with me. We're going to get clean away, out of the whole mess. I can't say I like Flynn much, but he's human. He's human! That means a lot—it means everything."

He looked up. "You two must do what you think best, but I wish you would come along too. I don't know, perhaps it would be difficult for you to go to Flynn. But I'd be glad to speak to him; I'm sure he would consent." He blinked at them painfully. "You must do what you think best."

"I'm sorry, Louis," Cudyk said, and stood up. "We'll see you before you leave?"

"Of course, of course," Burgess muttered. "Good-by, Laszlo…Min."

"That island of Flynn's will be a hell-hole within two years," said Seu gloomily. They had been sitting for half an hour over coffee cups in the rear of Cudyk's shop.

"I believe it," Cudyk answered. "If Kathy goes, I would say not two years but six months."

"If it comes to the worst, I can kidnap them and hold them until Flynn leaves."

"No," said Cudyk. "You tried that once, with Harkway."

Seu blinked at him. "I would make certain this time."

"Don't misunderstand me. I was going to say that this case is altogether different. For one thing, I believe that even if we anticipate the sailing correctly, Flynn is capable of holding it up and searching until he finds the Burgesses. Or he might be more direct. He might take hostages. You have seen Flynn crossed."

"Yes."

"Even if that did not happen, I think you would lose your office afterwards."

"I admit the possibility. However, you are unnecessarily pessimistic. The thing could be handled more smoothly than that, Laszlo. For example, if we sent Flynn a letter of refusal, imitating Louis' handwriting, at the last moment…"

Cudyk was not listening. He said abruptly, "Kathy wants to go. It comes down to that, doesn't it? If she changed her mind for any reason, she would persuade Louis to stay also."

"Yes. What are you thinking, Laszlo?"

"I have a wild idea. Let's go and find Arnold Moskowitz."

Moskowitz was in the surgery; it was two hours before they could see him. When he finally entered the tiny, cluttered office where they were waiting, Cudyk said, "Arnold, we have a problem. Can you simulate a new and unheard-of disease of great virulence, well enough to deceive a person with some knowledge of illnesses?"

Moskowitz cocked a weary eyebrow at him. "Depends. Who's the person?"

"Kathy Burgess," Cudyk told him. He explained what he wanted done, and at the end Moskowitz nodded.

"Sure, I can do it," he said. "I can fake a fever for you— that's child's play—and I can inject some colored wax for pustules, and stain the skin a few gaudy colors. Is that what you want, something spectacular?"

"Yes. And unpleasant in the extreme," said Cudyk. "Perhaps you could also use an emetic?"

"It's all right with me, but it's going to be rough on the patients. You got anybody in mind?"

"I will undertake to provide the patients," said Seu. "But, Laszlo, it still seems to me that this is a very uncertain plan."

"I don't get it at all," said Moskowitz. "I'm supposed to make Kathy believe this phony disease is going to spread into a terrible epidemic that will probably wipe out the Quarter —and you think she'll persuade her father to stay here because of that?"

"I wish I did not think so," Cudyk replied. "But if I understand Kathy, that is what she will do. She will not tell herself that she must stay here, because here her sufferings will be greater. She will invent other reasons, I think, without any consciousness that they are only excuses. Probably, she will offer to come back to work in the hospital when she is needed. But I believe that she can no more stay away from death than a moth from a flame."

"And that's why she wants to go with Flynn now, is that it?"

"Yes. She herself does not know it, but I am convinced that that is her reason."

"You could be right," Moskowitz said slowly. "I never got to know her very well, but there's something unhealthy about her. A little too eager, every time we had a serious case. From what I've seen, I could put it down to either an honest desire to help people—a dedication—or a death wish. Except there's one tiling, an observation, for what it's worth. She's the best nurse I ever had. She has a natural talent for it, she knows her business, and she works like a beaver. And she's got a lot of natural charm. But the patients never liked her."

Cudyk nodded. "No, they wouldn't." He stood up. "Then it's agreed, Arnold? You'll do it?"

"Yes, I'll do it. I'll tell you the truth, though, Laszlo: I don't enjoy this kind of thing. It strikes me that a fellow could work up a hell of a guilt complex, tinkering around with other people's wackiness."

Cudyk said, "I am willing to give the idea up, if you feel strongly against it."

Moskowitz smiled. "You'd have to. No, I'll go along with you. I was just putting an anchor out for the sake of my conscience, or what's left of it. If I really thought I knew all the answers, I'd probably turn this place into a butcher shop and get it over with."

Cudyk said to Seu as they left, "He is right about the feeling of guilt. If the charge of presumption were to be raised against us, we would have no defense. We do not know that either Louis or Kathy will suffer less here than on Flynn's planet. Have we any right to play God, Min?"

The mayor said soberly, "I've asked myself that question a thousand times since I was twenty. If I ever stop asking it, I'll know that I'm no longer fit to meddle with other people's affairs."

V

The Armageddon had the stink of an old ship, too long out of planetary. She was rusty and corroded, and one of her four McMichaels propulsion units was badly out of phase. Spanner did what he could, with profanity and barked knuckles, but it was not enough. When the ship came out of overdrive in the Torkas system, ten days from New Earth, she lurched underfoot and rang like a brazen gong.

De Grasse, who had a hangover, caught himself by the edge of the chart table and swore. Emergency bells were ringing down the companionway in the control blister: the strain had parted seams again, and they were leaking air. De Grasse ignored the bells, and the whisper of running feet going past the chart room, to read the displays on his own board.

They had emerged into normal space well within the orbit of Torkas, some twenty billion miles from the G-type sun, and about ten degrees above the ecliptic. De Grasse took his readings and fed them into the scarred old computer, which whirred, chattered, and spat out a tape.

"All stations report," said Rack's cold voice on the intercom.

"Damage control, patching leaks," said May Wong promptly. "Five minutes, Larry."

"Engine room, building potential. Two minutes," Spanner's voice growled.

De Grasse palmed his plate. "Astrogator, it's on the tape."

"Fire control, we are arming. Ten minutes."

"Ultraphone, signal coming through from Torkas Orbital I, Commander."

Rack said nothing. Out of curiosity, De Grasse tuned his own ultraphone to the frequency Sparks was receiving. On the screen a squat, blue-black amphiboid shape came into view. The inhuman features were working, and speech came out of the speaker—Galactic Standard—with such a blubbery accent that De Grasse could barely make out a word. Presumably the thing was asking them to identify themselves. The voice stopped, then the screen flashed red for a second and a bell rang, and the voice began again.

"Belay that ultraphone!" Rack's voice snapped.

De Grasse turned the receiver off. The ship's own emergency bells were falling silent, one by one; as they died, he could begin to hear the creaking in the ribs as the old ship balanced her strains. The chronometer clicked off a minute, then another.

"Engine room, on the green."

"Acknowledged."

The chronometer moved steadily on. De Grasse had nothing to do but sit and hold himself in readiness. Under his feet and a hundred yards to the stern, Barnes and the gunner's mate would be in the improvised bomb blister, sweating over the long, delicate task of arming the bomb. De Grasse was tinglingly aware of them down there, invisible and inaudible, but he could feel them with his skin. And all over the ship, he knew, crew members would be sitting at their stations, listening and waiting. They had crippled themselves, torn out the old fire-control center and made the Armageddon's cannon useless, just to make room for that one tremendous weapon.

To take his mind off it, he read his instruments again and animated the visual-analog display. Krell, the Torkas sun, had seven major planets, four inhabited. Torkas, the dominant planet, was now near perihelion; the other three, all colonial worlds, swung farther out. Total population seventy-eight billion, including a human colony of some twenty thousand souls on the sixth planet, Trig. De Grasse glanced at the motionless red dot that stood for Trig, and looked away again. Near the red dot of Torkas, an intermittent white light indicated that the orbital station was still signaling them. After a moment a second white light began to blink, not near any planet, and simultaneously De Grasse's detectors showed a subplanetary mass at extreme range, in motion toward them.

"Ultraphone reporting, signal coming in from galactic ship at two point three parsecs."

Rack did not reply.

"Damage control, all leaks patched."

"Acknowledged."

De Grasse took readings, fed them to the computer. The galactic ship was closing on them at sublight speed, ETA too far in the future to bother about.

"Fire control reporting bomb armed and ready."

"Okay," said Rack crisply. The lethargy in his voice was gone; his voice was vibrant, eager, almost joyful. "All personnel strap in! Count down! Five! Four! Three! Two! One! Go!"

The ship lurched again under De Grasse's body: in the analog screen, the red dots that were planets suddenly took on depth as they began to float outward toward the viewer, while the golden star in the center slowly expanded. De Grasse involuntarily gripped his arm-rests, tensed his body. The seconds sped, away, the last red dot drifted past and was gone. The golden star continued to expand, while the instruments showed they were closing on it at frightful, unbelievable speed: ten billion miles… seven billion… five billion…

"Bomb away!" grated Barnes' voice in the intercom.

"Acknowledged!" Rack shot back. "Reversing course!" In the screen, De Grasse saw the blue arrow that represented the Armageddon joined by a blue dot. That was the bomb: the instruments gave its distance as a horrifyingly close five meters. Abruptly the dial swung, the arrow reversed its direction, the blue dot drifted away from the arrow; the golden Star hung steady a moment, then began to shrink, and one by one the red dots floated back toward it again. The blue dot went with them, then faster than they, and winked out at the limit of detection.

"Astrogator, report!" Rack snapped.

De Grasse ripped the tape out of the computer with shaky fingers. "Collision course, Captain!" he said.

In the screen, the Torkas system collapsed, shrank into itself and became one more star in a field of stars. De Grasse briefly tried to imagine it as a real sun, surrounded by planets with sentient beings living and working on them, traveling between them, but the effort was too much, he couldn't. He let the analog expand in a normal visual display, but kept an ultrabeam feeding in data on the Torkas sun. Two minutes passed, three, four; then the dot that was the Torkas sun blazed white.

"Well done, one and all," said Rack.

Once in overdrive and out of the Torkas system, there was nothing to do. De Grasse got out a bottle and sat with it discreetly in the chart room, looking at the wall.

Rack came by and leaned in the doorway. "Glum?" he asked.

De Grasse looked up. "I'm all right, Captain."

"Putting yourself in their place?"

"Who?"

Rack nodded sternward, without bothering to reply.

De Grasse turned to face the chart table, looked at it blindly and put one hand on it, palm down; his fingers worked at the smooth, scarred metal.

"Damn it," he said thickly, "there was a human colony on one of those planets, Captain. Not bugs. People."

"Don't you think I know that?" Rack asked quietly. He came into the room, closed the door. "We gave them warning, Tom. They had their chance to get out of the Minority Peoples' League, foreswear treason, come to us."

De Grasse's fingers found a pack of cigarette papers. He peeled one off, creased it, rolled it, and began twisting it into a thread. "I know," he muttered.

"Tom, this is war we're talking about," said Rack leaning over to punch the analog display. The screen lighted up with a chart of the central sector of the galaxy. "Here's Torkas." His finger stabbed. "Rud-Uri. Gerzion. Alfhal. Shergo. The five biggest shipbuilding centers in the central galaxy.' It isn't just killing bugs, Tom, it's immobilizing them—that's our job. We're men, and men have got to win. But don't forget the sheer monstrous size of what we've got to fight. Pin them down, isolate them—then we can mop up, even if it takes a century." He paused, turned off the display. "And make no mistake, it will—it's that long a job. But when we're done, the galaxy will be human, Tom."

"I know it," said De Grasse, turning toward him. "I'm sorry, Captain. I just…"

"I understand," said Rack putting a hand on his shoulder. Then he opened the door and was gone.

Afterward, lying in his cubby, De Grasse heard Rack's and May Wong's voices murmuring through the thin bulkhead; and such a wave of loneliness took him that he turned and bit the pillow to keep from crying out.

Six days out of Torkas, they made planetfall on a world known to its natives as Yerez, but to the Armageddon's crew as Hub's Rest. Hub's was a largely agricultural world, where a few hundred humans had been allowed to homestead. Their leader was a shaggy, unwashed giant named Hub McAllister, who had three wives nearly as big and dirty as himself, and uncounted hordes of jeering children.

There were fields of native biologicals around Hub's settlement, but they were neglected and scraggly; "pignuts and gruntweed," Hub called them. Hub did a thriving business in opium and marijuana, and in homemade white lightning; he also accommodated visiting humans with poker, blackjack, cockfights and girls. Hub did a little fencing of stolen merchandise, through the nearby transfer point of Ul-Rouha; he could get nearly anything, fix anything, dispose of anything, at a price.

Hub himself met them on the veranda of the sprawling, ramshackle saloon and general store. Lean, wild-eyed children clustered curiously behind him for a few moments as Rack and his crew approached. The hide of a green-furred predator was pegged out on the wall. The air hung stifling hot. A slatternly woman leaned from an upstairs window, to be greeted with bawdy shouts from Biff and the black gang.

"Commander, God damn it, it's good to lay eyes on you again." Hub stuck out his hand, which Rack did not appear to see; fists on his hips, the commander was staring around at the huddle of neglected buildings, the dusty street, the rows of weedy plants.

"Place hasn't changed much!" roared Hub, choking with laughter. "Nor you, neither, Commander—same old high hat, God love you. Come in, come in!" He led the way into the dim bar room adjoining the general store. De Grasse and the rest of the crew made for the back bar, where Hub's unshaven bartender was setting them up unasked. Hub and the captain sat at a table.

"Now remember, all you space-apes," Biff was saying, "two shots or a quart of beer, that's all. We're lifting ship no later than eighteen hours, and any sonofabitch that gets drunk'll stay behind." He lifted the shot glass in front of him and poured the contents directly down his throat, as if into a jug.

Nursing his own drink, De Grasse could hear the rumble of Hub's voice behind him, followed by the captain's clear, cold tones. They were exchanging news and rumors, comparing notes on mutual acquaintances—the beginning of the elaborate ritual of doing business with Hub. De Grasse half turned to watch, and to hear better. There was a bottle of Rack's own special smoky liquor on the table beside him; Hub, opposite was drinking beer from a tremendous stein. Rack was saying, "… a few opals from Dron. I don't know if that interests you."

"Not much market for gems now," Hub rumbled. "Have to transship halfway across the damn galaxy—cost more than they'll bring, probably. I might take 'em as a favor, though, if that's all you got. Couldn't pay much."

"It would have to be for barter, anyhow," Rack said. "I'm not interested in galactic currency."

"Yeah, I heard that," said Hub, wiping his nose with one sausage-like finger. His little eyes were shrewd. "Something about you taking anybody that'll go back to your New Earth. Put a new blister on your hull too, since last time, didn't you, Commander?"

"Want to come along?" Rack asked, swirling his drink idly. "I could send a transport for you in about a month."

"I'll think it over," Hub told him. "Well, dammit, in the meantime a fellow's got to live. I got some damaged slugs of galactic fuel I could let you have cheap…"

At the bar, Biff had his arm around a fat woman in a red print dress and was hailing her with loud cries of recognition. "Rosie, you old hooker!" Two or three of the other men had already drifted off to upstairs rooms."

In a few minutes, Hub had brought up the subject of spare machine parts, and Rack had delicately hinted that he could always use a few spares. In ten minutes more, they had established that Hub had the parts Spanner needed for the ailing propulsion unit, and settled on a price in opals, spilled out on the table from the pouch Rack wore around his neck.

Three hours later, when they were just clearing atmosphere, a pip appeared on the Armageddon's screens: it was one of the rare galactic police boats, coming into line of sight in a parking orbit.

"Ultraphone signal from a galactic ship, captain," said Sparks. "They're asking us to cut power and stand by for boarding."

There was silence for a moment. De Grasse palmed his plate, said bitterly, "Captain, this is Hub's doing. It's a sellout!"

"He wouldn't dare," growled Biff's voice. "I'd stuff his tripes down his throat, and well he knows it."

Ignoring them, Rack said crisply, "Astrogator, how fast are they closing?"

De Grasse read his instruments, said, "A little over three G's combined, Captain. But they're loafing now. Those little speedsters will do anything the crew can stand."

Rack said, "What kind of bugs are they, Sparks?"

"Nimmoke, Captain—those things that look like ginger-colored apes. They can take up to fifty G's, I heard."

The intercom was silent again. The pip was closing rapidly.

"Spanner! Can we go into overdrive this close to a planetary mass?"

"Tear the guts out of her, Captain."

Biff's voice roared again: "You, Spanner! Did you tell any of Hub's gang about the cannon?"

"I did not! You probably spilled it to that broad you was with!"

"Belay that!" said Rack.

"Ram her!" shouted Biff's voice. "Only thing to do, ram her, split her open!"

"Negative," said Rack's cold voice. There was a pause. "Airlock detail, stand by to admit boarders."

The silence on the intercom was eloquent of disbelief. Not a sound came even from Biff. The pip was closing rapidly, decelerating now, matching course and velocity with the Armageddon. Now it was within visual range—a sleek, bullet-shaped vessel perhaps half the size of the Earth cruiser.

The galactic pilot nursed his boat closer, jockeying it with superb skill until the airlocks of the two vessels were in alignment. A clang echoed through the whole ship as the magnetic gasket of a boarding tube struck the hull.

The Armageddon was taken, without firing a shot.

Rack went down to the arsenal with Biff, and came back empty-handed. To questioning looks as they came back up the companionway, Biff only shook his head glumly.

After some delay, pressure was equalized in the boarding tube and the Armageddon's' airlock opened. The crew looked on in hostile silence as three squat beings entered. They were suited and helmeted; through the faceplates it could be seen that they had ape-like heads, thickly covered with Pekinese-colored fur.

One of the spacesuited figures looked around and spoke briefly in Galactic.

"He wants to know who's in charge, Captain."

Rack nodded indifferently. Sparks pointed him out to the Nimmoke, who spoke again.

"He wants to know if we're the human ship that was seen in the Torkas system just before the accident to their sun."

Somebody snickered nervously.

"Tell them no," said Rack, gazing bleakly past the three aliens.

Sparks and the Nimmoke exchanged a few more words. "He wants to see our galactic registry papers, Captain, and then he wants to take us to the galactic yards on Shergo."

Spanner, standing at De Grasse's elbow, whistled softly. "That means they'll impound the ship," he said.

"Tell him we'll co-operate," said Rack, "but we must go back to Hub's Rest first. There are witnesses and evidence there that will prove our case."

Sparks and the Nimmoke spoke at some length. "He says he'd like to extend you this courtesy, Captain, but it isn't practical for our two ships to land together."

"Tell him to release us, and we'll meet him after landing."

There was a stir of attention among the crew.

"He says he's sorry, but experience shows humans sometimes don't speak the truth. He says it will be necessary to take a hostage aboard his ship. Then he'll grant your request."

Silence fell; the crew members looked at each other. No one had to tell them what that meant: the ship would get away, but the hostage would be lost.

"I'll go myself," said Rack, pulling on his gloves.

There was a babble of protest. "Silence," said Rack sharply. "That's an order! Biff, you know what to do." He stepped over to the Nimmoke and stood waiting.

The Nimmoke spoke to Sparks.

"Captain, he says you can't breathe his atmosphere. You'll have to wear a spacesuit all the time you're aboard."

"Very well. Biff, break out a suit."

May Wong, tears streaming down her face, stepped toward Rack and said, "Captain, send me, for God's sake! What good is anything if—"

"I promise you I'll come back," the tall man told her. "Do you understand? I give you my word. I'll come back." He was stepping into the legs of the spacesuit Biff held out, then zipping it up. The suit looked bulkier than usual; there was some nonregulation equipment strapped to it at the belt. Biff helped him on with the helmet, checked out the oxygen supply, radio and other devices. Stunned, the crew saw Rack raise his hand in token that he was ready. The three Nimmoke took him through the airlock, and the valve closed behind them.

"Stations!" said Biff, diving toward the control room. The crew dispersed.

After a few minutes came the clang as the boarding tube was released. In De Grasse's screen, the bullet-shaped vessel drifted slowly away.

"Gimme a landing tape," said Biff's hoarse voice on the intercom.

De Grasse punched the keys of his calculator. He could not guess what Rack's plan was, or how landing on Hub's Rest again would help the Armageddon to escape; but he fed Biff the tape he asked for. In a moment the ship's tubes fired. The distant globe of Yerez, turning far below them, steadied, grew insensibly larger, and seemed to revolve in the opposite direction. In the screen, the galactic ship was paralleling their course.

Suddenly a shout came over the intercom. Simultaneously, De Grasse saw a puff of vapor at the flank of the galactic ship; it looked as if it came from the region of the airlock.

"He did it!" Biff's voice bellowed happily. "Christ, was that sweet, or was it sweet?"

Confused and half deafened, De Grasse said, "Biff, I don't get it. What happened? What did he do?"

"Why, you chump, he took a delayed fuse demolition bomb with him—left it in the airlock. As soon as they had time to get out of their suits, blammo—it blew out both valves."

Under power again, they were drifting gently nearer to the galactic ship. De Grasse, bent over his screen, saw a tiny figure appear in the lock and leap free. It was Rack. A spacesuited crewman, standing in their own airlock, cast him a line and pulled him safely in while they were still in the outermost fringes of Yerez' atmosphere.

And the galactic ship, falling uncontrolled, struck and burst in the middle of the single street of Hub's Rest.

The Armageddon stayed in parking orbit, along with the eleven other ships of Rack's embryo fleet; the crew went down in the lighter, leaving a caretaker aboard: thus, there was no structure in the New Earth settlement bigger than the one-story sheds that housed the colonists. Little camouflage was needed. The sheds, of corrugated steel, were painted to blend with the dusty brown of the landscape, and were dispersed in random patterns. As for the ships, they might be natural satellites.

Should any galactic ship approach the planet—an unlikely event in itself—nothing would be visible from space to show that the arid world was not as deserted as it had always been.

The planet was near enough to its G-type primary to be livable for men, but it was lifeless, bone-dry; there was nothing here that the galactics wanted.

It was past three in the morning, local time, when the lighter touched down, but the colony was awake and active—a racket of riveting where new sheds were going up to ease the overcrowding; lights burning in the bomb shed, where the huge, deadly spindles of the T.C. bombs were assembled. Rack was working his scientists in three shifts, stockpiling weapons.

De Grasse got himself a steak in the messhall, but found that he could not eat it. As he emerged, a guard detail passed him, half dragging a slight, brown-skinned man who had a dazed expression. In the spill of light from the mess-hall door, De Grasse recognized him: it was Villaneuva. A few children followed, whistling and jeering. They must have been holding him until Rack returned; that meant the charge was treason. "Treason" meant anything from sabotage to slacking on the job. There was no room on New Earth for those who couldn't, or wouldn't, pull their own weight.

De Grasse walked on, past the poisonous yellow lights of the bomb shed. Behind him, he heard a scattered volley. So much for Villaneuva… He came to the canteen and paused, wanting a drink, but the clamor of drunken voices, Biff's the loudest among them, drove him away and he went on. At the corner of the training shed he heard running feet and saw a few teen-agers sprinting past him in the darkness. A voice floated back: "Come on! They're showing films of the mission down at the rec hall!"

De Grasse went on, past the living quarters with their darkened windows, past the last building of the colony, out into the desert night. It was as black as your hat but, looking up, he could see the frosty glory of the stars. He never could quite believe that he had been up there himself, only a few days ago. It was a miracle that you never got used to. His trained eye picked out Palu's primary, involuntarily, and he found himself thinking of Kathy.

Standing in the darkness, he felt angry tears leaking from his eyes. It was unfair—things that life had promised him had never been delivered. His youth was up there, as distant and unreal as the stars; all that happiness, the anticipation of joy that had somehow been stolen from him when he wasn't looking.

He heard his name called softly, and whirled to see a dark figure pass before the lights of the settlement. "Who's that?" he demanded.

The figure came closer. It was a woman, and now he recognized her by her whisky-coarsened voice. "Tommy," she said plaintively, "what you doin' out here all by your lonesome?"

It was Edie Bannon, once a good-looking woman, now a hopeless drunk who hung around the camp, doing odd chores, shacking up now and again. She had been Biff's woman for a while, till he kicked her out for a younger girl.

"How did you know I was here?" he demanded.

"I followed you, honey." She sniffed. "You shouldn' be out here in the dark, all by your lonesome," Her form shifted against the lights of the camp, frizzy-haloed, and he saw her come nearer. "You want a drink, honey?"

The raw smell of whisky.

After a moment, he took the bottle, put the sharp-tasting rim to his lips and drank. The liquor went hot down his throat, started a warm glow in his belly. He took another, bigger slug.

"Hey, don' drink it all," her voice said gently.

He turned, lowering the bottle, offering it back. "You're a good old girl, Edie," he said, feeling as he spoke that it really was so, that she wasn't so bad after all, coming out here to comfort him.

"No, that's all right, you drink it," she said, pushing the bottle back. "I got more in my room. You drink it up. Go ahead, kill it."

He held the bottle up against the distant lights, a phosphorescent ghost-bottle, with a half-inch of amber at the bottom: one more jolt. He drank it down, tilting his head back. Off balance, he reached for her to keep from falling in the darkness; she was bare and mountainous under the thin dress.

"That's right, honey," she said. "Come on with Edie, we go get some more."

He put his arm around her, not giving a damn. "Why not?" he said, and went.

VI

There was a curious feeling of suspension in the Quarter. Trade was slow; only a few Niori and still fewer members of other galactic races strolled down the narrow streets, and for more than a week Cudyk sold nothing.

Human faces were missing too. Almost two hundred of the ghetto's inhabitants had left quietly, during the night, when word had gone around that the New Earth transport was waiting. Villaneuva had gone, with his family; so had Martin Paz; and Flynn had gone earlier with all his crew. The Burgesses had not gone with him.

Today, two weeks later, Cudyk had a consignment coming in on the weekly shuttle from Rud-Uri, and he went to the spaceport to see it through customs. It was shortly after sunset when he started out; the nocturnal city was just coming to life, the broad, curved avenues brilliant under the stream-lights and in the blue glare of the moon, Hut-Shera, which had just risen in the east. Cudyk walked north out of the Quarter, past the office and factory hives of downtown Lur, and at the Niu traffic center allowed himself to be sucked down into the blue hell of a transport tube, along with the crowd of Niori on their way to work.

The tube let him off at Oray Central, the huge elevated plaza around which were clustered the city's merchandise hives. Cudyk spent twenty minutes shopping here, lost his way, asked directions of a Courtesy Leader, finally found the hive he wanted and purchased some Oladi silks.

From Oray he walked northward again past the Niori legislative hives, attracting curious stares from pedestrians. He was beginning to be sorry he had come, as he always was when he ventured out of the Quarter; seeing himself through the Niori's eyes, he could not help feeling soft and squashy, grotesquely shaped, disgustingly hairy. At a substation near the dream hives, he boarded an aircar, an extravagance, merely to have a little privacy. He arrived at the spaceport in good time, claimed his parcel, and took another aircar back to the Quarter.

At the foot of Kwang-Chowfu Avenue, he met Zydh Oran coming out of his office. The Niori said formally, "Greeting, Mr. Cudyk. I have recently seen the priest, Father Exarkos. He was endeavoring to find you."

Cudyk said, "Greeting. Do you know where he has gone now?"

"I believe he is at his home. Contentment to you, Mr. Cudyk."

"Contentment," said Cudyk wryly, and went on. The Out-group Commissioner had used the form of address which, in his language, was normally reserved for strangers. It was the nearest thing to insult that was possible to a Niori. Even these people, Cudyk thought, can learn to recognize the existence of evil in time. It has taken them more than twenty years, but I think they are learning now.

He remembered the three monkeys which had sat on the mantelpiece of his father's home: See-no-evil, Hear-no-evil, Speak-no-evil. The Niori were like that. To the pure, all things are pure. Set a thief to catch a thief. But even a saint's patience can be tried, Cudyk thought; and the deaf and dumb can be taught to speak.

Depressed, he walked down to Brasil and crossed over to the building in which Exarkos lived. He pressed the combination that opened the street door and went up. The priest answered his knock.

"You were looking for me, Astereos?"

The little man smiled, then looked concerned as he saw Cudyk's expression. "Yes, my friend," he said, "but it is nothing. Nothing has happened. I am sorry you were worried."

He pointed to the chessboard by the window, set between two comfortable chairs. "I only thought that perhaps you would like a game."

"I would," said Cudyk, and smiled. "Lately, whenever I see anyone, I think that he is going to give me bad news."

They sat down, and Exarkos held out two pawns in his closed fists. Cudyk chose the black. "As with all of us," said the priest. "Seu is badly worried, more than I have ever seen him. I think that he knows something he has not yet told."

"We'll find out soon enough," said Cudyk, and countered Exarkos' gambit. In five moves he lost a pawn, and in seven the priest had driven him out of the center.

"Your mind is not on it," said Exarkos.

"No. I concede, Astereos. If you don't mind, let's play another day."

The priest got up and brought two goblets and a bottle of white wine. "We will talk then," he said, filling the glasses. He held up the bottle. "This wine is from the vineyards of Agrinion, where I lived when I was a boy."

"Will you go back there, Astereos, if we have to go?"

The priest shrugged, smiling. "I will go where I am sent," he said. "It does not matter. I was a city man, Laszlo, like yourself. All wildernesses will be the same to me."

They looked at each other. At length the priest sighed. "Well," he said, "let us say what we are thinking. How much damage do you think the activists will be able to do before they are stopped?"

"I only wish I knew," said Cudyk slowly. "They can't have much armament—only a few ships from the Earth Navy, rebuilt to take galactic fuels, probably. Perhaps they have stolen some galactic ships, but those would not be armed. And I don't know how much ammunition they could have for the cannon in the military ships; I think not much. I give them credit for knowing where to use it where it will do the most harm—to disrupt communications, for example, or to destroy manufacturing centers on which many planets depend. But the galaxy is too big for them. They're ridiculous, in a way. They would not last a week against a fighting force of any size."

"You think that they have developed some defense against the stasis field?"

"They've had twenty years," said Cudyk grimly. "And that is the only weapon—if you can call it a weapon—that the galaxy has. What I am most afraid of is that they have developed more weapons of their own—a workable total-conversion bomb, for example."

"Well"—the priest spread his hands—"perhaps nothing will happen. At any rate, we can do nothing but wait." He smiled. "Do you know, I have often had the heretical thought that if only the other races of the galaxy had been as warlike as ourselves, all would have been well. They conquered space long before we did. By the time we entered upon the scene, the worst of the wars between planets would have been over. Doubtless they would have achieved an order of some kind, even if it were only an armed truce. And they would have looked at us pityingly, and said, 'Mind your manners, little Earthmen, if you do not want to have your breeches warmed.' And we would have minded our manners."

Cudyk smiled and shook his head. "Can you imagine twentieth-century Europe, expanded to the size of the galaxy?"

"Oh," said the priest, gesturing widely, "it would have been very dreadful, of course. One would hear daily of some planet that had been blown up as the result of losing a quarrel. But it would have been no worse, for us, than the world we were accustomed to. And above all, we would not have had to bear all the guilt."

His eyes were narrowed with enjoyment. "But," he said, "it is a heretical thought. I make many penances for it."

Cudyk laughed.

"Ah, good," said Exarkos. "You have forgotten to be gloomy. When you are gloomy, you know that talking accomplishes nothing, but this knowledge only makes you gloomier. When you are able to laugh, you realize that the futility of discussion is the reason why it can be enjoyed. If it were otherwise, there would be no pleasure in it."

Cudyk laughed again, relaxing in his chair. "All right, Father Christmas," he said, "I will stop croaking of disaster. But let me hear you make light conversation on the subject of Rack."

"Rack," said Exarkos promptly, "is an amateur. The amateur, my friend, has been the curse of our people from the beginning of time. I do not mean simply the apprentice, who has not yet learned his trade. Unfortunately there are people who are amateurs by nature, and these people never become professionals even if they have seventy years' of experience. I will give you an example."

He pointed a forefinger at Cudyk. "In writing," he said impressively, "you begin as a small boy. You read some author's works, you are struck with admiration, you are overwhelmed; you say to yourself, this is what I will do with my life. You write. It is bad, but you do not realize this. You continue writing, you learn a little—but still it is bad. Now you begin to doubt, but still you write. Then comes the turning point.

"Suddenly you discover that you have learned enough to see behind the things which so fascinated you in the works of others. With this knowledge, you write again—and now, perhaps, the work is not great, but it is not hopeless. At the same time, your attitudes have changed. You have become the least bit cynical. You work consciously for effects; you criticize yourself as you write. And you read the works which first inspired you, and think to yourself, 'Well, but after all, I was very young then!' This means, my friend, that you have become a professional.

"This has happened to you; but there are others to whom it will never happen. There are writers who never will recover from the awe they felt for their first idols. There are revolutionaries who never will cease to feel the pure, uncritical emotions of their first conversion to the Cause. There are priests who never will progress a step beyond their first investiture. These are bad writers, bad revolutionaries, and bad priests. I believe, truly, that nine tenths of the evil of the world can be traced to them and those like them; for professionals are rare. Amateur statesmen, amateur generals, amateur psychologists, amateur economists—can you picture the confusion they have spread?"

"Bravo," said Cudyk.

"You like it?" the priest asked, pouring more wine. "I have been saving it for someone who would come and tell me that Rack is dangerous because he is a professional soldier; but no one had felt the need to tell me this, so I give you the theory free of charge."

Cudyk rose to go a few minutes later, when one of Exarkos' congregation knocked on the door. He nodded and spoke to the man as he left: it was Speros Moulios, hat in hand, eyes frightened and humble in the little gray face. Both his sons had elected to go to Rack's New Earth when the cruiser had called, but Moulios himself had been too timid to leave; and now, without doubt, he was afraid to stay where he was.

Exarkos would soothe him, quiet his nerves, perhaps make him laugh—just as he had done for Cudyk. It was little enough to do, perhaps—soothing-syrup for the dead-alive— but Cudyk was profoundly grateful that there was someone in the Quarter who was able to do it.

We have very little left, he thought, except one or two minor virtues that have no bloodstains on them. Kindliness, humor, a sense of brotherhood—perhaps if we had stuck to those, and never learned the martial virtues, never aspired to be noble or glorious, we would have come out all right. Was there ever a turning point? When Carthage was sown with salt, or when Paul founded the Church—or when the first caveman sharpened the end of a stick and used it for murder? If so, it was a long way back, dead and buried, dust and ashes.

We took all that was best in three thousand years of yearning and striving for the right, he thought, and we made it into the Inquisition and the Star Chamber and the NKVD. We fattened our own children for each generation's slaughter. And yet we are not all evil. Astereos is right: if the other races had been like ourselves, it would have been bearable. Or if we ourselves had been creatures of pure darkness, conscienceless, glorying in cruelty—then we could have made war on the galaxy joyfully, and if we failed at least there would have been an element of grandeur in our failure.

Olaf Stapledon had said this once, he remembered—that there was an artistry in pure, uncontaminated evil, that it was in its own way as real an expression of worship as pure good.

The tragedy of human beings was that they were not wholly tragic. Jumbled, piebald parcels of contradictions, angels with asses' ears… What was that quotation from Bierce? The best thing is not to be born…

Someone brushed by him, and Cudyk looked up. He was at the intersection of Kwang-Chowfu and Washington, three blocks from Exarkos' apartment.

Chong Yin's was only a few doors to his left; perhaps he had been heading there automatically. But the doors were closed, he saw. Seven or eight Chinese were standing in the street outside, and as Cudyk watched, Seu Min came down the stairs from the living quarters over the tea room. The other Chinese clustered around him for a moment, and then Seu appeared again. The others slowly began to disperse.

Cudyk went to meet him. The mayor's face looked strained; there were new, deep folds of skin around his eyes. "What is it, Min?" said Cudyk.

Seu fell in beside him and they walked back up the street. "Chong killed himself about an hour ago," said the Chinese.

How many does that make? Cudyk thought, frozen. Six, I think, in the last two months.

He had not known Chong well; the old man had been a north-country Chinese, not at all Westernized, who spoke only his own language. Now that he thought of it, Cudyk realized that he did not know who Chong's close friends had been, if he had had any. He had always been the same spare, stooped figure in skullcap and robe, courteous, unobtrusive, self-contained. He had a family: a wife, rarely seen, and six children.

"Have you some whisky?" asked Seu abruptly.

"Yes, of course."

"Let us go and drink it," Seu said. "I'm very tired."

It occurred to Cudyk that he had never heard Seu say that before. They turned the corner at Athenai and climbed the stairs to his apartment. Seu sighed, and dropped heavily into a chair while Cudyk went to get the bottle and glasses.

"Straight or with water?" he asked.

"Straight, please." Seu tilted his glass, swallowed and shuddered. Cudyk watched him in silence.

For the first time in more than an hour, Cudyk remembered his meeting with Zydh Oran, and the commissioner's coldness. Now, looking at Seu's tired face, he knew that he was going to hear something unpleasant.

Seu was the only one in the Quarter who owned a Niori communicator: an elaborate mechanism which reproduced sound, vision in three dimensions, odors, modulated temperature changes, and several other things perceptible only to Niori. There was no restriction on their sale, and they were cheap enough, but the Niori broadcasts were as dull or as incomprehensible to men as a Terrestrial breakfast program would have been to the Niori. Seu used his as a source of galactic news. Today, Cudyk guessed, the news had been very bad.

"It's Rack, isn't it?" he said finally.

Seu glanced at him and nodded. "Yes, it's Rack. I haven't told anyone else about it yet. The Quarter's in a half-hysterical state as it is. But if you don't mind my talking it out to you..."

"Go ahead," said Cudyk.

"It's worse than anything we expected." Seu took another swallow of the whisky, and made a face. He said, "They've got a total-conversion bomb."

"I was afraid of that."

Seu went on as if he had not heard. "But they're not using it on planets. They're bombing suns, Laszlo."

For a moment, Cudyk did not understand; then he felt his abdominal muscles contract like a fist. "They couldn't," he said hoarsely. "It would explode before it got past the outer layers."

"Under faster-than-light drive?" Seu asked. "I did some figuring. At one thousand C, it would take the bomb about two point six thousandths of a second to travel from the surface to the center of an average G-class star. I think that is a short enough interval, but maybe it isn't. Maybe they have also found some way to increase the efficiency of the standard galactic drive for short periods. Anyway, does it matter?" He looked at Cudyk again. "I have seen the pictures. I saw it happen."

Cudyk's throat was dry. "Which stars?" he said.

"Torkas. Rud-Uri. That's the Oladi sun. And Gerzion. Those three, so far."

Cudyk's fingers were nervously caressing the smooth metal of his wrist watch. He looked down at it suddenly, remembering that the Oladsa had made it. And now they were gone, all but their colonies and travelers on other worlds, and those who had been in space at the time. All those spidery, meticulous people, with their million-year-old culture and their cities of carved opal: wiped out as a man would swat a fly.

Seu took another drink. His face flushed, and drops of sweat stood out on his forehead and cheeks.

He said, "They'll have to learn to kill now. There isn't any alternative. They intercepted one of the New Earth ships and sprayed it with the stasis field. It didn't work; the ship got away. They'll have to learn to kill—do you know what that means?"

"Yes."

Seu drank again. His face was fiery red now, and he was gasping for breath. "I can't get drunk," he said bitterly. "Toxic reaction. I thought I'd try once more, but it's no good. Laszlo, look out, I'm going to be sick."

Cudyk led him to the lavatory. When he came out, the Chinese was weak and waxen-pale. Cudyk tried to persuade him to rest on the bed, but he refused. "I've got to get back to my office," he said. "Been gone too long already. Help me down the stairs, will you, Laszlo?"

Cudyk walked him as far as Brasil and Washington, where two of Seu's young men took over with voluble expressions of gratitude. Cudyk watched the group until it disappeared into Town Hall, and then turned back.

He could feel nothing but an arid depression. Even the horror at Rack's mass-murders, even his pity for Seu was blunted, sealed off at the back of his mind. The lives of saints, Cudyk remembered, spoke of "boundless compassion" and "infinite pity": but an ordinary man had a limited supply. When it was used up, you were empty and impotent, a canceled sign in the human equation.

Half instinctively, half by choice, Cudyk had chosen his friends among the strongest and most patient, the wise and cynical: the survivors. But he had leaned too much on their strength, he realized now. He had seen Seu crumble; and he felt as if a crutch had broken under his weight.

Someone called his name. He turned to see Kathy Burgess walking toward him. She looked incongruously fresh and happy, and it took Cudyk a long moment to recall that she did not know about the exploded suns; that no one in the Quarter knew except himself and Seu.

"You are in good spirits today," he said, trying not to sound lugubrious.

She smiled. "Yes. I have a wonderful new job, Mr. Cudyk. I'm helping a Niori—his name is Sef Eshon.""

"Helping a Niori," Cudyk repeated. "What does he do?"

"Well…" Her smile became a trifle uncertain. "He's a psychologist. I'm really only a guinea pig, I guess, but he says I'm an excellent subject. He asks me questions, and I answer them as well as I can, you know, and then he puts me into a kind of a reverie state and asks more questions. He uses the same thing they have at the hospital—it's a Niori drug like sodium pentothal, but better. He's a wonderful person, Mr. Cudyk."

Cudyk asked, "How does your father feel about this?"

She frowned. "I haven't told him yet. I only got the job this morning. I had a notice put up in their medical hive, and early this morning a note came from Eshon. I didn't tell Father about it then, because of course I wasn't sure I'd get the job." She hesitated. "He won't like it, I know. But you can't imagine what it means to me to have this job, Mr. Cudyk. It gives me such a wonderful feeling to be useful, and at the same time to be free—to have some place to go outside the Quarter."

"Yes," said Cudyk. "That is something I think all of us would like to have."

He left her at her door and walked home, wondering why he was so sure that Kathy would not, this time, submit to her father. She had given up De Grasse at his order; why should she refuse to give up a job? Perhaps because marriage might have brought her happiness?

That evening he opened his shutters and looked out at the sky. The familiar constellations were there, unchanged: the light of the nearest star took more than three years to reach Palu. But in his mind's eye one glittering pinpoint exploded suddenly into a dreadful blossom of radiance; then another; then a third. And he saw the blackened corpses of planets swinging around each, murdered by that single flash of incredible heat.

During the night he dreamed of a black wasteland, and of Rack standing motionless in the center of it, brooding, with his cold gray face turned to the stars.

It was Cudyk's birthday. He had never told anyone in the Quarter the date, and had all but forgotten it himself. This morning, feeling an idle desire to know what the season was on Earth, he had hunted up a calendar he had last used fifteen years ago; it translated the Niori system into Gregorian years, months and days. The result, when he had worked it out with some little trouble, was February 18th. He was fifty-six.

Now he was constrained to wonder whether the action had been as random as it seemed. Was it possible that subconsciously he had no need of the calendar? That he had kept track, all these years, and had known when his birthday came? If so, why had he felt it necessary to remind himself in this oblique way?

A return to the womb? A hunger for the comforts of the family circle— the birthday cake, candles, the solace of yearly repetition? Perhaps that was it. Cudyk, smiling a little, thought of the cycle of seasons, the long slow rhythm that was soothing at first, before the fact that you were going to die became in the least credible. Later, to most men, it was frightening, like the measured sweep of Poe's scimitar-bladed pendulum: each stroke shearing away a little of life. Still, even when you cursed the sweating silent heat of one season and the bitter chill of another, the rhythm was a part of you.

Cudyk was fifty-six. When he had been fifty-five, he had thought of himself as a man in his middle years, still strong, still able. Now he was old.

The same thing had happened to Seu: he had recovered from his first shock when the news had come about Rack, and for more than three weeks now he had moved about the Quarter, as quiet and as competent as before; but there was a difference. His swift, furtive humor was gone except for rare flashes; his voice and his step were heavy.

It was the same with all of them, all the old settlers. Cudyk had met Burgess on the street the day before, for the first time in several weeks, and had been genuinely shocked. The man's hair was white, his skin papery, his gait stumbling.

Even Exarkos showed the change. More and more of his gray, woolly hair was vanishing. The umber crescents under his eyes were a deeper shade, almost black.

Watching him now, as he sat listening to Seu, Cudyk told himself that the priest was the strongest of them all, and the hardest to fathom. Strain was written in his face, but his eyes gazed through that wrinkled, clever mask as serenely as ever. There was a deep inner quietness in Exarkos that was the antithesis of Kathy Burgess': it was the pregnancy of life, not death.

Cudyk remembered what the priest had said on that evening, long ago, when Flynn had asked him about his beliefs. We are like sterile mutants—we carry the seeds of greater fulfillment within us, but they will die with our bodies. For himself, at least, Exarkos had spoken the simple truth.

In other times, Cudyk thought, this man might have flowered into greatness. As it is, he was born too late; the seed he carries will never grow; he will go down into darkness like the rest of us. And I believe he knows this, all of it. But there is no self-pity in him. Here is a man with every excuse to make himself a tragic figure; and yet he is a man at one with himself.

Seu was saying, "These problems have to be considered, but it would be simply asking for more trouble if I took them to a full Council meeting at this point. There would be five hours of argument, probably finishing with a free-for-all, and in the end nothing would be done." He raised his hand slightly and set it down again, flat on the tabletop. "Perhaps that would be the best thing. I admit that I am unable to decide. I want you to help me."

The three of them were sitting in the assembly room at Town Hall. In one corner the speaker's stand was leaning against the wall, its base splintered; the last full meeting, two weeks ago, had ended in a brawl, and the damage had not yet been repaired. When the news about the war in the galaxy had leaked, as it was bound to do, the first reaction had been a stunned apathy; later it had turned to something dangerously close to hysteria. Tempers were short in the Quarter, moods unpredictable. There had been several stabbings in the Russian section, and half a dozen more suicides. And the bombings had continued: by now more than thirty suns had blazed into terrible brightness.

The mayor said wearily, "I don't think there is any doubt that if we do nothing to stop it, there is going to be a change in the Niori policy towards us. It was bad enough when our only offenses were crimes committed inside the Quarter, and in similar ghettos on other planets. Now it isn't just a few people like Zydh Oran, who are directly concerned with us and have to notice how disgusting we are, that we have to reckon with: every Niori on the planet is thinking about us now, and changing his ideas, if he had any.

"As I see it, there's only one thing we can do—reverse our own policy completely. Confess that there have been murders here in the Quarter, that we've harbored activists, and that we've lied about it—and explain our reasons as well as we can. After that, throw ourselves on their mercy; volunteer to fight against Rack—anything. The question is, simply, will that do us more good than harm?"

He looked at them in turn. "I don't think any of us would claim to understand the Niori completely, but perhaps one of you has some insight that has been denied to me. What do you think?"

"Very risky," said Exarkos after a moment."We are dealing here with a people who do not understand what it is to sin. Now we are forcing them to understand it. I am afraid I do not believe that they would regard this confession as an evidence of repentance—because, you see, repentance cannot exist without sin. I do not think that they understand what repentance is. I think that, being forced by our statement to believe that we lie, they would most probably conclude that the statement itself is also a lie. What they would then do, I cannot guess. This is for them a completely new situation, without precedent. But what do you say, Laszlo?"

Cudyk said slowly, "I agree with you, but I think Seu's plan might be worth trying nevertheless. I myself believe that we are going to be expelled, no matter what we do. I have no hope for the Quarter. But I think it would be as well to try whatever we can."

As he finished speaking, someone shouted, outside in the street. A door slammed in the hall, and they heard running footsteps on the stairs.

Seu stood up and started toward the windows. Before he got there, the door opened and Lee Far thrust his head inside. "Is Miss Burgess!" he said. "She walk down street with no clothes!"

Seu paused in mid-stride, half-turned, then went on and opened the nearest window. Cudyk and the priest followed him.

Two stories below, ivory in the warm sunlight, the slender figure walked down the middle of the street. She had already passed Town Hall, heading toward Rossiya Street and the Russian sector. She was walking slowly, arms swinging freely, looking to neither side.

A small crowd had collected behind her, and two half-grown boys were capering at her side, talking to her, reaching out to touch her. Three of Seu's young men were spaced along the sidewalk below, looking up at the windows, waiting for orders.

Seu called, "Miss Burgess!"

She did not turn or pause.

The mayor said, "Laszlo, you'd better get her." As Cudyk headed for the doorway, he heard Seu calling down to the waiting men, "Get one of the doctors, quickly!"

Cudyk hurtled down the stairs and out into the bright sunlight. Kathy had nearly reached the end of the block. The Crowd was growing. As Cudyk came up to her, he saw that her lips were compressed and her face flushed with anger, although she was still staring straight ahead.

Her body was immature: slender, almost boyish hips and thighs, breasts no larger than a man's fists. Her skin was clear and silkily soft, like a child's. Virginal, Cudyk thought, remembering that the word had once been a synonym for "seductive." He stepped in front of her and took her arm. "Please come with me, Kathy," he said.

She stepped back with a swift, lithe motion, slipping her arm free. "But why won't you leave me alone?" she said.

She was staring at him, he saw, but her eyes did not quite seem to focus on him. They were glassy, the pupils so large that he could not see her irises.

Cudyk stepped toward her again, but one of the two boys moved into his way. He saw now that it was Red Gorciak, the wine merchant's son: not more than sixteen, but as tall as Cudyk and nearly as broad. The youngster's face was flushed, lips swollen, ears bright pink. He said breathily, "Sure, leave her alone, Mr. Cudyk. She don't want you to bother her."

Cudyk said, "Don't interfere, Red," and moved forward. Gorciak danced away from him, keeping between Cudyk and the girl, and said over his shoulder, "Get her, Stan!"

The other one, then, was Stanley Eleftheris. Naturally. Cudyk put his weight on the balls of his feet, brushed aside Gorciak's warding arm, and swung his fist to the youngster's jaw. Gorciak went sprawling down. He did not get up.

Eleftheris was standing just beyond Gorciak, two steps from Kathy: a loose-limbed boy with oversized nose and ears, and a pale adolescent beard on his pimpled cheeks. He looked from Gorciak to Cudyk, his mouth hanging open. When Cudyk stepped toward him he moved hurriedly away. "I didn't do nothing! What you want to hit me for?"

The crowd had gathered in a semicircle around them now: a few Russians and Poles, several Greeks, one or two Chinese. The situation had the making of a full-scale riot, Cudyk knew, but he had had no choice but to knock Gorciak down; otherwise the amorous pair would have been on his back as soon as he tried to lead Kathy away. Even now, there might be trouble. He said carefully, "This girl is sick. One or two of you help me to get her upstairs, but be careful not to hurt her."

Kathy said violently, "I'm not sick! I'm all right. Why don't you all let me alone?"

Cudyk stepped cautiously forward, seized her right arm and elbow. There was a furious strength in her slender body; Cudyk had all he could do to keep his grip without injuring her, and meanwhile she was raining a flurry of blows on his face and chest, kicking at his legs, kneeing him, doing her best to bite. This lasted perhaps six seconds, and then the blows stopped. One of the Greeks, a strongly-built, middle-aged man, had stepped forward and gripped her other arm.

Kathy stood trembling between them, tears running down her cheeks. She called piteously, "Won't somebody help me? Oh! Why are you doing this?" She screamed piercingly and began to struggle again, back arched and head thrown back, writhing as if in agony.

The crowd parted and Moskowitz came through, breathing heavily. He set his bag down on the pavement, opened it and took out the squat tube of a pressure hypodermic. He put the tube's blunt end against Kathy's left shoulder and pressed the trigger. In a few moments her taut body relaxed; she would have fallen if Cudyk and the other man had not held her up.

The two hospital attendants came forward with a stretcher and they put her into it. She lay breathing quietly, lips half-parted, arms crossed limply over her body. Damp strands of hair lay across her closed eyes.

The hospital was a narrow three-story building on Brasil Street, almost exactly in the center of the Quarter: morgue in the basement, then receiving rooms, clinic and surgery, and wards on the top floor. The place had a smell that was not like the smell of any hospital Cudyk had known on Earth. There were a few familiar elements in it, but they were smothered by the alien odors: the galactic drugs and antiseptics which filled the gaps in the human pharmacopoeia.

Moskowitz sat behind a tiny desk cluttered with unfiled forms and charts, and more than half covered by a rack of labeled bottles. He was obviously weary. His eyes were alert and steady, but the dry skin of the lids was taut and discolored around them.

He said, "As I get it, then, she just came home from work, took off all her clothes as soon as she crossed the line, and walked straight down Washington."

"That's right," Seu said. "We found her clothing at the foot of Washington Avenue. She didn't talk to anyone, as far as I can discover—just walked straight ahead, taking her time. According to Laszlo, she seemed outraged when he stopped her."

"Yes," said Moskowitz. He picked up one end of a pencil and let it drop. "It would help if we could find out what set her off. How did you make out when you tried to locate this Niori she was working for?"

"No one remembers his name, unfortunately."

"Sef something," Cudyk put in. "She told me last month, when she first got the job, but that is all I can remember."

"I sent word to Zydh Oran, however," said Seu. "I think he will find the Niori."

Moskowitz raised one eyebrow. "That's against policy, isn't it?"

Seu shrugged. "I don't think we need to worry about the Niori finding out that one of us is insane. I only wish we could have found some way of concealing the fact that we're all mad."

Moskowitz grinned wryly and nodded. "True for you, Mr. Seu. I don't know how seriously you meant that, but I'll tell you one thing: the reason we never got any farther than we did with the treatment of psychoses back home, is that we never had a single mind we could point to and say, 'That's sanity. That's what we want to produce.' We were like a bunch of fellows tinkering with a garageful of beat-up Fords, trying to turn out a brand-new Cadillac. It can't be done. The best we can get is something that runs, and that's about all you can say for it. And we don't always get that."

Cudyk asked curiously, "Have you learned anything from Niori psychiatry, Arnold?"

Moskowitz shook his head sadly. "Not a thing. It doesn't exist. The galactic races just don't ever jump their trolleys. Well, I'm exaggerating; it happens once in a long while. Once or twice in a century, maybe. When it does happen, it knocks them over. They don't know what it is or what to do about it."

"So we have too many madmen, and they have too few," Cudyk commented.

"Sure. It makes sense. There are human diseases that have never been licked because there aren't enough cases on the books. To find a cure for galloping consumption of the toe-nails, you'd want to have a few consumptive toenails to study. If you can't get 'em, you're out of luck. But if everybody's got the same disease, and you don't even know what the disease is, just that something's fishy somewhere—you're really licked then. All you can do is keep pushing buttons to see what happens—pure empiricism. That's what we do. Sometimes it works, after a fashion."

"I gather then," said Seu, "that you can't make any forecasts about Miss Burgess' recovery."

Moskowitz shook his head. "Not unless I get a dream about it tonight, or cast a horoscope or something. I'll push as many buttons as I know how, but it's really up to her. She may snap out of it in a month, or it might take five years, or she may never come but of it."

He added, "I won't tell Burgess that, of course. He's in bad shape, himself. Has he got someone to look after him, by the way?"

"I left one of my assistants with him," said Seu. "He is very disturbed. He wants to be with his daughter, and I am very much afraid he'll get his wish."

Cudyk stood up. "I'll look in on him before I go home," he said. "If you're through with us, Arnold?"

Before Moskowitz could reply, the door opened. Cudyk, turning saw two Niori enter the room. One he recognized by the distinctive markings on the flat armor of the head; it was Zydh Oran. The other was a stranger to him.

Oran greeted them formally, in his own language and said, "This person is Sef Eshon, the scientist. Sef Eshon, I introduce to you Mr. Cudyk, Dr. Moskowitz, and Mayor Seu."

After greetings had been exchanged, Moskowitz said in Niori, "You are the person who employed Kathy Burgess?"

"I am that one. I was told that she has been taken ill. I have come to give what help I can. I hope that the illness is not virulent."

"The illness is of the mind," Moskowitz told him.

The Niori emitted the harsh grating noise that signified astonishment. "In this case I can give no help. She was not deranged, to my perception, when she left me."

He passed a many-jointed "hand" over the gleaming translucency of his crest—a motion so like that of a bald man nervously caressing his pate that Cudyk was taken by a curious mingling of amusement and despair. If it were only true that they were that nearly human—if they could be laughed at!

Moskowitz asked, "Scientist Eshon, did she undergo any unusual emotional strain during her last session with you?" The question was hard to put into Niori; he stumbled over it several times.

Sef Eshon did not seem to understand. Moskowitz tried again, with a different phrasing. Finally the Niori scientist said, "I am not sure I have your meaning, Dr. Moskowitz. She felt emotion toward me, but surely this is not harmful to your race?"

The lines of Moskowitz' face tightened. He said haltingly, "Sometimes when one emotion conflicts with another—or when the. emotion is one which by its nature cannot achieve its object—emotions can be a factor in precipitating mental illness."

Sef Eshon hesitated, turned and exchanged a few words of rapid Niori with Zydh Oran. Cudyk understood them to say, "Do you understand this?" and "Little, if any, more than yourself."

The scientist turned back to Moskowitz. "The emotions Kathy Burgess felt for me were respect, admiration, and love. In my understanding, these emotions do not have what you call an object, they are self-sufficient."

Moskowitz asked. "Did she express these emotions in words, at your last meeting?"

"She did."

"Can you recall the words she used?"

The Niori thought for a moment: then, mimicking Kathy's high, clear voice almost perfectly, he said in English, " 'You are so wonderful. I never knew anyone like you. I think I love you, Sef Eshon.' " In his own voice he added, "She said these words in her language, and then translated." He repeated the sentences in Niori.

Moskowitz glanced sidelong at Seu and Cudyk. He said cautiously, "Thank you. You have been very helpful, Sef Eshon."

The scientist said, "She then stroked my upper left hand with her fingers. I am trying to recall any detail which may be helpful, although I still do not understand what you say about the 'object' of an emotion."

"It is difficult to explain—" began Moskowitz, glancing again at the other two.

Seu said to the Niori, "Perhaps I can make it clear. I will try. With us, the word 'love' applies not only to the objectless affection any person may feel for another, but especially to the strong emotion felt by one person toward another with whom he wishes to mate. It is evident, from the words and the tone in which Kathy spoke to you, that this was the 'love' she meant. She has twice been disappointed in her choice of mates among us; apparently she turned to you in despair at achieving a normal relationship. But at the same time she knew perfectly well that union with one of another race was impossible, and the conflict of emotion with reality, as Dr. Moskowitz said, made her insane."

The two Niori stood perfectly still, not speaking, for what seemed to Cudyk almost a full minute. Then Sef Eshon said formally, "I am glad to have been of help. Contentment to you all." He turned to go.

Zydh Oran lingered to say to Seu, "It would please me to speak with you later, in private."

"I will come to your office in half an hour," said Seu.

"You are kind. Contentment to you." He followed the other Niori out.

"You shocked them," said Moskowitz after a moment. "You should have let me cover up."

"We've been covering up for more than twenty years," Seu said wearily. "I don't think we can do any more harm now by telling the truth."

VII

The Quarter's graveyard was an acre of ground, surrounded by trees, on the outskirts of the City; there the dead reclined in a more ample space then the living enjoyed. The Niori had allotted the ground, though the outline of the City was thereby disfigured, and had contributed slabs of a synthetic stone which carved easily when it was fresh, later hardening until it would resist any edged tool. The plot was ill tended, but the standing stones, translucent pearl or rose, had a certain beauty. To the Niori, the purpose of the graveyard was only that; they were not equipped to understand mankind's morbid attachment to its own carrion.

Cudyk had gone to Burgess' funeral, presided over by Kellin, the falsely hearty Protestant pastor; and the image of those ranked headstones, neatly separated into the Orthodox, the Protestants, the Buddhists, the Taoists and the unbelievers, had returned to him many times since. It was another sign of the change that was taking place in him: the images which formerly had dominated his mind had been pictographs of abstractions—the great globe of infinity, the tiny spark that was creative intellect; now they were the pale headstone and the dark curtain of death.

He had felt nothing, standing over Burgess' grave and watching the sod fall. What is there to say about a man when he is dead? The pastor's words were false, as all such words are false; they had no relevance; the man was dead. Nothing was left of him now but the dissolving molecules of his flesh, and the fragmentary, ego-distorted memories he had planted in the minds of others. He was a name written in water.

It was not Burgess who obsessed Cudyk, nor the many other half-remembered men and women whose names were clumsily carved on those stones. It was the cemetery as a symbol: the fascination of the yawning void.

When he looked at the stars now, they sparkled with the cold brilliance of death, and he could feel the icy stillness of the waste between them.

Always a man turned his face toward some dimly-felt goal, whether it were the sun-image, the suspected, yearned-for warmth of childhood and adolescence, or the bright, steely purity with the resounding name that replaced it in early manhood—the Socialist World State, the Rule of Reason, the Kingdom of God—or the immense nothingness, the sheer overpowering weight of transcience and unreason, that bowed a man's head and drew him into darkness when he was old.

Cudyk thought of all the words, the billions of words that had seemed so important at the time they were spoken. It was possible to live by words, to live so blinded that nothing existed beyond words; and to weave them tirelessly into bright, intricate structures that always collapsed and always were replaced by others. Only at the end, when you were close to that dark curtain, did their hypnotic hum fade from your ears—and then the stillness!

The majesty of that silence struck you dumb; you saw the universe as it had been before your first groping speech, in the forgotten time before words; and you felt that never once, in all the years between, had you seen the truth. But the truth was not to be borne, and the squeaking little phrase-maker, the cricket of the skull, once more began to spin its vulgar thread into the silence.

Cudyk had one other preoccupation: he thought often of Earth, seeing it as a dark globe turning, black continents dim against the gray ocean, pricked by a few faint gleams that were cities. Or, if he thought of the cities, he saw them drowned in shadow: the shapes of tower and arch melting into night-patterns; moonlight falling faintly, dissolving what it touched, so that shadows became as solid stone, stone as insubstantial mist.

For Earth, also, was a symbol of death.

There had been no more suicides since Burgess had poisoned himself, no riots. It seemed to Cudyk that the whole Quarter moved, like himself, through a fluid heavier than air. All motion had slowed, and sounds came muted and without resonance. People spoke to him, and he answered, but without attention, as if they were not really there.

Even the news about Rack's defeat had stirred him only momentarily, and he had seen in Seu's face that the Chinese felt himself somehow inadequate to the tale even as he told it. The galactic fleet, vastly expanded, had met the activist forces with a new weapon—one, indeed, which did not kill, but which was shameful enough to a citizen of the galaxy. The weapon projected a field which scrambled the synapse patterns in the brain, leaving its victim incapable of any of the processes of coherent thought: incapable of adding two figures, of lighting a cigarette, or of aiming a torpedo. Eleven New Earth ships had been captured, and it was thought that these were all the activists' armed vessels; there had been no further attacks since then.

He did not believe that anything which could now possibly happen could rouse him from his apathy. But he had forgotten one possibility. Seu came to him in Chong Yin's, where Yin's eldest son Fu now moved in his father's place and said, "Rack wasn't taken. He's here."

Cudyk sat with his teacup raised halfway between the table and his lips. After a long moment, he saw that his hand was trembling violently. He set the cup down. He said, "Where?"

"The Little Bear. Half the town has gone there already. Do you want to go?"

Cudyk stood up slowly. "Yes," he said, "I suppose so." But he felt the tension that pulled his body together, the tautened muscles in back and shoulders and arms.

As they reached the corner of Ceskoslovensko and Washington, they saw scattered groups of men moving ahead of them, all hurrying, some frankly running. The crowd was thick around the doorway of The Little Bear when they reached it, and they had difficulty forcing a passage. Men moved aside for Seu willingly enough, but there was little space to move.

Inside, it was worse. The stairway was solidly packed; it was obviously impossible to get through.

"There is a back staircase," Seu said. He worked his way toward the rear of the room, Cudyk following, until he caught sight of the bartender. The press was not so thick here, and he was able to reach the man and lead him into a corner away from the others. "Can you get us up the back way?"

The Russian nodded, scowled, and put his finger to his lips. Following him, they went through the swinging doors at the back of the room, through the dark kitchen and up the narrow service stairs at the rear. The bartender unlocked the door at the top and helped them force it open against the pressure of the packed bodies inside.

The long room was heavy with the odors of sweat, tobacco smoke and stale air. Faces shone greasily under the yellow glare of the ceiling lights. The only clear space was the table top against the wall to Cudyk's right, where Rack stood.

Cudyk could see him clearly over the heads of those in front of him. He stood with legs planted firmly, hands at his sides. As always, the leather jacket was draped over his shoulders like a cloak.

He was alone. Spanner was not there, nor Biff, nor Tom De Grasse.

Rack was talking in a low, clear voice. Cudyk listened to the end of a sentence which conveyed nothing to him, and then heard: "After that, we got it. They gave it to us." Rack's hands clenched once, and then opened again.

"They intercepted us three minutes after we came out of overdrive in the orbit of New Earth. Twelve fighting ships, the whole fleet. We were in a line, just closing in after we broke C on the way down— the Thermopolae, the Tours, the Waterloo, the Chateau Thierry, the Dunkirk, the Leningrad, the Acre, the Valley Forge, the Hiroshima, the San Francisco, the Seoul, and the flagship last, the Armageddon.

"We didn't know they were there; they were out of our detector range. They had us like sitting ducks. The first thing we knew about it was when a teletype report from the leading ship, the Thermopolae, broke off in the middle of a word. Five seconds later the same thing happened to a report coming in from the next ship. Three seconds more, and the Waterloo was gone.

"I gave the order to reverse acceleration and scatter. But the field—whatever it was—came after us. It would have taken us at least two minutes to build up the overdrive potential again, and we all knew we wouldn't make it. They were getting us one ship every six or eight seconds.

"The men were looking to me for orders. I didn't have any to give them. Suddenly De Grasse turned around and looked at Biff and Spanner, and they all nodded. They jumped me. I don't know what happened. I struck my head against the deck when I went down, or one of them hit me with a gun-butt."

His fists clenched and opened once more. "When I came to, I was strapped into a one-man lifeboat, on overdrive, doing ten C's. They must have emptied the ship's accumulators into that lifeboat, charged it up to C potential and got me off just before the field hit them.

"I took my bearings, reversed, and went back. Eventually I found the fleet again. The galactics had matched courses and velocity with them and they were just beginning to tow them off, in the general direction of Altair.

"They hadn't got into overdrive yet. I slipped in—there were a hundred of their little scouts nosing around, about the same mass as my lifeboat—and berthed in the same port I'd come out of. I got out and walked into the control room.

"The crew was still there, still alive. But not men. They were lying on the deck, looking at nothing. Their mouths were open, and they were drooling."

Rack's head moved stiffly, and his sharp profile turned from one side of the crowd to the other. "Mindless idiots," he said. "They couldn't feed themselves, or stand up, or sit. But they had saved me.

"I built up the charge and took my time about it. When the galactics went into overdrive, I took off in another direction. I was a good seventy light-years away before they knew I was gone.

"I had a ship, an undamaged ship. But I had no crew to man her. I can astrogate and, when I have to, I can man the engines on top of that. But I can't fight her as well.

"I came here, put the Armageddon into a one-day orbit and came down in the lighter. I want to go back and find out what those slime-eaters did to us, and give them a taste of the same. I want twenty men." There was a silence.

Rack said, in the same even, low voice, "Will you fight for the human race?"

Someone called. "What did you do with your other crew?"

Rack said, "I gave them military burial, in space." For the first time, the crowd as a whole broke its silence. A low murmur rose. Rack said sharply, "I would have given my life for those men, as they did for me, gladly. But they were already dead. If there's a way to restore a man's mind after that has been done to it, only the vermin know how. I would rather be buried in space, and so would they."

A deep voice called, "Are you God, Rack?"

"I'm not God," he said promptly. "Are you a man?"

There was another murmur, dying as a pulsing movement began near the back of the room: someone was forcing his way toward Rack. In the stillness, another voice said thinly, "My Demetrios… my Alexander…" It was Moulios, wailing for his two lost sons.

Red-faced, with a lock of black hair hanging over his forehead, the painter Vekshin squeezed through to the edge of the table on which Rack stood. He shouted, "I'm a man, all right. What do you call yourself, you assassin? You come here with blood dripping from your jaws like a weasel fresh from a poultry yard, and we're supposed to feel sorry for you because they wouldn't let you go on killing! The great god Rack! Ptui!"

Rack did not move. He said quietly, "I killed your enemies, while you sat at home and drank tea."

"Enemies!" Vekshin roared. "You're the enemy, Rack." He put his big hands on the tabletop and heaved himself up. Rack let him come. He waited until the Russian was standing on the table; then he stepped forward with a motion so smooth it seemed casual. There was a flurry of blows, none of which landed except two: one in Vekshin's midriff, the other on the point of his jaw. Five men went down as Vekshin's body hurtled into them.

Rack stepped back. "I have very little patience left," he said, "but if there is anyone else here with a personal grudge, let him step up."

Two men at the table's edge moved as if to climb up. Rack put his hand to the gun at his belt. The two men stayed where they were.

Rack stared out over the crowd. He looked suddenly very weary; it occurred to Cudyk that he must have gone without sleep for a long time.

Rack said, "This is the last call. I am not trying to deceive you. I promise you nothing, not glory, not your lives, not even that you will be able to spend your lives usefully. But if there is any man here who will serve aboard the Armageddon, in the last fight for mankind—raise your hand!"

There was a long moment's silence. Rack turned abruptly, with his hand still on his gun, and said to the men in front of Cudyk, "Stand back!"

The silence held for an instant, while the men at the table's end moved uncertainly away; then sound broke like an avalanche. As Rack jumped down, the crowd surged toward him, no longer an audience but a mob. Cudyk felt the pressure at his back, caught a glimpse of Rack's face, then heard the deafening report of the gun as he went hurtling forward.

The gun did not fire again. Cudyk was squeezed tightly in the center of the struggling mass. He saw Seu, a few feet away. The mayor's mouth was open; he was shouting something, but the words were lost.

Suddenly Rack came into view again, charging straight toward Cudyk, hurling bodies to either side. The lower half of his face was a smear of blood; his cap and jacket were gone, his shirt torn half away.

Cudyk was half-aware of the constriction in his throat, the pounding of blood at his temples. He wrenched one arm free and, as Rack came near, struck him full in the face.

He had one more glimpse of Rack's white features, the pale eyes staring at him with a curiously detached expression: the eyes of a Caesar or a Christ, reproachful and sad. Then the crowd surged once more, the door to the back stairway slammed open, and Rack was gone.

Cudyk found himself running through the doorway with half a dozen others. He caught sight of Rack leaping down the stairs, just short of the landing where the narrow stairway doubled back on itself.

With a catch in his breath, feeling no surprise at what he was about to do, Cudyk put both hands on the railing and swung himself over into vacancy. Then there was an instant of wild, soaring flight, Rack's foreshortened body drifting beneath him, and the shock.

Dazed and numb, Cudyk felt the universe moving under him like a gigantic pendulum. He saw faces appear and vanish, felt someone push him aside, heard voices faintly.

After a long time his head cleared, and there was silence. He was lying at the foot of the stairs, one arm flung over the first step. Rack was not there; no one was there but himself.

He moved cautiously was rewarded by an astonishing number and variety of pains. But apparently he had broken no bones. He felt weak and hollow: he was afraid he might vomit. He hoisted his torso up slowly, sat on the lowest step and then put his head between his trembling knees.

He heard a foot scuff on the concrete floor, and looked up. It was Seu.

The Chinese looked at him anxiously. "You're all right?"

"Yes. I think so. I have felt better in my life."

"Do you want to get up? Did you jump or fall?"

Cudyk leaned forward, trying the strength of his thighs to raise him, and Seu put a hand under his arm to help. "I jumped," Cudyk said. "What happened afterward?"

"The mob came down, me in the middle, and I couldn't stop to see if you were all right. They took Rack with them. He was unconscious then; he may have been dead."

"And?"

They tore him apart," said Seu. "I have seen some bad ones in twenty years here, but nothing to match that. For half an hour, I think we were all insane."

They moved toward the exit from the kitchen, Seu holding Cudyk's arm firmly.

"I don't know if you felt this," the mayor said stiffly, "but the way it seemed to me was that Rack suddenly represented all of it—not only the bombings, but the Quarter, the galaxy, Earth—everything we hated. It was a feeling of release, a kind of ecstasy. Watch out for the sill."

"Scapegoat," Cudyk said, indistinctly.

"Yes… Zydh Oran saw it, you know. He was there when the mob came out. He saw it all. This finishes the Quarter, Laszlo. After this there won't be any more reprieves."

Cudyk glanced down at Seu's plump fingers. There was a thin film of blood on the skin, and a dark line of it around each fingernail.

Cudyk stood at the top of the gentle rise opposite the foot of Washington Avenue, and looked down at the Quarter. It was just after sunset, and the ranked street lights cast a lonesome gleam. The streets were empty. There was no one left in the Quarter except one man in the powerhouse. When the time was up, he would pull the switches on the master board and come out; then the Quarter would be dead.

The Niori edict had come on the Wednesday morning after Rack's death. They had been given four days to pack their belongings, arrange for assignment of cargo space, and wind up their several affairs. Cudyk's stock was small and his personal belongings few; he had been ready two days ago.

The evening breeze, freshening, pressed Cudyk's trousers against his calves and stirred the hair at the back of his head. Looking into the east, he saw a few pallid stars in the sky.

Several hundred people had already been collected by the aircars which served the spaceport. Cudyk, Seu, Exarkos and a few others, by unspoken assent, had taken places at the rear of the crowd, to be the last to go.

He glanced at Seu. The little man was standing with his hands in his pockets, shoulders slumped, staring dully at the Quarter. He looked up after a moment, smiled unhappily, and shrugged.

"It's absurd to feel homesick for it, isn't it?" he said. "It was a ghetto; we had no roots there. It was cramped, and it stank, and we fought among ourselves more viciously than we ever fought on Earth. But twenty years…"

"We could pretend that we had roots, at least," Cudyk answered. "We don't belong anywhere. Perhaps we'll be happier, in the long run, once we face that and accept it."

"I doubt it."

"So do I."

To Cudyk's right, Father Exarkos was sitting on his suitcase, hands relaxed on his thighs. Cudyk said, "If I were a believer, Astereos, I think it would do me a great deal of good to confess to you and be absolved."

The priest's dry, friendly voice said, "Why, have you sinned so terribly, Laszlo?"

"I killed a man," said Cudyk, "but that's not what I mean. I jumped over a stairway railing and stopped Rack. If it hadn't been for me, he might have got away. There would have been nothing wrong with that. He couldn't have done any more harm, one man by himself. The Guards would have captured him sooner or later, anyhow. And if he had gotten away, we wouldn't have given the Niori the one more straw they needed. In that sense, it is my fault that we were expelled."

"No, Laszlo," said Seu.

Exarkos said, "You have nothing for which to reproach yourself, on that score. You were only the instrument of history, my friend, and a minor instrument at that. And, speaking for myself, not for the Church, Rack deserved to die."

Cudyk thought, At least it was quite suitably ironic. Cudyk, the man of inaction, hurls himself through the air to kill a murderer. And the citizens of the Quarter are deported, not because one of their race murdered a billion billion galactics, but because that same man was killed by them.

That was one thin mark on the credit side. There was one more: the tension was gone, for some of them at least. Now the worst thing that could happen had happened; the Damocletian thread had snapped. The problems which had caused the tension no longer existed, and as yet there were no new ones.

Earth was two months away. Cudyk expected nothing and hoped for nothing. But the Niori had agreed to set each passenger down wherever on the globe he chose to go: each man, at least, could choose his own purgatory. The crews of the captured battleships, and the captured staff of the base on New Earth, were also being sent back. The weapon that had been used on them had done no permanent damage; they would simply have to be retrained, to learn all over again, as if they were born again.

Seu was going to North America, where he hoped survival for a fat cosmopolite would be a little less difficult than in Europe or Asia. Moskowitz had been born in New York, and was going back there. Kathy Burgess was going to England, where Cudyk supposed she had relatives. Exarkos was going to Istanbul first, for orders; he had no idea where he might be sent after that. Cudyk had not yet made up his mind. He thought that perhaps he would go with the priest; if he should change his mind after landing it would be no great loss. One wilderness, as Exarkos had once said, was as good as another.

It will all be anticlimax, he thought, and perhaps that is the definition of hell: unending anticlimax.

We are dying now, at this moment; what happens afterward does not matter very much.

He wondered how it would feel to be Earthbound again. The repatriation ship was to be the last galactic vessel which would ever call at Earth. And there would be a constant guard. The Niori had learned, belatedly but well. If humanity ever climbed high enough again to reach the stars with its bloody fingers, the citizens of the galaxy would be ready.

Seu glanced behind him and said, "Nearly all the others have gone. The next aircar should be ours."

Cudyk looked at his watch. The man in the powerhouse must be a sentimentalist: he was waiting until the last possible moment.

He heard the soft hum of the aircar behind him, turned and saw it settling lightly to the clipped lawn. The remaining passengers were moving toward it; Exarkos stood up and lifted his suitcase. Cudyk turned back for one last look at the Quarter. It was full dark now, and all he could see of it was the blocky, ambiguous outline of its darkness against the glowing buildings beyond, and the cross-hatched pattern of yellow street lights. The lights went out.