Early Days: More Tales From the Pulp Era
Author: Robert Silverberg
Date: 2016-08-31 00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction
Description: In 2006, Robert Silverberg published In the Beginning, a generous selection of stories from the early, developmental stages of his distinguished sixty-year career. Fast-paced, energetic, and unabashedly pulp-like in their origins and ambitions, those stories proved to be an unexpected gift to Silverberg's many readers. That gift continues with Early Days, a second volume of apprentice fiction as wide-ranging and enjoyable as the first. Early Days collects seventeen impossible to find stories from the years 1956 to 1958, supplemented by a fascinating introduction and extensive notes on the crea
Publisher: Subterranean

Teaser

In 2006, Robert Silverberg published In the Beginning, a generous selection of stories from the early, developmental stages of his distinguished sixty-year career. Fast-paced, energetic, and unabashedly pulp-like in their origins and ambitions, those stories proved to be an unexpected gift to Silverberg’s many readers. That gift continues with Early Days, a second volume of apprentice fiction as wide-ranging and enjoyable as the first.

Early Days collects seventeen impossible to find stories from the years 1956 to 1958, supplemented by a fascinating introduction and extensive notes on the creation and publication history of each story. Together, these non-fiction pieces constitute both an episodic memoir and an affectionate history of an era when pulp magazines still dominated the SF marketplace.

Without exception each of the stories in Early Days offers honest, unpretentious entertainment. The astonishingly prolific Silverberg may have had a bit to learn back then, but he had an innate understanding of narrative that shines through every one of these tales. The stories range in tone from the grimly dystopian future of “The Inquisitor” to the playful “Space is the Place,” in which a maintenance technician from Crawford IX experiences comic culture shock during a mandatory vacation on Earth. “Rescue Mission” revolves around the telepathic connection between two interplanetary intelligence agents. “Housemaid No. 103” provides a humorous glimpse into the romantic difficulties of a far future matinee idol. “Hardwood’s Vortex” combines a mad scientist, alien invaders, and the possible end of life as we know it into a single colorful narrative.

Silverberg, of course, would evolve into one of the genuine masters of the genre, and this retrospective collection of early work offers in valuable insights into his development. Silverberg himself calls Early Days “an affectionate tribute to my hardworking self of more than half a century ago.” It is all of that and more. Anyone with an interest in Silverberg’s career, or in the history and evolution of modern science fiction, needs to read this book. They may not write ’em like this anymore, but once upon a time they did. And looking back has never been so much fun.

Copyright

EARLY DAYS: MORE TALES FROM THE PULP ERA
Copyright © 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959, 2016 by Agberg, Ltd.

Dust jacket illustration Copyright © 2016 by Bob Eggleton
All rights reserved.

First Edition

ISBN
978-1-59606-799-8

Subterranean Press
PO Box 190106
Burton, MI 48519
subterraneanpress.com

Dedication

For William L. Hamling, Paul W. Fairman,
Robert A. W. Lowndes, and W. W. Scott.
And, as always, for Randall Garrett,
who opened the doors.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

The Inquisitor

The Ultimate Weapon

Harwood’s Vortex

Quick Freeze

Six Frightened Men

Puppets Without Strings

A Time for Revenge

Housemaid No. 103

Rescue Mission

Planet of Parasites

Slaves of the Tree

Frontier Planet

The Aliens Were Haters

The Traders

Waters of Forgetfulness

You Do Something to Me

There’s No Place Like Space!

INTRODUCTION

More than a decade ago—it was in 2004, I think—I put together a book called In the Beginning, which restored to print sixteen of my short stories from the earliest years of my career, stories which perhaps were not quite as skillful as the ones I would write later on, but which, I think, all bore the recognizable mark of the writer you know as Robert Silverberg. That is to say, they were plainly the work of a very young man—I was still in my teens when I wrote the earliest of them—but, and this is what gives that book its chief point of interest, the stories show the future Robert Silverberg not just in embryo but already in command of the basic narrative skills. I was very prolific in those days, as anyone trying to earn his living by writing for magazines that mostly paid a cent or two a word had to be, and so the stories collected in In the Beginning represent only a fraction of my output in the early years of my career, 1955 to 1958. I was, in fact, not just prolific but wildly prolific—my bibliography lists 62 published stories in 1956, 101 published stories in 1957 (yes, 101, which is two a week that year, week in and week out), and another 84 for 1958—and so In the Beginning merely scratched the surface of the total production. I would not want all of those hundreds of stories brought back into view again. Some of them, indeed, date from my middle teens, and the fact that I was able to find some magazine willing to publish them a few years later does not mean that they show me working at a true professional level. But a lot of them do, and so, here in the seventh decade of my career, I have assembled another group of stories from those early days and am thrusting them into the bright light of the twenty-first century.

That young writer of long ago was not, of course, fully experienced either at the skills of storytelling or in the perils and pitfalls of mature adult life, and these stories show it. Anyone who expects them to read like the work I was doing at the age of 35, or 45, or 55, is going to be disappointed. It must also be borne in mind that I was writing these stories at a time when most of the science-fiction magazines of the day were concerned with delivering fast-moving entertainment for youngish readers; a few writers like Ray Bradbury and Theodore Sturgeon and two or three others had the privilege of reaching for stylistic power and emotional profundity, but most of us were expected to conform to the narrative conventions that the readers of popular magazines—pulp magazines, they were called, because they were printed on cheap pulp paper—expected. As I said in the introduction to In the Beginning, “I have to confess, right up front here, that you will not find a great deal in the way of poetic vision in these stories, or singing prose, or deep insight into character. Nor are these stories that will tell you much that is new to you about the human condition. These are stories in what is now pretty much a lost tradition in science fiction, the simple and unselfconsciously fast-paced adventure story of the pulp-magazine era. They are stories from the dawn of my career, which began in the closing years of that era, and are straightforward tales of action, in the main, that were written partly for fun and partly for money.”

The money part first: I needed the income that these stories brought in, because I was barely out of college when I wrote the first of them, and the rest followed over the next few years, when I was newly married and just starting out in the world. Writing was my job straight out of college. I had not wanted any other sort of employment, and I made no attempt to find one. But I was not going to be supported by my indulgent parents, nor did I have a trust fund that some thoughtful ancestor had established for me. My livelihood would have to be generated by my typewriter. My wife had a decently paying job, yes, so I can’t say I was completely on my own, but we could hardly have lived on her earnings alone if my writing had failed to bring in an income. Rent had to be paid; furniture for our new apartment had to be bought; the pantry had to be stocked with food; whatever medical expenses we might have came out of our own checkbooks, not out of any medical insurance plan, since such things were rarities then, especially for self-employed writers. Telephone bills, electricity, the cost of typewriter ribbons and typing paper, a haircut now and then, movie tickets, restaurants, subway fares (we lived in Manhattan, where even back then it was madness to own a car), the occasional new pair of shoes—well, writers have expenses just like everyone else. What they don’t have is regular paychecks.

Since what I had chosen for myself was the next-to-impossible task of earning my living as a full-time science-fiction writer in an era when only two publishers were regularly issuing science-fiction novels in the United States and their total output was something like three or four titles a month, and the handful of s-f magazines that existed then paid between $50 and $200 for most of the stories they published, I knew I had to write quickly and to tailor most of my stories to the needs of the marketplace. Coming straight out of college as I was, without any day job to see me through times of thin inspiration or editorial rejection and having no significant savings to draw on, there was no other option. I didn’t want to dilute my energies by putting in eight hours at some mundane job and trying to write science fiction in the evenings, as so many of my well-known colleagues did. I wanted to be a writer, not a public-relations man or a bookkeeper or a shoe salesman. But I wasn’t of the sort of temperament that encouraged me to starve for the sake of my art, either. I have never been much into asceticism. I loved science fiction and yearned to write it as well as those of my predecessors whose work had given me such delight as a reader, but there was time to be an artist later, I reasoned: right now, if I wanted to make a go of it as a writer, I had to write things that editors would be willing to pay me for.

Not that I didn’t want to tell you all sorts of profound things about the human condition, or to win your admiration with unique and unforgettable visions of the worlds to come. I would, of course, have been happy to be earning my living writing nothing but searching, weighty stories of unparalleled artistry and power that would rank me with the greats of the field.

The trouble was that the greats of the field were already in place, and I wasn’t remotely their equal. In the early 1950s when I set out to become a writer the science fiction field already had such people as Theodore Sturgeon, Ray Bradbury, James Blish, Cyril Kornbluth, Alfred Bester, and Fritz Leiber in it, all of whom were fifteen or twenty years older than I was, and who had had first-hand experience of a great many aspects of real life (military service, parenthood, financial or marital crisis, the deaths of parents and friends) that I knew about mainly from having read about such things.

Precocious though I was, I couldn’t begin to match those writers in worldly wisdom and I had nowhere near their level of craftsmanship, either. Once in a while one of my stories would find its way onto a magazine’s contents page, tucked away between the newest work of Sturgeon or Bester or Blish or Leiber, but I had no illusions about which writer would get more attention from an editor if manuscripts by Sturgeon and Silverberg were to show up in the same batch of morning mail. So if I wanted to write science fiction for a living, I was going to have to earn the bulk of that living writing unpretentious stories to order for the unpretentious pulp-style magazines that catered to youthful and/or relatively undemanding readers simply looking for a lively read.

But there was also the fun aspect of writing that kind of fiction. I had been reading science fiction since I was about ten years old, and, although I had been an earnest and scholarly little boy who inclined naturally toward the more literary side of science fiction (represented then by the books of H.G. Wells, S. Fowler Wright, Aldous Huxley, John Taine, and Olaf Stapledon and such high-level magazine writers as Sturgeon, Leiber, and Bradbury), my teenage self also had an unabashed fondness for the rip-roaring adventure stories to be found in such gaudily named pulp magazines as Amazing Stories, Planet Stories, Startling Stories, and Thrilling Wonder Stories. In their pages I found stories by writers like Leigh Brackett, Poul Anderson, Henry Kuttner, and Jack Vance that were every bit as pleasing to me as the statelier kind of s-f (often by the very same writers) that I could read in the three “adult” magazines, Astounding, Galaxy, and Fantasy & Science Fiction. I loved the colorful, lively work of the best of the pulp writers, and emulated it in many of my own early stories. So my career got off to a schizoid start, back there in the 1950s: one part of me labored over carefully worked tales intended for such demanding editors as John W. Campbell of Astounding, Horace Gold of Galaxy, and Anthony Boucher of Fantasy & Science Fiction, while another reveled in the opportunity to write slam-bang adventure stories in the Brackett-Anderson-Kuttner-Vance mode for the editors of the lesser magazines that were intended for less fastidious readers of the kind that I myself had been only five or six years before.

There was nothing very unusual about operating on both these levels of science fiction at once. Such cerebral writers as Blish and Isaac Asimov and Damon Knight, and such poetic ones as Sturgeon and Bradbury, were unabashed contributors to Planet Stories, the wildest and pulpiest of all the slam-bang s-f magazines. (I came along just a little too late to join them there: to my great regret, Planet went out of business just as I was getting started.) For them, as it would be for me a few years later, the motives were mixed ones—the need to earn some quick dollars, sure, but also the jolly pleasure of turning out an uninhibited action story at high speed. None of them saw any kind of rigid compartmentalizing in what they were doing: a story was a story, science fiction was science fiction, and not everything they wrote had to be something intended for the ages. My own particular hero, Henry Kuttner, who under an assortment of pseudonyms had written dozens of the greatest science-fiction short stories ever conceived, had also, quite cheerfully, given the world reams and reams of pulpy non-masterpieces with titles like “War-Gods of the Void,” “Crypt-City of the Deathless One,” and “Avengers of Space.” If the great Kuttner could do it, I told myself, so could I. Maybe not as well as he could, not then, but in the same mode, at least.

When I was twenty years old, the doors to that pulp-magazine world opened for me (or, more precisely, were opened for me by my friend and collaborator of those days, Randall Garrett) and I was given my own chance to produce reams and reams of stories, all of them accepted and sometimes paid for in advance, for the action magazines. Sure, I went into it for the money. As I’ve said, I had the rent to pay, just like everyone else. But also I found real joy in writing at such great velocity, creating cardboard worlds with flying fingers and sweaty forehead—a 20-page story in a morning, a 40-page novelet in one six-hour working day. I had the youthful energy to do that, day in and day out, throughout the year. I was, somewhat to the consternation of my older colleagues, a juggernaut, unstoppable, who was destined to break all records for prolificity in science fiction. And I loved the cognate fun of knowing that I had made myself part of a pulp-writer tradition that went back through those early favorites of mine, Henry Kuttner and Leigh Brackett and Poul Anderson and the rest, to Edgar Rice Burroughs, Max Brand, Robert E. Howard, and the other famous high-volume writers of a pulp generation that had thrived before I was born.

Even as I wrote these stories, I knew them for what they were: work meant primarily to entertain, not to blaze new literary paths or to help establish a place for myself among the great writers of science fiction. I never abandoned my hope of achieving that, of course, and as time went along I concentrated less on the problem of merely paying the rent and more on the challenge of adding something new and memorable of my own to the literature of science fiction. And, by and by, the emphasis on quality overtook the emphasis on quantity for me, and these early stories of mine receded into oblivion, although those readers with a sense of the history of the field remained aware that I had written such things once.

As I re-read them for the present book, I felt the temptation to touch up these early works here and there, of course, to add a bit of extra color, to replace this or that semi-colon with a dash, to remove some bit of sensationalizing plot machinery, or otherwise to modify the text in the light of all that I’ve learned about storytelling in the past sixty years. But I resisted it. Doing that sort of ex post facto rewrite job would have been unfair to the young man who turned these stories out. I have no business imposing on them the accumulated wisdom, such as it may be, of the veteran writer I now am, and also it would have defeated the main purpose of this book, which is to bring back into view, as an archaeologist might, certain artifacts of the dawn of my long writing career as examples of a certain kind of science fiction, typical of its time, that virtually every one of us chose to write, back then, at some phase of his career.

Here, then, is a group of stories I wrote for long-forgotten magazines, stories written extremely quickly, stories in which, for the most part, I stayed rigorously within the boundaries of the pulp-magazine tradition. By way of deviating from the tried and true narrative formulas I allowed myself only the luxury of killing off my protagonist occasionally, something that would have been unthinkable in the pulps of the 1940s but which was sometimes permissible in the decade that followed; but in general, good struggles with evil in these stories and evil usually (not always) loses.

I will not try to deceive you into thinking that there are any unjustly neglected masterpieces here. I think they still make lively reading, yes, or I would not be allowing them to poke their noses back into visibility now. But I hope I’ve made it sufficiently clear that even at the time I wrote them these stories weren’t meant as high art—the magazines that bought them had no interest in publishing high art, only good solid basic pulp fiction—and I offer them here in that archaeological spirit I mentioned a few lines back, delvings into long-buried strata that provide demonstrations of who I was and what I was doing as a writer all those years ago.

I did, it must be said, learn a great deal about writing fiction from writing these stories: how to open a story in an interesting way and keep it moving, how to set a scene and sketch in a character (however roughly) without a lot of ponderous exposition, how to provide with a few quick touches the sort of color and inventiveness that makes people want to read science fiction in the first place. So these stories have some technical interest and some historical interest, too, for they are, after all, the work of the same man who would write Dying Inside, “Sailing to Byzantium,” “Born with the Dead,” and all the other books and stories for which the Science Fiction Writers of America would reward me, in 2004, with the highest honor of the science-fiction world, its Grand Master award. Is it possible to detect the touch of a future Grand Master in these early stories? Maybe not, because even when they were written they represented the side of him that was producing, at improbably high volume, stories meant to be fun to read and nothing more. I never pretended that stories like “Planet of Parasites” or “Slaves of the Tree” were the best science-fiction I had in me. But, for better or for worse, they were part of my evolutionary curve. I have never repudiated them, or anything else that I wrote along the way. And here they are again, these artifacts of a vanished age, seventeen of my earliest stories rescued from the jaws of time and given their first printings in book form.

THE INQUISITOR
(1956)

I dreamed of becoming a science fiction writer all through my adolescence. I wrote dozens of stories and sent them off with high hopes to the magazines of the day (Astounding Science Fiction, Amazing Stories, Startling Stories, and so forth.) They all came back, most with printed rejection slips, a few with encouraging notes from editors who urged me to keep trying. But then, in 1953, when I was 18 and a sophomore at Columbia University in New York, I began to make my first sales—an article about science-fiction fandom, then a novel for teenage readers only a few years younger than myself, and then a short story. The short story went to Nebula Science Fiction, a Scottish magazine that had only limited distribution in the United States, so that sale was not quite as satisfactory as one that all my friends in American s-f fandom would see. Before long, though, American sales came along: the first, in June, 1954, was a 1500-worder called “The Silent Colony,” to Robert W. Lowndes’ Future Science Fiction, and then, in February of 1955, a second one, “The Martian,” 3000 words, which went to William L. Hamling’s Imagination, an unpretentious little penny-a-word market that filled its pages with stories that various top-level writers (Gordon R. Dickson, Robert Sheckley, Philip K. Dick, Damon Knight) had been unable to sell to better-paying magazines. I was pleased to be joining their company. Even though these two sales had netted me a grand total of $40.50, I felt I was on my way toward the start of a career. And I was still only a junior in college, barely twenty years old, after all. There would be time later on to consider whether I could actually earn a living this way. Three more months went by before my next sale, another one to Hamling in May of 1955. But soon after that came a career-changing event for me—a life-changing event, really. I refer to the arrival in New York of a certain Randall Garrett. Garrett, a charming, roguish fellow seven or eight years older than I was, came from Texas but had been living in the Midwest, working as a chemist and writing science fiction on the side, in the early 1950s. He was a natural storyteller and had a good grasp both of science and of the traditions of science fiction, and very quickly he sold a dozen stories or so to most of the major markets, including two excellent novelets (“The Waiting Game,” 1951, and “The Hunting Lodge,” 1954) to John W. Campbell’s Astounding, one of the leading magazines of the field. But like too many science-fiction writers Garrett had an unfortunate weakness for the bottle, which led early in 1955 to the end of his marriage and the loss of his job; and then the friends in Illinois with whom he had taken refuge wearied of his wayward ways and suggested he move along. That spring he packed up his few possessions and a box of unfinished manuscripts and headed for New York to establish himself as a full-time science-fiction writer. One of the few people he knew in New York was Harlan Ellison, who had come from the Midwest a year before Garrett with the same goal in mind. Harlan and I were close friends, and at my suggestion he had taken a room next door to me in the seedy Manhattan residence hotel on West 114th Street, a couple of blocks from the Columbia campus, where I lived during my college years. It was a place inhabited by a sprinkling of undergraduates, an assortment of aging graduate students, a few aspiring writers like Harlan and me, some very old ladies living on pensions, and an odd collection of down-on-their-luck characters of no apparent profession. When he reached New York, Garrett phoned Ellison, Harlan told him about our hotel, and very suddenly we had him living down the hall from us. Almost immediately thereafter Garrett and I went into partnership as a sort of fiction factory. He and I could scarcely have been more different in temperament. Randall was lazy, undisciplined, untidy, untrustworthy, and alcoholic. I was a ferociously hard worker, ambitious, orderly, boringly respectable and dignified, and, though I did (and do) have a fondness for the occasional alcoholic beverage, I was (and am) constitutionally unable to drink very much without getting sick. But we did have a couple of big things in common: we both were deeply versed in the tropes of science fiction and we intended to earn our livings entirely by writing for the science fiction magazines. We had the same agent, too, Scott Meredith, who represented many of the best writers in the field, Arthur C. Clarke and Jack Vance and Poul Anderson and Philip K. Dick and a long list of others. Furthermore, we had complementary sets of skills: Garrett’s education had been scientific, mine literary. He was good at the technological side of s-f, and also was a skillful constructor of story plots. I, though still a beginning writer, was already showing considerable stylistic ability and the knack of creating interesting characters. I was tremendously productive, too, able to turn out a short story in a single sitting, several times a week. Garrett was also a swift writer, and when he did manage to make himself work, what he wrote was very capable stuff indeed, but only when he could stay sober long enough to get anything done. It occurred to him that if we became collaborators, my discipline and ambition would be strong enough to drive both of us to produce a great deal of work, and his more experienced hand as a writer would help me overcome the neophyte’s flaws in my storytelling technique that had kept me from selling stories to any but the minor magazines. And so we set up in business together. Right away we set out to sell stories to Astounding Science Fiction, which for nearly two decades had been the top magazine in the field, edited by the legendary John W. Campbell. We worked out an idea in great detail, and then, to my surprise, Garrett told me that we were going downtown to Campbell’s office to pitch it in person. I had never expected anything like that. I thought we would let our agent handle the marketing of the project. But Garrett, a supremely gregarious man, believed in personal contact with his editors; and so one summer morning he swept me off to Campbell’s office, where I was introduced as a brilliant new talent with whom he would be collaborating thenceforth. We pitched our story; Randall did most of the talking, but I added a thoughtful bit of Ivy League eloquence every now and then. Campbell loved the idea. He had a few improvements to suggest, though—in fact, by lunchtime he had transformed our story beyond all recognition. And he told us to go home and write it, in its Campbellized version, as the first of a series of novelets to be followed by a novel. Of course, I never thought anything was going to come out of this. Me, not even old enough to vote yet—voting age was 21, back then—selling novelets to John W. Campbell, let alone an entire novel? But we sat down and wrote the first in our series almost instantly, sticking the joint pseudonym “Robert Randall” on it, and Campbell read it in his office before our eyes and bought it on the spot, in August, 1955. I was so stunned at the idea that I had sold something to Astounding that I couldn’t sleep that night. Garrett didn’t want us to stop there. It was the personal touch that did it, he was convinced. Editors wanted to put faces behind the manuscripts. So we needed to visit all the other editors, too—Howard Browne of Amazing, Bob Lowndes of Future, Larry Shaw of the new magazine Infinity, etc. Later in August, Garrett and I attended the World Science Fiction Convention in Cleveland, where I met William L. Hamling, who had bought two stories from me in the past year and let me know now that he’d like me to send him some others. Garrett was right: in the small world that was science fiction in 1955, the personal touch did do it. On the strength of my collaborative sale to Campbell’s Astounding, coming on top of my scattering of sales to a few lesser magazines, I had acquired enough professional plausibility to find the doors of the editorial offices opening for me, and Garrett’s prodding had brought me inside. Before long Garrett and I were regular contributors to Howard Browne’s Amazing Stories and its companion Fantastic, which featured uncomplicated action tales written to order by a little stable of regulars such as Milton Lesser and Paul W. Fairman. It happened that in the summer of 1955 Browne had two vacancies in his stable, and he offered the jobs to Garrett and me the day we showed up in his office. So long as we brought him stories every month and maintained a reasonable level of competence he would buy everything we wrote, sight unseen. That struck me as almost as improbable as my selling novelets to John Campbell. Here I was, a kid still in college who had sold less than a dozen stories, and a cagy old pro like Howard Browne was offering me what amounted to a job, with a guaranteed rate of pay, to keep his two science-fiction magazines supplied with copy! But I didn’t hesitate. I had a story called “Hole in the Air” that Scott Meredith had returned to me because he didn’t think he could sell it to anyone. I handed the manuscript to Howard Browne on an August day and he bought it. The following week Garrett and I batted out a novelet, “Gambler’s Planet,” and Browne bought that also. We did another for him in September, “Catch a Thief,” and I sold two stories to Bob Lowndes’ Science Fiction Stories, too, and another novelet to Campbell, and then more to Browne, and so on. In the first five months of the Garrett partnership I made a phenomenal 26 story sales—some of them collaborations, but many of them solo stories, for with Randall’s help I had acquired the momentum for a career of my own. As 1956 moved along my new career as a science-fiction writer, and all the rest of my life as well, began to expand in ways that I would scarcely have dared to fantasize only a couple of years previously. I continued selling stories at the same torrid pace, and in May succeeded in placing one with the prestigious magazine Galaxy, edited by the exceedingly difficult, tough-minded Horace Gold. Selling one to him was a big step forward for me. In June I got my Columbia degree and set up shop as a full-time writer. Randall Garrett and I spent two weeks that summer writing the novel for John W. Campbell that we had so grandly imagined selling him the year before—The Dawning Light, it was called—and he bought it in August. Later that month I married my college girlfriend, Barbara Brown, and we found a splendid five-room apartment on Manhattan’s elegant West End Avenue, a short walk from the Columbia campus but light-years distant from the squalid hotel room where I had been living for the past three years. About ten days later I attended the World Science Fiction Convention, where I was greeted as a colleague by science-fiction writers like Edmond Hamilton and Jack Williamson who were old enough to be my father, and where to my amazement I was given the Hugo award as that year’s most promising new author. It was all pretty startling. I was getting published all up and down the spectrum of science-fiction magazines, from Astounding and Galaxy at one end to Amazing and Fantastic at the other, and by the end of the year I would have deals with two book publishers, Ace (for an original novel) and Gnome (for a two-volume reprint of the “Robert Randall” series from Astounding.) Everything was happening at once. That big year of 1956 began with a new contract for regular production of stories, growing directly out of my meeting with William L. Hamling of Imagination and Imaginative Tales at the 1955 Cleveland s-f convention. Hamling, a dapper, youthful-looking Chicagoan who, like me, had loved science fiction since his teens, had been Ray Palmer’s managing editor for the Ziff-Davis science-fiction magazines in the late 1940s, and when the Ziff-Davis company moved its editorial offices to New York in 1950 Hamling remained in Chicago, starting his own Chicago-based publishing outfit. Imagination, his first title, was a decent enough lower-echelon s-f magazine, but not even such major names as Robert A. Heinlein and Eric Frank Russell could get its sales figures up much beyond the break-even point, and in the summer of 1955 Hamling decided to emulate his friend Howard Browne of Amazing and revert to the tried-and-true Ziff-Davis formula of fast-moving action fiction written to order by a team of staffers. The lead stories for the book would be done by such veteran pulp-magazine stars as Edmond Hamilton and Dwight V. Swain. For the shorter material he turned to the same quartet that was producing most of Browne’s fiction: Lesser, Fairman, Garrett, and Silverberg. Evidently he figured that our capacity for turning out s-f adventure stories to order was infinitely expandible, and, as it happened, he was right. On January 16, 1956, I got this note from Scott Meredith:

“We sent one of your yarns to Bill Hamling. While he couldn’t use this yarn, he’s going to write you directly to tell you what he wants in the way of plotting, etc. He does like your stuff and will want to see a lot more of it in the future. You’ll know better what to expect when you get his letter, and then you can get right to work.”

Hamling’s letter followed a month or so later. What he wanted was short, punchy stories with strong conflicts, lots of color and action, and straightforward resolutions. And he made a very explicit offer: the Garrett-Silverberg team was invited to deliver 50,000 words of fiction a month, all lengths from short-shorts up to 7500 words or so. We would be paid $500 for each monthly package.

At that point we were each writing a couple of stories a month for Browne and doing our novelet series for Campbell, and I was sending out solo stories to such editors as Robert W. Lowndes, Larry Shaw, and Horace Gold as well. And I still had my college work to think about. But Columbia would soon be behind me and by this time I had dauntless confidence in my own prolificity. We accepted the deal. The first package, six stories, went off to Hamling in June, 1956. Early in July we sent him five more, and toward the end of that month another six, and seven in August before I took time off to get married. And so it went, month after month. The $500 checks—$5000 or thereabouts in modern purchasing power—arrived punctually and we split them fifty-fifty regardless of who had written the stories in each package.

Much confusion surrounds the authorship of the individual stories. Long after the fact the bibliographer Norm Metcalf asked me who had written which, and I gave him a series of guesses, trying to remember which had been entirely Garrett’s work, which were exclusively mine, and which were true collaborations, begun by one of us and finished later the same day by the other. The names under which the stories were published provide no clue, because Hamling ignored the pseudonyms we put on the manuscripts (“T.H. Ryders,” “William Leigh,” “Eric Rodman,” “Ray McKenzie,” etc.) and randomly stuck bylines of his own choosing on them—“Warren Kastel,” “S.M. Tenneshaw,” “Ivar Jorgensen,” and many another. Sometimes he put my name on a story that Garrett had written, sometimes Garrett’s name on one of mine. I was able to identify some of these switched stories: I know my own stylistic touches, and I also know the areas where Garrett’s superior knowledge of chemistry and physics figured in the plot of a “Silverberg” story that I could not possibly have written then. But a lot of my guesses were wrong, and not until I was preparing this collection and discovered the carbon copies of the stories themselves, which showed the original bylines we had attached to them and provided other evidence of the actual authorship of each story, was I able to correct the attributions.

My ledger for those early years showed that the first story in this book, “The Inquisitor,” was part of the initial Garrett-Silverberg package for Hamling. I wrote it in May, 1956, a few weeks before my graduation from Columbia, and put my own byline on it, but when Hamling published it in the December, 1956 issue of Imagination it was credited to Garrett, and so it has remained in bibliographies to this day. It’s my work, though: a compact synthesis, in 2500 words, of the themes of Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon and Franz Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony,” two classic works of fiction that would have been very much on my mind as I rounded out my days as a literature major at Columbia.

——————

When Conway Kroll reached his office that morning, there were three prisoners waiting to be interrogated. He smiled coldly at the sight of them, standing in the large bare room awaiting their fate.

“Good morning,” he said, with steely politeness. “My name is Kroll. It is my job to conduct the interrogation to which you three will be subjected today.”

One of the three—a tall, youthful-looking man—glared up at him bitterly. “Interrogation? Torture, you mean!”

Kroll brought his eyes to rest on the man who had spoken slowly, almost scornfully. “You have the wrong idea completely, my friend. It is necessary to persuade you to divulge certain facts. The State requires it of you. If you refuse—” He gestured sadly—“we must compel you. But you are all so determined to make things hard for us. I don’t want to hurt you, you know.”

“But you will hurt us,” said another of the prisoners. She was a girl, no more than twenty, slim and darkhaired. Even in the dreary prison garb, thought Kroll, she retained her beauty. “You’re going to torture us!”

Kroll shrugged: “I repeat: I don’t want to.”

He looked at his watch. “Come; we are wasting time, and the Inquisitor is waiting. Miss Horniman, you must be first.”

The girl shrank back behind the bitter-eyed young man. The third prisoner, a resigned-looking, balding man of fifty or so, did not change his expression.

“Take me first,” the man said. “Leave her alone.”

Again Kroll shrugged. “The Inquisitor would like Miss Horniman first, Mr. Leslie. This is the preferred order, and this is the order that will be.”

A guard stepped forward and shoved the sobbing girl up and ahead, toward the door. The man named Leslie clashed his manacles impotently together and spat. “Butchers! Torturers!”

“Please, Mr. Leslie,” Kroll said gently, a pained expression on his face. “You make our job even harder than it is.”

He followed the girl into the adjoining room, where the Inquisitor was waiting. The Interrogation Chamber was an immense rectangular room with concrete floor and bleak white walls, in the center of which stood the Inquisitor.

“Good morning, Kroll,” the Inquisitor said. Its metallic voice rattled and boomed in the big room. In the depths of the machine, relays clicked and hummed.

Kroll bowed to it, and the Inquisitor responded with a gesture of a prolonged metal arm. “The first prisoner, Kroll.”

“Miss Florence Horniman,” Kroll said. “Accused of treason against the State. Denies charge.”

“How do you plead?” the machine asked coldly.

“Not guilty,” stammered the girl.

Two huge metal arms extended from the Inquisitor’s sides and folded around her. They drew her across the room to the bosom of the robot. “Feed in the data, Kroll.”

At the signal, Kroll slipped in the tape on the girl. A moment passed while the Inquisitor digested the data, and then: “The plea of not guilty is rejected as invalid.”

“You can’t just do that!” the girl said. “That’s my plea!”

“Not valid in view of the evidence,” said the Inquisitor. Kroll smiled distantly. He had seen this scene repeated, over and over, almost every day for the ten years he had held the post. He wrapped his blue-and-gold Interrogator’s cloak around himself impressively and stepped forward.

“You are accused of treason against the State,” Kroll said sonorously. “But it is my duty to inform you that your sentence may be mitigated upon your delivering us certain information—about leaders of your movement, future plans, location of your party cell, and so forth.”

Florence Horniman’s eyes flashed brightly. “I won’t tell you anything!”

“Perhaps I did not make myself clear,” Kroll said. He repeated his offer.

“The answer is still no!”

Kroll sighed. “Very well,” he said. A third hand slid from the Inquisitor’s body and a needle-thin finger traced a line down the girl’s bare arm. A bloody trickle appeared.

She began to sob again. Kroll stepped closer and lifted her head. “Why must you hold out?” he asked. “Why don’t you speak?”

Still silence. The finger rose again and sliced lightly across her cheek.

“All right, take her away,” Kroll said when twenty minutes had passed. The Inquisitor was humming merrily, busily taping the data that had been extracted from the girl and feeding it to the main computers downstairs. They would integrate it and notify the State Police. It was a smooth-functioning system.

The bloody thing that had been Florence Horniman was led away by a guard, and the next prisoner led in. It was the middle-aged man, Chester Wengrove.

“Get your hands off me,” he snapped to the guard as he was shoved into the room. “You have no right to—”

“Unfortunately, as a representative of the State he has every right,” Kroll said calmly. He fed Wengrove’s tape to the Inquisitor. The trial proceeded.

Wengrove was stubborn; it took half an hour to break him down at all, but when he did speak he sang freely, giving data on his cell of the Movement.

“Very good,” the Inquisitor said when Wengrove finally coughed and said he knew no more. “You are completely exonerated from the charge of treason, in view of the information you have given.”

The eyes in the bloody face lit up. “I’m free, you mean?”

“Unfortunately, no,” the Inquisitor said. “Because of your danger to the State, you must be kept in Quarantine Camp, along with other diseased former members of society, until such time as we are able to clear your mind of its confusion. But you will not be punished.”

“I won’t be punished?” Wengrove repeated mindlessly.

“When the Inquisitor says something, it means it,” Kroll said.

“Take him away.”

The next prisoner was Neil Leslie. He strode into the Inquisitor’s Chamber without having to be pushed, and confronted Kroll defiantly. “My turn, eh?”

Kroll nodded. “Your companions have both been removed.” He nodded meaningfully toward the Inquisitor, whose claws were red with the blood of Florence Horniman and Chester Wengrove. “They both spoke most satisfactorily—after some persuasion.”

“Torture, you mean.”

“We’ve been through this already,” Kroll said. “Since you’re going to talk anyway, I don’t understand why you can’t save yourself a great deal of pain by talking now, before I hand you to the Inquisitor.”

“Because I don’t mean to talk at all,” Leslie said. He ran a hand through his shock of blonde hair and glared fiercely at Kroll.

“Very well,” the Interrogator said. He stepped to the robot and slipped in Neil Leslie’s tape.

“I don’t understand you at all,” Kroll admitted, looking down at the pain-racked body before him. “Why don’t you talk? I don’t want to keep you in here, you know.”

Bloodshot eyes looked back at him, eyes clouded with pain and hatred. “I’m not saying anything,” Leslie murmured. “Oil up your robot and let’s try again.”

For the hundredth time the Inquisitor’s talons descended, raked a red line across the man’s body. He shuddered, but did not speak. Kroll shook his head impatiently. No prisoner had ever held out against the Inquisitor this long before. He found himself perspiring.

The Inquisitor said, “The name of your leader is David Cosbro. Is this true?”

No answer.

A needle descended.

Still no answer.

“Your Cell was located in East Appalachia, Upper Quadrant. Is this true?”

No answer again.

Minutes passed, minutes in which Leslie continued to stare defiantly outward, continued to clench his fists and remain silent.

Finally the Inquisitor opened its tightly-clamped arms and let Leslie stagger out. He slumped to the ground at the feet of the robot and leaned dazedly against the Inquisitor’s gleaming base.

“Prisoner is on the verge of death,” the Inquisitor said. “Further questioning is pointless.”

Kroll looked down in surprise and chagrin. In ten years, this was the first time a prisoner had not broken under Interrogation. He scowled angrily; it was his first failure.

“You’re a stubborn man, Leslie. But it’s killed you.”

“I’m not dead yet,” the prisoner said brokenly. Suddenly he mustered some strength and managed to look up. “Tell me something, Kroll. I want to know something.”

“Yes?”

“Why do you do what you do?”

“You mean—Interrogate?”

“I mean torture,” Leslie said.

“I am an Interrogator because it is my duty to the State. Treason must be unmasked, the enemies of the State destroyed. It is necessary.”

Leslie looked up, and there seemed to be pity in his eyes. “Just one question, Kroll. Doesn’t it bother you, when you go home? How do you know you’re right and we’re wrong?”

Kroll started to say something, then saw there was no point in bothering.

“Prisoner is dead,” said the Inquisitor.

“Take him away,” ordered Kroll. The day was over.

What Leslie had said preyed on Kroll’s mind all the way home. He got out of the tube and made his way to his austere room with his mind fixed on one question—the snarling words the dying prisoner had hurled at him: How do you know you’re right and we’re wrong?

They had to be wrong, Kroll told himself firmly. The State had to be right. It was necessary; it was logical; it was the way things had always been.

But the thought obsessed him, and the image of Neil Leslie’s face, bloody but undefeated, hung before him as he went about his evening’s activities. The face was still in his mind as he prepared to go to bed.

Odd, Kroll thought. This was the first time he had been disturbed after a torture session. He had seen hundreds—no, thousands—pass through the Inquisitor, come out shambling rags of bone and flesh, and it had never bothered him, because they were enemies of the State and deserved no more.

He dropped off into an uneasy sleep. But suddenly, in the small hours of the night, he sat bolt upright in bed, a cold, clammy perspiration breaking out on him.

Leslie had just asked the question for the hundredth time. And Kroll had had no answer. He didn’t know who was right. He just didn’t know. His mind, unswervingly loyal for so many years, swayed in an agony of doubt.

He got out of bed and paced back and forth across the floor of his room.

“The State is wrong!” he said aloud. But it didn’t sound right. It couldn’t be true. It wasn’t true. “Stupid!” he told himself. It was stupid to distrust the State—and wrong. “Wrong! Criminally, disgustingly wrong!”

There! He felt better. He had rid himself of his foolish doubts. “How could I have been so foolish?” he said aloud. His nerves felt better now. Once again he was ready to do his duty as a loyal officer of the State.

Smiling to himself for being so easily disturbed by the remarks of disloyal traitors, he climbed back into bed and closed his eyes. A few moments later, he was asleep.

In the morning, everything seemed to be all right; the terrors of the last twelve hours were pale things of the past, no longer exerting pressure on him. He caught the tube and headed to the Ministry.

He donned his uniform in the locker room and took the elevator to the Interrogation Floor. He stepped into his office. It was empty. No prisoners this morning? It didn’t seem likely.

He pushed open the inner door and entered the Interrogation Chamber. To his surprise, he saw Matthews, one of his assistants, wearing the uniform of an Interrogator and standing near the robot, arms folded.

“What are you doing in here dressed that way?” Kroll snapped.

“I am the new Interrogator,” Matthews told him.

“Since when?”

“The appointment was made very early this morning,” the Inquisitor said. “We have all the evidence we need to brand you as a traitor to the State.”

The new Interrogator turned a switch, and Kroll heard his own voice come from a speaker. “The State is wrong! Stupid! Wrong! Criminally, disgustingly wrong! How could I have been so foolish?”

“There is no need to deny these words,” said the Interrogator. “It is only necessary that you tell us with whom you have been working.”

“But there’s no one!” Kroll shouted. “You don’t understand! I’m loyal! I can explain!”

But the new Interrogator merely looked cold as the long, chilling metal arms of the Inquisitor reached out and gathered Kroll to its steel bosom.

THE ULTIMATE WEAPON
(1956)

As I described above, Randall Garrett and I had been hired early in 1956 to do short stories for Bill Hamling’s two magazines; the lead novellas for each issue were the domain of the veteran pulp writers Edmond Hamilton and Dwight V. Swain, and, occasionally, Milton Lesser or Paul W. Fairman, and our monthly package of material filled the pages behind them. But one of the regulars must have missed his novella deadline in June, 1956, because my records show that I produced an 18,000-worder for Hamling that month, to which I gave the sort of Edmond-Hamiltonian title that I thought a space-opera novella ought to have: “Starlords of Shanador.”

Perhaps that sounded too much like a Hamilton title to Hamling, because when he published it in the January, 1957 issue of Imaginative Tales he called it “The Ultimate Weapon,” and, though I had put my own name on the manuscript, he stuck the byline of “S.M. Tenneshaw” on it. That was as good as publishing it anonymously, because “Tenneshaw” had begun life as a pseudonym in 1947 for a story in the Ziff-Davis pulp magazine Fantastic Adventures, true authorship now unknown, and had been used about a dozen times in the Ziff-Davis pulps by an assortment of writers, including Milton Lesser, Chester S. Geier, and, perhaps, Hamling himself. When he started his own magazines in 1951, Hamling had brought a lot of the Ziff-Davis house names over with him, and during the years that followed he ran five “Tenneshaw” stories that had been written by Garrett, Silverberg, or Garrett and Silverberg in collaboration, along with ten others the authorship of which remains unknown to this day.

Hamling’s idea in Imagination and Imaginative Tales was to revive the classic pulp formula, as old as fiction itself, that was already becoming obsolete in the late 1950s: a sympathetic protagonist struggles against insuperable obstacles, valiantly faces defeat, and, after coming right to the edge of the abyss, eventually triumphs against all odds. John W. Campbell, when he took over Astounding Science Fiction in 1937, had rebelled against that formula and had found a group of sophisticated new writers—Robert A. Heinlein, L. Sprague de Camp, Theodore Sturgeon, Fritz Leiber, Isaac Asimov, and many more—to provide a kind of science fiction that was richer in characterization, more complex in concept, altogether more adult. Such postwar magazines as Horace Gold’s Galaxy and the Fantasy & Science Fiction of Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas had followed Campbell’s path. So did Hamling, when he began his magazines, but the sales figures were disappointing, and so, reasoning that there was a younger audience still wanting to be served, had pivoted back to the action-oriented science fiction that Amazing and Fantastic, where he had learned the editorial trade, were still providing.

So I started “Starlords of Shanador” in classic pulp mode, opening with my protagonist’s name, showing that he was in big trouble, and providing a setting: “Laird Hammill raced frantically through the cold night of Denerix, largest world of the Shanador system. He was somewhere on a dark, vast plain outside the city of Lombrosa, and a half mile behind him lay the useless hulk of his burned-out landcar.” The story continues that way, slam and bang and biff and pow, displaying my precocious command of pulp formulas right to the curtain line (“We’ve won, darling…”) It moves along very nicely, I think. And in its portrayal of a race of intelligent beings that dwell in the hearts of stars I touch on a theme that I would return to, decades later, in my novel Starborne.

——————

Laird Hammill raced frantically through the cold night of Denerix, largest world of the Shanador system. He was somewhere on a dark, vast plain outside the city of Lombrosa, and a half mile behind him lay the useless hulk of his burned-out landcar.

The only light was the wide band of bright stars that was the galaxy of Shanador, glittering overhead; the only sound, the steady tunk-tunk of the radar-nosed pursuit robots creeping inexorably up from behind him. Desperately, Laird Hammill pounded on, clinging to the one wild hope that he would be able to avoid pursuers from the city and return safely to the scoutship he had hidden somewhere to the east.

If they caught him, it meant death. The penalty for spying is a universal constant.

As he ran, he heard the tiny beeping of his chest-radio. The transistors in his uniform pocket were picking up some sort of message from the main Earth fleet, hovering ten thousand light-years from Shanador. Cursing annoyedly, Hammill thumbed the transmitter without breaking stride.

“This is Hammill,” he muttered. “Come in, I read you. Over.”

He gasped for breath. It wasn’t easy to carry on a radio conversation while running for your life through pitch-black alien territory.

“Hammill, this is Flagship Gifford. Haven’t heard from you in three days. What’s up? Over.”

“Afraid I’m a lousy spy,” Hammill grunted. “Right now—uh—I’m in the process of being run ragged by a team of Denerixian pursuit-robots. I’ll report later, if I live through it. Over and out.”

“Hammill!” yelled the tinny voice. “Come in, Hammill!”

“Sorry, Gifford. I don’t have time to chat now.” He jabbed the transmitter off and slowed to catch his breath and survey the situation.

Somewhere behind him, a team of tin bloodhounds was sniffing his trail, leading along the very efficient police corps of the Starlord of Denerix. The dim glow of the city of Lombrosa was just barely visible on the distant horizon.

Ahead of him, on the far side of this damned plain, was his scoutship. But he wasn’t going to get there. He knew that, feeling a dull inexorability that he would be caught and executed as a spy.

The hideous sound of the pursuit-robots grew louder. Hammill grabbed for breath and started running again. He wondered how long his strength was going to hold out. The torture-chambers of the Starlord of Denerix had a well-earned reputation in the Shanador system, and Hammill wasn’t too keen on getting a first-hand opinion.

As he thought it over, he hadn’t done a very good job. He had been on Denerix a little less than a week, acting as advance-guard for the great Terran fleet that was massing to crush the Shanador Starlords.

Hammill had been assigned to scout Starlord bases, probe for weak spots, look for chinks in the mighty network of force the Starlords had erected around their system. It would be sheer suicide for the fleet to attempt to attack blindly; Hammill was vital. And Hammill had failed.

His first port of call had been the city of Lombrosa, capital of Denerix, which was one of the key-worlds of the Shanador system. He had planned to infiltrate among the hired mercenaries that formed the bulk of the local encampment, find out what was going on in the system, where the troop deployment was heaviest, where the weak worlds were. Then, he would relay the information back to the waiting fleet, and they would strike.

Shanador had to be crushed. The confederacy of alien despots was known to be gathering its might for an assault on the Earth Federation itself, and in interstellar warfare it was a matter of get the first jump or none at all. Second best in an interstellar conflict was crushing defeat; there could be only one winner.

When would Shanador strike? Earth didn’t know. There was talk of a mysterious weapon the Starlords were perfecting, a deadly mental projector whose properties were vague and terrifying; there were all kinds of rumors. The time had come to rid the universe of the Starlords, that was clear.

But first I have to get out of here alive, Laird Hammill thought grimly.

He felt as if he’d been running all night, but it had only been a little over an hour since his identity had accidentally been discovered by a drunken, over-familiar giant of an infantryman. Hammill had grabbed the first landcar in sight and had raced out into the bleak, rock-studded flatlands that separated Lombrosa from the reconnoiter-point where he had hidden his scoutship. His object had been to get off Denerix as fast as possible.

He’d had a ten-minute head start, no more. Alarms had wailed dismally in the whistling-cold night, and the pursuers had set out after him. And now—

He couldn’t run forever. The landcar had overloaded—he had not really known how to operate it—and its turbines had flared into a bright blue flash of radiance and choked off. Now he was on foot, with the hunters coming closer every moment.

Above, the Shanador system spread itself over the sky like a soft, lovely veil, a sprinkling of gold and blue and red and brilliant white. Under any other circumstances it might have been a really beautiful sight—but Hammill didn’t appreciate the grandeurs of the system just now. Gasping for breath, he raced onward, pulling one numbing leg after the other.

Suddenly, there was a deafening roar and the sky seemed to rain violet lightning. The endless plain was bright as day in the illumination of the flare.

“Stop running, Earthman,” a cold, dry voice said from behind him.

This was the end of the road, then. He couldn’t run any further. By the light of the flare, Hammill glanced ahead and saw that they had run him right into a pocket-ended valley that terminated in a closed rut which folded around him neatly. There wasn’t any place further to run to; they had bided their time, the devils, until they had him caught with nowhere to hide.

He drew his blaster and planted himself at the back end of the pocket, facing his antagonists.

“Come and get me!” he shouted defiantly.

There were seven of them, and three pursuit-robots. He caught a good glimpse of them in the dying light of the flare.

The men were Denerixians, all of them armed. One wore the dazzling cloak and tunic of the nobility, an outfit coruscating with encrusted gems and gleaming with the threads of platinum mesh sown in the cloth. The others wore the dull black uniforms of the Starlord’s private police.

The three pursuit-robots were hunkered down against the ground like chromium-snouted hogs, their sensitive olfactory antennae quivering disgustingly at his spoor. They looked uglier than the barrels of seven blasters that were pointed at him.

The nobleman spoke. “Come out of there, Earthman. Don’t try to fight.”

“Suppose you make me come out,” Hammill snapped. He squeezed the stud of his blaster and a rolling beam of fire spurted out, lighting up the sky the way the flare had done. He saw the charge splash in the air fruitlessly, three feet in front of the foremost of the radar-snouted robots.

“That was foolish, Hammill,” the cold voice said. “We’re screened against your little toy, so don’t waste your energy or our time.”

Without replying, Hammill fired, adjusting his aim for greater depth. The same thing happened again. They were screened after all. He was neatly penned in.

Cursing, he holstered the useless blaster and started to walk forward. Blackness was like a cloak around him, but he knew the sharp-eyed Denerixians could probably pick him out easily. Still, what did it matter?

He summoned what little strength he had left and started to run straight at them. They weren’t screened against him, and he wanted to vent some of his hatred before they gave him the inevitable coup-de-grace. Besides, a suicide charge like this might insure a quick death, instead of the lingering nightmare of the Starlord’s torture chambers.

They weren’t firing. He came close enough to see the gleaming butts of their blasters, and they didn’t fire. He reached the nearest pursuit-robot and launched a vicious kick at its quivering snout. It recoiled and scurried away.

“All right. Stop right there,” the noble ordered.

“I’m going to keep on coming,” Hammill yelled. “You’ll have to kill me.”

He leaped over the other two pursuit-robots and caught up with the foremost Denerixian, waiting for the flash of radiance that would leave him a charred hulk on the plain. It didn’t come.

“Guns down!” he heard the noble say. His fist crashed solidly into the first man’s stomach, and he followed with a roundhouse punch that knocked the man backward. Still no blast.

“What are you waiting for?” he demanded wildly. “Why don’t you shoot?”

He saw the level smile on the noble’s handsome, aristocratic face. “It’s messy,” he said. “Besides, we don’t want to kill you.”

Half-mad with rage, Hammill bunched his muscles for an assault on the grinning nobleman. But as he sprang, he saw the bejeweled dandy casually adjust his blaster to wide-beam stunning-force, and the bolt caught him in mid-leap.

The soft moist soil was like a warm bed as he fell face-first.

Hammill felt as though his head had been filled with lightning—lightning which seemed to flicker about inside his skull and strike with shattering force every few seconds.

As the noise within his mind seemed to diminish, he opened his eyes—just a little.

“Awake, Earthling?”

It was a soft voice, but it carried undertones of vicious threat.

It was the nobleman. Still playing dead, Hammill tried to recall what had happened. When it finally made sense, he thought: I’m still alive, then. Why?

It was, to say the least, unusual. The Starlords of Shanador, despite their seeming enmity towards each other, all abided by the same rules: Kill the enemy!

“Don’t be stubborn, Earthling,” said the arrogant voice. “I know you’re awake.”

“Shall I wake him, Lord Kleyne?” said a harsh voice.

“No. He’ll open his eyes.”

Hammill opened his eyes slowly. He was lying supine on a table—an operating table—with his arms and legs held tight by invisible force clamps. The rubbery feeling force fields held him tightly without cutting off circulation.

But he was still alive. And as long as he was alive, he had a chance.

He turned his head as far as the force clamps would allow and looked the Starlord in the face. “Well, my lord; you’ve become lax—or are you just a little late in killing me?”

The nobleman’s eyes narrowed; his shoulders moved a little, moving the jeweled robe slightly. A faint grin crossed his face. “I may—just may not kill you.”

Hammill flicked a suspicious glance at the noble. “What do you mean by that?”

Lord Kleyne smiled pleasantly, but ignored the question. He crossed the room, passing out of Hammill’s range of vision, and his voice drifted through the room in a low murmur, as he spoke to someone Hammill had not seen.

Beads of sweat rolled down Hammill’s face as he let his eyes rove over the room he was in. It was a high, vaulting chamber with clammy-looking stone walls and complex groining supporting the roof; a square-hewn window cut roughly into the rock allowed a single beam of light to enter, while glowing alpha-bulbs cast a grim illumination over the scene. It wasn’t a pleasant room.

Hammill could see three black-clad Denerixian guards standing impassively nearby, watching him without the faintest sign of interest. Hanging from one wall, there was a thick, spike-studded knout, along whose corded length ran a gleaming length of wire that indicated that it was electrified. It was the only torture implement in the room, but it was enough.

After a few moments, Lord Kleyne returned.

Hammill had made up his mind by then; if there was any way out, he’d take it. The Starlords hadn’t put off killing him for no reason at all, therefore, he wasn’t going to be killed—at least not immediately.

The question was: why had his life been spared? If the Starlord had any sense at all, he should have killed the Earthman long ago. But he hadn’t; therefore—

The Starlord loomed over him, his bejeweled clothing glittering oddly in the glow from the alpha-bulbs. Again the queer smile crossed his face. “I have a use for you.” He glanced up at one of the guards. “Cut the lights.”

The guard reached out and touched a panel on the nearby wall. Instantly, the alpha-bulbs died into blackness, leaving Lord Kleyne illuminated only by the single lamp above the operating table.

Hammill knew what was coming and braced his mind for the onslaught.

The Starlord’s eyes seemed to glow in the semi-darkness. Hammill could feel the creeping, probing tentacles of alien thought creep into his own mind. For the first time, he realized that the Starlords who ruled a galaxy, although they looked like men, were not human!

Hammill had been trained in blocking off his mind against telepathic probing. He set up the block almost instantly, less than a millisecond after the Starlord had started to probe. But the block was like a wall made of paper; with a vicious stab, the Starlord’s mental probes lanced through Hammill’s mind block as though it had never been. There was a brilliant flare of thought energy in the infra-levels of the mind, and Hammill’s defenses collapsed.

Hammill wanted to scream, but he couldn’t. Lord Kleyne’s mind held his own in a grip of steel—and stronger than steel. There was no fighting that driving, searing beam of thought energy as it lanced through and through Hammill’s very being.

As the psychic pain built up, Hammill could stand it no longer.

Less than a tenth of a second after the Starlord had begun the mental onslaught of the Earthman’s mind, Hammill faded into unconsciousness…

Laird Hammill ran fingers smoothly over the control studs of the fast little speedster, his eyes watching the growing star in the forward plate. Within less than an hour, he would be on Rhodanas, after five days of ultra-fast travel across intergalactic emptiness.

Five days since he had left—

Left where?

For the first time in five days, he realized how foggy his mind had been. His brain seemed fuzzy, as though he had been doing things that—

Things that he didn’t want to do!

Acting almost instinctively, he slammed out one hand toward the control panel. His finger touched a stud, and the ship’s mass-time converter died, its power cut off. The ship, deprived of the supernal power that drove it at ultralight velocities across thousands of millions of light-years of empty space, stopped dead. The star in the forward plate ceased to grow.

Hammill rubbed his temples with his palms. What had happened? Where was he? What was he doing?

It was as though he had been drugged for five days and was only now coming out of it.

Think back! Back! What had happened?

Slowly, the fog seemed to lift from his memory. He began to remember what had happened.

The Earth fleet had suffered for nearly twenty years under the ruthless invasion of the Starlord’s Armada. The alien ships had come from somewhere—no one knew where—and had begun to blast Earth ships out of the sky. It had taken twenty years to trace the enemy to another galaxy—M-33 in Andromeda.

Every habitable planet in that Galaxy was ruled by one of the Starlords—near-human, but evilly alien beings who ruled their planets with an iron hand. And the Fleet had stationed itself outside the M-33 galaxy, floating in the dead, empty blackness of inter-galactic space, sending in spies to find a weak spot—a chink in the Starlords’ armor.

Hammill rubbed his fingertips over his eyes. He had landed on Denerix, one of the most powerful worlds of the M-33 galaxy, the galaxy which the Starlords called Shanador.

And then he’d been captured, and—And what?

He couldn’t remember.

He lifted his eyes to the viewplate. The star was still there, shining brightly against a sprinkling of dimmer stars. Rhodanas. That was the name of the star. But where had he heard it before? Why was he here? Nothing seemed to make any sense.

He remembered vaguely that someone—some thing—had invaded his mind. That was it! He hadn’t been able to resist the power of that mind, but he had been able to throw if off after five days of blindly following the orders he had been given.

But what those orders were, what he was supposed to do, eluded him.

He reached out and flicked on the astronomical plates. He was near a star called Rhodanas—but where was it? The last five days were so hazy he could not recall how he had arrived here. He tuned the astroplates into the computer banks. There was a faint hum as the computer figured his location, then the astroplates glowed with little letters which marked off the stars.

He was within a globular cluster of stars nearly a million light-years from Shanador! Smiling a little, Laird Hammill glanced admiringly at the ship he had come in. He didn’t know how he’d gotten the ship, but, brother, it could really travel!

And now, by Heaven, it was going to travel right back! He had no idea why he had been sent to a mysterious star called Rhodanas, but he was dead certain that he wasn’t going to stay there! He touched a control, and the ship began to pivot in space, turning her nose back toward the Shanador galaxy.

Then, without warning, the ship lurched, throwing him out of the pilot’s seat. He leaped to his feet almost instantly. The star of Rhodanas was getting brighter again!

Something was pulling him toward it!

Hammill jammed his finger down on the drive button. The mass-time converters should have come on, but they didn’t. None of the controls would function as they should.

He looked at the forward plate bleakly, knowing what had happened. Someone or something had trained a paramagnetic beam on the ship, and like a bit of iron being drawn toward a powerful magnet, he was being drawn helplessly toward Rhodanas!

Then he saw a planet. It was only a tiny speck at first, a glowing pinpoint of light. But as the ship approached it, it seemed to grow larger, until it was a perceptible disc. It kept on growing until it was a huge ball, filling and overflowing the edges of the viewplate.

And then he was dropping toward the surface of the green world. He could see great seas and broad continents covered by fleecy clouds. And then he was dropping through the clouds toward the ground beneath. Below him was a broad spaceport landing field surrounded by shining spires and towers, a magnificently beautiful city that gleamed in the bright sunlight.

The ship settled gently to the surface of the field.

Hammill balled his fists. He wasn’t going to be easy to take.

The airlock door slid slowly open.

A figure stepped into the ship. He was a tall, youthful-looking man clad only in a gleaming web of metallic mesh. Hammill poised himself on the catwalk and hurled himself downward toward the newcomer.

He struck and rebounded off. It was as if the man were made of chrome steel and he of soap-bubbles; he made no effect on the other whatsoever.

Hammill sprang to his feet and launched a blow at the silent, strange-looking man, who had yet to take any definite action. The blow landed solidly—but again, to no effect. The tall man only stared curiously at him, smiling warmly.

“Are you finished resisting, Hammill?” he asked suddenly, in a vibrant, resonant voice that seemed to fill the small spaceship.

“Who are you?” Hammill demanded.

“That does not matter. I have come to escort you.”

Hammill scowled and darted back away from the other. “Escort me where?”

The tall man smiled sadly. “We knew you would be troublesome, Laird Hammill.” He advanced, and at that moment three men of similar appearance stepped through the airlock.

Hammill swung wildly as they closed in on him, fighting with desperation born of the nightmarish-ness of the situation. But the fight was over in a moment. Each of the four laid a firm hand on him, and a sudden, wordless surge of power ran through him. Suddenly, he did not want to fight them anymore.

“Who are you?” he asked again—but this time his tone was no longer aggressive.

“We are of the world of Rhodanas. At the moment, that is all that should concern you. Come with us, now.”

Unprotestingly, Hammill let them lead him through the airlock and out into the clean, fresh air of Rhodanas. A thousand unanswered questions flooded through his mind as he followed them through a rolling, wooded valley toward a high-vaulting rose-colored domed building that was visible beyond.

He was on Rhodanas—that much was definite. The Starlords had sent him to Rhodanas with some post-hypnotic command implanted in the subliminal levels of his mind. He was on some sort of mission for them—but what?

And had the Starlords figured on his being captured by these strange, invulnerable people? He had been snared like a small child, with hardly a struggle.

That meant he had fallen into the hands of an advanced race—a race millennia ahead of even Earth. Who were they? What did they want with him? Hammill shook his head puzzledly as his captors led him along. He was a pawn in some three-cornered galactic chess game involving the Earth Federation, the Starlords of Shanador, and these mysterious Rhodanans, and he didn’t care for his status at all.

As he walked with them, Laird Hammill studied the men of Rhodanas. They were handsome, tall, and well-built, but somehow they reminded Hammill of someone else—it was as though he had seen one of these men somewhere before, but he couldn’t recall where or when.

He shook his head, trying to clear it. It still seemed foggy. What the devil had happened to him?

He wanted to ask the men with him, but he knew they wouldn’t tell him anything until they were ready.

As they approached the great, iridescent, rose-colored dome, he saw that it was merely a part of the great city behind it. It was different from any city he had ever seen before; no Earth city had ever seemed so clean, so bright, so peaceful, so quiet. There were occasional murmurs of sound, like sweet strains of music that echoed hauntingly through the air and faded again, but there was no blare of horns, no rumble of heavy transportation, no roar of motors, no thunder of great rockets. He had never seen anything quite so beautiful.

They crossed the soft, green lawn toward the building. Hammill could see no opening in the smooth flawless beauty of the wall, but when they were within a few yards of it, a spot appeared and quickly dilated to reveal a round opening. From it stepped the loveliest girl Hammill had ever seen. She was wearing a close-fitting tunic, and the figure beneath was subtly rounded and desirable-looking. Her lustrous blonde hair was swept up in a chignon, reminding Hammill of the ancient carvings of the Grecian Aphrodite, the goddess of love.

She turned her cool blue eyes on him, and her soft, red mouth smiled faintly. “Your thoughts are flattering, Laird Hammill, but somewhat intimate.”

Hammill was not the blushing kind, but he came near to it as he realized that the girl had read the thoughts on the surface of his mind. “I apologize,” he said.

Her smile brightened just a little. “There is no need. I’m not offended.” She glanced at the tall man standing next to the Earthman. “We’ll speak aloud for his benefit, Karr. The Council is waiting for him.”

“Council?” asked Hammill. “Your rulers?”

The girl’s silvery laughter rang in the warm air, blending with the warm grins of the men.

“No. Laird,” the girl said, “we have no need of rulers here. We are not like other worlds.”

“I don’t understand,” Hammill said. “What sort of planet is this?”

“You’ll find out,” she said. “There are many things you will find out.”

Hammill grinned. “I’ll say. I don’t even know your name, you know.”

“Nita,” she said. “And now, let us go. The Council is waiting for you.”

They sat behind a curving, translucent arc of glowing plastic that provided illumination for the great room. There were eight of them, men neither old nor young, their deep-set eyes warm with a wisdom and a benignity that Hammill accepted immediately. As he stood before them, Nita at his side, the pain and terror of the last weeks seemed to wash away.

“You are Laird Hammill, of Earth,” said the foremost of the eight. “Welcome to Rhodanas.”

Hammill faced him squarely. “Just where am I and what is going on?”

“Patience,” the Councilman said. “First—may we have permission to enter your mind? Speaking aloud is clumsy and inefficient.”

Hammill stared uncertainly at him for a long moment, remembering the flaming agony of the moment when Lord Kleyne of Denerix had broken through his barriers and probed his mind. He did not want that to happen again. But—somehow, he trusted the Rhodanans.

“Very well,” he said.

It was like stepping into a soothing raybath. The mental energy of the Rhodanans seeped into him, washed over him, left him feeling calmed and refreshed. His perceptions were heightened; he could see Nita, at his side, take on a glowing beauty that he had not known it was possible for a woman to possess, while the members of the Council grew in dignity and authority.

“Welcome to Rhodanas a second time,” the elder said. Only now his voice was an unspoken thought, and Hammill knew not only that he was Lorkan, nominal head of the Council of Rhodanas, but that he was Nita’s father, and that he was on a world which far surpassed in mental power any that the galaxy had ever known.

“You could have destroyed me,” he said. “Why did you bring me here?”

“We do not destroy unless we are directly threatened,” Lorkan said. “And, as usual, our friends of Shanador bungled the job when they planted the command in you.”

“Command?” Hammill groped for the information he lacked.

“You were sent here to steal the hsrorn,” Lorkan said quietly.

Immediately awareness came flooding back. Hammill rocked dizzily as the pieces fell into place, as the whole picture took form and meaning and coherence.

The minds of the Rhodanans meshed with his own, and Nita’s warm hand tightened in his as the dams broke and the data tumbled through him. He saw a sweeping vista of Galactic history in an instant, a record of millennia-long eras.

He knew why he was here.

It had begun millions of years in the distant cosmic past, here on the world of Rhodanas. The Rhodanans, who had sprung from the same hardy stock that had gone on to give rise to the peoples of the Earth federation, had, through untold centuries of evolution, reached a state of near-perfection. They had mastered the ability of controlling the hsrorn.

Which was, Hammill learned in that blinding instant, the key to the conflict that threatened to consume the civilized galaxy. The hsrorn was a semi-living entity that resided in the hearts of suns, a light-being which existed at incalculable temperatures, neither fully alive nor totally inanimate.

The Rhodanans had mastered the skill of snapping their minds across space to the star in which lived the hsrorn, seizing a microscopic fragment of the light that composed the entity, and crystallizing it instantly into a lambent jewel. Hammill noticed the hsrorn for the first time—a tiny bead that glistened brilliantly at the throat of each of the Rhodanans.

Mastering the hsrorn had been the final step in the Rhodanans’ path toward perfection. Its peculiar property was its ability to act as a focus for the mental powers, to allow them to project their thoughts to one another, to enter into each other’s minds, to live in perfect harmony and utter balance with each other.

Only—not all the Rhodanans were capable of using the hsrorn. In some, the genes of evil still lurked. And they, these inferior Rhodanans, were consumed with jealousy, cut off as they were from the wondrous mental blending the hsrorn afforded. Bitter, thwarted, twisted and warped, they banded together and attempted to steal the hsrorn from those Rhodanans who rightfully possessed it.

But the hsrorn was a weapon as well as a source of eternal harmony. Gathering their united powers and focussing their thoughts through their hsrorn, the Rhodanans had risen to what would be their final act of violence for all time, and in a mighty battle had swept away the outcasts. They had been hurled from Rhodanas forever.

“And now they are the Starlords,” Hammill said quietly, still shaken by the force of the experience that had poured into him.

“Yes,” Lorkan said. “When we drove them away, they settled in a distant cluster, gathering themselves together in defeat. They have remained there ever since, scheming against one another and against us, caught forever in their web of destruction.”

“We have nothing but pity for them,” said Nita.

“They do not dare return to Rhodanas,” Lorkan went on. “They fear us and they know our might. They are well aware that we could hurl them back just as easily a second time as a first.

“But you—an Earthman—they had hoped somehow to send you to us and have you steal the hsrorn for them. It was a mad plan—but they are madmen, the Starlords.”

Hammill nodded. “Yes. But suppose I did succeed in stealing the—the hsrorn. What then? Do they think they could defeat you?”

“No. Not us. They want the hsrorn to focus their hatred against the peoples of the Earth Federation, who even now threaten to smash them.”

“So they sent me here to snaffle the super-weapon that would smash my own people,” Hammill said. He smiled. “But if you should give me the hsrorn, and I take it to the Earth fleet to use against the Starlords—”

“No,” Lorkan said gravely. “That would be impossible. We do not interfere in cosmic struggles.”

Hammill frowned, then. “Now wait just a second. If you don’t intend to do anything, why did you bring me here?”

“I will be frank with you, Laird,” the Rhodanan said. “We wouldn’t have brought you here ordinarily. The so-called Starlords have sent a good many emissaries here under hypnotic compulsion. None of them have ever landed. We stopped their vessels in space long before they reached us. And, much as we dislike violence, even on a mental level, we blanked their minds and sent them away.”

“Why am I so special?” Hammill asked.

Lorkan smiled. “You are the first being we have ever known who had the innate mental ability to break the mental compulsion of a Starlord. Our race—and that includes the Starlords—is one of vast mental powers, vaster than you know, even yet. The Starlords are the weakest of us, but no one has ever been able to break away from their mind control—until you did.

“That’s why we brought you here, Hammill. We wanted to see what kind of man you were.”

Hammill was astounded. “Me? Strong mind? Why, I hardly was able to resist him more than a fraction of a second. He—Lord Kleyne—went through my mind block like a hot knife through butter.”

“True. But you did resist him. Even though your block only held for a short time, it was more than anyone else has ever done. And, too, you were able to break the compulsion after five days. And that takes strength—real strength!”

Hammill felt a chill run up his back. If the Starlords were actually that strong, Earth and her Federation didn’t stand a chance against the combined might of Shanador!

“Look, Lorkan,” Hammill said, “you’ve got to help us! You’re the people who drove those men off of Rhodanas! Now they’ve enslaved a whole Galaxy and are going on to more! They’ve got to be stopped, and you’re the only one who can do it!”

Lorkan shook his head. “You don’t understand. Each race must work out its own destiny; we have worked out ours, we will let others work out theirs. We do not interfere!”

“You won’t help then?”

“We cannot. I’m sorry, Hammill.”

Laird Hammill’s teeth were clenched. “I presume I’m free to go at any time?”

“As soon as your ship is repaired,” Lorkan said. “The paramagnetic beam jammed the controls, but they will be ready soon.” He asked no question; there was no need to. He knew exactly what the Earthman was thinking, and he didn’t seem to care.

“You’re snobs,” said Hammill. “Every one of you. You sit here on this tight little world of yours and pay no attention to what’s going on in the rest of the Universe. One of these fine days, when the Starlords have conquered themselves enough territory, they’ll turn on you—and you can’t fight physical force with a little telepathic compulsion!”

Lorkan only smiled. “There is some truth in that. But, remember, you don’t know all of the facts. Possibly you never will. You will just have to accept our word for it.”

Then Nita’s thought cut across the subdued comments of the councilors. “Just a moment, please. May I speak?”

A thought of assent came from the Council.

“It has occurred to me that it may be wise to make a personal investigation of the Shanador Galaxy.”

“Indeed?” came the general thought of the Council.

“And why?” thought Lorkan to his daughter. “We have them under continual mental observation. Our Observers report nothing unusual.”

“Remember,” said Nita, “in spite of their weaknesses and their warped minds, the Starlords are of our race. They know us. It’s possible that they may have developed a method of hiding their activities from our Observers.”

Hammill kept out of it. He sensed that the girl was on his side, and she seemed to be making her point. There was no need to interrupt yet.

Lorkan was silent for a moment. Then he sent out a powerful thought. “Observers! Link up and come in with us.”

In several star systems scattered throughout the local cluster, fifty Rhodanans linked their minds together to become, in effect, one mind. Then that mind sent a thought to the Council. “What do you wish?” The Council, too, had linked themselves together, thinking as one individual.

“Have you made the latest check on the activities of the Outcasts?”

“Shanador?” came the Observers’ thought. “We have.”

“Is there anything unusual to report?” the Council asked.

“Nothing,” said the Observers. “They are arming, of course, and they war among themselves and with others. They have expanded in the past few centuries, but we have nothing to fear from them.”

“Excellent. But is there any chance that they may be acting in a manner which is not detectable to you?”

There was a silence for a moment, then the Observers said: “It is admittedly possible that they may have developed a method of concealing their activities from us. But the probability is so remote that we have not taken it into account. We will, however, check again. It will not take long.”

“Do so,” said the Council. “And this time, make a careful check for any clues that might mean that they have found a method of screening us out.”

“One moment.”

It had lasted only a minute fraction of a second of time, that conversation. And through it all, Hammill had listened and watched. What a people! What minds! Here was a race that could really think!

The answer came from the Observers. “Our results are negative. We find nothing suspicious whatsoever. No Starlord or any of his subordinates anywhere are working on any weapon or device which might prove inimical to us. And that, of course, in the light of your question, is highly suspicious in itself.

“Other than that, we have nothing to report.”

“Thank you,” said the Council.

The councilors unlinked their minds and became separate people once again.

Lorkan looked puzzled. “We have no evidence that there is anything wrong—nor do you, Hammill. But, in view of the remote possibility that something may be happening of which we are utterly ignorant, we must, for our own safety, check the Galaxy of Shanador in person.

“Will you be willing to aid our agent?”

Hammill nodded. “If it will help convince you that the Starlords of Shanador are more dangerous than you think, I’ll go with your agent wherever he wants to go.”

“Not he,” Lorkan said, smiling. “She. My daughter will go with you.”

The small ship curved upward from the surface of Rhodanas as in a tight, smooth arc and shot away into the blackness of space. Hammill fed coordinates into the automatic pilot while Nita, at his side, watched with great interest.

“We’ll return to the Earth Federation fleet,” he told her, as he guided the tape into the entry slot of the computer that controlled the ship. “Then we can get our plans squared away with them.”

Nita smiled. “Remember, I’m just along as an observer on this flight. Don’t start figuring either me or the hsrorn into your plans, Laird.”

He glanced at her. She was wearing an abbreviated tunic that clung to her tightly from breast to thigh, and nestled in the valley between her full breasts was the glowing radiance of the hsrorn. Hammill had to force himself to recall that she was not merely another lovely girl, but a representative of the universe’s wisest race.

“I think you’ll see what the Starlords are up to, Nita. They’re assaulting innocent races—and if you and your people let them do it, the guilt will be on Rhodanas forever.”

She shook her head. “Our custom is not to interfere,” she said. “But I will see if there is justification in what you say.”

He returned his attention to the drive, and worked rapidly until the ship was fully automatic. Then he moved to the sub-space radio and began setting up the coordinates that would put him in contact with the Flagship Gifford of the Earth Federation fleet.

There was a momentary whine and crackle of static, and then the Gifford came in.

“Starship Gifford. Starship Gifford. Come in, please. Over.”

“Gifford, this is Laird Hammill.”

“Hammill! Where have you been?”

“It’s a long story, Sparks. But I’m on the way back to the fleet with something interesting.”

“You’ve been missing for more than a week! We’d written you off as dead.”

“I’ll explain it to the captain,” Hammill said. “Beam me in.”

“Are you crazy? In the middle of a battle?”

“Battle?” Hammill glanced at Nita and then back at the subradio. “What’s happened?”

“Didn’t you know? The Starlord’s fleets have been on us for three days! We’ve been dodging where we could and fighting where we had to. We have them pretty much at a standstill now; they can’t find us. But we’ve been completely outmaneuvered. We’re out-gunned and outmanned, and they are fighting us on their own territory!”

“How about reinforcements?”

“From the home Galaxy? It’ll take days! By that time, we’ll be wiped out, and the Starlords can set a trap for the reinforcements!” Then there was a sudden roaring crackle of static.

“Gifford! Battleship Gifford! Come in!” Hammill shouted.

But there was no answer.

Hammill clenched his fists and glared at Nita. “That may have been a battleship exploding! Do you see what your stupid ‘hands off’ policy is doing? You’ve set a bunch of maniacs loose in the Universe, and you’re doing nothing about it!”

Nita shook her head. “I’m sorry, Laird, if you think so badly of us. But don’t judge us until you’ve uncovered all the facts.”

“Men are dying out there,” he said coldly.

Nita’s face sobered. “Perhaps we can help them.”

“How?” Hammill’s voice was sarcastic. “We’re only an hour out from Rhodanas! It’s a five day trip from here to there, even in this ship.”

Nita looked at him for a long moment before answering. Then she said: “Laird, you have a strong mind. You’ve got more power than you know—perhaps more than I know. But if you push your abilities too hard and fail, you may die. Do you want to take the chance?”

“What sort of chance?”

“Would you risk your life in the off chance that you might be able to reach the Earth fleet in time to help them—even if your help wasn’t worth much?”

Hammill’s face became hard. “You know damned well I would!”

“Very well, then.” The girl put her hands behind her head and unclasped the necklace that encircled her neck. The chain came away from her throat as she brought her left hand out. From her hand dangled the iridium chain—and at the end of the chain glowed the supernal light of the tiny hsrorn jewel. With her right hand she reached out and cradled the scintillating gem in her palm. Then she looked again at the Earthman. “Hold my hand,” she said softly, extending the palm containing the jewel.

Without hesitation, the big Earthman closed his hand over hers, clasping it as though they were lovers. Between their palms, the glowing bit of crystallized light throbbed warmly.

And, in that second, Laird Hammill became the first Earthman to contact the hsrorn.

Hsrorn was a symbol—not a word. It was never actually meant to be pronounced in any human language. It was a concept-thought for something that could not be described in language.

Hsrorn was a being—and yet not a being. It was a race—and yet not a race. It was intelligent—and yet not intelligent. In its entirety, it was entirely incomprehensible to the human mind. There was only one—and yet there were many.

In the heart of every living star dwelt the hsrorn. In every glowing star throughout the sidereal Universe—in every one of a billion billion billion shining suns—dwelt the hsrorn. Some of them—or, perhaps, parts of it—were stronger than others. A blue-white giant was a more powerful star than a red dwarf. But, as a whole, the hsrorn was more powerful, more potent, than any or all of the stars that were its components.

As a plant changes the light of a sun into heat and chemical energy, as the vast Powertapper engines of Earth’s Federation bled the inconceivable nuclear power of a sun, so did the tiny jewel tap the tremendous mental energy of the uncounted suns of the Universe.

But a plant does not tap all the power of a sun, nor does a Powertapper engine pick up more than a tiny portion of the limitless nuclear energy of a huge star. Each is limited by its own ability to use that power.

And thus it was with the mental energies of those suns—each mind, with the aid of the jewel, could use the energy that the jewel tapped—provided that the resiliency and ability to handle the energy that poured from those tiny bits of crystallized light.

The electrical socket in an ordinary house has no ability of its own; it is merely the outlet for the tremendous energies of the generator at the power station. If something that is too weak to withstand the voltage and amperage of a household socket is plugged into it, there is a short circuit. The weak appliance burns out. But if it is used properly, the socket can feed energy into a motor or any other appliance—and that energy can be used, transmitted from a power source many miles away.

And thus it was with the hsrorn gem; it was a power source that could be used—provided the mentality of the being using it was strong enough to stand the strain of those incomprehensible energies.

For a moment, Hammill’s mind reeled as the power from the jewel flowed through him. Then the flow stabilized, and the Earthman’s mind could feel the energy backing it.

Nita’s thought came into his brain, urging, pressing. Think, Laird! Think of the ship moving! Faster! Faster! Push, Laird; aim it toward the Earth Federation fleet and push—with all your might!

There was a terrible rushing. Stars swam and blurred. The coupled minds of Nita and Laird Hammill slammed the tiny scoutship through space as though distance were a negligible thing—as though there were no distance at all.

Then, quite suddenly, the ship slowed.

Nita gently took her hand from Hammill’s own and relocked the hsrorn jewel about her throat. “We’re here,” she said gently.

Hammill glanced at the plate. There, within less than a hundred million miles, he saw the ravening fury of a space battle.

The blackness of space was rent with the brilliant gouts of flame that told of titanic conflict. Rays splashed across the arch of the void, battered into protective screens, staggered armaments. As Hammill watched, the dull gray snout of a Shanador cruiser spurted bright green as an energy charge leaped from its fore batteries and blazed toward a retreating Terran destroyer.

The ray-charge struck. Hammill pictured vividly what must be going on aboard the ship as the screens labored valiantly to absorb the overload. Again the Shanador cruiser struck, probably raising temperatures aboard the Terran ship to unbearable degrees.

He watched as a second Shanador vessel cruised in for the kill, orbiting silently downward and smashing through the Terran star-ship’s defenses with a powerful caesium-beam that sizzled through screens and turned the Earth ship into a spinning husk. Another Terran ship cut upward to provide a defensive maneuver, but it was too late.

“You see what’s happening?” Hammill said. “The Starlords are cutting us to pieces!”

She nodded grimly. “I see. Perhaps it is not too late to save them. Take my hand once again.”

He grasped her, tingling at the contact, and felt the throbbing vibrance of the hsrorn surge through him—that, and the quite different throbbing vibrance of the girl’s physical nearness.

“Hold me tightly,” she whispered—and for a moment it seemed that her mind was not entirely on the battle. But it was only for a moment. She stared keenly into the viewplate, searching the roaring turmoil below.

“That’s the Shanador flagship,” Hammill said, pointing to a long, menacing dreadnought that seemed to be controlling strategy. “We’ll be best concentrating our attack there.”

She nodded. Suddenly he stiffened as the hsrorn drew on his and the girl’s combined mental powers, and hurled a bolt of faint pink light down toward the cruising Shanador ship.

It enveloped the flagship like the fuzzy halo of a comet, and then the beam—vanished! Winked out of existence!

A ripple of despair ran through him, and Hammill realized that he was linked to the girl by the hsrorn, sharing her emotions and her reactions. Puzzled, he turned to her.

“What happened? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Let’s try again.”

A second time the beam streaked toward the Shanador flagship, and a second time it was deflected and blinked out.

“I don’t understand what they’re doing,” she said. “Unless—yes, that must be it! They’ve finally developed a shield!”

Hammill whitened. “You mean the Starlords have a defense against the hsrorn?”

“Yes and no. They can’t ever be able to withstand our combined might—but this shield can hold off whatever you and I can throw against them. At the moment, we can’t stop them. I hope your friends know how to retreat swiftly.”

Hammill’s eyes narrowed. The Rhodanans had failed him, and he wasn’t sure what to believe now. If the hsrorn were as powerful as it was supposed to be, how could the Starlords shield against it? And why didn’t the rest of the Rhodanans join in to save the Earth fleet?

There were no answers. He glanced at the girl, who was fingering the gem at her throat with nervous fingers. Her breasts rose and fell rapidly; he could see she was worried.

“Let’s get out of here!” he said, and turned to the control panel. A quick look at the viewplate showed him that the Shanador fleet was in full command, with the Earth ships streaking to all corners of the cosmos in frantic and undignified retreat. Hammill’s fingers played rapidly over the blasting console—there was not time to set up the automatics—and directed his ship out and away from the advancing Shanador fleet.

“We’ll have to figure out some other line of attack. We’ll—”

The sentence was never completed. The ship came to a sudden halt, as complete as if it had run into an immovable screen in mid-space.

“They’ve slapped a traction beam on us,” Hammill muttered. He looked around and saw the slumped body of Nita sprawled near the wall—the sudden jolt of deceleration had slammed her up against it with a stunning impact.

There was a twisting effect as the frozen ship dipped and whirled in space. Hammill clung to the controls and fought for consciousness. They were giving him the spin treatment, pivoting the traction on beam off one end of the ship and whirling them in a tight circle like a cat held by its tail.

Blood circled dizzyingly in his head as the ship went over and over. Once, he managed to glance out the plate, and saw Lord Kleyne’s flagship hovering within striking distance, ready to pounce. Kleyne was no doubt enjoying the scene of Hammill’s ship whirling over and over.

Hammill rocked and swung, clinging tightly to awareness. He knew why Kleyne was spinning them—Kleyne realized there was a Rhodanan aboard, and Kleyne was taking no chances. They were trapped.

Hammill hung on a moment more, then blacked out completely. He could almost hear Kleyne’s sadistic laughter now.

The blackout didn’t last more than a few seconds. When stability returned, Hammill found himself still hanging on to the wall of the ship, holding himself erect by sheer will power.

There was a wave of searingly hot air which washed through the ship as Lord Kleyne’s cruiser burned the airlock door open and clamped a tube against it before the air could escape.

The two ships were tied together now, connected by the tube which ran from the airlock of Lord Kleyne’s battle cruiser to the burned lock of the little scoutship.

As he pulled himself upright, Hammill saw Lord Kleyne step into the ship from the tube. There was a sardonic smile on his lips and a semi-portable ray rifle in his arms. The radiation-blackened muzzle pointed directly at Hammill’s midsection.

“Well, Earthling,” the Starlord said contemptuously, “I see you’ve done your duty.” He glanced at the supine figure of Nita, who lay unconscious on the floor.

Hammill realized instantly what the Starlord must think. Laird Hammill had been sent out, under hypnotic compulsion, to steal one of the hsrorn jewels from Rhodanas. Lord Kleyne thought that he had done just that!

If he could play it right, Hammill knew he could make the Starlord think he was still under compulsion!

Hammill blinked. “Yes, Lord Kleyne,” he said dully, “I’ve brought you the jewel.”

The muzzle of the Starlord’s ray rifle lowered a bit. He looked hungrily at the glowing bit of cold fire at Nita’s throat.

“Within a short time, I shall be Starlord of Rhodanas,” he said.

He was so intent upon the jewel that neither he nor the men who had followed him through the tube had seen the little ship pull up alongside the other airlock. But Hammill had seen it. Some other ship was also trying to board the scout cruiser!

Lord Kleyne stepped over to Nita and bent down. “At last! With this jewel, I shall become the greatest ruler the Universe has ever known!”

“You’ll die before then!” said a harsh voice from the port airlock.

Lord Kleyne jerked himself erect and stared down the twin muzzles of a dimodine projector. “Lord Brannis!” he said sharply.

The man holding the dimodine projector also wore the bejeweled cloak of a Starlord of Shanador. He was shorter than Lord Kleyne, and broader of shoulder. His wide face radiated contempt and hatred.

“Well, my lord,” he said sneeringly, “so you have managed to get a hsrorn crystal, eh?”

“I intended to turn it over to the Starlords’ Union,” Kleyne said steadily. Out of the corners of his eyes, he could see that his own men had dropped their weapons as soon as they had been covered by the other Starlord’s personal guard.

“Oh, certainly,” said Lord Brannis sarcastically. “Well, I’ll just take charge of that little bauble myself, Lord Kleyne.”

“The Union has elected me Starlord of Starlords,” Lord Kleyne said in a hard voice. “Would you violate the decision of the Union?”

Lord Brannis laughed harshly. “No more than you would, my lord.”

Hammill had been watching the scene between the two Starlords without moving a muscle. He smiled inwardly. It was easy to see what Lorkan of Rhodanas had meant when he said that the Starlords were warped mentally; they could not even agree among themselves. In spite of their great power, they were no better than any neurotic criminal; they didn’t trust each other, and probably did not even trust themselves.

There was silence for a moment as the two Starlords faced each other, each backed by his hypnotically controlled minions. The ordinary people of Shanador had no great mental power, and were thus at the mercy of the Starlords. Even without a hsrorn jewel, a Starlord could control a planet. What would happen if they seized control of the gem?

Because of his own newly-found ability to handle mental energy, Hammill felt more confident in the situation than he would have before his trip to Rhodanas. Ironically, he had Lord Kleyne to thank for that.

But, as long as the Starlords both thought he was under hypnotic compulsion like the guards, he had a chance. Cautiously, he felt toward their minds with his new-found telepathic sense. He just barely touched the surface of their minds. Neither one reacted, so he went a little deeper, watching, listening, making no attempt to control them.

Lord Brannis hefted his dimodine projector and glanced at Nita. His eyes glittered evilly. “Well, well! Not only do we have one of the hsrorn jewels, but a lovely girl as well.”

He started to step toward Nita, and, in that instant, Lord Kleyne acted. He sent a driving thought out to his own guards, who, under his control, cared nothing for their own lives. They brought up their weapons and fired.

But Lord Brannis had sensed that order and had dropped to the floor, swinging his own twin-barreled weapon about.

For an instant, the cabin was filled with the ravening flame of white-hot radiation as the rays burned their way through flesh and bone. The guards of both Starlords flared, smoldered, burned, and died—the hot beams of their ray rifles cut both sides down within half a second.

The two Starlords, meanwhile, had fired at each other almost simultaneously. The beams met in midair, flaring blue-white and filling the cabin with heat. Both men were unharmed, but their weapons had been short-circuited. They smoked ominously and became impotent in their owners’ hands.

Two Starlords, weaponless and without guards, faced each other in the control room of the tiny scout vessel, while the Earthman stood by and watched the battle to the death.

But Lord Brannis did the unexpected. Instead of trying to do battle with Lord Kleyne, either physically or mentally, he flung himself toward Nita’s inert body.

When he did, Laird Hammill almost leaped to protect her. But Lord Brannis wasn’t after the girl; he wanted the jewel! His hand clasped around it, and he glared at Lord Kleyne.

It was the last act of his life. He had meant to use the hsrorn energy to kill Lord Kleyne. But Lord Brannis did not, by any means, have enough mental power of his own to control those supernal energies. When he called them forth, it was as though he had touched a high-voltage wire. Like a man strapped in an electric chair, he found himself unable to resist the tremendous power behind the hsrorn. His mind, burned out completely by that terrible force, collapsed and died.

With an effort, Hammill held himself in check. At the moment, he was in no danger from Kleyne—so long as the Starlord believed he was still under compulsion.

“Poor Brannis,” Kleyne said cluckingly. “He should have known that second-rate minds have no business trying to play with the hsrorn. Eh, Earthling?”

Kleyne stooped and picked up the gem, carefully grasping it by its chain. He’s afraid of it, Hammill thought. He saw what it did to Brannis, and it scares him.

Smiling, the Starlord pocketed the hsrorn. A new thought entered Hammill’s mind; Suppose Kleyne did have enough innate mental ability to handle the hsrorn? Would he be able to unleash a crushing attack on the rest of the galaxy? And—more important—would Nita’s people remain so damnably detached, standing aloof so long as Kleyne didn’t come near them?

Hammill didn’t know. He longed to spring at Kleyne, to turn his aristocratic hawk’s nose into a pulpy mass, to seize the hsrorn and restore it to its rightful place at Nita’s throat, but it wouldn’t be a wise move. Right now it was smarter to pretend to be a hypnotized dupe.

Kleyne spoke briefly into a hand-microphone and almost immediately half a dozen of his black-clad guards came up the tube that linked the ships.

He gestured to the inert body of Lord Brannis. “Get rid of this,” he ordered. Then he turned to Hammill and the still-unconscious Nita, and indicated them to several of the guards.

“As for these two—the Earthling’s served his purpose well, and we can’t let that go unrewarded. Earthling, I grant you a speedy death—instead of the lingering one in the torture chambers!”

Hammill’s face became a steely mask. This was Starlord honor, then—not that it mattered. It was no more than he expected from Kleyne.

“What about the girl, lord?” asked a guard.

“I don’t care to have her remain alive either,” Kleyne said crisply. He gathered his jeweled cloak around him, and affectionately patted the pocket that contained the hsrorn. “That will be all,” he said.

He turned imperiously and stalked away down the tube that led to his own ship, leaving Hammill and Nita in the custody of two of the guards.

The bigger of the two guards, who seemed to be the higher in rank as well, waited until the tube that linked the ships was empty. He peered down its length for a moment, then turned to the other guard.

“Hah! It would be just like our noble Starlord to sever the tube and leave us adrift in this ruined hulk!”

“The tube’s all right, isn’t it?” the other guard asked uneasily.

The bigger one nodded. “But let’s finish these two off quickly. I don’t know how long we can trust our luck to this derelict.”

Then his eyes fell on Nita, and he smiled. “Hmm—maybe we’ll take a little extra time after all,” he said, leering. “The good Starlord said nothing about the exact method of inflicting death, so long as it was fairly merciful.” He chuckled.

Hammill, standing stiffly against the far bulkhead by Nita’s slumped body, reached down and grasped her cold, limp hand. He gathered together his ever-growing mental powers. This was the time to act. Now. Without any more delay.

Nita. Nita, can you hear me?

His mind moved out, sought contact with hers as she groped toward consciousness. He sensed feelings of pain stirring in her bruised head; he detected a sense of loss, of incompleteness, of almost nakedness, coming from her as she realized she no longer had the hsrorn.

Nita. Nita.

Desperately, he transmitted to her the image of the leering guard, standing before them pondering which way of killing them would be the most delightful.

Wake up, Nita. Wake up.

He felt her mind coming back to full activity again. Oh, my head! And then—what’s going on?

Rapidly he filled in the events up to the present moment. The entire interchange took but a microsecond.

We’ve got to do something.

Yes. Hold on tight, Nita’s mind said. There was something else, indistinct, half-concealed, that she had added. Was it—darling?

Hammill reached toward her mind and they linked. It was not as effective nor as powerful a linkage as it would have been if focussed through the hsrorn, but their minds did blend to a degree of rapport.

The guard took a step forward and lifted Nita’s head. “You’re a pretty one,” he said. She quivered imperceptibly at his rough, coarse touch. “Too pretty to kill, perhaps.”

“You’d better not try that, Holmak,” warned the other guard. “If Lord Kleyne comes back and finds us—”

“You’re right,” Holmak admitted. He unholstered his blaster. “We’d better make it quick after all.”

All right, now, Nita said. Now! Push!

A burst of energy sprang from their unaided minds and leaped toward the unsuspecting guards.

“We’ve got them!” Hammill cried exultantly. The dizzied guards tottered unsteadily under the assault of the two minds, and Hammill sprang forward, happy to be able to end his long period of motionlessness.

His fist crashed into the taller guard’s chin, snapping his head backward sharply. As he fell, Hammill turned his attention to the other, who was groping bewilderedly around the cabin.

“I’m over here,” Hammill said happily. He collared the guard, slapped him a few times to clear his head, and then slammed him to the floor with a roundhouse right.

“I think that’ll do it,” Hammill said. He picked up the two unconscious guards, dragging each by the scruff of his neck, and hauled them to the back of the tiny scoutship. “Tie them up,” he told Nita. “And get their blasters away.”

He reached down, took a blaster from one of the holsters, and quickly sealed off the tube that held the ship to Kleyne’s.

“We’re free of the other ship,” he said. “But now we’ve got to get out of here in a devil of a hurry. They won’t be expecting us to escape, and maybe we can get out of range of that traction beam of theirs.”

“How’s the drive?” she asked.

“It got pretty scrambled during the recent encounter. I don’t think the left field coil of the mass-time converter is going to give us enough push.”

“We’ve got another way,” Nita said. “Even without the hsrorn. Give me your hand.”

He nodded and approached her. It was the only way—and wouldn’t Kleyne be surprised when the little scoutship suddenly took off like a startled fawn, bursting to a thousand lights immediately from a standing start!

Nita’s thought came into his brain, urging, pressing. Think of the ship moving, Laird! Faster! Faster!

The scoutship shot off into the depths of space.

Fleet Admiral Bronson, tall, lean and graying, looked bleak as he received the two fugitives in his cabin aboard the flagship Gifford. His battleship had been hit by two ray-blasts, and a torpedo had taken off part of the rear guide coils.

Hammill and Nita stepped into his cabin; his hand was tightly clasping hers.

The admiral’s eyes were cold. “We’ve lost, Captain Hammill. We—”

Hammill knew immediately what was going on within the admiral’s mind. As far as the admiral was concerned, the failure of the Earth Federation Fleet was due entirely to Hammill’s failure as a spy on Denerix. It was an irrational decision on the admiral’s part; he had to blame someone, so he had blamed Hammill.

The defeat of the Earth Fleet had weighed heavily on the admiral’s mind; though, ordinarily a just man, he had, in the past few hours, become bitter against those who had figured in the loss of the battle.

“I don’t know who this woman is,” he said. “I presume she is a native of one of the local planets in this galaxy. You have—”

A thought flashed from Nita to Hammill. Stop him!

But Hammill’s mind had reacted even more rapidly than the girl’s. In a split second, he had taken control of the admiral’s mind.

When the admiral finished his sentence, he said: “—done the fleet a great service. Do you have any ideas for beating the Starlords?”

The speech was purely for the benefit of the officers who were watching. Under Hammill’s control, Fleet Admiral Bronson turned to his staff and said: “Captain Hammill knows this galaxy better than anyone else. I suggest we listen to his ideas.”

Hammill felt all the bitterness of the admiral; he knew how every one of the officers felt. His mind had picked up every bit of the fear, the heroism, the panic, and the determination of these men.

And yet, he knew that, in spite of their feelings, he, Laird Hammill, must take charge.

A ripple of shock ran across the surface of Nita’s mind as she realized what Hammill intended to do. But it only lasted for a moment. Then she thought: “You’re right, Laird; it’s the only way.”

“It is,” he thought. “It’s the only way.”

Aloud, he said: “As I see it, we’ll have to use guerilla tactics. We’ll have reinforcements from Earth within a few days, but, until then, we must harass the enemy within their own borders. If we give them a chance to form a fleet, a really big fleet, we won’t stand a chance, ourselves.”

At that instant, a deep, resonant voice sounded within Hammill’s mind.

Nita and Hammill! What are your findings on the military preparations of the Starlords of Shanador?

Instantly, Nita responded.

They have some sort of screen.

Hammill had recognized the mental voice as that of the linked and assembled minds of the Council of Rhodanas. It was obvious that none of the Earth officers in the flagship’s control room had heard a thing. Only Nita and himself could receive the mental communication from Rhodanas.

What sort of screen?

Rapidly, Nita explained what had happened when she had hurled a bolt of mental energy at the Shanadorian spaceships.

We see, said the Council. It hardly seems worth worrying about, but we shall check. Meanwhile, we have information for you. Observers, inform them of what you have learned.

The mental voice changed subtly, and Hammill recognized it as the voice of the Observers.

We have been able to penetrate the screen.

Hammill felt a sense of deep respect for the Rhodanan Observers. Nita had given them the characteristics of the Shanadorian thought screen, and within a small fraction of a second, they had analyzed that screen, penetrated it, and taken full account of what it had hidden.

The Starlords are preparing an invasion in force, the Observers continued. Under the enforced leadership of Lord Kleyne, they have prepared an Armada of ships to blast Earth. Unless they are stopped, the Federation will be doomed.

Quickly, Hammill fired a thought at the Observers.

Will you help us?

The answering voice was cold. We cannot. We will give you information, but we will not give you either physical or mental aid. That is our decision, and the decision of the Council at this time.

Very well, Hammill said bitterly. We’ll do without your aid. What information do you have?

Quickly, concisely, the Observers told them what had happened and was happening within the Galaxy of Shanador.

So short a time had passed during the interchange of thought that the officers of the Gifford didn’t even notice the slight pause in Hammill’s voice. As though there had been no interruption whatever, Hammill continued.

“I happen to know where every main base of the Shanadorian fleet is located.”

“That’s almost unbelievable!” said one Commander. “We have estimated that there are over three hundred thousand major bases in this star system!”

“Three hundred thousand, four hundred and eighty-one, to be exact,” Hammill said coolly. “I know where they are located, which stars, which planets of those stars, and where the bases are on each planet. Earth’s only hope—and believe me when I say this—is for us to smash those bases!”

The officers looked at each other and then looked at Admiral Bronson.

Bronson, still under the mental control of Laird Hammill, said: “What do you think, gentlemen?”

“Why can’t we wait for Earth’s reinforcements?” asked a Vice-Admiral.

“They won’t be here for three days,” said the Fleet Admiral. “In that time, the Starlords’ fleet can take off and hit Earth, which will be unprotected. Neither this fleet nor our reinforcing fleet could get back to Earth, set up defenses, and fight a battle in time.” He glanced at each of them in turn. “We’ll have to do it as Hammill says.”

Thirty-five thousand and eleven Terran ships—all that remained of an armada of nearly ninety thousand starships—fanned outward from their point of assembly, many thousand light-years from Shanador, and sprang forward for the attack.

In the flagship Gifford, Laird Hammill paced uneasily back and forth as he watched the glittering suns of Shanador grow closer in the viewplate. This was virtually Earth’s last chance.

If the Starlords beat back this attack, crushed the remnants of Earth’s armada before the reinforcements had a chance to arrive—it would mean Lord Kleyne’s unquestioned dominion over the Galaxy.

Hammill felt a deep sense of inner confidence that helped to dispel some of his fears, and knew that he was drawing on the resources of mental power itself. His experiences with the Rhodanans, with Nita, with the actual hsrorn itself—they were changing him, bringing his latent mental skills to fruition. Laird Hammill was growing in mental power with each successive challenge.

And now forces were gathering for the final attack. He stared at the glowing viewplate, and began to plan his assault, knowing that he might be called upon to develop even further in the next few hours.

He snapped on the wide-band communicator and began to dictate orders to his ships.

“Wing 26? Wing 26? Do you read me?”

“We read you,” came the voice of the radio operator aboard one of the three J-type destroyers that constituted Fighting Wing 26.

“Here are your orders: attack Starlord base on Nellerang Seven.”

Quickly, he reeled off the coordinates of that planet and directed the three destroyers to the point of attack.

He watched as they peeled off from formation and swung down to Nellerang. Then he summoned another group. This would be a pinpoint job, a series of lightning swoops that would immobilize the Starlords’ bases before they were aware of what was going on.

The Starlords had one great weapon in their armory—the hsrorn stolen from Nita. But that was a question-mark; Hammill did not know if Kleyne would dare to use the gem after seeing what it had done to the late Lord Brannis. And Earth had one great weapon on its side—the sensitive, powerful mind of Laird Hammill.

Frowning in concentration, he continued the job of planning the destruction of the Starlords.

The reports began coming in shortly.

“Wing 38, Commander Hammill. Do you read us?”

“Come in, Wing 38. Over.”

“We report mission accomplished. We’ve blasted the port on Quinbak VII and destroyed nine spaceships sitting on the field waiting to blast off.”

“Good work, Wing 38. Move to Trantol IX now, and operate as follows—”

Hammill carried the entire gigantic pattern in his mind. Nita, at his side, stared white-faced at the screen, saying nothing, simply lending the strength of her own mind to Hammill. For that moment, he was two people, and the whole was definitely greater than the sum of its parts. His mind ranged through the Shanador system, finding weak points, dispatching ships to blast them immediately.

As the reports flooded in, a sense of exultation rose within him. Earth was winning! Earth was raking the Starlord bases with deadly fury, was gutting and burning and pillaging before the Starlords could react.

The exultation immediately died at a colder realization—there were still thousands of unharmed Starlord bases. Even the swiftest surprise attack could not possibly crush all of them at once. And soon, perhaps this very minute, the massed might of Shanador would be assembling to repulse the invader.

It happened almost instantly. A Class F light cruiser was reporting from Kradang, the moon of Denerix, when suddenly—

“The ship’s getting warm, sir! It feels like we’re burning up! And there are no enemy ships in firing range!”

“Let’s have that again!” Hammill ordered. “Check it. Sure you are not under direct fire?”

“Positive—we—” And the signal crackled off into a trail of static.

Hammill remained frozen for just a moment. On the screen, a tiny dot of fire told him what had happened to the cruiser.

The Starlords were beginning to fight back, then. They had recovered from the surprise blow.

But there was only one weapon that could have struck down the cruiser that way—

The hsrorn was in use!

Lord Kleyne was hurling beams of mental sun-force at the Terran ships!

“What now?” Nita asked, as the reports began coming in. “Someone is using tremendous mental energies, that’s for certain.”

Hammill nodded. “Yeah. And they’re hiding behind that damnable thought screen, too. Your Observers might be able to pierce it, but I can’t.” He pointed at the astroplate. “There they are, squatting on Denerix like a sniper in a tree, picking off the crews of our ships as fast as they can spot them!”

It had taken him several minutes to locate the Starlord after the first few ships had failed to report. By expanding his mental perception over an ever-increasing volume of space, he had finally found the source of the energies that were killing his men. The men themselves felt as though they were being burned alive as they died, although no actual physical force was being used against them.

Hidden invulnerably behind a gigantic thought screen on Denerix, Lord Kleyne was using the hsrorn to detect and kill the Earthship crews.

Meanwhile, the physical battle was still going on. Some of the Starlords’ ships were getting into space; more and more of them poured into the skies from bases that had not yet been bombed out of existence.

In the Eighth Decant, thirty thousand light years from Denerix, a tremendous battle had been engaged; the main part of the fleet, under Fleet Admiral Bronson, was fighting a force of Starlord ships which had assembled there, presumably intending to head for Earth.

Hammill was still in contact with the Admiral’s mind; he focussed sharply on it and watched the battle through the Admiral’s eyes.

Searing bolts of energy leaped through space, splashing against the force shields of cruisers and battleships. Occasionally, those ravening bursts of energy would cut through the force shields, and the ships would dissolve in a coruscating flash of fire.

The Earth fleet was still holding its own, but that state of affairs wouldn’t last for long if the Starlords started blasting the minds of the crews. There was only one answer to the problem: The Starlords had to be smashed. And the only man who could do that was Hammill himself.

Withdrawing from the Fleet Admiral’s mind, Hammill turned to Nita. “I’m taking a scoutship to Denerix.”

The girl nodded in agreement. It was highly probable that Hammill would die—but he had to take that chance.

Minutes later, he was in a tiny, one-man spaceship, spearing through space toward Denerix. Mentally he kept watch for the huge thought screen the Starlord was using. Hammill had learned to detect the thought screen; he couldn’t send or receive thoughts through it, but he could see where it was.

And, as he headed toward Denerix, it moved!

Instantly, Hammill knew what had happened. The thought screen generator was aboard a spaceship, and the ship had taken off. It was quite obviously headed toward the battle in the Eighth Decant.

Hammill shoved on acceleration, trying to catch up with it before it did any harm. If it reached the scene of the battle—

There was only one way to beat the thought screen. He had to get inside it physically. That meant he had to invade the Starlords’ spaceship personally!

Slowly, slowly, the little ship gained on the Starlord’s cruiser. Hammill still could hardly believe that Lord Kleyne had managed to learn to control the hsrorn jewel without help. Lord Brannis had tried it and died. Even Hammill himself had been aided by Nita when he had first used the gem.

But there was no doubt that the hsrorn was being used; nothing else would account for the destruction of the minds of several hundred Earthmen.

Five hundred million miles from the fringes of the great battle that was taking place between the stars, the space cruiser of the Starlords slowed and stopped.

Hammill formed his plan in an instant. Donning his spacesuit, he set the automatic pilot of the ship to continue on in the trajectory already established, and dropped through the airlock.

He dangled in the bottomless gulf for a moment, wheeling to orientate himself. He caught sight of the Starlord’s cruiser far off down in the star-jeweled distance, and narrowed his eyes as he estimated the push he’d need.

His mind groped backward until he felt Nita’s thought-radiations. Nita?

Laird?

Stay with me, he told her. Then he pushed, propelling himself forward to the Starlords’ great cruiser with his mind.

He reached the skin of the ship and clung there for a moment. The thought-shield was still wrapped around the vessel; inside, Lord Kleyne dealt destruction to the battered Terran fleets.

His mind thrust at the thought-shield and rebounded. The ship was tight as a nut.

Summoning all his hsrorn-awakened powers, Hammill shaped a thought and drove it against the thought-shield, hurling it again and again. The wave-barrier yielded, strained, finally gave. The thought broke through.

Hammill’s mind made contact with that of one Dovrak Lemorn, a jetman aboard the cruiser. Hammill transmitted an image to him—that of Lord Kleyne, ordering the jetman to open the secondary airlock.

Hammill smiled as he heard the jetman say, “At once, lord,” to the empty jetroom, and move toward the lever that operated the airlock.

Hurry, Dovrak! Hammill ordered.

The airlock slid open and Hammill leaped in.

“Who are you?” the jetman asked, just before Hammill struck him down with a bolt of mental energy. He turned and ran down the corridor. Now that he was within the thought-shield, he could detect the pulsing vibrance of the hsrorn, focussing the hatred of the Starlords against the Terran fleet.

It was Hammill and Nita against Kleyne plus the hsrorn. Hammill had no time to see if the odds were with him. He burst into the control-room—and reeled back as a bolt from the hsrorn sent him staggering.

“Hammill! Inside the thought screen!”

It was Kleyne—only Kleyne had not dared to use the hsrorn alone after all. He stood in the control-room with six other men in the ornamented robes of Starlords; their hands were joined in a ring. The seven of them, together, could handle the mighty voltage of the hsrorn, where one man—as Brannis—would be burned out instantly.

Hammill recovered and thrust up mental defenses. Sweat poured down his body. He wasn’t sure if he could handle only Kleyne—and now there were seven Starlords!

They turned their attention away from the battle and on Hammill. He felt the blazing power of the hsrorn driving him back, back, relentlessly.

Seven against one—and they had the hsrorn. Feebly he repulsed their assault, batted away the impulses radiating from them, but slowly they forced him to his knees.

Hammill reeled dizzily. Somewhere in the back of his mind he heard Nita urging him on, urging him to rally and drive the Starlords back—but he could not. Another few steps and they would reach him, and then he would be vulnerable to orthodox weapons—such as the blaster in Kleyne’s hands.

There was one defense.

He would have to create a hsrorn of his own.

With part of his mind, Hammill unleashed a blast of mental power that rocked the Starlords momentarily and gave him the instant of freedom he needed.

His mind reached out, questing toward the nearest star. He plunged into its heart, dove deep into the blazing fire—and plucked out a flaming mass of light!

The Starlords pressed him relentlessly as he drew the light from the heart of the star, drew it toward him, compressed it, crystallized it, infused it with life and purpose and power.

“We’ve got him now!” he heard Kleyne cry jubilantly. The Starlords rushed forward, bursting through Hammill’s temporarily-weakened defenses, drove in for the kill—

Hammill looked up and saw Kleyne’s hate-contorted face hovering over him.

“Sorry, Kleyne,” he said almost regretfully. With a final gigantic wrench, he pulled the newly-created hsrorn to him. It hovered in the air just above his eyes, glowing and filling the cabin with its light.

Hammill focussed his mind through it—and hurled Kleyne and his six cohorts back against the far wall of the cabin!

The other six Starlords remained where they had fallen, knocked unconscious by the tremendous power of Hammill’s mental thrust. But Lord Kleyne was on his feet in an instant with the hsrorn grasped tightly in his hand! The practice in using it with the other Starlords had enabled Kleyne to use it by himself! Kleyne, by himself, could now control the mental energies of the hsrorn!

With a look of hate on his thin, handsome face, the Starlord of Starlords hurled a bolt of mental force calculated to slay any living thing. Instantly, Hammill erected a mental barrier against it, and the spear of hate splashed harmlessly aside. At the same time, Hammill blasted back at Kleyne.

But Kleyne, too, warded off the blow. Mind to mind, both powered by the tremendous forces of the hsrorn, the two men faced each other.

The battle between them was silent. Neither man moved. But the titanic energies unleashed between them became a roaring holocaust in the infraspace of the mind.

No unprotected mind could withstand even a small percentage of that gigantic torrent of power. Within a few milliseconds, every crewman on the ship and the six unconscious Starlords had died, their minds burned out by the flare of silent energy from the battle in the control room.

It was a stalemate. Powered as they both were by the forces of the hsrorn, neither could gain an advantage over the other.

Meanwhile, the Earth Fleet, disastrously weakened by the directed mental blasts of the Starlords, was fighting a losing battle. And the reinforcements were still over two days away!

Slowly, Lord Kleyne moved his right hand. It was difficult for him to concentrate on moving his hand and to concentrate on the Earthman at the same time, but the hand moved, nonetheless.

Hammill saw what Kleyne was doing; he was reaching for the blaster at his hip. And Hammill was unarmed!

Carefully, slowly, Hammill took a step toward the Starlord. It was difficult; in order to move his foot, he had to think about it. And if he took any attention whatever from the screen that was holding off the mental bolts of Lord Kleyne, if that screen were to weaken in the slightest—Hammill would die. And with him would die Earth’s fleet and Earth itself.

But he had to move forward. If Kleyne managed to draw the ray pistol at his side, he could kill Hammill where he stood.

And then a thought came into Hammill’s mind.

Hold on, Earthman! We are coming! Hold on!

It was the voice of the Council of Rhodanas! Had they, then, changed their minds? Hammill didn’t know. He took another step forward.

Lord Kleyne’s hand was only inches from the butt of his pistol now.

There was only one chance for Hammill. Gathering every ounce of mental and physical strength he could muster, he hurled one tremendous bolt of mind-shattering force against the Starlord, and simultaneously launched his body across the control room in a great leap.

His shoulder slammed into the Starlord’s solar plexus, and the pain of the blow momentarily distracted Lord Kleyne’s mind. Just for an instant, he dropped his screen. And in that instant, he died, his mind seared into death by the vastly greater power of Hammill’s mind.

With the mental pressure so suddenly removed, Hammill felt his senses reel for a moment. He shook his head dizzily, trying to get the fog out of his brain. When his head cleared, he looked up at the astroplate. The Battle of the Eighth Decant was still going on.

But there was one difference. The Earth fleet was winning! Somehow, the reinforcements had arrived. Then Hammill realized what had happened. The Council must have brought them. The full power of the people of Rhodanas, backed by the unthinkable energies of the hsrorn, had pulled Earth’s reinforcement fleet to the battle in a matter of seconds.

That is correct, Hammill, said the resonant mental voice of the Council.

“Why did you change your minds?” Hammill asked telepathically.

We did not, the Council said. We had intended to aid you from the start. But we couldn’t tell you so openly. You would never have developed your present mental power if you had depended on us. You had to learn by fighting your own battles.

“I see,” Hammill said. “But why? Why did you want me to develop such powers?”

The Starlords are dead. The peoples of this galaxy have been enslaved by them for so long that they are no longer capable of governing themselves. A strong mind was needed for the job. We chose you—and Nita. This galaxy is yours, now, Hammill; yours and Nita’s. Rule it well.

And then came Nita’s voice. I’m coming, Laird Hammill!

And, again projected by the might of the Council’s mind, Nita appeared suddenly in the control room beside him.

“We’ve won, darling,” she said as he took her in his arms.

HARWOOD’S VORTEX
(1956)

“Harwood’s Vortex” is a formula story too—Bill Hamling hadn’t hired Garrett and me to surprise his readers with dazzling avant-garde fiction—but the formula it follows had its antecedents not in the action-oriented pulp magazines of the 1930s but in the science-oriented magazines that the pioneering s-f publisher Hugo Gernsback had issued beginning in 1926. Gernsback believed that the science in science fiction came first, the fiction being only an incidental, and instead of recruiting the experienced pulp-magazine storytellers of his day to fill his pages, he brought in a crew of largely amateur new writers who had little skill at plotting or characterization but could build their tales around some ingenious facet of science. A standard cast of characters for such Gernsbackian fiction evolved: the dedicated scientist (usually devoted to his experiments to the point of madness), his beautiful daughter, and the valiant young laboratory assistant or, perhaps, newspaperman, who finds a way of coping with the catastrophe that the mad scientist has unleashed, rescues the beautiful daughter from the predicament that her father’s reckless work has entangled her in, and lives happily ever after.

Hardly anyone was still writing stories like that in August, 1956, when, newly graduated from Columbia, fresh from the glory of having sold a three-part serial to Campbell’s Astounding, and about to win my first Hugo award at the New York science-fiction convention, I turned out “Harwood’s Vortex” for Hamling, complete with mad scientist (“‘It’s an experiment, young man,’ Harwood said. ‘Would you mind leaving my house right now?’”) and beautiful daughter (“‘Daddy’s experiment,’ Laura half-sobbed. ‘It—it worked!’”) and, of course, Daddy’s experiment has worked only too well (“globes of light…like so many loathsome jellyfish…bodies lay everywhere, charred and lifeless…”), but also there is the fearless hero who demonstrates superior coping abilities (“There would be a lot of work to do. I would have to find the authorities, if any were left, and show them how to build my generator…”)

What I admire about the story is the sheer unabashedness of it. Writing with a straight face, I pushed every button, plugged in every module that a mad-scientist story required, and yet managed to tell the story with some semblance of smooth 1950s narrative technique rather than doing it in the creaky, stilted Gernsback manner. Hamling ran it in the April, 1957 issue of Imagination, along with another story of mine and two of Garrett’s, for by now we had sent him three of our monthly packages of stories and were starting to fill most of the magazine with our work.

——————

The vortex bubbled up out of nowhere, hung shimmering in the air in front of me, glistened and gleamed brightly. There was a whirlpool of twisting currents in the air, and I wavered dizzily for a second or two while the Invaders poured through the newly-created gulf.

Then someone had me by the hand, someone was pulling me away. Leading me inside the house, behind a screen, safe from danger.

I didn’t understand what had happened. I was numb with shock, half-blinded by the brightness. I felt Laura near me, and that was all I cared to think about.

After a couple of minutes, I opened my eyes. “What was that?” I asked weakly. “What happened?”

Two minutes before, I had been approaching the Harwood house, impatient to see Laura, untroubled by the world around me. And suddenly—

“It was Daddy’s experiment,” Laura half-sobbed. “It—it worked!”

“The old crackpot,” I said. “The dimensional gulf—at last? I wouldn’t believe it, if I hadn’t nearly fallen into it!”

She nodded. “I saw you staggering around out there. I got out front just in time to—to—”

I held her tight against me, while she unloaded some of her anxiety. She sobbed for a minute or two, not trying to say anything. I looked uneasily out the window. Yes, it was still going on.

Right in front of Abel Harwood’s house, the vortex was open—and coming up through it were what we later knew as the Invaders. Globes of light, radiant and intangible, floating up out of nowhere and ringing themselves in the air like so many loathsome jellyfish.

“Why doesn’t he close it?” I asked. “Those things are still coming through! Laura, where’s your father?”

“I’m right here,” said a cold, business-like voice from behind me. I turned and saw Abel Harwood’s husky frame in the door. “What do you want of me?” Harwood asked.

“Do you see what’s going on out there?”

He nodded. “So?”

“Those things out there—what are they? What are you letting into the world, Harwood?”

“It’s an experiment, young man.” He crossed his arms over his dressing-gown. “Would you mind leaving my house, now?”

“Daddy!”

“You keep out of this, Laura.” He turned to me. “I’ve asked you to leave my house. I don’t want you meddling in my experiments any more.”

I repressed an urge to aim a kick at his well-stuffed belly. Abel Harwood was a crackpot, a crazy amateur scientist who had been riding this other-dimension kick for years. Now, he’d let loose Lord knew what upon the world—the things were still funneling through the gateway—and he was determined to see it continue.

“Harwood, you’re playing with something too big for you! You’re foolish and blind, and you—”

“You’re a trespasser,” he interrupted. “I’ve ordered you out of my home twice, already. Will you go now—or do I have to get my gun?”

“I’ll go,” I said. I broke loose from Laura and, with an uneasy look at the gateway outside, headed for the door.

“Wait. Dad—you can’t make him go outside in that!”

“Quiet, Laura.”

She started to say something else, but I put my hand on her arm. “Never mind, Laura.”

I opened the front door and stepped outside.

It was hellish out there. The things had formed a circle around the vortex in the air and hung there, humming and crackling. The air was dry and strange-smelling.

I paused on the porch of the Harwood house for just a moment, tucked my head under my arm and ran—ran as fast as my legs would go. I charged through the garden, carefully averting the vortex that had opened right in front of me, circled the nest of things buzzing in the air, and dashed down the street.

One of the creatures followed me a short distance, hovering a foot or two above my head. I watched it uneasily, dodged and ducked as it took swipes at me. It caught me once, a grazing blow on the side of my scalp. I smelled burned hair, and felt as if I’d stuck my head up an electric socket. It drove low for another swipe.

And just then it began to rain. The heavens opened and the water came pouring down and the sky was bright with lightning. And the globes went up to meet it. The one that had been tormenting me forgot me in an instant and went to join its fellows.

I stood there and watched them. They rose in a straight line—there must have been a hundred of them by now—climbing upwards, toward the black clouds overhead. The sky was split by a giant bolt of lightning, and I saw all hundred of them limned grotesquely against it, enlarged and given color by the lightning, drinking it. Then I started running again.

I kept on running until I was home, in my two-room flat near the University. I dove in, locked and bolted the door, threw off my soaking clothing. I grabbed for the phone and dialed the Harwood number.

“Hello?”

It was Laura’s voice. I sighed in relief. It could have been old Abel, after all.

“Laura? This is Chuck.”

Her voice dropped. “Daddy’s right here. I can’t talk very much.”

“Tell me—what the devil has he done? You should have seen those things drinking up the lightning!”

“I did,” she said. “I know what you mean.”

“Is the gateway still open?”

“Yes. They’re still coming through. Chuck, I—I don’t know what’s going to happen. I—no, Daddy!”

There was a sound of a little scuffle, and then the phone went dead. I stared at the silent receiver for a second, then let it thunk back on the cradle. I sat down on the edge of my bed and stared at my soggy socks for a long while.

Abel Harwood fit the classic description of a crackpot perfectly. My status as an authentic scientist—if only an underpaid engineer—gave me every right to make that statement.

I had been doing some experimental force-field work, and when I met Laura she told me her father would be interested in talking to me about my work. So I had dinner at their home one night, and started talking about my project—and then old Harwood started talking about his.

It was some hodge-podge. Dimensional tubes, and force vortices, and subspace converters. A network of gadgetry in the basement that had taken twenty years and as many thousand dollars to build. A fantastic theory of bordering dimensions and alien races. I listened as long as I could, then made the mistake of expressing my honest opinion.

Harwood looked at me a long time after I finished. Then he said, “Just like all the others. Very well, Mr. Matthews. Kindly don’t pay us a second visit.”

“If that’s the way you want it,” I told him. “But I still think it’s cockeyed!”

And a month later, I still did. Only now there was this vortex in the street, spewing forth alien entities that drank radiation. Crackpot or not, Harwood had turned something on that might take some doing to turn off.

Outside, the storm was continuing. I snapped on my radio, listened to the crackling of static that was the only sound it produced. Were Harwood’s pets blanketing the radio frequencies, I wondered, as I twiddled the dials? Were they drinking them too?

I’d know soon enough, I thought.

That was just the beginning, that night when the Invaders came storming out of Harwood’s vortex. The next few days told of terror and panic, of retreat and the swift crumbling of civilization.

The Invaders, they were called. Thousands of them, wandering around New York and the metropolitan area, devouring electricity, attacking people, bringing a reign of terror to the city.

The newspapers the second day said, in screaming two-inch headlines, ALIEN BEINGS LOOSE HERE.

The third day, there were no more newspapers. No one dared leave his home—not with the Invaders at large. No newspapers, no radio, no television—the channels of communication began to break down.

On the fourth day, armed forces from the rest of the country began to arrive. They combed the city, searching for the creatures. Bullets had no effect, though. They passed right through the bodies of the Invaders, splattered off buildings and lampposts as though there had been nothing in the way.

Damn Harwood, I thought, as I stood at my window and watched the fruitless attempts to drive away the Invaders. All the time, I knew, that damnable vortex was still open, and more and more of them were pouring through every second.

It was funny, in a way, that the world should end this way. It was the end of the world, of course; we had no defense against them, and they burned and killed unstoppably. The streets were blockaded; we could go nowhere, see no one.

Communication was impossible; telephones were no longer working, ever since the Invaders had discovered what a juicy supply of radiation the coaxial cables provided. We were walled up with ourselves, waiting for the end.

As I paced my room impatiently, I thought of Laura, there with her father—her father who had, unwittingly or otherwise, brought this destruction into the world. Then I looked around at my equipment, my partially-designed force-field generators. An idea struck me.

We were completely defenseless against the Invaders now. But maybe, if—

I worked through the night and on into the morning, soldering and reconnecting. I had only the barest shred of a plan, and that a mostly wishful one, but I had nothing else at all to do but work.

Finally morning came. Again there was the booming of guns from outside, as the army continued its attempts to drive out the Invaders. I glanced out the window and saw three of the translucent globes hovering over the charred body of a man in military uniform, and shuddered. I went back to my generator, and worked until hunger reminded me that there was no food left in the house.

This was the end, then. I was nowhere near the solution of my problem, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to work for long without food. I glanced outside again. The air was thick with the things; I didn’t dare risk a break.

So I turned back to my generator and forced myself to keep working. I did. I worked far on into the afternoon, getting more and more tired—until, sometime near night-fall, I fell asleep.

I slept. Suddenly, I was awakened by the simultaneous touch of a hand on my shoulder and clap of thunder outside. I looked up.

“Laura! What are you doing here?”

“I had to get away,” she said. She was soaked to the skin, cold and shivering. She was wearing only a flimsy housecoat over some sort of pajamas. “Daddy wasn’t looking, and I ran out of the house. I ran all the way.”

“But how’d you get past the—the—?”

“The Invaders?” She pointed outside. “There’s a storm going on. They’re all in the sky, drinking up the lightning again. They didn’t bother me at all on the way over. Much better food available, I guess.” She shivered again.

“Look, you’ve got to get out of that wet stuff.” I told her. I threw her a towel and my bathrobe. “Here, get into this, and then we can talk.”

“Okay.”

She disappeared into my other room, and returned a few minutes later, looking drier but just as pale and frightened. She peered inquisitively at the machine I had been building, then turned to me.

“Chuck—Dad’s out of his mind!”

“I’ve known that a long time,” I said.

“No—I don’t mean that way. He’s really insane, Chuck. You know that he’s been in contact with these Invaders? That he deliberately brought them here!”

“No!”

She nodded. “He reached them through some short-wave transmitter of his, and made mental contact with them. They showed him how to build the Gateway—and he let them through! They promised to give him the world, when they get through with it!”

I clenched my fists and stared angrily at the cloud-swept sky. “The madman! He was getting his revenge for the years people laughed at him, I guess. But—what’s to happen to us?”

“I don’t know. The creatures won’t harm him, and they’re under orders not to touch me unless I leave his protection—which I have. But as for you and the rest of the world, I don’t think Daddy cares at all. Chuck, he’s out of his head!”

“We’ve got to stop him,” I said grimly. “We’ve got to close that gateway and drive off the things he’s let through. But how?”

“The generator’s in his basement,” Laura said. “If we could get in there and smash it, somehow, and—”

“How would we kill the Invaders that have already come through? There must be thousands of them!”

“We’ll find some way, Chuck. There must be a way.” I looked out the window. The rain was letting up, and there were only occasional flashes of lightning in the dark tormented-looking sky. “The Invaders will be coming back soon,” I said. “Do you want to risk a dash over to your place to try to get at the generator?”

She nodded. “If we wait any longer, we won’t be able to make it. But—”

She gasped and pointed to the rear window. I turned, saw what she was trying to show me. Abel Harwood, hovering twenty feet off the ground, riding on a cloud of Invaders.

“Come out of there, Laura!” His voice was somehow amplified and it seemed to shake my little room. Horror-stricken, we watched as the buzzing horrors bore Harwood closer and closer to my window. Laura shrank back against the wall and tried to flatten herself into invisibility. With a sudden nervous gesture I pushed the table containing my unfinished generator into the closet, and turned to face Harwood.

He was right outside the window now. I saw the old man’s staring eyes blazing at me, as he stood there astride two of the Invaders. They droned like defective neon signs, a horrifying slow buzz.

I picked up a heavy soldering iron and waited as they reached the window. Then Harwood reached out and contemptuously smashed the glass and stepped through—stepped right off the backs of his hideous mounts and into my room. One of the Invaders entered also, squeezing its bulk through the window. There was a pungent odor of ozone in the air.

“Get back, Harwood. You can’t have her,” I said.

He laughed. “Who are you to give me orders? Come here, Laura.”

Laura shrank back even further. I gripped the hot soldering iron tightly and sprang forward, plunging it into the Invader that hovered between me and Harwood. I stabbed again and again—and it was like stabbing air. Finally Harwood made an impatient gesture, and the Invader glowed a brilliant red for an instant.

I dropped the soldering iron and clutched at my burned hand.

“For the last time, Laura—will you come with me?”

“No! I hate you!” she shrieked.

Harwood frowned and started toward her. As he came past me, I grabbed him with my one good hand and tried to pull him back. I had thirty years on him, but my right hand was badly seared and he was no weakling even at his age. He shoved me away and sent me sprawling against the wall. I saw him grab Laura roughly. The alien hummed ominously above my head.

I made a mad dash for Harwood, caught him by the throat, started to squeeze. The humming sound grew louder, and then suddenly there was a blinding wave of heat sweeping through the apartment, and I fell back, clawing at the floor.

When I was able to open my eyes, a few minutes later, I dashed to the window just in time to see Harwood holding the struggling form of Laura and riding off into the night on the backs of his extra-dimensional Invaders.

I sat down heavily on the bed and stayed there for what might have been hours, recovering my strength. The Invader had given me just a glancing shock, just enough to stun me and singe my eyebrows—and Harwood had grabbed Laura.

Now I had to find the answer. I had to close the gateway and find some way of killing the Invaders—and get Laura out of her father’s clutches.

It was nearly morning by the time I shook off the last effects of my stunning and was able to think clearly again. I pulled my generator out of the closet and looked at it, wondering what needed to be done.

The gateway, first of all. It was a doorway to some alien dimension, Harwood had said. All right. I’d accept that at face value.

The Invaders—what were they? Pure radiation? Energy-eaters? They were intangible, immaterial, but yet very much present. Perhaps, I thought wildly, their corporeal bodies were still in whatever dimension of infra-space they came from, and merely their essences, their elans, had come through?

Could be, I thought. And if it were true, I might have the answer.

Ignoring the fierce pangs of hunger shooting through me, I got back to work and concentrated steadily. The thought of Laura was with me always—the image of her riding off in the sky with her father’s arms locked tightly around her. Riding off as if kidnapped by a witch on a broomstick.

I don’t know how long it took, but finally my generator was finished. Finished, and portable. I strapped it to my back and picked up my longest and sharpest kitchen knife. I didn’t have a gun, but it didn’t matter. If my theory was correct, a knife would be just as good—and if I were wrong, a gun wouldn’t help anyway.

Then, without stopping to ponder, I ran downstairs and out into the street for the test.

Fresh air smelled good after days of being cooped up in my little apartment. I stood in the middle of the street and surveyed the wreckage.

Bodies lay everywhere, charred and lifeless. Overturned automobiles lay piled here and there, stalled trucks, artillery batteries and tanks. The defensive maneuver had failed, and what few people remained were in hiding. I stood alone in the middle of the street, the heavy generator on my back, and waved my kitchen-knife as triumphantly as if it were Excalibur.

“Come and get me,” I yelled. “Come on Invaders. Let’s see what you can do!”

I looked up. There were a few clusters of them, browsing idly around some television antennas atop a neighboring building. They ignored me for a few minutes; maybe they were so surprised to see a living human in the streets that they were unable to move. I shook my fists at them.

“Come down here where I can get at you!” I shouted.

They hovered uncertainly—and then they came.

Six of them swooped down, humming and buzzing, glowing faintly and billowing in and out as they dropped toward me. I waited, waited until they were no more than three or four feet above my head, waited until I was dizzy with the strain and suspense and could wait no more.

Then I snapped on the generator.

It was like catching flies in molasses. The six aliens stopped dead in their tracks as my force-field spread out around them, engulfed them, imprisoned them. Suddenly they were forced to contend with more radiation than they could possibly swallow. It pinned them there, nine feet above the ground.

I listened to their frenzied buzzing as they stretched themselves, elongated fantastically in an attempt to free themselves from the unexpected thing that had grabbed them. And then I stretched up on tiptoes and began to stab.

My knife flashed once, twice—and the buzzing became an unbearable shriek. My heart surged as I struck home again and again. Now we had them! Now they were vulnerable!

Snared in the force-field, they no longer were able to flicker out of phase with our dimension every time a weapon approached. They were anchored now, mired in our continuum, helpless before my savage attack.

I kept stabbing until all six of them were torn and wounded, and then I snapped off the force-field. And they were gone. Instantly, without lapse, they popped out of existence like so many snuffed flames.

Six down, I thought grimly. Six down, and untold thousands to go. But now we have a weapon.

I thumbed my power-pack and the field spread out around me. I began to cut my way through the streets to the Harwood house.

The aliens took notice of me, now. No more hovering around tv antennae; they clustered in the air, just outside range of my force-field, and chattered and buzzed for all they were worth. Every once in a while, one would blunder into my field, and a swift upward cut with the knife would take care of him. One cut. They were like balloons, and the first puncture did it. I didn’t dare shut off the force-field to see if they’d pop out of existence, for fear the clouds of them in the air would swoop in on me before I could turn it on again—but as I moved on, through the dead and deserted streets, I could see the string of dead Invaders hanging in the air vanishing one by one as I moved out of range.

And then I was standing in front of Laura’s home, right in front of the vortex itself. It was still there, and the aliens came thundering through at a rate of ten or twenty a minute.

I stepped past the vortex, ignoring the aliens that clustered around me, as helpless against me as humanity had been against them only a few hours before. There was no point in dealing with the Invaders yet—not until the source was cut off.

I strode up to the porch and peered in the window. I saw Laura huddled in a far corner of the sitting-room, and behind her Abel Harwood marching up and down, probably delivering a fiery parental harangue. It was a nightmare scene, with a dead city outside, hordes of alien invaders swarming in the air—and the man responsible for it busy delivering a lecture to his unruly daughter!

I banged on the door. “Come on out of there, Harwood!”

He looked up, astonished. I saw Laura’s pale face brighten as she recognized me, then grow downcast as Harwood started to come toward me.

I walked off the porch into the garden and waited there for him. He emerged, eyes blazing, and said, “How did you get here? How did you get past my guards?”

“Your guards don’t worry me any more, Harwood. I’m going to put a stop to all this now!”

He chuckled. “You’re a very troublesome young man, Mr. Matthews. I spared you once, for my daughter’s sake—but I’ll have no such scruples this time.” He gestured imperiously to the thick swarm of Invaders billowing out of the vortex.

“You don’t scare me, Harwood.” I drew a deep breath, reached around back, and cut off the force-field for the barest fraction of a second, then restored it. It was just enough time to trap twenty or so aliens in a glowing ring right above my head.

Smiling, I drew my trusty kitchen knife and began to lay about. I heard Harwood’s flustered exclamations as, one by one, the imprisoned Invaders winked out, darkened, and died.

I finished off the twenty and folded my arms. “Care to send some more, Harwood? It’s easier than swatting gnats!”

He sputtered a few unintelligible words, then rushed from the porch toward me.

He was a big man—big, and heavy. I was under the handicap of the heavy force-field generator, which I knew I had to keep from his grasp or else I was finished. All he had to do was to smash the generator, and I’d be roasted the next second.

Harwood barreled into me, sweeping away the kitchen knife while I was still debating whether or not to use it. It went clattering into a pile of rocks in one corner of the garden, and then his fists hit me.

I backed away, making sure I kept the generator out of his reach, and flicked out a few defensive gestures. His face was contorted with rage. He was almost blind with fury, and I could hardly blame him. Here I stood, threatening to wreck whatever monument of villainy it was that he had been erecting for twenty years.

We closed in a tight clinch, and his fists pummeled my stomach. I drove upward and felt teeth splinter as I connected. He spat out a mouthful of blood and backed off.

“Why did you have to do it?” he muttered. “Why did you ruin everything?”

“You pitiful madman,” I said. “For the sake of silly revenge on a world that rightfully regarded you as a crackpot, you—”

His eyes blazed and he came driving in at me again. In the background, I heard the continuing buzzing of the Invaders, who hovered out of reach of my force-field, unable to help their master. And overriding the dull droning of the aliens was a steady pattern of sobbing coming from the porch.

Laura. Watching her father and the man she loved fighting to the death in her front yard.

Harwood grasped me in a tight bearhug, his thick fingers reaching for the power-pack on my back. I danced away and landed a solid punch in the midsection, and he countered with a wild roundhouse that staggered me and knocked me within a few inches of the gar-den fence.

He came lumbering after me, obviously determined to flatten me against the fence and crush the generator that way. I didn’t have any way of escaping to the right or the left: I could only wait there and hope to withstand his assault.

As he drew near, I tensed my legs and crouched. Then he hit me, and I pushed upward with all my strength. The fate of a whole world—and Laura and me—depended on my strength at that instant.

It worked. His heavy body lifted, and he grunted in pain as I rammed upward. He went up, up, over the garden fence—

And then, to my horror, he cleared the garden fence and, with a soul-splitting cry, fell into the gaping mouth of his own vortex!

I leaned against the fence, gaping—and before I could think of what to do, the vortex was gone, winked out as if it had never been!

Then Laura was on the porch, white-faced, terrified.

“What happened? Where’s Daddy?”

I ran to her side. “He’s gone,” I said. “Tripped and fell into the vortex, and then—”

“Oh!” She gave a little cry and I thought she was going to faint, but she caught herself with an effort and straightened up. Speaking carefully, syllable by syllable, she said, “I—just—smashed—Daddy’s—machine-ery.”

“You what?”

“While you were fighting—I ran down to the basement and wrecked everything. Everything!”

I shivered. No wonder the vortex had vanished. At the very instant Abel Harwood was tumbling into it, his daughter was busily destroying the generator that operated it.

Her control broke. She burst into sobs and huddled in my arms. Finally she said, “I—hated him. He was out of his mind.”

“Try not to think about it,” I told her. “Try to forget him. It’s all over. There’s just us now.”

“I know,” she said.

I looked up at the sky, which was dark with the Invaders. It was a frightening sight—but I no longer feared them. The Gateway was closed, and Abel Harwood dead, so far as we were concerned. I didn’t want to think of what might be happening to him in whatever universe he was in.

There would be a lot of work to do. I would have to find the authorities, if any were left, and show them how to build my generator. Then would begin the long, slow war of eradication against the remaining Invaders.

Laura was still sobbing. “Don’t worry,” I said soothingly. “It’s all over now.”

We had won.

QUICK FREEZE
(1956)

Of course, Hamling wasn’t my only market in that busy couple of years. I was indefatigably turning out stories all up and down the field, now for the high-paying and demanding Astounding and Galaxy at the top and now for one of the formula-fiction magazines at the other end. One of the editors I did a great deal of work for was Robert W. Lowndes of Future Science Fiction, Science Fiction Quarterly, and The Original Science Fiction Stories, who occupied an anomalous position as a science-fiction editor, compelled by a parsimonious publisher to pay very little for his material but led by his own cultivated tastes in science fiction to seek out high-quality material that would appeal to a sophisticated audience.

Lowndes had been a prominent figure in the science-fiction world since the 1930s, first as reader and critic, then as a short-story writer of considerable ability, and, since 1941, the editor of Columbia Publications’ chain of pulp magazines. He was responsible for a wide assortment of titles—sports pulps, western pulps, detective pulps, and so on—but he edited those with his left hand, so to speak, while pouring his greatest energies into his s-f magazines.

The skimpy editorial budgets he was forced to live within meant, of course, that Lowndes had to settle, mainly, for the top-paying editors’ rejects. Since neither Campbell nor Gold nor Boucher could buy every story that their best contributors turned out, Lowndes did succeed in snapping up some estimable material by the likes of Clifford D. Simak, Isaac Asimov, Fritz Leiber, and L. Sprague de Camp that had failed to make the grade higher up, and because he was a genial man with wide social connections in the field, such writers as James Blish, Damon Knight, and Frederik Pohl gave him first look at new stories, primarily out of friendship, despite the low rate of payment. His magazines, therefore, were widely admired, and most readers were unaware of the intricate improvisations by which Lowndes was able to fill them with stories worth reading.

Randall Garrett introduced me to him in the summer of 1955, and even though there was a difference of nearly twenty years in our ages, he and I struck up an immediate rapport. For one thing, he had already bought one of my earliest stories, “The Silent Colony,” which he had published the year before. For another, he sensed that I was one of those science-fiction prodigies, like his old friends Isaac Asimov and Cyril Kornbluth of fifteen years before, who even though barely out of his teens could be relied upon for a steady stream of publishable stories and was too productive to be able to confine his output to the three top magazines alone. And also we had many interests in common—classical music, cats, and the collecting of old science fiction magazines. After my marriage in the summer of 1956, my wife and I became frequent weekend guests at Lowndes’ small but pleasant country home about an hour’s drive north of New York City; I explored his huge record collection, we argued amiably about our favorite stories and books, and I played with his cats (and took a kitten home for Christmas that year).

He began to publish my stories regularly right from the beginning. The May, 1956 issue of The Original Science Fiction Stories (which we all referred to simply as “The Original”) ran “The Desiccator.” The same month Science Fiction Quarterly used a Garrett-Silverberg collaboration, “No Future in This.” I was back in The Original’s July issue, in the September issue of Future, in Science Fiction Quarterly with Garrett again in November, and so on and so on.

Most of these were paid for at rock-bottom prices, and made economic sense for me only because I was capable of writing so quickly, a 5000-word story in a single morning, a novelet in a day or two. And a dollar went a long way in those days when my handsome Manhattan apartment cost me something like $150 a month in rent, so that $50 or sometimes $75 for a morning’s work was actually quite generous. But Lowndes was occasionally permitted to commission a few stories at higher rates—Asimov got the extraordinary rate of four cents a word from him for a couple of stories—and I got the benefit of that from time to time when the magazine needed a special favor. For example, it was a common custom in those days for magazines to buy a cover painting from an artist and then find a writer to turn out a story that included the depicted scene. (It was also the custom for the chosen writer to dream up the most far-fetched narrative situation he could for the illustration he was working with.) Knowing that I could be depended on to meet deadlines, Lowndes began to ask me to do these cover stories. In November, 1956 the artist Ed Emshwiller came into Lowndes’ office with a sketch for a cover showing a spaceship buried up to its nose in ice on some alien planet, while two spacesuit-clad spacemen desperately tried to free it with pickaxes. I happened to be in the office that day, and the Emshwiller sketch drew a chuckle from me—whereupon Bob Lowndes asked me to write a story about the cover that would result from it.

So I went home and wrote “Quick Freeze,” for which Lowndes paid me a bonus rate, and paid rather more quickly than was the custom for his magazines. It ran in the May, 1957 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly, a magazine that had the distinction of being the last of the old-fashioned large pulp format science-fiction magazines. (It struggled along for another year before distribution problems swept it away.) “Quick Freeze” was popular with Lowndes’ readers and I wrote a good many more cover stories for him in the next few years, usually after a consultation with Ed Emshwiller, who was very good at coming up with clever cover-worthy ideas that I could turn into lively fiction. I doubt that very many readers suspected that the covers had come first and the stories afterward.

——————

According to the ship’s mass detectors, Valdon’s Star lay dead ahead. In the fore cabin of the Calypso, Communications Tech Diem Mariksboorg tried to shut his ears to the angry, insistent shrill distress pulse coming from the Empire hyperliner that lay wrecked on Valdon’s Star’s lone planet.

Spectrometer analysis confirmed it. “We’re here,” he said. He turned to the Calypso’s captain, Vroi Werner, who was running possible orbits through the computer. “You ready for the pickup, Vroi?”

Werner nodded. “I figure we’ll make a jet landing, using a standard orbit, and grab the survivors quick as we can.”

“And no salvage.”

“Just people,” Werner said. He picked up the sheaf of notes Mariksboorg had transcribed from the distress message, read them again, and laid them down. “There are twelve survivors. With a little shoe-horning, Diem, we can just about get twelve more aboard the Calypso.”

Mariksboorg peered at the growing bright image in the viewscreen, frowning moodily. “We’d be back snug on Gorbrough now if we hadn’t taken this cockeyed route. Whoever heard of a jetship making an emergency pickup?”

“We happened to be right where we were needed at just the right time,” Werner said stiffly. “There’s a time element involved in this, Diem. It turns out to be more efficient to use an inefficient old jet-powered tub to make the pickup than the shiniest new warp-ship…for the efficient reason that we’re already here.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” the chastened tech replied.

Valdon’s Star was actually a triple system, consisting of a small, Sol-type main-sequence sun; a gray ghost companion, bulky and lifeless, a monstrous rarefied cinder and nothing more—and one unnamed planet, orbiting around the gray companion.

The Empire hyperliner Andromeda had been bound for the Deneb system out of Terra when something—a fused ultrone in the main generator, perhaps, or a cadmium damper inserted askew—went out of kilter, upsetting the delicate balance of the hyperdrive, restoring the liner to normal space, and depositing it abruptly on the frozen surface of Valdon’s Star’s one world.

A wrecked hyperliner is a thoroughly helpless object; the Bohling Hyperdrive is too complex for any journeyman engineer to repair, or even understand; with a conked-out drive, a hyperliner becomes—permanently—just so much junk.

To compensate for this, Galactic law requires that two automatic-break circuits be built into the cybernetic governors of all hyperdrive ships, in case of drive failure. The first is an instantaneous molecular disruptor that can and will volatilize the ship’s every milligram of mass immediately upon emergence from hyperspace within critical range of what is defined as a Stress Area—which is to say, the interior of a planet, or, more alarmingly, the interior of a sun, where a sudden materialization could precipitate a nova.

A Bohling-drive ship gone sour can materialize anywhere at all—but if it returned to space at some point already occupied by matter, the result would be spectacular. Just thirty-seven feet saved the Andromeda from a Circuit One volatilization: the thirty-seven feet it was above the surface of Valdon’s World at the moment of materialization.

From this height, it dropped to the ground, cracking open like a split log. Twelve of the fifty-eight within survived, getting into their thermal suits before the ship’s atmosphere could rush from their bulkheaded compartment.

Circuit Two then went automatically into effect: a distress-pulse, audible over a range of twenty light-years, fanned on a wide-band thirty-megacycle carrier to any and all craft in the vicinity. In this case, the wide range proved excessive.

The Calypso, an eight-man cargo ship, was en route on a minus-C orbit between two of the local stars, and it happened to be only a half-hour’s journey from Valdon’s World when the distress-pulse exploded all over that segment of space. No other ship was within a light-year of the scene of the accident.

Central Control instantly checked with the Calypso, and eleven seconds later Captain Werner and his ship were willy-nilly bound for Valdon’s World on a top-emergency rescue mission.

Which was how the Calypso, its tail-jets blazing with atomic fury, came to roar down on the blue-white airless ball of ice and frozen methane that was Valdon’s World. The operation had to be carried out with utmost rapidity. Captain Werner had never landed on a methane planet before, but this was no time for maidenly shyness.

Thermocouple readings showed a mean temperature of minus 330 degrees F.; an abnormal albedo of 0.8 was recorded, and explained when spectroanalysis revealed a surface consisting of a frozen methane-ammonia atmosphere, covered with an ice-carbon dioxide overlay. A sonic probe from turnover point indicated a heavy rock shelf beneath the frozen atmosphere.

Aboard the Calypso, the crew of eight prepared efficiently for the landing and readied the cabins for the twelve newcomers who would be jammed aboard. Captain Werner studied the fuel banks, running hasty computations that assured him that the ship would still be stocked with sufficient fuel to handle the altered mass.

At eight minutes before planetfall, everything was checked out. Werner slumped back in his deceleration cradle, smiled grimly, flicked a glance at Mariksboorg.

“Here we come,” Mariksboorg murmured, as the Calypso swung downward and the mirror-bright surface of Valdon’s World rose to meet the jetcraft.

“Here they come,” muttered Hideki Yatagawa, Commander of the former Terran hyperliner Andromeda. He folded his arms around his stomach and stamped his feet in mock reaction to the planet’s numbing cold. Actually, it was somewhat more than mockery: the thermal suit kept him at a cozy 68 degrees F. despite the minus 330 degrees around him—but the thermal suits would register “Overload” in eight or nine hours, and within seconds after that happened Commander Yatagawa would be dead, his blood frozen to thin red pencils in his veins.

“Is that the rescue ship?” asked Dorvain Helmot, of Kollimun, former First Officer of the late Andromeda and sole non-Terran among the survivors. “By Klesh, it’s a jet!”

“They probably were closer to us than any warp-driven vessels when the distress signal went out,” suggested Colin Talbridge, British ambassador-designate to the Free World of Deneb VII. “There’s some sort of time element in this, isn’t there?”

“There is,” Yatagawa said. “These suits can’t fight this sort of temperature indefinitely.”

“It’s a good thing the rescuers are here, then,” said Talbridge.

The Commander turned away. “Yes,” he said in a muffled voice. “But they’re not here yet.”

“Look at those jets!” Dorvain Helmot exclaimed in frank admiration. Jetships were all but obsolete in the Kollimun system; Helmot was accustomed to dealing with fuelless warp-ships, and the torrent of flame pouring from the tail of the Calypso aroused in him a connoisseur’s love of the antique and the outmoded.

“Indeed,” Commander Yatagawa remarked sourly. “Look at those jets. Look at them!”

Those jets, at the moment, were bathing the planet below with fire. Hot tongues of flame licked down, beating against the thick carpet of ice and frozen CO_2 that, along with a heavy swath of methane and ammonia, made up the surface of Valdon’s World.

Yatagawa watched, arms folded, as the Calypso came down.

“I wonder if they’ve bothered with thermocouple readings,” he said softly as the spaceship dropped.

“What do you mean?” Talbridge asked.

The rest of the Andromeda survivors were rushing from the wrecked ship now, running out on the icy plateau where Yatagawa, Helmot, and Talbridge had been standing. Quietly, Yatagawa said to Talbridge: “You don’t think they’re going to be able to rescue us, do you?”

“Why not? Are you keeping something back from us, Commander?”

“I’m merely postponing the inevitable. The people on that ship think they’re coming down to rescue us—but I’m afraid it may have to be the other way round.”

“What do you mean?”

“Watch,” Yatagawa said.

The Calypso’s jets continued to blast down. The ship would be landing on an upswept, ice-covered shelf perhaps a mile from the wrecked hyperliner. Already, the approaching jetwash had begun to melt the ice beneath; a dark spreading stain over the gleaming surface indicated the area being weakened.

Talbridge gasped. “You mean they’re not going to be able to land?”

“It’s much worse than that,” Yatagawa said with a calmness that belied his words. “They’ll make a perfect landing. But I wonder how deep the ice is over there.”

“Won’t the jets melt it?”

“The jets will vaporize the ice in the direct blast, and liquefy whatever’s tangential to the area. Only—”

The Calypso hung for a moment on the bright pillar of its jetwash, then lowered itself to ground. Talbridge saw the tailfins hang, for a fraction of an instant, an inch above the swirling cloud of vapor.

Then the Calypso, cutting its jets, entered the pit the jets had blasted. The slim sleek vessel came to rest finally on the rock shelf beneath the ice-sheath.

“Look!” Talbridge yelled.

There was no need for Yatagawa to look. He had seen it coming since the jet had made its appearance—and had known there was no way to prevent it from happening.

In a temperature of minus 330 degrees, melted ice refreezes instantly upon melting, give or take a few microseconds. A few microseconds had been all that was necessary. No sooner had the Calypso settled in its pit than an unexpected vise of frozen liquid clamped back around it. The water created by the jets had refrozen the instant the jets had been cut off.

Perhaps the crew of the Calypso had expected the water to stay liquid indefinitely; perhaps they had fully expected to set down in a small lake. Perhaps they had thought their jets would not melt the ice sheet. Perhaps—and this seemed most likely to Yatagawa and Talbridge and the other horrified onlookers from the Andromeda—they had not thought at all.

It hardly mattered now. Conjectures were unimportant; facts remained. And the fact was that the hundred-foot length of the Calypso was now almost entirely under ice, frozen in an unbreakable grip, having slid into the temporary lake as easily as a blade into clay…a clay that hardened instantly. Only the snout of the rescue ship was visible above the flat icy wastes, sticking out like a periscope from an ocean’s waves.

Talbridge gasped. Yatagawa merely frowned unhappily. None of the twelve could evaluate the immediate situation too clearly, but all could see one indisputable verity: the rescue ship was trapped.

Yatagawa, moving quickly on his short, wiry legs, got there first. He paused, testing the ice, before approaching the ship itself.

The ice held; it was solid. Very solid. The short-lived lake had refrozen into a clear sheet of ice that nestled snug against the ship. The ice displaced by the bulk of the Calypso fanned out around it in all directions.

Yatagawa climbed out over the ice and looked down. Visible just a few feet below the transparent surface was a single port, and staring upward out of the window was the face of a sad-looking jetman.

Yatagawa waved to him; the man waved back, then tapped the port with an expression of gloomy desperation on his face. A second man appeared behind him, and the two peered upward through the ice like animals in a cage.

Yatagawa gestured at the throat of his thermal suit, indicating the suit-radio. After a few moments of that one of the men inside caught the idea and donned a pickup.

“Welcome to our shores,” the Commander said dryly, when contact was established. “It was a beautiful landing.”

“Thanks,” said the mournful voice from beneath the ice. “Of all the stupid, harebrained, needleheaded—”

“No time for recriminations now,” Yatagawa said. “We’ll have to get you out of there in a hurry. I’m Yatagawa, the Andromeda’s Commander.”

“Werner. Captain of the Calypso—and the biggest fool unhung.”

“Please, Captain. Who could expect you to prognosticate such an unlikely event?”

“You’re just being kind, Commander, but thanks anyway. I never dealt with one of these snowball planets before. I guess I should have known the ice wouldn’t stay melted more than an instant, but I never figured I’d get frozen in like this.”

A bit more forcefully, Yatagawa said, “There is little time for discussion, Captain Werner.”

“Just how little, Commander?”

Yatagawa smiled sadly. “I estimate our thermal suits will short out within eight hours.”

“Then we’ll have to move fast,” Werner said. His face, clearly visible despite the feet of clear ice that covered it, was red with embarrassment. “But—how?”

Helmot said, “I’ve sent Sacher and Foymill back to the Andromeda for picks and shovels. We’ve got a lot of digging to do.”

Yatagawa’s sad look remained. He said indulgently, “Dorvain, just how long do you think it will take twelve men to dig a hundred-foot hole in solid ice?”

The Kollimuni was silent a moment. Then, in a hollow-sounding voice, he said, “It’ll take…days, maybe?”

“Yes,” Yatagawa said.

“You sure of that?” Werner asked.

“We can always try it,” said Talbridge.

“Very well,” the Commander said. Sacher and Foymill arrived bearing picks, and Yatagawa, stepping back, indicated that they should go to work.

The picks rose and fell. Over the audio network linking the suits came the sound of rhythmical grunting. Yatagawa allowed the demonstration to continue for exactly two minutes.

In that time, the two crewman had succeeded in digging a cavity four inches deep and six inches broad. A little heap of powdered ice lay to one side.

Stooping, Yatagawa inserted a gloved hand to measure the depth. “At this rate,” he said, “it would take centuries.”

“Then what are we going to do?” Helmot asked.

“A very good question,” said Yatagawa. The Commander kicked the little heap of ice away, and shrugged. Even under the bulk of the thermal suit, the shrug was eloquent.

Aboard the Calypso, Captain Werner and Communications Tech Mariksboorg regarded each other bleakly. A thin beam of light trickled through the blanket of ice, through the one fore-ship port, and into the cabin. It was light from the yellow Sol-type companion star; unfortunately, it afforded little warmth.

“Minus three-thirty outside,” Werner said. “And we knew it.”

“Easy, Captain.” Mariksboorg was sincerely worried that Werner’s contriteness would prove fatal. He wondered how Yatagawa, up there, might react had he done what Werner had. Certainly two thousand years ago Yatagawa would immediately have disemboweled himself. Hara-kiri was millennia obsolete, but Werner seemed to be considering it quite seriously.

“Whoever heard of a spaceship getting icebound?” Werner demanded.

“It’s over, Vroi. Forget about it!”

“Easy enough, forgetting. But we’re still stuck here. And how can I forget, when I don’t even dare leave my cabin and face my own crewmen?”

“The boys aren’t angry,” Mariksboorg insisted. “They’re all very sorry it happened.”

“Sorry!” Werner wheeled and jabbed an index finger sharply in the Communications Tech’s direction. “What good is being sorry? This is serious, Diem. We’re trapped.”

“We’ll get out,” Mariksboorg said soothingly.

“Yeah? Listen: if we’re not out of here in eight hours, those twelve guys outside are going to freeze to death. Their ship’s got no air left, and there damned sure isn’t any on this accursed planet. Okay. So they die; too bad for them. But who’s going to get us out?”

“Oh,” Mariksboorg said, in a small voice.

“By my figuring we’ve got four days’ food. When Central Control asked us to make this pickup, they said they couldn’t get another ship here in less than a week. That’s not even counting the time it would take for another ship to find us once it got here—and we can’t help it much in that department.”

Mariksboorg moistened his lips. “I guess we’d better get out,” he said. “Fast.”

“Uh-huh. Faster, even.”

From outside came the crackling voice of Commander Yatagawa. “We’ve attempted to dig you out. It can’t be done in time.”

“Of course not,” Werner said. “Nothing’s going to work in time,” he added under his breath.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing,” Werner said.

There came a pause. Then: “This is Dorvain Helmot, the Andromeda’s First Officer.”

“Hello, Helmot.”

“Our ship’s still in pretty good order,” Helmot said. “Unless you count the hole in the skin that let all the air out. Do you think we can make use of any of our equipment to get you free?”

“Got a hydraulic drill?”

“We have no digging equipment whatever,” Commander Yatagawa said crisply.

Werner studied his fingertips for an instant. Above, anxious faces peered down at him—separated by a thin but durable plastic window and a thick and equally durable window of ice.

“How about starting up your jets?” Talbridge suggested.

“You could run them on lower power—just enough to melt the ice around you and free the ship.”

Werner smiled. It was pleasant to find a bigger fool than himself on the planet. “If we start the jets, it’ll be like firing a pistol that’s plugged at the business end. You know what happens?”

“The barrel would explode, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes,” Werner said. “Only in this case, the barrel happens to be us. Besides,” he added, glad of the chance to show that he wasn’t an utter fool, “even if we did melt the ice, we’d have to have some way of pumping away the fluid around us before we could blast off. Do you have any sort of pump?”

“A small one,” Helmot said. “It might do the job, but I doubt it.”

“Couldn’t you,” Talbridge offered undismayedly, “heat the inside of the ship? You could get into thermal suits and turn the heating system way up. That ought to heat the hull and—”

“No,” Werner said. “The hull wouldn’t heat.”

“Hold it,” Commander Yatagawa interrupted suddenly. “How come? Suppose you could get the jets started, wouldn’t they heat up the tail, at least?”

“No. How much do you know about jets?”

“Not too much,” Yatagawa admitted. “I’m pretty much a warp-ship man.”

“The hull’s a polymerized plastic,” Werner said. “It affords pretty near perfect inside-outside heat shielding. Keeps us from cooking when we pass through an atmosphere—and from freezing on places like this one.”

“You mean even the jets are shielded, and the tail-assembly won’t heat up when you’re blasting, eh?”

“That’s right,” Werner said.

Up above, Yatagawa nodded inside his thermal suit. After a moment’s silence the Commander said, “We’ll be back in a little while, Werner. I think you’ve given me an idea.”

“I hope so,” Werner said fervently.

The shattered corpse of the hyperliner Andromeda lay on its side in a shallow depression on the ice. A furrowed gash ran the length of the ship, attesting to the force with which it had dropped to the ground.

Twelve figures gathered about the ship, bulky in their cumbersome thermal suits, moving with jerky rapidity. All around, blue-white snow wastes spread to the horizon. Here and there an outcropping of rock gave evidence of the stone shelf that underlay the frozen atmosphere—and, a little farther away, an even stranger outcropping thrust from the ice: the dull-green snout of the Calypso.

“Polymerized plastic hull,” Yatagawa repeated, half to himself. “That means—if no heat gets conducted from inside to outside—”

“It ought to work the other way too,” Helmot completed.

“Exactly.”

Yatagawa mounted one fin of the wreck and clambered inside, followed by his First Officer. Together, they headed down the narrow companionway.

Bodies lay scattered randomly in the hulk. The bacterialess frigidity of Valdon’s World ensured that they would remain preserved indefinitely: there was always time to bury them later. More urgent affairs beckoned now.

Yatagawa tapped an unbroken helium tank. “Could we use this? Helium ought to be liquid in this temperature.”

“You mean as a superconductor? Damned if I know how,” Helmot said.

Yatagawa shrugged. “It was just an idea, anyway.”

They kept going, past the passenger compartments, down the dropshaft to the drive room. To Yatagawa’s surprise, a tear quivered suddenly in his eye. He scowled irritatedly; a thermal suit did not come equipped with tear-wipers, and, furthermore, this sort of emotional display seemed excessive to him. Yet the sight of the maze of controls that once had governed his ship moved him.

“Here we are,” he said somewhat harshly. He looked around. “Pity there’s no time to explore the place and figure out what went wrong.”

“There’ll be time for that later,” Helmot said. “They’ll work it out during the inquiry.”

“Of course.” Yatagawa shut his eyes for a second, thinking of the grueling inquiry that was sure to follow if he ever got off Valdon’s World. Then he picked up a heavy spool of copper wire and handed it to the Kollimuni.

Helmot grabbed the spool and staggered with it back to the bulkhead door. Yatagawa, continuing to prowl through the shattered drive room, hauled forth another spool, and a third.

“That’s three thousand feet,” he said. “That enough?”

“Better get another one,” Helmot advised. “We won’t want to set up our generator too close to the Calypso.”

“Right.”

He reached into a storage hold and yanked forth another spool. “That should do it,” he said. He glanced at the chronometer set in the wrist of his thermal suit. “Seven hours left. We should just about make it. I hope Werner was right about his hull. If he wasn’t, he’ll be cooked for sure.”

“Can you see what they’re doing?” Werner asked.

Mariksboorg craned his neck to try to peer through the port. “They’re wrapping wire around the nose of the ship,” he said. “I guess they’re covering the entire exposed area with it.”

Werner paced the cabin in gloom. The light of the yellow primary was fading, and time was moving along quickly. The men of the Andromeda had but a few hours in which to spring the trap.

“Here we are,” he said bitterly. “We’re the rescuers, and they’re the rescued—and they’re breaking their necks to save us!”

From outside came Yatagawa’s voice. “Werner?”

“What are you guys up to?” Werner demanded.

“We’ve wrapped a coil of wire around the snout of your ship,” Yatagawa said. “It’s hooked to an ultronic generator we’ve salvaged from the Andromeda. Can you see it from where you are?”

“No. I can’t see anything.”

“We’re a few thousand feet from the ship. The generator’s a medium-sized one, because the big one’s gone dead. But this one will do; it’ll give us ten million volts in a pinch. Not that we’ll need that much, of course.”

“Hey, hold on, Yatagawa! What are you going to do?”

“We’re going to roast your hull. I figure if we generate enough heat in the wire, your hull will heat up and the ice’ll melt around you.”

Werner gulped. “What about us? We’re inside.”

“The heat won’t get above a thousand degrees. Your hull can handle that—and you won’t feel a thing, I hope. You have thermal suits?”

“Yes,” Werner said hoarsely.

“I’d suggest you put them on. Just in case, that is.”

“Sure. Just in case.”

“I’ll wait for your signal before we send the current through. Meantime—”

Struck by a sudden idea, Werner asked, “What are you going to do with the melted ice? It’s only going to freeze again as soon as the current’s off. My hull’s not a heat-retainer.”

“We’ve thought of that. We’ve dug up our small pump and some tubing. As the stuff liquefies, we’re going to siphon it off down the hill.”

“And what happens then?”

“We’ll get into the ship and leave,” Yatagawa said.

“How? You won’t be able to get a bridge across the ice—and our airlock’s pretty far down the hull.”

There was silence at the other end for a moment. “There must be some way.”

Werner frowned thoughtfully. “We’re on bedrock right now, aren’t we?”

“Yes.”

“It’s simple, then, but pretty screwball. Clear away about a thirty-foot diameter of ice and we should settle into an upright position on the rock below. We’ll blast off the usual way, then come back and swing into a narrow orbit about thirty feet off the ground, and drop ropes for you from our airlock. It’s a crazy way to make a pickup from a spaceship, but it’s worth a try. Otherwise, I’m afraid, there’ll be some trouble.”

Commander Yatagawa stood by the hooded bulk of the ultronic generator, leaning affectionately against it, and stared at the gleaming red-brown wires stretching over the ice to the buried Calypso.

The yellow sun was setting; its dying rays illuminated the useless bulk of the gray ghost which was its neighbor, hanging low on the horizon and blotting out a great chunk of sky.

“We’re ready,” came the tense, tinny voice of Werner.

“So are we,” Yatagawa said.

He threw the switch. The generator throbbed, and began shooting current through the copper wire.

Electrons flowed; power was dissipated; electrical energy was transformed into heat.

The heat spread through the highly conductive plastic jacket of the Calypso. The Calypso’s hull began to grow warm.

“How’s the weather in there?” Yatagawa asked.

“We’re doing fine,” Werner said.

“Glad to hear it. Your hull’s temperature is probably well above zero now, and getting hotter.”

The hot wires had already melted thin lines through the ice to the ship. Vapor rose.

“It’s starting to melt,” Helmot called.

“Get the siphon working.”

The pump they had found in the Andromeda’s hold and dragged with such effort over the ice began to come to life. It groaned under the burden, but started to function, hauling the newly melted water away from the warming surface of the spaceship and through the siphon, spurting it down the side of the hill, where it froze instantly into a spire of fantastic shape.

“It’s working,” Yatagawa said, half to himself. “It’s really working.”

Later—after the entire volume of water had been siphoned away, after the Calypso had grudgingly righted itself and settled on its landing fins on the rock shelf, standing strangely naked in a pit thirty feet across and a hundred deep, the rescue operation began.

Still later—after the Calypso had blasted off amid much roar of jets and brief melting of additional ice, after the ship had levelled off and gone into its absurd orbit just above the frozen surface of Valdon’s World, after the twelve survivors of the Andromeda had shinnied up the ropes into the Calypso’s airlock, the two captains confronted each other.

Commander Yatagawa, who had lost his ship—and Captain Werner, who had lost his face.

Together, they peered out the viewport at the rapidly retreating brightness of Valdon’s World.

“I think I see it,” Werner said.

“That dot over there? Maybe that is where we were, after all. That must be the pit.”

“And that’s the wreck of the Andromeda,” Werner said. Suddenly, he began to laugh.

“The joke?” Yatagawa inquired.

“We’ve got to fill our reports on all this,” said Werner. “And I’ve got to notify Central Control that the rescue’s been effected.”

“And what’s so funny about that?”

Werner, red-faced, said: “Officially, I rescued you. Dammit, I’m going to get a medal for this!”

SIX FRIGHTENED MEN
(1956)

And now we are back to William L. Hamling and my monthly task of supplying his magazines with a package of short stories at a guaranteed price of $500 per month. The story called “Six Frightened Men” went to him in the Garrett-Silverberg bundle of November, 1956, bearing the deplorably pulpy title of “Spawn of the Void.” (Since Hamling usually changed our titles anyway, I rarely devoted much effort to thinking them up.) I put the pseudonym of Erik Rodman on it, a name that I was starting to use in other magazines (though I seem to have spelled it “Eric” in those). Hamling changed the title, all right, calling the story “Six Frightened Men,” and though his title changes generally ran in the direction of greater pulpiness, this was, I think, an improvement over my original one, and I have maintained it here.

As I noted earlier, Hamling also had a way of assigning bylines randomly to the stories of ours that he published, regardless of whatever might be on the manuscript when we sent it in. And so, when “Six Frightened Men” appeared in the June, 1957 issue of Imagination, it was published under the name of Randall Garrett, and so it has been listed by bibliographers ever since. But I wrote it, and now, nearly sixty years later, I reclaim it for my own.

——————

You put your life on the line when you join the Exploratory Wing of the Space Corps. They tell you that when you sign up. The way they told it to me, it went like this:

“You’ll be out there on alien worlds where no human being has ever set foot—worlds which may or may not have been inhabited by hostile alien creatures. You take your life in your hands every time you make a planetfall out there. Still interested?”

“That’s old stuff,” I said. “You don’t think I’d join up if it was an old ladies’ tea party, do you?”

Which was how I happened to be crouching behind a fantastically-sculptured spiraling rock out on the yellow wind-blasted desert of Pollux V, huddling there with the fierce sweep of sand against my faceplate, looking at the monster that barred my path.

The thing was at least sixty feet tall and all eyes and mouth. The mouth yawned, showing yellow daggers a foot long. As for the eyes—well, they burned with the cold luminosity of an intelligent and inimical being.

I didn’t know what the thing was. One minute I’d been examining an interesting rock formation, a second later I was hiding behind it, watching the ravening thing that had appeared out of nowhere.

Other members of the expedition were sprawled here and there on the desert too. I could see Max Feld, our paleontologist, curled in a tight plump little ball under an outcropping of weathered limestone, and there was Roy Laurence, the biochemist, flat on his stomach peering at the thing incredulously.

Back behind me were three others—Don Forster, Leo Mickens, Clyde Hamner. That made six. The two remaining members of the team, Medic Howard Graves and Anthropologist Lyman Donaldson, were back at the ship. We always left a shift of two back there in case of trouble.

And trouble had sure struck now!

I saw Laurence swivel in the sand and stare goggle-eyed at me. His lips moved, and over my helmet radio came: “What the hell is it, Phil? Where’d it come from?”

I’m a morphologist; I’m supposed to know things like that. But I could only shrug and say, “A thing like that could only come from the pits of Hell. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

I hadn’t. We had been fine combing the broad windswept plain in front of the ship, looking for archaeological remains. The planet was uninhabited, or so we thought after running a quick check—but Max Feld had discovered relics of a dead race, an exciting find, and we had all fanned out to help him in his search for more.

We had been heading toward a flat mountain wall that rose abruptly from the desert about a mile from the ship when—from nowhere—the creature appeared, towering above the desert like a dinosaur dropped from the skies.

But no dinosaur ever looked like this one. Sixty feet high, its skin a loathsome gray-green quivering jelly with thick hairy cilia projecting, its vat-like mouth gaping toothily, its cold, hard eyes flicking back and forth, searching for us as we flattened ourselves out of sight, it was an utterly ghastly being. Evolution had gone wild on this planet.

And we were cut off from the ship, hemmed between the mountain wall and the creature.

“What are we going to do?” Clyde Hamner whispered. “He’s going to smell us out pretty soon.”

As he spoke, the monster began to move—flowing, it seemed, like some vast protozoan.

“I’m going to blast it,” I said, as it oozed closer to us. Cautiously, I lifted my Webley from its shoulder-holster, turned the beam to Full, began to squeeze the firing-stud.

A bright white-hot beam of force leaped from the nozzle and speared the creature’s eye. It howled, seemed to leap in the air, thrashed around—

And changed.

It became a boiling mass of amorphous protoplasm, writhing and billowing on the sand. I fired again into the mass—again and again, and the alien creature continued to shift its form. I was cold with horror, but I kept up the firing. My bolts seemed to be absorbed into the fluid mass without effect, but at least I had halted the oozing advance.

It reached one final hideous stage: a giant mouth, opening before us like the gate of hell. A mouth, nothing more. It yawned in front of us—

Then advanced.

I felt noxious vapors shoot out, bathing my thermosuit, and I saw a gargling larynx feet across. I fired, again and again, into the monster’s throat.

My companions were firing too. We seemed to have halted the thing’s advance. It paused some twenty feet from us, a wall of mouth.

Then it disappeared.

It blinked out of sight the way it had come—instantaneously. For a moment I didn’t realize what had happened, and fired three useless charges into the space where the monster had been.

“It’s gone,” Hamner exclaimed.

My hands were trembling—me, who had stood up to Venusian mud-worms without a whimper, who had fought the giant fleas of Rigel IX. I was shaking all over. Sweat was running down my entire body, and the wiper of my faceplate was going crazy trying to blot my forehead.

Then I heard dull groans coming from up ahead. One final grunt, then silence. They had been coming from Max Feld.

Looking around cautiously, I rose to my feet. There was no sign of the creature. I ran to where Max lay.

The plump paleontologist was sprawled flat in the sand, face down. I bent, yanked him over, peered in his facemask. His eyes were open, staring—and lifeless.

It wasn’t till we got back to the ship that we could open his spacesuit and confirm what I thought I saw on his face.

Doc Graves pronounced it finally: “He’s dead. Heart attack. What the devil did you see out there, anyway?”

Quickly I described it. When I was finished the medic shivered. “Lord! No wonder Max had an attack. What a nightmare!”

Donaldson, the anthropologist, appeared from somewhere in the back of the ship. Seeing Max’s body, he said, “What happened?”

“We were attacked on the desert. Max was the only casualty. The thing didn’t touch us—it just stood there and changed shape. Max must have died of fright.”

Donaldson scowled. He was a wry, taciturn individual with a coldness about him that I didn’t like. I could pretty much guess what he would say. No expression of grief, or anything like that.

“It’s going to look bad for you, Doc, when it’s discovered we had a man with a weak heart in the crew.”

The medic stiffened. “I checked Max’s heart before we left. It was as good as anyone’s. But the shock of seeing that thing—”

“Yeah,” Don Forster said angrily. “You’d have been shivering in your boots too if that thing had popped out of nowhere right over your left shoulder.”

“Keep your remarks to yourself, Forster. I signed on for the Exploratory Team with the same understanding any of you did—that we were going into alien, uncharted worlds and could expect to meet up with anything. Anything at all. Fright’s a mere emotional reaction. Adults—as you supposedly are—should be able to control it.”

I felt like hitting him, but I restrained myself. That ordeal out on the desert had left me drained, nerves raw and shaken. I shrugged and looked away.

“Well?” Hamner said. “What do we do? Go home?”

It was said half as a joke, but I saw from the look on young Leo Mickens’ face that he was perfectly willing to take the suggestion seriously and get off Pollux V as fast as he could.

To forestall any trouble, I said, “It’s a tempting idea. But I don’t think it would look good on our records.”

“You’re right,” Hamner agreed. “We stay. We stay until we know what that thing is, where it came from, and how we can lick it.”

We stayed. We spent the rest of that day aboard ship, having called off the day’s explorations in memory of Max. The bright orb of Pollux set about 2000 ship time, and the sky was filled with a glorious sight: a horde of moons whirling above. The moons of Pollux V were incredible.

There were one hundred of them, ranging in size from a hunk of rock the size of Mars’ Deimos to one massive high-albedo satellite almost a thousand miles in diameter. They marched across the sky in stately order, filling the Polluxian night with brightness.

Only we didn’t feel much sense of wonder. We buried Max in a crude grave, laid him to rest under the light of a hundred moons, and then withdrew to the ship to consider our problem.

“Where’d it come from?” Doc Graves asked.

“Nowhere,” I said. “Just nowhere. One second it wasn’t there, next second it was. It vanished the same way.”

“How could that be?” Donaldson asked. “Matter doesn’t work that way; it’s flatly impossible.”

Holding myself in check, I said, “Maybe so, Donaldson. But the thing was there.”

“How do you know?” the anthropologist persisted, sneering a little. “You sure it wasn’t a mass illusion of some kind?”

“Damn you,” Forster shouted, “You weren’t there. We were—and we saw it. Max saw it. Ask Max if it was there!”

Evenly, Donaldson said, “On the basis of your description, I’m convinced it must have been an illusion. I’m willing to go out there and have a look first thing in the morning—either alone or with any of you, if you can work up the courage. Fair enough?”

“Fair enough,” I said. “I’ll go with you.”

The next morning we left the ship, clad in thermos-suits, armed to the teeth—at least I was. I carried a subforce gun and a neural disruptor; Donaldson scornfully packed only the prescribed blaster.

We crossed the flat plain together, without speaking. I led the way, looking back nervously every few paces, but there was nothing behind me but Donaldson. We made a complete reconnaissance of the area, picked up a few interesting outlying fossils—Donaldson thought they might be relics of the dead race of Pollux V—and reached the bare face of the mountain without any difficulties.

“Well?” Donaldson asked sneeringly. “Where’s your monster this time? He afraid of me?”

“So it didn’t show up,” I snapped. “That doesn’t prove anything. For all we know it might jump us on the way back to the ship.”

“So it might. But I doubt it. For one thing, I’ve been checking footprints in the sand. I’ve counted six tracks—one each for you, Feld, Hamner, Laurence, Forster, and Mickens. Unfortunately, that doesn’t leave any for your monster. There’s no sign of him anywhere.”

I was a little startled by that. I glanced around. “You’re right,” I admitted, frowning. Licking dry lips, I said, “There ought to be some trace—unless the wind’s covered it.”

“The wind hasn’t fully covered the traces of you six yet,” Donaldson pointed out with obstinate logic. “Why should it obliterate only those of your nemesis?” I scowled, but said nothing. Donaldson was right again—but I still found it hard to convince myself that what we had seen was only an illusion.

On the way back to the ship, I formulated all sorts of theories to explain the creature. It was a monster out of subspace, generated by etheric force; it was a radiation-creature without tangible physical body; it was—

I had half a dozen conjectures, each as unlikely as the next. But we returned to the ship safely, without any trouble whatever. I was sure of one thing: the creature was real, no matter what hell-void had spawned it.

When we returned, I saw the tense faces of the men in the ship ease.

“All right,” Donaldson said. “We’ve both been out there and come back. I say we ought to investigate this place fully. There’s been a high-level civilization here at one time, and—”

“Suppose it’s this monster that killed off that civilization?” Forster suggested.

“Then it’s our duty to investigate it,” I had to say. “Even at the cost of our lives.” Here I agreed with Donaldson; monster or no, it was our job to fathom the secrets of this dead world.

We agreed to explore in twos, rather than risk the customary complement of six all at once. Two men would go out; five remain within, three of them space-suited and ready to leave the ship to answer any emergency call.

Mickens and Forster drew the first assignment. They suited up and left. Tensely, we proceeded about our shipside duties, cataloguing information from our previous stops, performing routine tasks, busying ourselves desperately in unimportant work to take our minds off the men who were out on that desert together.

An hour later, Forster returned. Alone.

His face was pale, his eyes bulging, and almost before he stepped from the airlock we knew what must have happened.

“Where’s Mickens?” I asked, breaking the terrible hush in the cabin.

“Dead,” he said hollowly. “We—we got to the mountain, and—God, it was awful!”

He sank down in an acceleration cradle and started to sob. Doc Graves fumbled at his belt, drew out a neurotab, forced it between the boy’s quivering lips. He calmed; color returned to his face.

“Tell us about it,” Hamner urged gently.

“We reached the back end of the plain, and Leo suggested we try the mountain. He thought he saw a sort of cave somewhere back in there, and wanted to have a look. We had to go over that sharp rock shelf to get in there.

“So we started to scale the cliff. We were about a hundred feet up, and going along a path maybe four feet wide, when—when—” He shuddered, then forced himself to go on. “The monster appeared. It popped out of nowhere right in front of Leo. He was taken by surprise and toppled over the edge. I managed to hang on.”

“Were you attacked?” I asked.

“No. It vanished, right after Leo fell off. I went down to look at him. His facemask had broken. I left him there.”

I glanced around at the tight-jawed, hard faces of my crewmates. No one said a word—but we all knew the job that faced us now. We couldn’t leave Pollux V until we’d discovered the nature of the beast that menaced us—even if it cost us our lives. We couldn’t go back to Earth and send some other guys in to do the job. That wasn’t the way the Exploratory Wing operated. We had a tradition to uphold.

We drew lots, and Hamner and Donaldson went out there to recover Mickens’ body. They encountered no hazards, and brought young Mickens’ shattered body back. We buried it next to Max’s. The monster had taken a toll of two already, without actually touching either.

It was almost like some evil plan unfolding to wipe us out one by one. I didn’t like it—but I didn’t have anything too concrete to base it on, not till the fifth day.

I was teamed with Donaldson again, and I felt strangely confident about our safety. So far the monster had yet to materialize any time Donaldson was out on the plain. That fact had been in the back of my mind for quite a while. It was the only clue I had.

We prowled over the plain, which by now had been pretty well finetoothed, and then I suggested we try the cave where Mickens had met his fate.

“I don’t like the idea,” Donaldson said, eyeing the narrow shelf of rock we would have to walk across. “You remember what happened to Mickens, and—”

I laughed harshly. “Don’t tell me you’re beginning to believe in this monster of ours?”

“Of course not. Mickens simply had an attack of vertigo and toppled off; Forster’s active imagination supplied the monster. But that shelf looks treacherous. I’d just as soon not go up there.”

“You’re not talking like an Exploratory Wing man, Donaldson. But it’s okay with me if you want to wait down here. That cave might be a goldmine of artifacts. We ought at least to have a look.”

His hard face dropped within his mask. “No—I couldn’t let you go alone. You win,” he said. “Let’s try the cave.”

We began the climb—and it was, I saw, a deadly road. It narrowed dizzyingly—and while the drop was only a hundred feet, which a man could survive if he landed right, spacesuits weren’t made to take falls of that sort. And without a suit, a man was instantly dead on this methane-ammonia atmosphere world.

We were about ten feet out on the ledge, I in the lead and Donaldson behind me, when I heard him gasp.

“Great God! There it is!” I felt him lurch against me in sudden terror, nearly heaving me into the abyss, but somehow I steadied myself, dropped to my knees, hung on. I turned.

He had avoided a fall too. But I saw no monster.

“Where is it?” I asked.

“It came out of the air right next to me—just popped out of the void and vanished again. I saw it, though.” His voice was hoarse. “I apologize for everything I’ve said. The thing is real. If it weren’t for your sure footing we’d both have gone the way Mickens did.”

He seemed almost hysterical. There was no sign of the monster, but I wasn’t going to take any chances out on this ribbon of rock with a hysterical man.

“Let’s go back,” I said. “We’ll try to get to the cave some other time.”

“All right,” Donaldson said, shaken. We turned and inched our way back along the shelf to safety, and half-ran to the sanctuary of the ship.

But once we were inside and I was thinking clearly again, I began to sprout some suspicions.

I reasoned it out very carefully. Every time Donaldson had gone out previously, the monster had failed to show. There wasn’t another man aboard ship who hadn’t had some encounter with the thing. And some of them were remarking about Donaldson’s apparent luck.

So this time we’re out on the shelf, and the monster does show up—but Donaldson’s the only one who sees him, after staunchly denying its existence all along. It seemed to me that it might only have been pretense, that he had faked seeing the monster for some reason of his own.

I didn’t know what that could be. But I had some ideas. Donaldson, after all, had been a member of the first party to explore Pollux V, the day before the exploration that killed Max. I had remained on the ship while that group had been out.

Suppose, I thought, Donaldson had found something on that first trip, something that he hadn’t bothered to tell the rest of us about. Something he might want badly enough to kill all of us for.

It was pretty far-fetched, but it was worth a try. I decided to explore Donaldson’s cabin.

Ordinarily we respected privacy to an extreme degree aboard the ship. I had never been in Donaldson’s cabin before—he never invited anyone in, and naturally I never went uninvited. But this was a special case, I felt.

The door was locked, but it’s not hard to coerce a magneplate into opening if you know how they work. Donaldson was in the ship’s lab and I hoped he’d stay out of my way till I had a good look around.

The room was just like any of ours, filled with the usual things—a shelf of reference books, a file of musictapes, some minifilms, other things to help to pass away the long hours between planets. It seemed neat, precise, uncluttered, just as Donaldson himself was crisp and reserved.

I moved around the room very carefully, looking for anything out of the ordinary. And then I found it.

It was a black box, nothing more, about four inches square. It was sitting on one of his shelves. Just a bare black box, a little cube of metal—but what metal!

Beyond the blackness was a strange unearthly shimmer, an eye-teasing pattern of shifting molecules within the metal itself. The box had a sleek, alien appearance. I knew it hadn’t been in the cabin when we left Earth.

With a sudden rush of excitement I realized my mad guess had been right. Donaldson had found something and kept news of it back from the rest of us. And perhaps it was linked to the deaths of Max Feld and Leo Mickens.

Cautiously I reached out to examine the box. I lifted it. It was oddly heavy, and strange to the touch.

But no sooner did I have it in my hands when the door opened behind me. Donaldson had come back.

“What are you doing with that?” he shouted.

“I—”

He crossed the cabin at top speed and seized the box from my hands. And suddenly the monster appeared.

It materialized right in the cabin, between Donaldson and me, its vast bulk pressing against the walls. I felt its noisome breath on me, sensed its evil reek.

“Donaldson!”

But Donaldson was no longer there. I was alone in the cabin with the creature.

I backed away into the far corner, my mouth working in terror. I tried to call for help, but couldn’t get a word out. And the beast squirmed and changed like a vast amoeba, writhing and twisting from one grey oily shape to another.

I sank to the floor, numb with horror—and then realized that the monster wasn’t approaching.

It was just staying there, making faces at me.

Making faces. Like a bogeyman.

It was trying to scare me to death. That was how Max Feld had died, that was how Leo Mickens had died.

But I wasn’t going to die that way.

I rose and confronted the thing. It just remained in the middle of the cabin, blotting everything out behind it, stretching from wall to wall and floor to ceiling, changing from one hell-shape to another and hoping I’d curl up and die.

I stepped forward.

Cautiously I touched the monster’s writhing surface. It was like touching a cloud. I sank right in.

The monster changed, took the dragon form again—much smaller, of course, to fit the cabin. Teeth gnashed the air before my nose—but didn’t bite into my throat as they promised to do. Nervelessly I stood my ground.

Then I waded into the heart of the monster, right into its middle with the grey oiliness billowing out all around me. There seemed to be nothing material, nothing to grapple hold of. It was like fighting a dream.

But then I hit something solid. My groping hands closed around warm flesh. I started to squeeze.

I had a throat. A living core of flesh within the monster? It might be. I constricted my fingers, dug them in, heard strangled gasps coming from further in. I couldn’t see, but I hung on.

Then a human voice said, “Damn you—you’re choking me!” And the monster thinned.

Through the diminishing smoke of the dream-creature, I saw Donaldson, and I was clutching his throat. He still held the black box in his hand, but it was slipping from his grasp, slipping…

He dropped it. It clattered to the floor and I kicked it far across the cabin. The monster vanished completely.

It was just the two of us, there in the cabin. I heard fists pounding on the door from outside, but I ignored them. This was between me and Donaldson.

“What is that thing?” I asked, facing him, tugging at his throat. I shook him. “Where’d you find that hell-thing?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” he wheezed.

My fingers tightened. Suddenly he drew up his foot and lashed out at my stomach. I let go of his throat and fell back, the wind knocked out of me. As I staggered backward, he darted for the fallen box, but I recovered and brought my foot down hard on his outstretched hand.

He snarled in pain. I felt his other fist crash into my stomach again. I was almost numb, sick, ready to curl up in a knot and close my eyes. But I forced myself to suck in breath and hit him.

His head snapped back. I hit him again, and he reeled soggily. His neat, precise lips swelled into a bloody mass. His fists moved hazily; I blackened one of his eyes, and he groaned and slumped. Fury was in my fists; I was avenging the honor of the Exploratory Wing against the one man who had broken its oaths.

“Enough…enough…”

But I hit him again and again, till he sagged to the floor. I picked up the black metal box, fondled it in my hands. Then, tentatively, I threw a thought at it.

Monster.

The monster appeared in all its ugliness.

Vanish.

It vanished.

“That’s how it works, isn’t it?” I said. “It’s a thought projector. That monster never existed outside your own mind, Donaldson.”

“Don’t hit me again,” he whined. I didn’t. He was beneath contempt.

I threw open the door and saw the other crewmen huddled outside, their faces pale. “It’s all over,” I said. “Here’s your monster.”

I held out the black box.

We held court on Donaldson that night, and he made full confession. That first day, he had stumbled over an alien treasure in the cave beyond the hill—that, and the thought-converter. The idea came to him that perhaps, as sole survivor of the expedition, he could turn some of the treasure to his own uses.

So he utilized the thought-converter in a campaign to pick us off one by one without aiming suspicion at himself. Only his clumsy way of pretending to see the creature himself had given him away; else he might have killed us all.

Our rulebook gave no guide on what to do about him—but we reached a decision easily enough.

When we left Pollux V, taking with us samples of the treasure, and other specimens of the long-dead race (including the thought-converter) we left Donaldson behind, on the bare, lifeless planet, with about a week’s supply of food and air.

No one ever learned of his treachery. We listed him as a casualty, along with Max and Leo, when we returned to Earth. The Exploratory Wing had too noble a name to tarnish by revealing what Donaldson had done…and none of us will ever speak the truth. The Wing means too much to us for that.

And I think they’re going to award him a posthumous medal…

PUPPETS WITHOUT STRINGS
(1957)

The arrangement with Hamling, since it was contractual and required 50,000 words a month from the Garrett-Silverberg fiction factory, took priority in my monthly output of short stories throughout 1956. But I continued to maintain my connections with Amazing Stories and its companion Fantastic as well, although on a reduced basis. In those heady days of the summer of 1955 Garrett had set us both up as regular writers for those two magazines, which then were edited by Howard Browne, a skillful mystery-story writer who somehow had found himself editing two science-fiction magazines even though he had a fairly vigorous dislike for science fiction. He went about his job conscientiously, but scarcely made an effort to hide the intensity of his boredom with robots, spaceships, time machines, and all the rest of that science-fiction stuff. Browne was an amiable man who took an avuncular liking to 21-year-old me, and, since I very quickly demonstrated that I could be a reliable supplier of stories for his two copy-hungry magazines, he bought everything I brought him on my regular Monday morning visits to his Manhattan office. The records show that I had twenty stories published in the two Browne titles in 1956 alone, some of them collaborations with Garrett but most of them solo work.

Toward the end of 1956 Howard resigned from his editorial post to return to his real love, writing detective novels, and his place was taken by Paul W. Fairman, his associate editor and also one of his regular writers. As it happened, Fairman and I didn’t get along particularly well. Like Browne, he had no great love for science fiction; he carried out his chores as editor with no more enthusiasm than a shoe salesman or a bank clerk might have shown, and though he was a prolific producer of s-f, most of his work was doggedly uninspired, routine formula stuff that he dutifully cranked out to fill the pages of Browne’s and Hamling’s magazines. Fairman knew that it was my ambition to write science fiction of a more than routine sort, and I suppose that caused him to feel some resentment over my presence on the staff of his own magazines, as though he thought, “This kid is slumming,” and didn’t like it.

So I continued to bring stories to Fairman, as I had to Browne, and he continued to buy them, because his two monthly magazines demanded a steady flow of material, but the welcome I got at his office was a cool one, and the stories became fewer and farther between as other markets, one of them paying twice as much as Fairman’s magazines for similar material, emerged to absorb my vast output. In my enormously prolific year of 1957 I had a dozen stories in Amazing and Fantastic, but most of them were bunched in the first half of the year, and a good many of those may have been left over from the Browne regime. From September through December I had just two stories published in Fairman’s magazines, and by the time 1958 came around I was no longer dealing with them at all.

One of the last I wrote for Fairman was “Puppets Without Strings,” which I delivered in April, 1957 and which he ran in the August, 1957 issue of Fantastic. (That issue reached the newsstands in June, and the brief two-month gap between delivery and publication would indicate that there was a 4400-word gap in the issue Fairman was putting together the day I brought my story in, and he sent it immediately to the printer. That was how things worked in those days.)

“Puppets Without Strings” is a fantasy, more or less, rather more quietly told than most of the furious action stories I was writing for the pulp magazines then. Its theme was hardly original. Heinlein had dealt with it in a 1941 short story called “They,” and Fritz Leiber in a powerful novella, “You’re All Alone,” in the August, 1950 issue of Fantastic Adventures, the ancestor of Fantastic, and those are only the first two that come to mind. The Leiber story had had a strong effect on me when I read it at the age of fifteen, and I still remember the dramatic cover blurb for it: “In a world of puppets known as men…YOU’RE ALL ALONE.” Whether I was consciously setting out to rewrite “You’re All Alone” seven years later for Paul Fairman, or simply working from a subterranean memory of the story, I have no idea at this late date. But the connection between the two is impossible to deny.

Fairman ran my story under the title, “Call Me Zombie!”, which he may have chosen to use as a flashy headline on the cover; but since it is not really a zombie story at all, I have chosen here to revert to the title I originally gave it.

——————

The troop-train let Phil Marsh off at Grand Central, and he stood in the midst of a jostling mob of his ex-buddies, wondering whether to call Marylin or not. She wasn’t expecting him until Friday; it was only Wednesday, now.

Someone nudged him. Harry Davenport. “Let’s go get a beer,” Davenport said. “Our first as civilians again.”

“No. My wife—”

“Your wife can wait. She isn’t figuring on having you come home till Friday, anyway. Give the gal a decent amount of time to say goodbye to her boy friends, huh? What’s a few more minutes?”

Marsh scowled. “I don’t like jokes like that—”

“Jakes? Who knows?” Davenport said. “Strange are the ways of servicemen’s wives.”

Marsh heaved his duffel-bag higher on his shoulder and glared coldly at Davenport. He and Davenport had been drafted around the same time and had spent two years in the same outfit; still, Marsh felt he hardly knew the tall, hard-faced man at his side. And suddenly he didn’t want to know him any more. There was something about Davenport—

“So? You coming for a beer with me?”

“The hell with a beer. I’m going home. I haven’t seen my wife in two years, and I can’t get home soon enough.”

Davenport’s cold eyes twinkled. “I’m warning you, you better call first. You never can tell what you’ll find if you come popping in on her like that!”

There wasn’t room in the crowd for Marsh to hit him. Angry, he shouldered his way through the mob, went past the cotton-candy booths and the newsstands, found fifteen cents in his pocket and bought a token. At least that hadn’t changed; they were talking about raising the fare to twenty cents, but they hadn’t.

The new fluorescents made the IRT track incredibly bright and airy, though they showed up all the dirt. Marsh stood all the way into Brooklyn, got off at his old station, walked the familiar five-block walk to his house. It all looked pretty much the same, though he didn’t recognize any of the kids playing out in front.

He paused for a moment outside the house, fumbling through his civilian belongings for his house-key, still angered at what Davenport had said.

He knew Marylin better than that. Grinning in anticipation of her surprise, he ran up the stairs, jiggled the key into the lock, and opened the door.

“Hey! Guess who’s home, Marylin! I—” His voice died away.

She was standing in the middle of the floor, stock-still, eyes open, mouth gaping, looking very much like a department-store-dummy version of herself. Marsh had never seen anyone so dead-looking and yet so alive.

It was as if she had been turned off when he went away—and hadn’t been turned back on yet.

No more than a fraction of a second passed before she was awake and smiling warmly, but that fraction of a second was enough. Life flowed back into her; the change was apparent. But Marsh felt a cold chill as she skipped across the floor to wrap herself jubilantly around him.

“Phil! Phil! You said Friday, and it’s only Wednesday! Darling, I was going to have the place all fixed up to surprise you, with ribbons and streamers and things—but I guess this is a much better surprise—isn’t it?”

“Of course,” he said, without any warmth at all. His mind kept going back to the thing he’d seen when he opened the door—the puppet-Marylin who’d awakened into the real one when she realized he was watching her.

He couldn’t help thinking of Davenport’s warning—you never can tell what you’ll find if you come popping in on her like that. Maybe, Marsh thought, Davenport hadn’t been talking about possible infidelity. Maybe it was something uglier and deeper and more horrible than that.

Marylin’s hand brushed his cheek lightly. “I can’t believe you’re really back. My mind is sort of geared to Friday—I was counting the days and the hours and tomorrow I was going to start counting the minutes.”

“They processed us through quicker. That was all there was to it. The Friday discharges gained two days—and we even get paid for them!” Marsh tried to smile, but the thought of—that—dampened his lightheadedness.

“You seem strange,” Marylin said. “Cold…almost frightened. Is there something wrong? Darling, two years…I hope they didn’t do anything to you!”

He jerked out of his strange mood with an effort. “No—it’s just being home, that’s all. And thinking.” He looked around. “The place is fixed up nice. You’ve been taking care of it for me.”

And it looks just the way it did when I went away. Complete to the cigarette-ashes in the ashtray, and the dishes in the sink.

Like a stage-set, he thought weirdly. Stage-sets don’t change unless someone changes them.

“There’s beer in the icebox,” Marylin said. “Your favorite brand. I was stocking up for Friday.”

“Let’s go have some, then. My throat feels pretty dry.”

He followed her into the kitchen. He was remembering something else, now—a long discussion he had had with Harry Davenport, a year or so back. He had forgotten about it. But now, as if triggered, it rose to the front of his mind.

It wasn’t long after Basic, and they had been stationed in Germany on a do-nothing post where the chief activity was drinking the dark German beer (very tasty) and ogling the passing German frauleins (very hefty).

Marsh and Davenport had had an afternoon to kill in Hamburg; they were serving as chauffeurs for some of the brass, and while the high-level conference went on across the street the chauffeurs were free to cool their heels until wanted.

They were in one of those German combination hotel-bars and pickup-joints, drinking authentic Bock beer and saying very little. Marsh hadn’t been in the Army long enough to be used to the idea of being separated from his wife, and he was lonely and not very talkative. Being with Davenport didn’t help; the big man always seemed half a million miles away and frosty as the top of Everest. Marsh knew hardly anything about him, despite constant contact with him.

But then a German girl came waddling along, the kind who looked to have grown fat and healthy on a diet of sauerbraten and beer. She was young—twenty-five or thereabouts—and might have been pretty with fifty less pounds aboard. Marsh stared broodingly at her. Her fat smiling face bore no sign of intelligence.

And after her came another, and another. Pleasant plump girls who seemed to be cut from a cookie-tin.

“Look at them,” he said. “Waddling along ten or twenty an hour, and all of them alike. Like so many puppets without strings, moving along a fixed path and not knowing what the hell for. Damn, I’m getting philosophical in my old age, huh?” He swilled down more of the dark, rich beer.

But Davenport looked at him, cold amusement in his face. “Maybe they are.”

“Huh? Are what?”

“Puppets. Like you said.”

Marsh shook his head in confusion. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“It’s an old theory of mine. That most of the world’s people are golems—dummies, with no real life of their own. That just a few of us are really alive, and the rest of us just toys, playthings to give an appearance of reality to the world surrounding the real few.”

A gust of cold wind blew suddenly into the streetside cafe. Marsh shivered a little. “Dummies? Puppets?”

“Yeah. Why not?”

“Of course,” Marsh said, “We’re among the real people, you and me. Or else we would never be talking about it like this.”

Davenport chuckled. “I don’t know about you. But I’m real.”

That conversation, nothing but a beery bit of time-passing speculation then, now took on a sharp-focussed immediacy.

Marylin was bustling around the kitchen, taking two cans of beer from the refrigerator, opening them (a little spray of beer frothed up at her, the way it always did), pouring them carefully, so as not to put heads on them, into the tall pilsner glasses Marsh had bought one day about three years before.

She looked real.

The freshness of her smile, the whiteness of her teeth, the trim little figure and the yellow-brown hair—

Real?

Or the work of an ingenious puppet-master?

Sweat beaded Marsh’s face. He said, “Marylin—when I came through the door a little while ago—I thought there was something funny about the way you looked.”

“Funny? Why, what could you mean?” She efficiently cleared away the empty beer cans and set Marsh’s drink on the table before him.

He groped for words. “I mean—you looked sort of vacant. Like an empty body someone had hung up to dry. I almost got the feeling you had been standing like that for two years, ever since I was drafted. That you’ve just been carefully designed as a toy for me. That you aren’t real at all, Marylin. Not really real.”

She looked searchingly at him. “Phil, let me touch your forehead. You must have caught something when you were overseas. Malaria, or something that affects the brain.”

He shook her hand away.

Maybe I am crazy, he thought. Brain-fever. This is no way to be talking to my wife ten minutes after coming home from Germany.

But Davenport’s mocking words bit into him, drifting back clear and sharp.

He sipped his beer.

“Phil—”

“Eh?”

“Those things you said a minute ago. You were kidding, weren’t you? It’s just some crazy thing, some joke you heard overseas. About being real.”

“Oh—yeah, sure. Sure, kid. Don’t listen to me too seriously. The sight of you makes me a little slaphappy, that’s all.”

But he was thinking: If there’s just a few of us real ones and Marylin’s only a puppet, I ought to be able to turn her on and off whenever I felt like it. What good’s a toy you can’t turn on and off?

He thought about it a while. Turned it over six different ways in his mind, while Marylin carried away the empty beer glasses, washed them, moved around the kitchen tidying things up. She looked real, lovely, desirable.

He decided to test it.

“Marylin?”

“Yes, Phil?”

“Stop. Just stop. Freeze. I’m turning you off like the puppet you are. Pretend I never came back from the Army. Pretend you’re still frozen here, waiting for me.”

He expected her to giggle scornfully, or to get angry, or to react in any one of the ways Marylin would react to such a ridiculous request. But she didn’t do any of those things, though.

She froze.

One minute she was Marylin, smiling, breathing, lovingly grinning at him. A minute later she was the slack jawed empty thing he had seen when he came in, rigid, vacant-eyed, drained of all life and personality and motion.

He walked up to the thing that had been his wife and gently touched her forehead. It was cold. The warmth that had been Marylin was just part of the illusion.

Illusion. He felt chilled.

“Come out of it,” he said hoarsely. “Wake up, Marylin. Unfreeze.”

It was as if a light-switch had been turned; she awoke, life flowing back into her.

“What was that you said, Phil? I’m afraid I didn’t quite hear yo—”

“Freeze.”

She froze again. On, off. Flick, flick. Just a puppet.

Marsh walked to the window and looked outside. It was just an ordinary Brooklyn afternoon, kids coming home from school, a punch-ball game going on in the street, a young mother rocking her baby to sleep across the way where it was sunny, a policeman directing traffic at the big intersection up ahead.

He looked back at the empty Marylin. He wondered how much of the world was illusion, how much real. He wondered how he had stumbled into this nightmare.

I would have been better off if I never met that devil Davenport, he thought bitterly. He started me thinking about this. If I hadn’t started it I’d still be happy, still have Marylin. And the whole damned world.

Almost without knowing what he was doing he slipped on a jacket that had hung in his closet two years, walked past the frozen Marylin-thing, past his abandoned duffel-bag, and out the door. He didn’t bother locking it.

He started down the stairs. A creaking sound came from below, and a fat figure rounded the balustrade on the second floor. Mrs. Giovanetti, the landlady.

Her round little eyes beamed as she caught sight of him. “Why, Mr. Marsh! You weren’t supposed to be back till Friday, and I was going to bake a cake for—”

“Freeze,” he said. “Turn yourself off.”

Mrs. Giovanetti seemed to slump into herself and stood lumplike on the stairs like a potato sack. Shuddering, Marsh walked around her and continued on down. He wished he had come back on Friday. If he hadn’t caught Marylin by surprise that way, this wouldn’t be happening.

He came out into the bright clean sunlight. A boy and a dog came by: the boy about eight, dirty-faced, the dog a wire-haired terrier that didn’t like being held on its leash.

“Hey, kid.”

“Yeah, mister?”

“I’m tired of you. Stop being alive.”

The boy became a statue of a boy. And the terrier stopped straining at the leash and froze, just like that, leaning forward with its tongue half out.

Marsh kept going.

The delivery boy bringing up the groceries—a pimple-faced teenager who was probably worrying about the draft himself. Marsh froze him, extracted the pseudo-life with a word.

The policeman waving the cars on became a blue-clad statue. The cars obediently stopped; Marsh stepped off the sidewalk and came over to the driver of the first car.

He was a balding man in his fifties. He leaned out the open window and Marsh froze him. A Buick behind them started to honk. Marsh made the honking stop.

A cold sort of numbness grew in him as he moved on down the block, heading toward the subway. His feet were taking him on; he had no idea of where he was going, or why. But it took just a word to drain life from the puppets he met.

At the corner newsstand, an old woman was sitting behind a stack of newspapers. Marsh put down a dime, picked up a paper, and froze her. He took back his dime. The newspaper had all the usual news, the crises and the Presidential statements, the UN debates and the baseball scores. The Dodgers were in third place, battling for second. The President was returning from his vacation, smiling, tanned, healthy-looking.

“Is it all a game?” Marsh asked out loud. “Played out for my benefit only? Am I the only real one?”

It looked that way.

“What’s that, Mister?” a passing truckdriver asked. “You got troubles?”

Marsh froze him too.

He moved on…on through this world of stringless puppets that danced out their dramas for him. He wondered if it went on this way all over the world, or just where he was. He had been in Germany, seen the frauleins and gulped the bock beer. Was Germany frozen in pseudo-death now that he was in America? For that matter, did people freeze every time he looked the other way?

There wasn’t any way of finding that out, he thought.

I’m the only one that’s real. In the whole damned world.

It was a shocking, numbing realization.

He reached the subway; busy shoppers jostled past him as if they didn’t know he could stop them in their tracks with a word, or perhaps a thought or a sour look. Marsh scooped change out of his pockets and scowled when he saw he had no tokens. The line at the change-booth was ten or twelve people long.

But there was an easy solution. He moved up the line, freezing them as he went, and reached the front. The change-booth keeper was staring pop-eyed at him.

“You can freeze too,” Marsh said. He reached into the booth and took a token for himself. What did stealing fifteen cents matter now? What did anything matter?

It was like moving through a world of soap-bubbles that popped at his command.

The uptown express came along, crowded. Marsh stepped inside and rode silently to Manhattan, listening to the conversations going on all around him, to the flapping of mouths with no meaning intended. Bitterly he glanced from one face to another. Behind the flickering eyes, behind the faces and the smiles—nothing, he thought. Just emptiness.

The train arrived at Grand Central. Marsh stepped out, stuck his head back into the train, and said, “I’m tired of all of you. Stop!”

Conversation died away. Marsh left the train, conscious of the trail of demolition he was leaving behind him, knowing that none of it mattered at all.

It was funny, he thought, how your world could fall apart like this. Your nice, normal world, with a pretty wife and a house in Brooklyn and your army discharge papers in your pocket, becoming nothing but puppetry and illusion. Soap-bubbles.

He stepped out of the subway station at Madison and 42nd. Traffic whizzed by; busy people were heading home for dinner. The streets were jammed.

Marsh cupped his hands and yelled, “Anyone who can hear this, stop! I order you! Me!”

Within a radius of twenty feet or so, all life stopped. He was surrounded by a circle of statues, of tree-trunks that had been people.

He walked down 42nd, heading westward, stopping all life as he went. The spectacle of New York’s busiest street silent, lifeless, clotted with New Yorkers frozen where they stood, was awesome, almost terrifying.

For what? Why was all this done? he asked. And am I the only real one?

Times Square was thronged with people, thousands of them ebbing forward toward the subway kiosks. A barker was huckstering for a sight-seeing tour of the city. With sudden inspiration, Marsh froze him and snatched his megaphone from his numb hands.

Veins stood out on Marsh’s throat as he yelled his command to the thousands in Times Square. And they began to stop; the toys ceased moving.

All except one.

Marsh waited, and a nerve in his cheek began to quiver. A tall, casual-looking man was weaving his way through the clusters of stiffened pedestrians, his face grim, his lips clamped together.

It was Harry Davenport.

Marsh let the megaphone drop and waited for Davenport to approach.

“Look here, Marsh—you can’t go about doing this! You’re wrecking the whole show! I’ve followed you up all the way from Brooklyn. Do you have any idea how much confusion you’ve caused?”

“It’s your fault,” Marsh said accusingly. “If you had kept that mouth of yours shut—”

“Oh, come now.”

“Don’t give me that! If you had shut up, I wouldn’t ever have found out about this! The world was a nice place. I liked it. And now look what you’ve done!”

“Couldn’t you always turn everyone back on again, Marsh? It’s no harder than turning them off.”

Marsh scowled unhappily. “And could I live with them any more, knowing they were all just puppets? No, Davenport. I’ll turn the whole damned puppet show off.” He waved his arms, encompassing all of Times Square. “The whole world will be just as frozen and as dead as Times Square. Dammit, this didn’t have to happen.”

Davenport said, “You made it happen. You didn’t have to take me seriously.”

“Well, I did. And I’ll turn you off too. Go on—freeze!”

Marsh waited. But Davenport did not freeze. He continued to frown grimly, to breathe, to blink his eyes.

“It didn’t work,” Marsh said. “You’re the first one it hasn’t worked on. That means—you must be real, too! So I have to share the world with you? How many of us are there, Davenport?”

The tall man shook his head sadly. “Only about a dozen, Marsh. We found out about…things, and we created things for our own amusement. We didn’t expect you to become so violent when you found out the truth. But your destructiveness has been, in its way, amusing. We tire of it, though.”

“So what? What can you do to stop me?”

“A great deal.” Davenport looked very sad. “There are different levels of realness, Marsh. The lowest you see around you—people with no life of their own, who can be turned on and off at will. Then there are those who are truly real. And then a third kind, intermediate, whom we create for special diversion. Such as you. But you’ve overdone your job. We can’t have you upsetting everything.”

“Me? You’re crazy!” Marsh burst out. “I’m just as real as you are, and—”

He never finished the sentence. Shrugging his shoulders sadly, Davenport spoke the words that would turn Marsh off.

A TIME FOR REVENGE
(1957)

While I was in the midst of toiling away for William Hamling and Howard Browne, doing seven or eight short stories a month for those editors alone, a new magazine came out of nowhere that wanted much the same kind of action-adventure material, was willing to buy every story I brought in, and would pay two cents a word for it—twice the price stories for Hamling or Browne were bringing me, and quite a substantial figure in that far-off era, when the income from one 10,000-word story that took me two days to write would cover a month’s rent on my handsome Manhattan apartment, with enough left over to pay for dinner for two at a good restaurant.

It was a young writer named Harlan Ellison, who had come to New York from the Midwest in the winter of 1954-55 and taken a room next door to mine in the ramshackle residence hotel near Columbia University where I lived in my college days, who got this one going. Like me, he had been an avid science-fiction reader who longed to have his own stories published in the magazines he had read in his teens, and by the spring of 1956 he had begun selling them to many of the same magazines I was writing for. He had discovered, though, that he also had a knack for writing hard-boiled crime stories—tales of life among the juvenile-delinquent kid-gangs of New York became a specialty of his—and had opened a market for himself at the small house of Crestwood Publishing Company, which had just started two crime-fiction magazines, Trapped and Guilty. Harlan went downtown to visit their editor, one W.W. Scott, at his office near Manhattan’s Columbus Circle, and began rapidly to sell him dark, harsh crime stories at the premium rate of a cent and a half a word. He was kind enough to let me in on this bonanza, and, busy as I was turning out science fiction for all my regular markets, I started doing crime stories too. My records show the sale of “Get Out and Stay Out” to Guilty in June, 1956, right about the time I received my Columbia degree, and “Clinging Vine” to the companion magazine, Trapped, a couple of weeks later.

And then W.W. Scott, acting on a suggestion from Harlan, talked his publisher into bringing out a science-fiction magazine as well, to be called Super Science Stories. Since Scott knew next to nothing about science fiction, and Harlan and I had a great familiarity with it, he asked us to supply him—right away—with as many stories as we could provide. The magazine would come out every two months and pay even better than the crime-fiction titles: a very respectable two cents a word. Suddenly Harlan and I had the inside track on a lucrative new market.

Scott—“Scottie,” Harlan called him, though he preferred to be called “Bill”—was a short, cheerfully cantankerous old guy who would have fit right into a 1950s Hollywood movie about old-time newspapermen, which is what I think he had been before he drifted into magazine editing. The main activity of his employer, Crestwood, was producing slick men’s magazines with names like True Men and Man’s Life. Scottie was the one-man fiction-magazine department, with a tiny office of his own, a room just about big enough for a desk, a bookcase, and a shelf for holding recently submitted manuscripts. To us—and we both were barely past 21—he looked to be seventy or eighty years old, but probably he was 55 or thereabouts. His voice was a high-pitched cackle; he had a full set of top and bottom dentures, which he didn’t always bother to wear; and I never saw him without his green eyeshade, which evidently he regarded as an essential part of the editorial costume. He freely admitted to us that he had hardly any knowledge of science fiction, other than it had something to do with alien beings and robots and things like that, and he invited us to bring him as much material as we could manage to produce.

It was like being handed the key to Fort Knox. Two cents a word, for all the stories we could write! I brought him the first one in late June—“Collecting Team,” I called it, but Scottie turned out to be a compulsive title-changer, and when he published it as the lead story in the first issue of Super-Science Fiction he called it “Catch ’Em All Alive.” Others followed—plenty of them. Super-Science lasted eighteen issues over the next three years, and, because Harlan was careless enough to get himself drafted in 1957 and spent the next two years on an army base, while I remained a civilian, the task of keeping the magazine filled fell largely to me. Of the 120 stories that Super-Science published, I wrote nearly a third, 36 in all, one or more in every issue except the second, for which I was too busy with other projects to turn anything in.

Scottie never rejected anything I brought him. They ran under my own name and under such pseudonyms as “Eric Rodman,” “Richard F. Watson,” “Alex Merriman,” “Dan Malcolm,” and any number of others. Most of them followed what I had helped to define as the Super-Science formula, stories set on alien planets with vivid scenery, involving hard-bitten characters who very often arrived at bleak ends. I suspect I derived the manner and some of the content from the South Seas stories of Joseph Conrad and W. Somerset Maugham, both favorite writers of mine. The variations I could ring on the themes of extraterrestrial colonists or exploration teams in deep galactic trouble were endless, and for three jolly years I supported myself very nicely from this one market alone.

“A Time for Revenge,” which I wrote in March, 1957, appeared a few months later in the sixth issue of Super-Science Fiction, published in June and dated October, 1957. The story, published under the “Calvin M. Knox” pseudonym, was my seventh sale to the magazine. Like most of my work for Super-Science it’s dark in tone and drives onward to the sort of somber climax that many another action-oriented s-f magazine would have regarded as taboo.

——————

Fenton didn’t have much to go by when he landed on Vordil IX, but he thought it would be enough to find the alien who had killed his brother. The Vordillans, like any aliens, looked pretty much alike to a Terran—angle-bodied lemon-colored leathery men with dark black fur collars sprouting round their throats—but Fenton had a few stray scraps of description, of differentiation, to cling to.

The Terran liner angled down out of the skies and left Fenton at the spaceport, half a mile out of the main settlement. Immediately three bright-yellow Vordillans came scuttling toward him, and asked with their clicking accents if they could carry his baggage into town.

Almost automatically he looked them over, looking for the pale grey forehead-stripe and the reddening of the collar that marked the one who had killed Jamie. But these were ordinary Vordillans. He picked the least ugly and handed over his bags; the other two melted into the crowd.

The baggage-boy hailed a two-passenger cab that took them to town. “Staying long?” he asked Fenton.

“As long as I need to.” Broodingly, Fenton stared out at the alien scene, at the blue-black carpet of grass and the needle-thin trees on both sides of the road. “I’m on vacation. Spending a couple of months touring the galaxy.”

“You will enjoy Vordil IX, sir.”

Jamie took his vacation here, Fenton thought. And one of these little clowns killed him.

As they rode into town, Fenton tried to remember the last time he had seen his younger brother. Jamie had been big, topping Fenton’s six-two by at least two inches, and there had been something warm and smiling about him that the older brother had never had.

And now Jamie was dead. But a friend of Jamie’s had sent word to Fenton, who had been living on Aquillon VII, and Fenton was here to even the score for Jamie.

The cab rumbled into a hot little town of square little buildings strung out in endless rows. “Do you have a hotel reservation, sir?” the baggage-boy asked.

Fenton told him the name of the hotel; the boy repeated it to the driver in Vordillan, clicking it out. The cab veered sharply to the left. They jounced down a rutted road and stopped before a building somewhat more imposing than the rest. Its gray sides seemed to be made of slabs of mud. Hanging over the entrance was a gaudy sign:

GRAND VORDIL HOTEL
—Terrans Welcomed—

The baggage-boy flipped open the side of the cab—the whole thing lifted away, like the top of a trapdoor spider’s home—and dragged Fenton’s baggage out into the street. Fenton handed the driver an octagonal Vordillan coin, received three tiny slivers of metal in change, and followed the baggage-boy into the hotel.

A chubby Terran stood just within, wearing seersuckers and sweating heavily. He grinned as Fenton entered.

“You Fenton?”

“That’s right. McGill?”

The fat man nodded. “Glad to see you got here. I was wondering whether you’d bother to come.”

“He was my brother,” Fenton said quietly.

A Vordillan came bustling up to him, jingling keys. “I am the proprietor,” he said. “You are Mr. Fenton? Come—I shall show you your room.”

Fenton glanced at McGill. “Why don’t you come along with us? I’d like to talk to you.”

The room was small and very square; a filter-stat kept the dusty Vordillan air circulating, but otherwise there was no real air conditioning. A hell of a planet, Fenton thought. A hell of a place for a man to die.

McGill was sitting on the edge of the bed, sweating. Fenton said, “You were the last to see my brother alive, weren’t you?”

“That’s so. Jamie stayed at this hotel; we were very friendly.” Perspiration oozed down McGill’s flabby cheeks. “I saw him just before he was—killed. The alien came and got him in the hotel bar. They left together. Only the alien came back.”

“What happened to the body.”

“The aliens buried it in the forest. The Terran Consul made some inquiries and found that out. Got a drink, Fenton? I’m parched.”

Fenton buzzed the lobby and had them send up a bowl of Vordillan wine and two glasses. He doled the greasy stuff out to McGill, poured himself a drink, and said, “You’re sure about the one who killed Jamie?”

“Positive. Grey stripe across his forehead, and that black ruff of his was on the red side. There’s no doubt about it. He admitted it himself.”

“What? Isn’t there any legal system on this planet?”

“Yes,” McGill said smoothly. “Your brother was a victim of it.”

Fenton let it sink in. “What the hell does that mean?” he asked the fat man finally.

McGill finished his drink before replying. “Your brother did something that made his life forfeit among the Vordillans. He was…executed. Local law doesn’t recognize it as a murder.”

“And the life of an Earthman—”

“—is worthless,” McGill said. “Don’t believe what you read in the travel guides. Your Terran citizenship isn’t worth a damn, once you run out of dollars.”

“Did Jamie?”

“Jamie was doing a lot of drinking, toward the end.” A retrospective smile lit McGill’s face. “He was a generous boy, was Jamie. He didn’t have much money left.”

Suddenly Fenton felt disgusted by McGill’s presence; the fat man was interplanetary flotsam, a drifter who had come to the end of his drift here on this hot, dusty little planet, who had seen a good touch in Jamie and so had befriended him. Fenton stood up and said, “I’ll have to start unpacking now. Would you excuse me?”

“Of course. I’ll be in the bar any time you want me.”

Fenton nodded. “All right. And if that alien with the red collar shows up, give me a buzz.”

Fenton took a long time unpacking. When he was finished, he drew his needlegun from its holster, broke it open, and inspected the charges. Sixteen of them, and the heat hadn’t done them any harm. He reholstered the weapon and went down the three flights of stairs to the hotel lobby.

It wasn’t hard to find the bar. The odor of stale liquor floated out from behind the stairs: he followed it. McGill was sitting at the bar, back to the door, head hunched down over a glass. A dark blotch of sweat stained the back of his shirt.

An alien sat at either side of him. Fenton walked noiselessly across the floor and nudged the fat man.

“McGill?”

“Huh—oh, you. Fenton. ’Scuse me.” McGill muttered something in the harsh fricatives of the Vordillan tongue and the alien at his left moved over one seat. Fenton slid in next to McGill.

McGill was drinking something red and thick-looking from a pottery dish shaped like a gravyboat. He poured a little into a glass and offered it to Fenton. “Try some. Native drink; pretty damned good. They call it ghar.”

Fenton sipped it. It was bitter, with a delayed-action kick that really kicked. Fenton imagined this could leave a man mindless in a month, if he drank enough of it.

He said, “You know why I’m here on Vordil?”

“Can’t possibly guess,” McGill remarked blandly.

“I’m here to avenge my brother,” said Fenton. “I want to find the alien who killed him, and kill him. Blood-feud. Vendetta.”

McGill turned to stare full-face at him. “You better have another drink, Fenton. The heat’s getting you. Go on—have another one. It’s cheap.”

“No,” Fenton whispered harshly. “I’m serious. The law on Vordil’s going to overlook his murder…but I’m not. I owe Jamie at least that much. If I have to comb this whole planet to do it, I’ll find his killer. My own brother, buried somewhere in a forest on a little dustball in the back of a galaxy…dammit, McGill it’s no good!”

The fat man shrugged and took another drink. Fenton looked around at the silently smiling Vordillans, the slim almost-humanoids with the sharp angular bones protruding from their bare shoulders and the fur collars sprouting from their throats like expensive wraps. In the half-darkness of the bar, they all looked alike: grotesque not-men cut from a single mold.

Fenton took ten crisp ten-dollar notes from his wallet and fanned them out before McGill. “You can buy a lot of drinks with these, McGill.”

“Yes. Hell of a lot. So?”

Fenton riffled the plastic bills and said, “The hundred is yours if you find Jamie’s killer for me. You know this planet; you even know the one I’m looking for. Find him and the cash is yours.”

“Pay in advance,” McGill grunted. “I’ll guarantee delivery.”

Fenton hesitated for a moment, then put the bills down next to McGill’s drink. With a swift motion of his pudgy hand, McGill scooped them up and pocketed them. “Thanks,” he said thickly. “You got yourself a deal.”

“I want Jamie’s killer,” Fenton said. “How long do I have to wait?”

“Not a hell of a long time. He’s sitting right over there, in the fourth booth back.”

That stunned Fenton; enough to freeze him at the bar for a long moment. He turned, at last, and counted booths. A single alien sat in the fourth booth, bent over a bowl of liquor. It was hard to see details at this distance and in the dingy light, but it seemed to Fenton that there was indeed a grey discoloration on the alien’s forehead, and that the alien’s furry ruff had a distinct reddish tinge.

Fenton gripped McGill’s fleshy forearm tight. “You aren’t playing games with me, McGill? That’s the one?”

“His name is Cklezn,” McGill said, pronouncing the alien name with an ease born of long practice. “He’s the one who did Jamie in. I’m not cheating you, Fenton.”

“You better not be. I have plenty more bolts in my needlegun than I’ll need for Cklezn.”

McGill paled. “I’m an Earthman, Fenton. You wouldn’t—”

“Jamie was an Earthman too,” Fenton reminded him. “That didn’t stop anyone from closing him out.” He swung himself lightly out of the seat, picked up his glass, and said, “I’m going over to have a talk with that alien. You stay right here, understand?”

“I got a hundred dollars to drink up. It’ll take a while, even for me.”

Fenton crossed the bar, stepping around two weavingly drunken Vordillans, and headed for the booth where the single alien sat. Cklezn was peering into his drink, not seeming to care what was going on about him. Fenton was tempted to draw his needlegun and put three or four bolts through the alien’s body without bothering to talk to him, but he choked the idea down.

That was the wrong way. Besides, he’d never get away with it in here.

The needlegun was cold against his skin as he bent over the alien’s table.

“Is your name Cklezn?” he asked, hoping he had the consonants pronounced right.

The alien peered blankly at him and nodded.

“Mind if I sit down?” Fenton asked.

The alien shrugged. Fenton took a seat in the booth facing him. “My name is Mark Fenton. Maybe you knew my brother. Jamie Fenton.”

Slowly, the alien’s mouth opened. “Oh. I knew him. Yes.”

The bald flat way the alien had of saying it hit Fenton savagely. His eyes narrowed. “You—knew him, eh? He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“How did he die?” Fenton asked, weighting each word, making it come out almost as four separate paragraphs. “You know how he died?”

“He was killed,” the alien said.

“They tell me he was killed by a Vordillan. Is this so?”

“It is so.”

“By which Vordillan?” Fenton’s fingers trembled.

“I killed him,” Cklezn admitted. “You knew this before you sat down next to me. Why do you ask all these questions, Mark Fenton?”

Fenton resisted an impulse to lean across the table and throttle the alien, to grab that reddish fur collar and shake and shake. He said, “He was my brother. Do you know what a brother is?”

“You shared parents, yes? I know.”

“There’s a loyalty between brothers. Christ knows I never stuck too close to Jamie, and that’s probably why he went drifting around until he landed up on Vordil. But he died here. Why’d you kill him?”

“I had to,” Cklezn said simply. “I had no choice.”

Fenton remembered what McGill had told him: “He was…executed.” “Why? What did my brother do to you that made you kill him?”

“Naming it would be as bad as doing it,” said the alien. “I cannot tell you.”

Casually, Fenton slipped his hand inside his blouse, tugged at the butt of the needlegun, worked it free from the holster. He drew the gun up out of his armpit far enough for the butt to show. The metal had an ugly glint in the dim light of the bar. Cklezn glanced at the deliberately exposed gunbutt, then looked away.

“You know why I’m here on Vordil?” Fenton asked.

“Your brother is dead. You wish to avenge him.”

“You’re smart, for an alien. You’ve hit it dead center.” Fenton hadn’t expected it to be this way; he hadn’t expected to be holding a long question-and-answer session with his brother’s killer. The quick shot in a quiet street, the moment of revenge—that was what he had anticipated. Not this.

“I’m going to kill you for killing my brother,” he said. “If this place weren’t so damned crowded—”

The alien gasped. “No! Not here! It is—impossible—”

Fenton frowned. “I wouldn’t do it here.” He became suddenly conscious that eyes were on him—alien eyes. He looked around. Half a dozen Vordillans were staring at him, regarding him intently, curiously. He knew he could kill Cklezn before anyone moved—but he’d have them all down on him a second later.

The alien lifted his drink-bowl to his face. He had six bony fingers, Fenton noticed, each tipped with a long, tapering green fingernail. The alien drank, set down the bowl, and said, “There is a time for revenge, Mark Fenton. It has not yet come.”

He rose smoothly, dropped a coin on the table, and before Fenton could move had vanished suddenly. Fenton sprang to his feet, intending to follow.

Instantly a living wall formed before him: the Vordillans who had been watching him so intently had swiftly glided from their seats and now barred his way. Fenton clenched his fists. The alien was escaping.

A moist, fleshy hand clasped his shoulder from behind. “Don’t make a fuss,” said a husky voice. McGill’s voice. “Don’t start trouble in here. It’ll be bad for all of us, you know.”

Fenton whirled. “He just walked out of here, and they’re blocking my way.”

“Naturally. They know why you’re here. Everybody does. They want you to do the thing properly. They don’t want you to shoot him down in a bar, like a pig.”

McGill was hobbling unsteadily, but his voice was the voice of a sober man. He seemed to know what he was talking about. His hand tightened on Fenton’s shoulder, and he forced him back down into the booth with surprising strength. It was as if beneath the blubber there lay muscles of beryllium steel.

Imperceptibly tension slackened in the bar. The aliens returned to their places. Fenton thought impatiently of the killers escaping outside.

“He won’t go far,” McGill said, as if reading his mind. “He’ll only head out to the forest. You have time to find him whenever you want him. Relax, and have a drink. Let me buy you one. It’s your money, anyway.”

With a few more of the alien drinks in him, Fenton felt relaxed enough to sit still and stare at McGill’s puffy face without getting the urge to set off after the escaping alien.

“You’ve been here a while,” Fenton said.

“Six years.”

“Okay. Fill me in on a few things. I get the feeling I’m involved in some sort of ritual, and I don’t understand the ground rules.”

McGill sighed wheezingly.

“You’ve got to understand that these are an alien people, and they don’t think the way you do. Maybe there are some surface resemblances, but that’s all. Hell, they have two arms and two legs, so they almost look like Terrans. But they aren’t. And they almost think the way we do, except they don’t really. You follow?”

“I think so. Why did they kill my brother?”

McGill shrugged. “That’s part of it. I don’t know why they killed him; he was a nice enough kid. Somewhere along the line he did something that they didn’t like. Maybe he didn’t even know he was doing it. But they picked Cklezn to kill him, and Cklezn took him out to the Death-Grounds in the forest and killed him.”

“Didn’t he try to fight back?”

McGill looked abashed and apologetic. He said, “Jamie was too drunk to know what they were doing to him.”

Fenton’s eyes dropped. “I see.” After a moment he said, “You couldn’t find out what he did?”

“It’s taboo to name it. I don’t know.”

“And what about this Death-Grounds business?”

“It’s a place in the forest,” McGill said. “When a man has to die violently, he tries to die there. That’s where Cklezn went. If you had killed him in here, he would have lost his soul, or something. He’s out there, waiting for you to come kill him. I tell you they’re funny people, Fenton. They’re alien.”

“Let me get this straight,” Fenton said, pushing back some hair from his forehead. “Jamie did something wrong. Cklezn killed him. And now Cklezn is out at the Death-Grounds waiting for me?”

“He did something wrong, too,” said McGill. “He killed a man. It’s a chain that goes on and on, dragging in victim and executioner. I don’t know where it ends.”

“But that’s not right!” Fenton protested. “You can’t send a man out as an executioner, and then expect him to die too! Not even aliens—”

“Cklezn killed Jamie while Jamie was drunk. That was the wrong thing for Cklezn to do. So Cklezn’s life is forfeit, and if you go out to the Death-Grounds you’ll be able to claim it. They’re aliens, I tell you. We can’t ever really understand them.”

Fenton took a long drink. He licked his lips smackingly, exhaled, stood up. “How do I get to the Death-Grounds?” he asked.

He left after lunch, when the white dwarf sun was high overhead, blazing furiously. A crowd of interested aliens gathered about the hotel as he left, gun strapped outside his shirt, head shielded by a protective tobee.

McGill walked with him, reeling just a little. Fenton felt completely sober. He didn’t bother to look at the curious Vordillans who peered at him; he walked right through them, out into the dusty, sandy road.

“I’ll go as far as the entrance to the forest,” McGill said. “I’ll put you on the road. You can’t miss the place if you go straight.”

“How will I know when I’ve reached it?”

“You will. It’s a circle about a thousand feet in diameter, smack in the middle of the forest. Not a tree, not a blade of grass—totally bare. Death-Grounds. Cklezn will be there waiting, anyway.”

“Armed?”

“No. He expects you to kill him. Make it a clean death, Fenton. Then come back here and pack up your stuff and get off Vordil. Kill him quick and clean and the chain of death is broken.”

“You’re sure you don’t want to come with me?”

“Damned sure,” McGill said emphatically. “This is your quarrel, friend. You’ll have to settle it alone.”

They walked together through the town, down a twisting little rutted road that wound off in a direction leading away from the spaceport. After a while McGill said, “Okay. This is as far as I’m going. You walk straight and you’ll get there okay.” He pulled out a soiled bandanna and mopped his head. Vordil was the hottest world Fenton had ever seen: hot and dry, but not so that it couldn’t make a fat man sweat.

Fenton took five tens from his wallet and waved them in front of McGill’s nose. “You come with me and you can have these bills for your very own,” he said.

Hesitantly McGill shook his head. “It’s your quarrel,” he repeated stolidly. “I got enough drink-money to last me a while. I’m not going any further.”

Shrugging, Fenton handed him the bills. “Keep them anyway, then. Thanks for your help. I’ll see you tonight, I guess.”

“Yeah. See you later,” McGill said.

He turned away and waddled back the way he came. Fenton began to walk…on, toward the Death-Grounds.

The alienness of the place was borne in on him as he walked. The afternoon was silent, except for the droning of silvery insects four or five inches long that swooned through the slender trees that rose like needles along the road. The grass sprang up thickly—squarish, shovel-shaped blades, a dull, ugly blue-black in color. In the distance rose a low hill, thick with the spike-like trees.

Life ran fairly close on planets that were fairly similar. The people of Vordil IX were almost human; the trees were almost trees, the grass almost grass. But not quite. There were differences, sometimes glaring, sometimes subtle. The birds didn’t sing, here; they barked. Rabbits bounded out of the thick-packed shrubbery—but they were rabbits with snake-like tails and beady blue eyes and savage teeth.

Fenton wondered how it had been for Jamie to walk this path—whether he had been sober enough to see where he was and how alien the things were, or whether it really mattered to him. He pictured big Jamie being dragged along, half-supported by the wiry little Vordillan who was to be his executioner.

He stared ahead, eyes flicking nervously through the trees. Despite all that McGill had told him, he found it hard to believe that Cklezn would be simply waiting for death, and he expected some sort of ambush. He moved forward warily, now, hand ready to spring to the needlegun in the holster.

But no danger presented itself. The alien calm of the afternoon remained unbroken. The road twisted and turned, winding like an epileptic serpent, and Fenton followed every twist and every turn, never knowing when death might step out from behind a curve.

And then he turned one final curve and knew he had reached the Death-Grounds.

Whether man-made or natural, there was no way of telling. But the area was absolutely sterile. Not a blade of grass, not a tree-trunk. It was a circle of utterly bare ground, perhaps a thousand feet in diameter, naked, nothing but black earth.

Cklezn stood waiting in the very center of the circle, his thin arms folded in a startlingly human pose.

Fenton drew his gun and advanced into the circle cautiously. The butt of the needler fit nicely into his palm; his anxious finger lay tensely on the firing-stud. Cklezn stared at him interestedly, without moving.

“This is the Death-Grounds, isn’t it?” Fenton asked. His voice was strangely dry.

“Yes. I have waited for you, Mark Fenton. This is the place for revenge, and this is the time.” He sounded calm, resigned. He didn’t seem to carry any weapons.

“The time for revenge,” Fenton said, lifting the needlegun. Somehow it was strangely hollow, gunning down a willing victim this way. It wasn’t the sort of death that would wash away the burden of Jamie’s murder.

“Why did you kill my brother?” Fenton demanded suddenly. “What did he do?”

“I must not say it,” Cklezn muttered. “Especially not here! Not on the holy ground itself!”

Fenton gestured with the gun. “I want to know what my brother did that made it necessary to kill him.” He smiled craftily. “You’d better tell me, Cklezn. Or else I’ll drag you halfway back to town before I kill you. You wouldn’t like that.”

The alien sucked in his thin lips in a nervous gesture. “No. I must die here—on this ground.”

“Then tell me.”

“Very well,” Cklezn said wearily. “It is wrong, and I will be punished for it…but not half so heavily as if I do not die on the Death-Grounds. Come.” He started to walk toward the edge of the forest.

“Where are you going?”

“I can’t commit a sin while standing on the Death-Grounds itself,” Cklezn said.

Fenton followed him across the bare ground to the forest. The border of the Death-Grounds was precise and even, as if it were weeded every day. Probably it was. Cklezn stepped over onto the grass.

He said, “Your brother spat at a priest during a ceremony. This is unforgivable. He was drunk, and knew not what he did—but he had to die for it.” The alien shuddered and looked away.

Fenton wondered what taboo made it so revolting for Cklezn to utter Jamie’s crime aloud. “For that you killed him?” he asked. “For a drunken act that he never knew he committed…you killed a man?”

Cklezn nodded.

A sudden terrible rage flooded through Fenton. That Jamie should die for such a cheap thing, be led to the fields of slaughter while he was drunk and…

His finger tightened convulsively on the firing stud. He knew how he could exact a fitting revenge, now. He squeezed the stud, once.

A bolt lanced through the fleshy part of the alien’s leg. Cklezn gasped and sank to the ground. A needlegun was not a painless weapon.

He stared at his leg, with the tiny hole drilled through flesh and bone and muscle and nerve. “I killed your brother quickly,” he said. “Do the same for me.”

“Don’t worry,” Fenton said. “I’m not going to torture you. The next shot is to kill.”

Cklezn looked relieved. He began to crawl forward on his hands, over the grass to the nakedness of the Death-Grounds. Fenton grinned.

“Sorry. I don’t want you to die there.”

“But—”

He seized the stricken-looking alien and dragged him back, tugging him remorselessly over the ground away from the Death-Grounds. Cklezn clung to the grass, dug his hands into the soil, tried to hold back, but Fenton pulled him on.

Finally they were a hundred yards from the Death-Grounds.

Cklezn rose uncertainly and tried to stagger back, exclaiming constantly both in his own language and Fenton’s. Taking careful aim, Fenton sent a bolt through his other leg.

The alien toppled, face-forward. Fenton heard him sobbing.

“This is the time for revenge,” Fenton said. “Out here. You’ll die the way my brother did…alone, unpriested, in the wrong place. That’s the proper revenge.”

Cklezn wailed once. Fenton nudged the firing-stud and the needlegun leaped in his hand. The bolt whizzed through Cklezn’s throat. The alien jerked, nearly rolled over, then flattened out.

A time for revenge, Fenton thought.

Then sudden hands appeared to wrench the needlegun from his astonished grasp.

He whirled and saw four aliens looking at him sadly. One held the needlegun, pointed directly at him. They had come up so noiselessly he had not suspected it.

Fenton went cold despite the afternoon heat. “This was between me and him. I killed him. He had it coming to him, didn’t he? Give me back my gun!”

The alien with the gun smiled unhappily. “We came to see that it was done right. We had hoped the chain would be ended here. It was not.”

“What in blazes do you mean?”

“Your brother…did something. This man punished him for it. The method he used brought punishment upon his head, and you were the instrument of that punishment. You, too, failed by willfully destroying Cklezn’s soul.” The alien indicated the crumpled body on the grass, and pointed to the Death-Grounds. “He should have died there. Your vengeance was too great, Fenton.”

“You don’t understand. I—”

He broke off and ran forward, hoping to seize the gun. A shaft of pain seared through his thigh. He fell, doubling up, trying to squeeze the bright agony out of his leg. After a moment he looked up and saw the aliens regarding him patiently, sadly.

Fenton thought of Jamie, drunk, uncomprehending as Cklezn drove home the fatal blow. He thought of Cklezn writhing on the ground a hundred yards from the place where he had come to die. Fenton shivered uncontrollably.

“The chain of death ends with you,” the alien said. He nodded to the other three, who lifted the crippled Fenton and bore him forward.

He felt warm soil beneath him—warm, bare soil. Sprawled on the ground, he dug his hands in hard, and waited to die. The aliens had been kind. They had carried him to the Death-Grounds. The one holding the needlegun fired; and Fenton felt absurdly grateful to them as he writhed on the bare ground, waiting for death.

HOUSEMAID NO. 103
(1957)

We return to Bill Hamling and my monthly package of short stories for his two magazines. This one, which I sent him in February, 1957, appeared in the November, 1957 issue of Imaginative Tales, under the byline of “Ivar Jorgensen,” and there’s a story to go with that.

The “Jorgensen” byline was originally the property of Paul W. Fairman, who inaugurated it in the June, 1951 issue of the Ziff-Davis pulp Fantastic Adventures with a novella called “Whom the Gods Would Slay,” a fantasy involving Vikings, Nubians, aliens, and various other assorted characters, which I thought was great stuff when I read it at the time. (I was sixteen.) The magazine accompanied the story with a lengthy biography of the author, claiming Norwegian birth for him and a turbulent, adventurous life, and providing a drawing of a virile, slab-jawed Scandinavian-looking fellow. A second Jorgensen novella followed in the same magazine a few months later, and then some short stories for its companion, Amazing Stories. By then word had slipped out that “Jorgensen” was no Norwegian at all, but actually Paul W. Fairman, the associate editor of Amazing and Fantastic, who had had a few undistinguished stories published under his own name in those magazines as well.

Fairman left Ziff-Davis briefly in 1952 to launch an unrelated science-fiction magazine, If, but after four issues there he returned to Z-D, once again as editor Howard Browne’s right-hand man, and continued to write “Jorgensen” stories for him on the side. When Bill Hamling launched Imagination and Imaginative Tales about the same time, Fairman did some stories for him as well, both as “Jorgensen” and bearing his own byline. But Hamling always had had a fairly casual attitude toward pseudonyms—his main concern was not to use the same byline twice on one contents page, and he would stick any old name on stories to avoid such repetition. And so it came to pass that some stories I had written for Hamling turned up with the “Jorgensen” name on them, much to Paul Fairman’s annoyance, for until Hamling had co-opted the byline it had been Fairman’s property entirely. The situation became even messier because a young editor named Larry T. Shaw, who had replaced Fairman at If in 1953, thought that the name was spelled “Jorgenson,” thus transforming the author from a Norwegian into a Swede. A “Jorgensen” novella that Fairman had sold to himself when he was editing If was still in the magazine’s inventory when Shaw took over, and he published it as by “Jorgenson,” after which nobody was ever quite sure about the correct spelling of the name. Hamling, when he started using the byline, spelled it “Jorgensen,” but in the May, 1957 issue of Imaginative Tales a little story called “Pause in Battle,” which Randall Garrett probably had written, was listed as by “Jorgensen” on the contents page and “Jorgenson” on the first page of the story itself. And when Larry Shaw became the editor of a new space-opera magazine called Science Fiction Adventures, for which I was the main contributor, he ran four of my stories under “Jorgenson” in 1957 and 1958. (One of them eventually appeared as an Ace paperback under that name and spelling.) Fairman later reclaimed the pseudonym for a couple of paperback novels as “Jorgensen,” but it was generally believed that I had written them, and hardly a year now goes by without someone asking me to sign one at a convention. Whereupon I launch into an explanation just as tangled and confusing as the one I have provided here.

My original title for “Housemaid No. 103” was the perfunctory and uninspired “Misogynist,” but Hamling retitled it for publication, and I prefer his title to mine. My title implies that the protagonist, a handsome hunk of a movie star, is a man who just doesn’t much like women, though they keep throwing themselves at him. Anybody reading the story today would immediately conclude that he is gay; but one did not write stories about gay men for magazines like Imaginative Tales in 1957, and the idea that he was gay may not even have occurred to me back then. Very likely I saw him merely as a guy who didn’t care for women, period. Things do change.

——————

The only man in Sollywood who never got mentioned in the scandal sheets was Brad Crayshaw. There wasn’t another leading man (or woman) in the sollies who didn’t get romantically linked at one time or another, but not Crayshaw.

In a way, that added to his popularity. The moony-eyed teenage girls who went to the sollies for their vicarious necking flocked to the Crayshaw films with the same frequency they did to sollies of such stars as Lee Leighton or Mace Marhew. Experts wondered if the glamour of multiple matrimony might be a myth.

The answer came from Brad Crayshaw himself, in one of his rare press interviews.

“Sure, every kid hopes she can marry Mace Marhew. Why not? Seven females already have, and there’s no telling who’s next. But the ones who’re looney over me don’t stand a chance. I’m a woman-hater, that’s all.”

Brad Crayshaw’s misogyny made clear his appeal to the subdeb set: not only did they want to marry him but in his case they ran the extra-special challenge of having to break down Crayshaw’s resistance to feminine charms.

Which was, it seemed, a mighty sturdy resistance.

Brad Crayshaw first skyrocketed to fame in the fall of 2073 when the sollies were given their world premiere simultaneously in New York, Chicago, and Hollywood (which was to have a new name before the following year was out.)

Crayshaw played the part of Paul Bunyan in the sollie of that name. Six feet four, massively built, he was the ideal sollie star; his dimensions merited tridim transmission.

The film played to standees for well over a year and by then Hollywood was Sollywood, Brad Crayshaw was a rich man and the movie industry—the flatties, that is—was a gone bird.

With the coming of sollies a good many of the flattie stars vanished quietly into limbo. Just as the coming of talkie films had finished the careers of such dashing but squeaky-voiced stars as John Gilbert, so did the coming of sollies ruin any flattie actor who depended for his brawn on padding or corsets—and there were some of those. That was out, now—now that the audience could not only see and hear, but feel as well. The film world’s heroes and heroines had to be real.

And Brad Crayshaw was real.

But Brad Crayshaw didn’t care to join the Sollywood game of musical chairs with mates; he didn’t fit in, he didn’t jive, he didn’t run with the herd.

“I don’t get it, Brad,” his manager and agent told him. “There isn’t a woman in Sollywood who wouldn’t trade in a five-year option for a chance to marry you. What goes?”

Crayshaw grinned and poured another shot of gin. “I just don’t aim to wed,” he said in the familiar bass growl so many women adored.

“I don’t like women. I don’t like frills and I don’t like lace, and I don’t want to be tied down and handed a lot of sentimental slush. Got that, Ace?”

Ace got it. He shrugged. “It’s your life, Brad. I won’t try to run it—not while my 10 per cent is still in six figures.”

“Good. Keep it that way.”

Ace kept it that way. Two hours later he had arranged for the celebrated interview in which Brad Crayshaw exposed his misogynistic views to the world and by the following morning every unmarried female in the western hemisphere was anxiously discussing the star’s firm statement.

It was criminally unfair, they said, that a man like Brad Crayshaw should abstain from marriage, should remove himself from the matrimonial sweepstakes. He had no right to prefer his hunting and his fishing and the company of his mastiff hound.

There were 10 million red eyes across the country that day—the eyes of girls whose ambition it had been to marry Brad Crayshaw and who saw that ambition forever demolished now.

But there were some who didn’t give up that easily.

One of them was Lora Laurence, a starlet heading for the top. After three minor roles in minor sollies she was signed on for a romantic lead opposite Brad Crayshaw in a costume drama called Across the Wild Frontier. The role, she knew, would be the beginning of her established stardom but snagging Brad Crayshaw would be the coup that would clinch things.

Crayshaw had no objection to being romantic in front of the multiplex solidoscope cameras; it was just in private life that he grew reticent. He okayed the script even though it was a torrid one for a man of his privately unromantic nature.

So the cameras began to roll and Crayshaw and Laurence swung into their big love scene.

“Darling,” Crayshaw said. “I’m leaving, now. My regiment’s going to Illinois to fight the Indians.”

“Oh—David! You’ll come back, won’t you?”

“I hope so. Maybe not.” Bluntly, matter-of-factly, in the Crayshaw style.

“David—darling! I love you so much! I’ve never told you, but—”

She moved up against him, caressing him, running her fingers over his Revolutionary War costume, murmuring incoherent little words of love, while the battery of cameras snagged the scene from all directions and the cybernets picked up various tactile and olfactory sensations which would later be fed directly into the watching audience.

Finally he tore himself away. “I must go now, darling!”

“Darling—you said darling!” Lora moaned.

“I must go now!” And he strode stiffly away.

“Cut!” the director yelled.

Between takes Crayshaw sipped a drink speculatively and mopped away sweat. It was funny, he thought; he had read the script and thought he had judged it correctly: a crudely-written potboiler, nothing more. And yet it had seemed to come oddly to life just that minute…

He frowned suspiciously. And a moment later Lora Laurence drew near.

“Brad—”

“Yes, Miss Laurence?”

“Call me Lora, will you? I wanted to tell you—I thought your acting was wonderful just now—I mean…”

“Thank you, Miss Lau—Lora. You seemed particularly good yourself out there. Well, I guess we oughta get into costume for the next scene…”

“No—Brad. There’s something I want to tell you.”

“Well?”

She clung to him suddenly. “I meant what I was saying, on the set. I mean, it wasn’t just lines in a sollie. You understand, Brad? Do you? Do you?”

“Yes,” he said icily. “I’m afraid I do.”

That night Brad Crayshaw’s name appeared for the first and last time in the Sollywood gossip sheets. “Crayshaw to wed Lora Laurence,” the headlines yelled.

The following day Crayshaw issued a denial: a flat no. It wasn’t so. He had no plans for marrying Miss Laurence and furthermore he was going on an extended hunting trip beginning tomorrow and Director Hal Martin could do whatever he wanted with Across the Wild Frontier because he wasn’t going to appear in it.

They talked him out of breaking his contract and he went through with the film but when it appeared Lora Laurence wasn’t in it. Crayshaw had insisted on her being replaced as the price of his continuing.

No one tried to turn a sollie scene into a real-life wooing of Brad Crayshaw after that. For a while it seemed as if his wish to have nothing to do with the female sex was going to be respected.

Then one day a new housekeeper arrived at the 28-room Crayshaw villa.

Mrs. Stubbs, his old housekeeper, had been the one woman Crayshaw tolerated on the premises—but since she was 63, a grandmother seven times and not especially well preserved for her years, Crayshaw didn’t mind. Besides, she was untalkative and kept well out of his way.

“I’m a friend of Mrs. Stubbs,” the new housekeeper said. “I’m Mrs. Higgins. Mrs. Stubbs is sick and asked me to fill in for her for a few days.”

“Oh. Too bad. Sorry to hear that,” Crayshaw grunted. The new housekeeper looked even older and more shrunken than Mrs. Stubbs had so he shrugged and went on cleaning his rifle.

Mrs. Higgins began to move through the room, dusting and wiping, and Crayshaw ignored her as he had ignored Mrs. Stubbs. One housekeeper was just as good as another, he thought.

An hour later a soft voice said, “May I come in?”

There was a girl standing at the door, smiling invitingly.

“Who the blazes are you?” Crayshaw demanded. “How’d you get in here? Mrs. Higgins! Mrs. Higgins!”

“Don’t call for her, Brad honey. She’s right here.”

“You—you—”

“They can do wonders with makeup, Brad. My name is Jodi Carpenter, and I’ve seen all your pictures. I’m wild about you, Brad! And I know that we’ll be happy together, darling.”

It was nearly 10 seconds before Crayshaw could find his voice. Finally he sputtered in a high-pitched rasp that bore little resemblance to his usual basso boom, “Get out! Out!”

“I want a robot housemaid,” Crayshaw told the salesman. “A mechanical that can dust, mop, cook—you know.”

“Of course, sir.” The salesman chuckled confidentially. “You want a robot with all the advantages of a female and none of the…ah…drawbacks. Very well, sir. We have just the model for you.”

He drew back a thick plush curtain and revealed a very lifelike female robot, looking much like a tall, slim blonde of 23 or so except for the faint glassiness of her eyes and the minute trademark on her forehead.

“Model 103, Mr. Crayshaw—our very best.”

Crayshaw frowned. “Don’t you have something that looks—well, a little more like a robot and a little less like a woman? I’m not interested in a pretty robot. I just want one that can empty ashtrays and wash dishes.”

The salesman guffawed. “I see what you mean! But I’m sorry about that; we believe in tailoring our products to the demand and this number has proven tremendously popular. I’m afraid there just is no robot of the specifications you request. But you’ll find this model totally satisfactory.”

“Okay. How much?”

“Ah—$30,000, sir. Ours is a quality product, and…”

“I’ll take it,” Crayshaw said.

The robot did not arrive for nearly a week—a week which Crayshaw spent broodingly doing his own housework and hating it. A tearful Mrs. Stubbs showed up and protested that she hadn’t really meant to let that girl take her place that day but she had seemed so anxious to meet him, and…

Crayshaw held up one hand for silence. He wasn’t interested. He gave Mrs. Stubbs two months’ pay and told her to find employment elsewhere.

Finally the robot was installed. Model 103 was perfect, Crayshaw agreed. She—it—handled the task of tidying up the house to perfection, gliding silently from room to room, handling each chore easily and uncomplainingly. Her designers had left 100 blank memory tubes in her cooking circuits and Crayshaw was able to install 100 of his favorite recipes.

Life was complete, Crayshaw thought. The robot never spoke—he had cut off her highly-developed speech centers for fear of being disturbed while studying scripts—and when her chores were done for the day she turned herself off and stood mutely in the closet until the following morning. No backchat, no nagging, none of the slushy sentimentality to which females are prone and which Crayshaw’s masculine soul hated so thoroughly.

Until the disastrous day when Crayshaw tried to rehearse a scene from his forthcoming Passion and Poverty.

He summoned Model 103 and told her, “I want you to read the parts in the script that are marked Lisa, and wait until I’ve read the words marked Paul. Got that?”

She smiled and nodded. He activated her speech-circuits and they began.

One thing surprised him immediately: she was astonishingly capable. She didn’t merely read off word by word, as he had expected; instead, she actually took the part, delivering it with skill. He rose to the lines, embodied them with passion, found himself emoting with an ardor he had never known in rehearsal before.

When the scene was over he noticed that the robot’s glassy eyes were fixed on him strangely.

“Very well done, I must say. We’ll have to rehearse again some time.”

He reached out to snap off her voice circuits but she caught his hand and said, “Please—not just yet, Mr. Crayshaw.”

“Eh?”

“There’s something I want to tell you first. Something that’s been undergoing feedback within me ever since you bought me, something that finally crystallized just now, when we acted together. I must tell you—”

“What must you tell me, 103?”

The mechanized mouth drew back in a flawless smile; it seemed as if a light flush colored her soft plastic skin. She sighed lightly.

“I love you, Mr. Crayshaw,” the robot said.

RESCUE MISSION
(1957)

The final 1957 story here—Lord, that was a busy year for me!—is another Hamling item, which I wrote in February, 1957 and which came out in the December, 1957 issue of Imagination. It went in under my “Ralph Burke” pseudonym, but Hamling put my own name on it. (Garrett and I had three other stories in that issue, one bearing the Garrett byline and, I think, actually written by him, one by “S.M. Tenneshaw” that was my doing, and a “Robert Randall” story that was another Garrett product.) “Rescue Mission” is the sort of space opera that I could easily have sold to the new Super-Science for two cents a word, but my contractual obligations to Hamling compelled me to send it there for half as much. Such were the pitfalls of contract writing: Hamling gave me a guaranteed monthly income, but if I accidentally wrote a story that I could have sold at a higher price, I had to think of my monthly delivery requirements first. A fair trade-off, though: I lost a few dollars here and there, but I sidestepped the uncertainties of the freelance life, and, eight months out of college with a big monthly rent check to meet (at least it was big for those days) and not much of a savings cushion in the bank, that was an important consideration.

——————

Rick Mason’s ship was still high over Mordarga, coming in for a landing, when the cry for help sounded in his audio phones.

Rick frowned, reached to the control panel to turn up the amplification—then realized that the voice had not come over the audio after all. It had spoken in his mind.

Help! Rick, they’ve caught me!

There was urgency in the mental cry. Instantly, Mason sized up the situation.

It was his partner, Klon Darra, the Venusian—the other half of this mentally-attuned Solar System intelligence team. Klon Darra was in trouble!

He focussed his mental energies and replied: I read you, Klon Darra. What’s the problem?

The response was blurred and indistinct, as if the Venusian were laboring under great mental strain. I…landed on schedule. Fell into hands of…ruler. In prison. Going to be tortured. I.

Mason struggled to keep his attention on his descending spaceship while picking up the Venusian’s fading mental voice. Go ahead, Klon Darra. I hear you.

They’re going to torture me. Help me, Mason. Help!

Where are you? Mason asked.

Dungeons of the main palace, Mordarga City. Hurry, Rick. There’s not much time.

Mason switched on the fore visiplate and the mottled grey-and-blue surface of Mordarga became visible ahead of him. The planet Mordarga was one of the universe’s potential trouble-spots. That was why the Solar System Government had sent a team of its intelligence agents there.

But they had planned on a leisurely, detailed reconnaissance of the planet, intending to return to home base with a full account of Mordarga’s weaknesses and future militaristic plans. Now, that was changed; Klon Darra would have to be rescued at once. The Mordargans probably knew by now that the Solar System had discovered Mordarga’s warlike aims.

Rick began setting up his landing orbit. The tiny two-man ship curved sharply downward as his trained fingers played over the control console. The planet of Mordarga sprang up to meet the down-plunging ship.

Mordarga was in the Sirius system, a big, ugly world inhabited by big, ugly humanoids. Mason landed in a secluded spot on the north continent of the planet, coming to rest in a foul-smelling valley between two looming mountains.

Jutting angular blue-leaved trees stuck up around, and hoarse-voiced alien wildlife chattered and yawped in the background. Mason strapped his safety-kit to his side, flipped on the homing-switch he’d need to find his way back to the ship, and lightly swung down to the ground. He started to walk.

Unless his figures were wrong Mordarga City lay three miles to the west. He kept his receptive mind attuned, hoping to hear from the Venusian again but Klon Darra was not sending.

They made a good team, Mason and the Venusian. A pair of Earth-men somehow never were as efficient together as a mixed-planet outfit; the green-skinned Venusian had certain attributes Mason lacked and vice-versa. Together they were a well-nigh perfect intelligence team. Knowledge of Mordarga’s future intentions was essential to the safety and security of the Solar System.

Suddenly Klon Darra’s voice sounded in his mind.

Mason, have you landed yet?

Yes. I’m on my way. You all right?

They still don’t know why I’m on Mordarga. They picked me up on suspicion. If you can, get me out of here before they find out.

I’m three miles out of Mordarga City. Can you hold out for another half hour? Mason asked.

Silence for a moment. Then the Venusian said, I think so. So far they’ve just tried some elementary torture. Not kid stuff but I’m still okay.

Mason grinned. A Venusian’s pain threshold was fantastically high; the Mordargans could torture Klon Darra for days without getting any essential information from him. But there were other methods.

Klon Darra said: They’ve sent for a telepath. Once they penetrate my mind they’ll know why we’re here. We’ll both be cooked.

Don’t worry, Mason telepathed. I’ll be there with bells on.

There were occasional buildings now, he saw; the main bulk of Mordarga City lay up ahead, sprawling in a disorderly, confused fashion. The Mordargans, for all their neat precision of mind, cared little about the arrangement of their cities.

Mason saw some of the Mordargans now—husky brutes seven feet tall, square-shouldered and thick-muscled. They were gray-skinned with blazing white eyes and savage fangs; they diverged most sharply from the humanoid pattern in the pair of thick, stubby antenna sprouting from their heavy-browed foreheads.

Those antenna governed the extra Mordargan sense—the sense of balance, of perspective, of distance-judgment. It made them deadly in a hand-to-hand fight.

A couple of the Mordargans looked at him suspiciously but without overt antagonism. Earth and Mordarga were still theoretically at peace and Earthmen on Mordarga were, if not common, at least not totally unknown.

Mason kept his eyes to the ground and walked quickly past the Mordargans. They were a surly, unpredictable race; he didn’t want any trouble with them now.

He tried a message to Klon Darra.

Hey, Venusian! How’s it going?

The telepath is due to arrive in one hour, Rick. Where are you now?

On the outskirts, just coming into the city. I’ll be there to spring you in plenty of time.

The main palace was visible ahead, about a mile further into the city. Mason quickened his pace. There was time but not much.

He stepped between a pair of drunken Mordargans who were jostling each other on the narrow street. Suddenly one of them turned and said, “Hey, there’s an Earthman. Come on, Terran. Have a drink with us?”

They were wobbling unsteadily. Mason caught his breath. He had little enough time to get to Klon Darra as it was. He calculated the speed at which they could move and wondered if he could outrun them.

“Sorry,” he snapped. “I’m too busy for a drink now.”

He lowered his head and ran. They grunted in surprise and started to chase him. He heard their heavy feet clobbering along on the pavement. He cursed. They were probably just trying to be sociable but this was no time for that.

“Ho, Earthman! You run fast but your legs are short!”

He glanced back. They were gaining on him. A tangle of buildings loomed up ahead and he made for those.

A rough hand clamped around the back of his neck and dragged him to a halt. Mason spun around and waded in without waiting for an introduction.

His fist crashed into the stomach of the nearest Mordargan and sent him rocking back against his companion. Mason hit him again and he started to sag. The heavy body thudded against the pavement.

But the other Mordargan was more sober. He stepped over his companion’s unconscious body and wrapped mighty arms around Mason’s middle.

The Earthman gasped and turned purple. His fists pounded at the alien without avail.

“Had enough, Earthman?”

“You’re choking me! Let go!”

“When a Mordargan invites you to drink with him, you drink!” The alien tightened his grip and Mason felt the universe reel. He could hardly see; his eyes were ready to pop. Against the 300 pound Mordargan he stood no chance at all.

Suddenly the alien released him. Mason took several hesitant, dizzy steps, sucking in breath as fast as he could. The alien’s bearhug had nearly finished him.

The big Mordargan was chuckling happily. “Earthman, you don’t know how close you came to death just then!”

“Oh, yes I do!” Mason said rubbing his bruised body. There didn’t seem to be any obvious broken bones at any rate. But he was wasting valuable time.

“Will you come now, Terran?”

“I—I have an appointment,” Mason said. He realized the futility of trying to run away again. There was a blaster in his pocket but it was hardly possible to gun the creature down on a public street. “I can’t stay,” he said.

“You can’t? We’ll see about that.”

The Mordargan equivalent of a bar was a long, low-ceilinged place dimly lighted. Curious fumes of alcohol and other things drifted in the atmosphere. Mason could see Mordargans lying prostrate here and there, some of them totally unconscious, others contentedly sucking on feeding-tubes.

There was no way to escape the obstinate conviviality of the alien who had encountered him. Mason’s only hope was to make a quick exit once the Mordargan had decided he was through drinking. “What’ll you have, Terran?”

“You name it,” Mason said. “Match you drink for drink if you pay.”

“Fair enough. Well start with gruuna. Straight?”

“Why not?”

“Two bowls of gruuna,” the alien bellowed.

The drinks arrived. They were a murky, slimy-looking stuff that fizzed faintly and gave off a sour odor. Mason stared at his bowl unhappily.

“Drink up, Earthman!” The Mordargan lifted his bowl in massive fingers and held it to his tooth-ringed mouth. He drained it in one long slurping gulp. Mason shrivered a little and picked up his own bowl.

He sipped. The stuff was as mild as molten uranium and twice as potent. It seared its way down into his stomach and landed with a thunk. Mason wondered if the drink gave off alpha particles; it was that hot.

The things a man has to do in the name of Solar System intelligence, he thought.

He wondered what was happening to the Venusian. Impatience coursed through him. He had to get away, had to reach the dungeon before the Mordargans could interrogate Klon Darra with the telepath.

Rick! Where are you? came the sudden anxious mental plea. The telepath’s here. They’ll be questioning me soon, and…

I’m trying to get to you, Mason telepathed. But I’m having trouble. Stall if you can.

“Ready for your second bowl, Earthman?” the Mordargan asked jovially.

Mason shuddered. “I’m not through with this one,” he said.

“Slow, eh? Drink it down!”

Obediently Mason lifted the drink to his lips, took another shallow sip, winced as the ghastly stuff traveled down his gullet. Maybe gruuna was champagne to these evil-smelling so-and-sos, but it was no drink for an Earthman.

And the telepath had arrived at the dungeon. Before long they’d know everything.

He squinted around the edge of the bowl, eyeing the big Mordargan speculatively. Gruuna was potent stuff, he reflected; what would be the effect if I hurled a bowlful of it into the Mordargan’s eyes?

It was worth a try. In one quick motion he lowered the bowl from his mouth, heaved its contents upward into the alien’s face and started to run. He heard a roar of pain and anger from behind.

And the door slammed shut in his face.

He hadn’t figured on that. The bartender probably could control the door manually from behind the bar and the moment Mason had broken away the signal to shut the door had been given.

He turned. The alien was rumbling toward him, wiping his eyes, bellowing in rage. Mason started to reach for his blaster but there was no time. The giant crashed into him.

He fought back gamely but the Mordargan was a foot taller and 125 pounds heavier, he didn’t stand a chance. Fists slammed into his stomach and chest; he beat them off feebly, hardly able to see in the dimness of the bar.

Rick! Rick! Where are you? came the Venusian’s mental voice.

But Mason was unable to answer. A barrage of mighty blows crashed in on him and he spun, clawing to keep his balance, and started to fold up. He heard Klon Darra saying, Here comes the telepath now. His head crashed against the wall and he blanked out.

The amused laughter of the Mordargans seemed to follow him into unconsciousness.

He awoke later—days, weeks, years later, it seemed. He felt mummified.

His body ached; his eyes wouldn’t focus properly and in his mouth was the acrid, retch-inducing taste of the gruuna.

But aside from the pain, aside from the physical miseries he felt, he sensed a stinging sense of personal failure. He was an agent of Solar System Intelligence, a member of the galaxy’s proudest and toughest organization…and he had failed to rescue his own partner.

By now the telepath had probably drained Klon Darra’s mind of its secrets, had learned that there was another Intelligence agent loose on Mordarga, that Earth suspected the big planet of hostile intentions, that…

It was all over. The team of Klon Darra and Rick Mason had been considered the tops of Intelligence but that rating looked pretty hollow now. The Venusian had gotten himself trapped on landing and Mason had flubbed a chance to rescue him. He had wound up lying somewhere—where?—with a hangover and a headache.

He looked around. He was in an alley and by the smell of it it was the alley back of the bar. They had probably dumped him after the Mordargans had finished having their fun with him.

Bright Sirius blazed high overhead. It was morning, probably getting toward noon. The Morning After.

Mason? Are you awake?

The soft mental whisper jolted him like a blast of raw energy. He just hadn’t expected to hear from the Venusian.

Where are you, Klon Darra? What’s going on?

I’m still in the dungeon, the Venusian said. They’ll be interrogating me again this afternoon. Why weren’t you here last night?

Mason went red with shame. I ran into trouble. I’m sorry, Klon Darra. Damned sorry.

There’s no time for feeling sorry now, came Klon Darra’s thought. Break our mental linkage and get off Mordarga in a hurry.

And leave you here?

I don’t matter. They know you’re here, Rick. Leave now, while you can. They’ve sent orders out to find you and bring you in. Get going!

Mason shook his head obstinately, even though he knew the Venusian could not see the gesture. He got to his feet and leaned against the wall, rubbed his throbbing forehead. I’m not leaving you here, Klon Darra. I’ll be there inside the hour and this time I mean it.

He started to walk out of the alley, groping unsteadily at the wall to keep from falling flat on his face.

Slowly, strength returned. And purpose.

He had fumbled last night. Now, he would make it up.

The main palace was a tall, lopsided structure built of a coarse-grained granite-like stone. The noon sun struck slantwise against the slabs which sparkled weirdly. Rick Mason stood outside and directed a thought at the Venusian within.

Klon Darra?

Yes?

I’m right outside the palace.

I thought I told you to leave Mordarga at once.

The hell with that, Mason said in an impatient mental snap. I’m here. Guide me in.

Very well. I’m in a dungeon on the third sublevel of the palace. If you can get that far I’ll direct you the rest of the way.

A Mordargan guard, his nose in the air, stood outside the main walk that led to the palace. Mason walked past him, nodded obsequiously, and kept going. The guard didn’t even bother to notice him.

He didn’t need to. He was just a decoration. But the guard at the inner wall frowned suspiciously and said, “Where are you going, Earthman?”

“Inside.” Mason’s voice was tight. “I want to look around a little.”

“Do you have a pass?”

“Sure. Right here in my hand.” The subminiaturized blaster in his palm flashed once, a brief bright spurt of energy that bored a pencil-thin hole through the Mordargan’s burly chest. Mason leaned forward, caught the guard as he started to fall, and eased him to a sitting position on a bench.

The alien’s eyes were glazing. The shot had been instantly fatal.

“You wait right here,” Mason told the dead Mordargan. “I’m going inside.”

He ran up the broad stone steps of the palace, entered an empty corridor and ducked into a beckoning stairway. No one interfered with him as he circled downward, down into the palace’s depths.

On the third level downward he shot another beam of thought at the captive Venusian.

I’m here, Klon Darra!

You’re a crazy fool, but I’m glad you did it, came the reply. Go down the left-hand corridor about a hundred paces and turn right. There’s an alcove there and a half-stairway that descends about eight feet, I’m in a room at the bottom of that stairway. Got all that?

You bet. I’m going to come in shooting—and we’ll be on our way out of here in no time.

Following the Venusian’s instructions he tiptoed along the strangely silent corridor, looking for the alcove and the half-stairway.

He found it.

The door was unguarded. Palming the tiny blaster, he went quietly down the stairs, groped for the handle of the door.

In the instant he threw the door open the Venusian’s mental voice wailed, Look out, it’s a trap!

But it was too late. A rolling tide of mental force came thundering out and held him frozen.

There were three people in the room. One was Klon Darra, lying on a table, his hands and legs strapped down with metal binding.

The other two were Mordargans. One was tall and fierce-looking with bright white eyes glaring authoritatively from his gray face. The other was small—no taller than an Earthman—with an abnormally large, grotesque, swollen head. The head was light blue rather than the usual gray and was covered with the pulsing striations of veins—the telepath.

The telepath was staring at Mason and holding him immobile.

“Now we have both the spies,” said the big Mordargan in a rumbling voice. “Well done, Senibro. Very well done indeed.”

Mason struggled to move, to muster enough coordination to fire the blaster he still held in his hand. But despite an effort that brought sweat to his face he was totally frozen, statuelike.

The big Mordargan approached and casually relieved him of the blaster—and his other weapons as well. Impotently, Mason glared at him.

“All right,” the big man said to the telepath. “You can relax the controls now. He’s weaponless.”

Mason went limp as the mental force-field blinked out around him. He said, “What the hell is this? Who are you, and by what authority are you holding a citizen of the Solar System prisoner here?”

The big Mordargan grinned. “I’m Levron Clargo. You may know me: I’m head of Security in Mordarga City. I’m holding this Venusian here by authority of my position, and you too. The Venusian was apprehended on suspicion of spying two days ago. We interrogated him and learned he had a partner at large on Mordarga. It was simpler to bring you here by a ruse than go looking for you.”

“Ruse? But—”

Levron Clargo smiled coldly. “We’ve been in possession of the mind of your Venusian aide since Senibro, here, interrogated him late yesterday.”

Mason was stunned. The messages from Klon Darra today, the selfless plea that Mason leave Mordarga immediately and save himself—

A ruse. A trap. A hoax.

They had used reverse psychology, played on his Earthman nature, knowing that if they told him to leave he’d first try to rescue his partner.

And now they had both. Mason felt like four kinds of idiot.

“Senibro, we can now interrogate both of them. But be very careful. I want to learn the mechanism of this linkage between them. Such a linkage would be very useful to know.”

Tensely Mason waited as the mutant telepath approached him. He looked away, avoiding the penetrating eyes. He glanced at the sleeping form of Klon Darra on the table—Klon Darra whose mind had probably watched helplessly as it had been manipulated to snare Mason.

“Look at me,” the telepath ordered.

Mason formed a plan of action. He decided to leap on the telepath, kill him if possible; Levron Clargo would kill him but that didn’t matter. Mason realized that if the aliens ever learned the secret of the telepathic linkage it would be disastrous for Earth.

“Look at my eyes,” the alien repeated.

Mason readied himself to spring.

Don’t do it, whispered the mental voice of Klon Darra.

That you, Klon?

Yes. The mutant has relaxed control over me. Don’t jump him as you’re going to do. Let him start to probe you.

Why? Mason asked. He was suspicious; Klon Darra’s mental voice had fooled him once already.

Two minds are stronger than one, Rick. And we’re linked.

Mason understood. Slowly he raised his head and stared levelly into the brooding, hypnotically-compelling eyes of the alien telepath.

He felt the alien mind begin to enter his. Strange tendrils of thought probed within his skull. He held his breath, waiting, knowing now that Klon Darra had spoken the truth.

“Find anything?” the Security chief asked.

“Not yet,” replied the telepath. “There’s still some resistance. I—”

And Mason struck.

His mind, supported wholeheartedly by Klon Darra’s, lashed out viciously at the mind of the probing mutant. A solid red fist of mental force crashed through the telepath’s barriers. The Mordargan staggered, arms flailing.

Hit him again! Mason thought triumphantly to Klon Darra, and the Venusian responded. Jointly they barraged the alien’s mind.

“What’s happening, Senibro?” asked the Security Chief.

The telepath moaned. “I—I—”

He slumped and fell heavily.

The Solar System agents gave the telepath an extra jolt, a final thrust, to finish burning out the sensitive mutated mind.

“Senibro! Senibro!” the Security Chief roared. He fumbled for his blaster.

But Mason had long since anticipated the clumsy move. The speed of thought is infinite; Mason and the Venusian, working jointly, easily immobilized the Mordargan. The blaster dropped to the floor.

“Go easy on him,” Mason said aloud to his partner. “We’ll need him to get us out of the palace.”

“Right.”

Together they bound the alien in a hypnotic compulsion—to conduct the two Solarians safely out of the palace. Then Mason sent an inquisitive mind-probe into the Mordargan’s psyche.

The yield of the probe was rich—data on Mordargan military movements, secret plans. Mason carefully memorized these things.

Then he freed the Venusian. Klon Darra smiled in gratitude.

“I was afraid you’d never get here,” he said. “After they caught me I thought we were both finished. But we fooled them.”

Mason nodded. “We’re still a good team, Klon Darra. A little careless at times but who minds that as long as we bring home what we went out here for.”

He turned to the stupefied Mordargan. “Let’s go, Levron Clargo.”

When they returned to the ship, they would file their report. Mission—successful!

PLANET OF PARASITES
(1957)

My career was off and running, but things were changing for me as 1957 drew to its close. I’ve already indicated that I had begun to write less and less for Amazing and Fantastic, my early standby markets, after Paul Fairman replaced Howard Browne as their editor, and by late 1957 I was doing nothing for them whatever. And my regular monthly deal with Bill Hamling was on the rocks, also. Hamling was having trouble with his distributor and his magazines were not doing well. He had built up a substantial inventory of Garrett/Silverberg stories, enough to last him a year or more, and early in the new year he let us know that the March, 1957 monthly package would be the last. His magazines would struggle along until the summer of 1958 as he ran out the inventory, and then they gave up the ghost.

What might have been an economic catastrophe for me, though, left me undamaged, because Super-Science Fiction and its crime story companions, Trapped and Guilty, had emerged to fill the void left by the collapse of my deals with Amazing and Imagination, and then some. Super-Science was coming out six times a year, paying two cents a word, and its editor, W.W. Scott, was eager to have everything I could bring him, from short story length up to 12,000 words. (And a 12,000-worder, which I could write in two days, would earn me $240.) From the third issue of Super-Science onward, I had at least one story in every issue, and sometimes as many as three. Trapped and Guilty each appeared six times a year, paid a cent and a half a word, and ran stories of all lengths up to 10,000 words. With Harlan Ellison, the magazine’s mainstay, now in the army, the job of filling up those two magazines fell likewise to me, and for the next few years, after having done my regular stint for Super-Science, I would descend on W.W. Scott with my latest batch of tales of juvenile delinquents, blackmailers, adulterous husbands, and other unsavory sorts. Between the crime stories and the s-f stories, I was able to earn more than enough from these three magazines to make up for the loss of assured income from Hamling and Fairman.

“Planet of Parasites” was the fourth of the 12,000-worders I did for Super-Science. I wrote it in August, 1957, and Scottie ran it in the April, 1958 issue, which was on the stands in February. He featured the story title on the cover (“Parasites” was misspelled “Parisites,” providing a nice Gallic touch, but they got it right inside the book) and the other two stories that were listed there indicated very neatly how little Scottie knew about our field, for one was a story by Isaac Asimov with his name misspelled “Issac” (again, done correctly inside) and the other was one by Jay Wallace, the only published story of this otherwise unknown author. (“Parasites” was published as by “Calvin M. Knox,” though I had one in the issue under the rather better known “Robert Silverberg” name as well, not mentioned on the cover. There was also one in the issue by the veteran writer Robert Moore Williams, but that didn’t make the cover either, and was concealed on the contents page by the opaque byline “Robert M. Williams.”)

As for “Planet of Parasites,” it followed the pattern for lead stories in Super-Science that I had established myself and rigorously obeyed in issue after issue. Human explorers on an alien world getting into trouble? Check. A new expedition coming out from Earth and trying to find out what sort of problem its predecessor expedition had become entangled in? Check. The inevitable entanglement of the newcomers in the same problem? Check. Check. Check. The venerable and beloved old pulp magazine Planet Stories had run dozens of stories of that type while I was still in grade school, and now it was my turn. Planet was gone, discontinued just as my career was getting started, but my work of the late 1950s would have fit right in. The one wrinkle that made the Super-Science Stories novelet a little different is that W.W. Scott would allow the protagonist of the story to meet a grim fate, indeed rather preferred it that way, whereas the earlier pulp formula generally showed the resilient hero ultimately triumphing over the obstacles that assailed him. I guess that’s a spoiler, isn’t it? Well, so be it. Go ahead and read the story anyway. Perhaps in this one the veteran space medic Neale, faced with a sinister alien antagonist, will come out on top. Perhaps.

——————

The relief ship detached itself from the orbiting bulk of the vast mother-vessel Ariel and spiraled down through the hazy clouds to the surface of Gamma Crucis VII. A small group of three was gathered in the communications room of the relief ship: Signalman Radek, Coordinator Harrell, Medic Neale.

“Contact made, sir,” Radek murmured.

Coordinator Harrell took the mike. “Harrell of Relief Ship staff speaking. Come in, groundside base. We’re here to take over. You can go back home now.”

A prickly sputter of static was followed with: “Allenson of groundside speaking. Acknowledge. We’ll be waiting for landing. Over and out.”

Neale shook his head. The expedition’s medic was the veteran of the unit; he had spent seventeen years in the Survey Corps. He was a tall well-muscled man with the deep tan of the veteran spacer. “They didn’t sound very enthusiastic,” he said.

Harrell chuckled. “What did you want him to do? Go into ecstasies over the phone?”

“Not exactly. But he seemed so—hell, so cold. When you consider that they’re finally being relieved after a year and a half on an alien world, maybe some excitement would be in order.”

Radek said, “The phones have a way of damping emotion out of a voice. They’re probably whooping it up grand down there.”

“I hope so,” Neale said.

He left the communications room and paused outside at the viewscreen, looking down. They were close enough to the world below to make geographical features visible: rivers and hills, lakes and valleys. It was a silent world, lacking intelligent life—or so the first survey expedition had reported. But somehow Neale mistrusted the planet below. He had been in the Survey Corps too long; he had seen too many green and fertile worlds that harbored hidden alien death.

This one had been under observation only eighteen months. A Survey outfit under Allenson had landed there early in 2716, and had carried out observations for the regulation maximum length of time. Now Allenson and his crew were up for Earthside leave, and Survey Unit 1198 under Clee Harrell was replacing them.

Neale turned away from the viewscreen and headed for his office. On the way he passed through the ship’s control room; Dollinson, the team biologist, was standing watch with his wife, Marie. Neale nodded hello. The Dollinsons together formed a skilled pair of ecologists. This was probably the best outfit Neale had ever worked with, these ten people. He hoped his instinctive mistrust of the green planet below was unfounded. These were people he liked.

He worked in his office a while; then the order for strap-down came, and he set aside his records and climbed into his hammock. The long fall ended; the ship stood upright on the surface of Gamma Crucis VII.

Allenson and his crew were there to greet them.

The relief team filed quickly out of the ship. Harrell came forward and took Allenson’s hand.

“I’ll bet you thought we’d never get here.”

Allenson shrugged. He was a thin, pale, stoop-shouldered man in Coordinator’s uniform. “You are here now. We can leave?”

Harrell looked startled. “Sure—sure, you can go. As soon as you show us around and break us in on whatever projects you have working.”

Neale, standing to one side, felt his wife nudge his arm. “Mike—you look worried. Something wrong?”

Neale nodded gently. “I think so. But I don’t know what it is. Something about these men—”

Allenson was saying. “No sign of intelligent life on the planet at all. Small wildlife which we’ve used for food; there’s a supply in the camp freezer that ought to last you a couple of weeks.”

“Good. We can start the break-in period right away, if you like. The Ariel’s in a sixteen-hour orbit up above, waiting to take you all back to Earth as soon as you’re ready to turn the planet over to us.”

Allenson said, “That’s agreeable to us. We can start right now. The quicker we leave, the better.”

“Why?” Harrell asked in sudden suspicion. “Something wrong with this planet?”

“Not at all! It’s just—we’re anxious to get on to Earth, that’s all.”

That was understandable, Neale thought. What was not so understandable was what he learned when the time came to pair off for break-in. Each member of the relief crew joined up with his opposite number in the original team: biologist with biologist, botanist with botanist, zoologist with zoologist. The incumbent signalman worked with Radek, showing him the communications network that had been established. The team cook spent time with Belle Radek, showing her the way the food storage rooms were laid out, the contents of the freezers, the sort of meals necessary to keep the team healthy on this planet—it varied from planet to planet, depending on such things as gravitational constants and the sort of molecules the plants were built from. Harrell and Allenson closeted themselves in the Coordinator’s office to discuss the problems of keeping the survey unit running smoothly and efficiently. The ecologists met. The two maintenance girls met.

The only one who had no one to work with him was Mike Neale. When he asked Allenson about it, he was told: “Oh, we don’t have a medic any more. Doc Marsh was killed in an accident not long after we landed. I thought I included that in one of the quarterly reports, but I guess I forgot about it.”

Neale blinked. “You’ve managed without a medic for more than a year?”

“We’ve been lucky,” Allenson said.

But there had to be more to it than luck, he thought. A medic was close to an indispensable man on a survey outfit. There were always five or six people who could astrogate in a pinch, and almost anyone could step in and act as Coordinator if he put his mind to it—but a Medic had to be a special sort, a flexible man capable of coping with unpredictable alien diseases as well as minor ailments, broken legs, and such things. It was hard to believe that the eleven other members of Allenson’s team had come through safely for more than a year without a skilled medic among them.

He puzzled about it a while—and puzzled about it a little more when he was taken to the office of the late Dr. Marsh. It looked as if it hadn’t been entered since the day the doctor had been killed.

The antitoxin rack was in place, and each of the precious little ampoules had a considerable covering of dust. The instrument case likewise was dusty. So was the sterilizer, the diagnostitron, even the little library of medical texts. Even, he thought in bewilderment, the first-aid manual.

He turned to the man who had accompanied him here—Bryan, an ecologist. “Do you mean to tell me that none of the expedition’s medical equipment has been used in over a year?”

“If it looks that way, sir, I guess it must be so.”

Neale nervously cracked his knuckles. “Nothing used! No tourniquets, no thermospray, no antitoxins, not even a band-aid. Look at the dust!”

“Do you want me to help you remove the dust, sir?”

Neale scowled. “No, I can manage myself. You’d better get about your business, spaceman.”

Alone, Neale peered through the glassite window; outside, the members of the two expeditions were busy with the transfer of duty from one to the other. It was late afternoon; the pale yellow sun that was Gamma Crucis had dropped low over the horizon, and dark violet clouds had come up from the thick forest that surrounded them.

He glanced at the unused medical equipment. How can this be, he asked himself as he blew a year’s dust off the sterilizer. Surely in the last year someone must have skinned his knee in the forest, at least, and needed a bandage. Someone must have contracted a disease calling for antivirotic shots. Someone must have cut his finger whittling model spaceships.

The more he thought about it, the less he understood it—and the more suspicious he became of World Seven of the Gamma Crucis system. You just didn’t live happily on an alien planet with your medic dead, and you certainly didn’t survive for a year without at least some slight need for medical attention.

At least, he thought, human beings didn’t do things like that. Then Dr. Neale shook his head and grinned self-consciously; he was reading mystery into places where mystery did not belong, and that was a sure sign that it was time for him to start thinking of retiring.

The breaking-in process took the better part of a day. In a less well-organized outfit than the Survey Corps it might have taken days or even several weeks, but in the Corps operations were standardized and a relief unit was supposed to be able to take over, if necessary, without any break-in period at all.

Neale spent the time ferrying his equipment from the relief ship to his new office, which was located in a tin-walled prefab hut at the very edge of the clearing, in the shade of a wide three-trunked tree with thick rubbery leaves. He carried over his antitoxin and antibiotic kits even though his predecessor had left him with an untouched supply; one never knew when an extra stock of neopenicillin would come in handy. But after running routine checks on the diagnostitron, the sterilizer, and the other heavy equipment in the office, Neale decided there would be no need to cart over the replacement units.

By the time he finished the job the office looked the way he believed a medical office should: clean, shining, every bit of apparatus in its place, everything where he could reach it or where laymen could find it in the event he was not there to give it to them. He finished up, flicked a little dust off the windowsill, and went out into the clearing, where the break-in session seemed to be finishing up.

Allenson was saying, “We leave everything in your hands, then, Coordinator Harrell.”

“Right. If it’s as safe a world as you say it is, this ought to be a vacation for us.”

The eleven men and women of Allenson’s unit filed one by one into the relief ship. A moment later came the blasting signal, and the small, sleek ship thrust flaming gas against the ground and rose.

It climbed out of sight. Overhead the mother ship, the Ariel, cruised serenely past. The relief ship would match velocities with the Ariel, the boarding hatch would open, and the great ship would swallow the lesser like an insect snapped up in midflight by a hawk. Allenson and his crew were on their way home.

And Gamma Crucis VII was now the responsibility of Survey Unit 1198, for the next eighteen months. Neale stared upward, trying to see the tiny relief ship against the bright shield of the late afternoon sky; a flock of bird-like creatures came by, flying in a solid dark bar, redwinged creatures with bald ugly vulture-like heads. He looked away.

“Okay,” Harrell called. “The place is ours. Everybody to quarters; camp time is now exactly 1703, and synchronize accordingly. Belle, meal time is 1800. General meeting after mess to plan procedure.”

Neale and his wife got quartered on the second floor of the three-floor housing, sharing the floor with the Dollinsons. The Radeks and the Harrells occupied the ground floor, while on the top floor lived the Grosses and the Kennedys. Six couples, twelve human beings. A Survey Corps team, and a good one.

The Corps always sent married couples out, tested for compatibility and cooperation; they worked better than teams of one sex or the other, and the theory was that sending man and wife out together increased the safety factor, for they took less risks and watched out together for unforeseeable danger. It was a tenable theory, too; accident rates in the Survey Corps were almost fantastically low, despite the hazardous nature of the work.

“I wish I understood it,” Neale growled unhappily after the procedural meeting that evening. “A solid year without a medic, and no accidents, no illnesses—Laura, it doesn’t add up!”

“They’re gone now,” his wife said, trying to soothe him. Laura Neale was a trained ecologist; he had met her at the Corps Academy, where 90% of Corps marriages had their roots. “They’re on their way back to Earth now. Why worry about them? We’ll have enough on our hands here without brooding about—”

“No. Look, Laura, how come they didn’t report the death of their medical officer?”

“Didn’t they? I thought—”

“They said they did, but I checked with Harrell and he doesn’t remember seeing anything about it in the quarterly reports Allenson sent out. You just don’t overlook a thing as big as that. And you don’t just ‘forget’ to report it, either. When any Survey Corps man gets killed on duty, that’s news. And when a team’s medic is the one who’s killed, it gets heard about back at Headquarters. Sometimes they even send a replacement medic out. They don’t ignore it, or overlook it.”

“But what possible reason would they have for concealing the medic’s death?”

Neale shrugged. “That’s the thing I can’t figure out. One of the things I can’t figure out. The other one is how they survived after Dr. Marsh’s death without using the medical supplies at all.”

He walked to the window and stared moodily out. The sun was down, now, and the moons were in the sky—two tiny chips of rock, fifteen or twenty miles in diameter that rotated around each other while they revolved around their planet.

Outside a forest creature barked, and immediately came an answering chorus. Neale scowled. An unexplored planet was by definition full of unanswered questions—but he had never met any of these before.

He was worried. It was a bad way to start off an eighteen-month stay.

He lay awake most of that night, thinking. One other thing troubled him about the survey team they had relieved, and this he had not told anyone, neither Harrell nor his wife.

There had been something about their eyes—Allenson’s and all the others. Something cold and feral, a curious narrowing of the pupils. And every one of them, all eleven, had developed some form of facial tic. Allenson twitched his left cheek uncontrollably. One of the others had acquired a compulsive left-eye blink. Still another had one side of his mouth—the left, as it happened—drawn downward in a sagging ugly sneer, which persisted even when the right side of the mouth was smiling.

Something had happened to Allenson’s team. Neale was sure of that. They did not need medical care, they had not bothered to report the death of their medic (had it really been an accident?) and they had picked up some strange somatic manifestations.

In three months the Ariel would be arriving at Earthport to discharge the off-duty survey team. Were they carrying some strange alien disease? Neale wondered.

And were the replacement team members going to contract it?

He found out early the next morning that, no matter how the last team had managed, Harrell’s team was going to need at least some medical attention. Belle Radek had been climbing a tree to secure a basketful of the blue-green apple-like fruits her predecessor said were edible, and she slipped and fell out.

Neale examined her. There were minor and negligible bruises, and also a long scrape on the inside of her right calf. Neale swabbed the abrasion with antiseptic, squirted some thermospray over it, slapped on a sterile bandage, and told her she could go about the business of preparing the noon meal.

“It won’t get infected or anything?”

“I don’t think so,” Neale said. “You won’t have any trouble with it. But be careful climbing those trees in the future, Belle.”

“I usually am careful. But this tree—well, it seemed sort of slippery. And it kind of twisted out from under me when I got up on that long branch, as if it was trying to throw me off the branch.”

Neale chuckled. “It’s just your imagination, Belle. We’ve never found an intelligent tree yet.”

But after she was gone, he thought about that new bit of information. The trees were slippery; yes. He went outside and experimentally began to climb the tree with the blue-green fruit. He moved slowly, gripping the thick branch with both hands, advancing up the tree in an ape-like sort of crouch.

Dollinson passed below. “What are you doing up there, Doc? Second childhood?”

“Scientific experiment,” Neale replied, and reached out for the shiny fruit that dangled a foot in front of his face.

The tree wriggled.

It lurched suddenly, and only because he had been prepared for it did Neale avoid being thrown to the ground ten feet below. He braced himself in the crotch of the limb, waited a moment, then made a sudden snatch at the dangling fruit.

He ripped it loose, but in that moment the tree heaved again even more violently. Neale rocked with it, swayed, began to lose his balance, and finally had to leap to the ground; he dropped to his knees when he landed. Dollinson who had gone by, came trotting back and helped him up.

“Hurt yourself?”

“Just stung my ankles a bit,” Neale said. He rubbed them. “It’ll take a minute or two till the shock eases up. But I got what I went up there for.”

He held out the apple-like fruit. Grinning, he bit into it; it was sweet and tasty, with a pleasant tang to it. He offered some to Dollinson, who sampled it with evident delight.

“Good stuff.”

“I know. Belle tells me Allenson’s team lived on them all the time. Can’t say I blame them either.”

Dollinson chuckled and moved on. Neale stared at the tree.

It had definitely moved. Perhaps it was just a tropism, but the fact remained that when an attempt was made to remove its fruit it resisted.

Yet the previous team had eaten the fruits regularly. They must have climbed the trees to get at them. Dammit, how come they never fell out and needed to be patched up? How come? Neale asked, and no answer came.

Life moved along routinely in the survey camp for the next two days. Allenson’s team had already explored a fairly wide-ranging sector of the planet, taking specimens and photographs and recording ecological data. It was a simple matter for the members of Survey unit 1198 to follow in the paths of their predecessors.

Neale spent his days doing bacteriological analysis, which was his chief job aside from tending to the medical needs of his team. His task was to isolate cultures of the alien bacteria for experimental purposes.

In the days before the development of interstellar travel, it had been feared that alien bacteria might cause plagues if brought to Earth, might contaminate survey teams and bring strange new illnesses to harass mankind.

This had proved almost entirely false. The number of alien diseases which affected mankind or any Earthborn animal life at all was slim—less than a dozen so far, and none of them overly virulent. The reason was simple. The diseases did not fit the victims. The difference in metabolism was too great; they simply did not “take.” Neale often said that human beings were as deadly to alien bacteria as the bacteria were to the human beings, only more so.

Still, medical research proceeded. And during his days, while the other members of the expedition went about their allotted jobs, Neale peered through the eyepieces of his microscope and jotted down notes in his neat precise handwriting.

Unlike the others Neale had no beaten path to follow. Dr. Marsh’s notes had been “lost,” Allenson had told him, and so he was starting from scratch in his research.

That night, his wife returned from her ecological tour—and now she was puzzled.

“This is the strangest place!”

“How do you mean that?”

“The animal life, and the plant life—I’ve never seen such a perfectly balanced ecology, Mike! Everything in its place, no surpluses. Everything dovetails. Just the right number of birds and fish, the right sort of vegetation in the right places.”

“Is this unique?” Neale asked.

“It is on planets in the natural state—especially young ones like this. The ecological balance on this world is mature, almost over-mature. By that I mean that everything has fallen into balance, something that normally doesn’t happen until a world’s a couple of billion years out of the jungle stage.”

“Just another additional wrinkle,” Neale said. “What do your predecessor’s notebooks say about it?”

“Hardly anything!” Laura exclaimed. “That’s the oddest part. On some of the early pages of her notes there are some comments about the extraordinary balance of life here, the carnivore-herbivore ratio, things like that. But after the fifth or sixth page she ignores it. All the data is here, but she doesn’t bother to draw the obvious conclusions from it!”

“I don’t like this place,” Neale said. “I don’t like it. Not at all.”

On the third day, an ecological tour went out by helicopter to cover the distant sawbacked mountain range to the westward, near the great river which according to Allenson’s map divided the continent almost in half.

Aboard the copter was nearly the entire ecological team: Laura Neale, the Dollinsons, Ferd Gross, Don Kennedy. The only member of the ecology squad that stayed behind was Sallie Gross who was in sickbay with an inflamed wisdom tooth. (Another job for Neale, who deadened the pain with a localized neural sedative; apparently Allenson’s people had never had toothaches either. If they had had them they had borne them with Stoic calm, because the sedative supply was unopened.)

The camp seemed almost deserted while the ecology outfit was gone. Neale, missing his wife, threw himself vigorously into his bacteriological work; Belle Radek and Donna Harrell planned meals for the team several weeks ahead, while Peg Kennedy policed the grounds and tidied the offices.

Neale took advantage of the emptiness of the camp to get Coordinator Harrell aside and confide his fears.

“Clee, I’m scared. There are too many inconsistencies in the reports left us by Allenson’s bunch, and I’ve noticed some things I don’t like at all.”

Harrell’s smile darkened. “What do you mean, Mike?”

“I mean the business of their medic being dead so long, and of the untouched medical supplies. And of a thing Laura told me about the way this planet’s ecology is so perfectly balanced. Perfect things always make me suspicious; nature doesn’t ever operate perfectly. It just isn’t her way.”

“These are pretty vague points you’re making, Mike. I can’t see how—”

“You can’t see? Didn’t you see something funny about Allenson’s bunch? Their faces?”

Frowning, Harrell said, “No, can’t say that I did. They all were pretty pale but otherwise—”

“The paleness is part of it. But their eyes—cold and hard, no warmth in them. And they all had some kind of tic on the left side of their face.”

Harrell’s eyes widened. “Come to think of it—yes! When I spent some time with Allenson, I remember being annoyed by the way his cheek kept twitching. His left cheek. But—”

“I don’t have any glib explanations,” Neale said quietly. “But something happened to those eleven people while they were on this planet. I don’t know what it was, and I’m a long way from even being able to make a guess—but whatever it might have been, I wouldn’t want it to happen to us.”

Harrell nodded. “We’ll have to keep our eyes open. If you have anything further to report on this, let me know right away.”

There was nothing further for Neale to report that day, or the next. But on the next—the fifth day of Survey Unit 1198’s stay on Gamma Crucis VII—the ecology team returned from its journey across the mountains.

The helicopter hovered over the clearing a moment; then, rotors whirring, it descended. Mack Dollinson was the first one out looking grimy and unshaven after his three-day trip; he was followed by Laura Neale, Ferd Gross, Marie Dollinson and Don Kennedy.

Neale held his wife for a moment. Then the band of returnees opened the copter’s cargo hatch and brought forth several bales of specimens.

“Good trip eh?” Neale asked.

“Very fruitful,” Laura said. “We covered nearly a thousand square miles by random sampling. We found some very unusual froglike creatures that change shape when you poke them, and—why, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Neale said. He forced his sudden frown to melt away, and tried to look interested as Laura continued to tell him about their trip. “Mack was the lucky one, of course—he had Marie along with him. The rest of us looked on in envy. Miss me, Mike?”

“Sure Laura.” But the words came out abstractedly, and when she kissed him he responded with a half-hearted peck that drew an irritated little snort from her.

But at the moment he could not take time to be affectionate. He was staring at Ferd Gross, the slim darkly handsome botanist of the expedition.

Gross was standing by the helicopter, waiting his turn to go inside and unload the specimens he had brought back. All Neale could see of the botanist was the left side of his face.

Neale squinted to make sure. Yes. The skin around Gross’ left eye was spasming; every fifteen seconds or so his cheek would jerk upward in a sudden squint. And Gross had not had any record of neural disturbances before the landing on Gamma Crucis VII. He had acquired the facial tic since their arrival.

Neale’s throat felt dry. “Excuse me, Laura,” he said in a rasping tense voice. “I want to talk to Ferdie about something, if you don’t mind.”

“Sure—go ahead. I can wait.”

He grinned feebly, moved past her, and walked up to where Gross stood. The botanist was staring with ferocious concentration into the darkened helicopter; he did not turn as Neale walked up. The medic took advantage of Gross’ absorption to study the tic that had developed on his face. Yes, he though, it was quite pronounced, a muscular convulsion of some sort.

He laid one cold hand on Gross’ shoulder. “Ferdie?”

Gross whirled like a surprised burglar. He ducked away, cringing, then said, “Oh—Neale. You surprised me.”

His voice was leaden and harsh. Gross had been an excellent baritone. But all tone had departed from his voice now; it seemed like a stranger’s voice.

And his eyes, Neale thought. Beast’s eyes.

Neale forced a smile. “How was the trip?”

“Oh—not bad.” The words seemed to emerge stiffly, as if Gross were fighting to get them out. He stuttered slightly on the initial consonants, and contorted his lips.

Neale waited. “Aren’t you going to ask me about Sallie and how she is?”

Blankness. “S-Sallie?”

“Yes. Your wife.”

Gross smiled suddenly as if comprehension were dawning. “Oh. Yes. Sallie. How is she?”

“Much better,” Neale said. “The swelling’s gone down, and I won’t have to pull the tooth after all. I’m damn glad it worked out this way. I hate pulling teeth. She’s asleep now—the sedative’s got her. You can see her later, though, in an hour or two.”

“That will be fi-fine,” Gross said with some effort. Neale felt a chill crawl over him. In the early stages of the disease, he thought, there was some motor and sensory impedance; in later stages, such as that of the Allenson team, the victim regained control over his voice and his muscles, except for the tell-tale tic of the left side of the face, which remained invariably.

Neale moistened his lips. “Take it easy, Ferdie.”

He crossed the clearing and found Laura. In a low, urgent voice he said: “Did anything peculiar happen to Ferdie during your trip?”

“Peculiar—why?”

“Because he’s sure as anything acting peculiar now. Was he alone for any length of time?”

“We all were. He was out collecting specimens. Radek fixed up walkie-talkies for us so we could go out separately and still maintain contact with each other.” Her face reflected sudden curiosity and fear. “What’s wrong, Mike? What’s happened?”

“I wish I knew,” Neale said hollowly. He wiped sweat from his forehead. “Stay here. I want to go talk to Harrell a minute.”

He caught sight of the tall figure of the team coordinator far at the other side of the clearing, near the specimen storage shack. Neale cupped his hands.

“Clee!”

Harrell turned and stared at him without saying anything. Neale trotted over to him.

“Well?” Harrell asked.

“That disease,” Neale said. “The thing Allenson’s bunch had, that I told you about day before yesterday? Well, Gross has it. Whatever it is, he caught it on that ecological expedition. He—”

“W-what disease?” Harrell asked coldly.

Neale stopped short and stared at the coordinator. Harrell’s eyes were narrowed, and they gleamed like taxidermist’s glass. And the left half of his upper lip was quivering almost imperceptibly, as if embodied with a life of its own.

“I—guess I was mistaken,” Neale said hastily. “Sorry to bother you, Clee. Sorry.”

So it’s hit us too, Neale thought. Gross…Harrell…and all the rest of us, one by one, as whatever it is (virus? protozoan? bacteria?) filters into our bodies and changes us.

It would make a good paper for the Annals of the Survey Corps, he thought wildly. It was so rare that any sort of alien life-form could have a biological effect on human beings—and here he was in a position to do a first-hand report. If he stayed uninfected.

Five days, and two of us have it. Who’ll be the next? Dollinson? Laura? Me?

He stepped out into the clearing. The ecologists were carrying their specimens up into the storage shack. Neale wondered if he could get hold of Ferd Gross on some pretext and examine him, try to discover just what effects this strange affliction had. But there was the risk of contracting it himself—

He looked at his watch. It was time to visit the infirmary to see how Sallie Gross was doing.

She sat upright in bed, a wan smile on her face; the swelling in her jaw had receded and she looked a little less grotesque.

“Sleep well?” Neale asked.

“Not bad. At least that darned throbbing’s stopped. Are you going to have to pull the tooth, Mike?”

“I doubt it,” he said, after a look. “The infection’s easing up.”

“I thought I heard a helicopter land. Is Ferdie back yet?”

Neale nodded. “I told him you were asleep. I’ll send him in now.” Silently he added, I’ll send in the thing that used to be Ferdie.

He found Gross outside, standing still with an aimless expression on his face. His eye was quivering rapidly. “Sallie’s awake,” Neale said. “She’d like to see you, Ferdie. In the infirmary.”

“Thank you,” Gross said stiffly.

He walked off, robot-like, toward the infirmary. Neale watched him a moment; then, hearing footsteps behind him, he turned and saw Sam Radek.

The signalman had the glassy-eyed look and the facial tic that stamped the victim of the alien disease. That makes three of us, Neale thought.

No. Four. Behind Radek came Marie Dollinson with the now-unmistakable symptoms evident on her face. It was spreading to the women now. The incubation period—was it five days? Would they all be transformed into stuttering robots by nightfall?

Neale stood with his hands held loosely, in frustration, knowing with a doctor’s despair that a new and strange disease was sweeping down on his people and that he did not know where to begin to fight back.

He heard a scream—a high, keening, woman’s scream, with a wobbly nerve-searing tremulo climax. He froze for a moment, then started to run toward the power shed, where Peg Kennedy had been checking the generators.

He pushed open the door of the shed just as Peg screamed a second time. The smell of burning flesh came drifting toward him. He spotted Peg huddled into herself on the floor, sobbing wildly and pointing.

Pointing toward the central power generator—where the seared and blackening body of Don Kennedy hung. The zoologist’s hands gripped the thousand-watt power leads, and his body was jerking and jumping convulsively with every surge of juice through it.

Neale moved quickly, throwing the knife switch that controlled the turbines. Power died away with a sickly whine. Hurriedly he cut in the auxiliary generators as the lights began to fade.

Rapid examination of Kennedy’s body told him that the zoologist was beyond medical help. Neale lifted Peg Kennedy to her feet and held her a moment, until the sobbing subsided.

“Peg,” he said softly. “Tell me what happened.” He noticed a horror-stricken group standing at the entrance to the power shack—Mack Dollinson, Donna Harrell, Laura, Belle Radek. None of the infected people were there.

“It—it was horrible. Don came in here—I was so glad to see him come back from that ecological expedition—but when he came in I hardly recognized him.”

“What do you mean?”

“His face—it was so different. His eyes were—were stranger’s eyes; they didn’t seem to know me. And one whole side of his face was writhing. As if the muscles were battling with each other. He stood right there”—she pointed to the middle of the floor—“and shook as if his body wanted to go in two different directions. Then he muttered something, deep and ugly-sounding, and jumped—right at the power leads.” Sobs racked her again. “I couldn’t move. Don—”

Neale felt sick despite his training. “Peg—try to believe me—I know why Don did what he did. He contracted an alien disease, a horrible one. He chose to die this way, while he still was master enough of himself to control his actions.”

He glanced at Dollinson. “Mack, give me some help. I want to take Kennedy’s body over to my office for an autopsy. I’m on the track of something big.”

The light burned late in Neale’s office. Once Laura came down to see if he planned to finish work and come to bed; but he told her he was busy, and did not let her enter the office or even peer past the door. He was relieved to see that as yet she still appeared normal.

He worked over Kennedy’s blackened and blistered body for hours, probing the tortured flesh with delicate micro-scalpels, laying bare nerve centers, tracing synapses. By the time he was satisfied, the dead man’s body was even less recognizable than it had been.

But now Neale understood the nature of the disease that had entirely infected the previous survey group, and which so far had taken at least five members of Survey Unit 1198.

He stared at the milk-white fibers that ran parallel to Kennedy’s nerve channels. They followed a course straight to the brain, and there they clustered in a complex ganglion that still lived, and writhed at the touch.

Neale looked at his watch. Time was 0100; it was late. But this was an emergency. He picked up the communicator and punched out a number. Mack Dollinson’s number.

The ecologist answered, and there was nothing sleepy in his voice. “Yes?”

“Mack, this is Neale. I’m down in my office and I’ve found something I want to show somebody. Anybody. Can you come over here right away?”

A moment’s pause. Then: “Yes. I’ve been wanting to talk to you, anyway.”

Dollinson arrived a few moments later, dressed in a light gown. He blinked in puzzlement at the sight of the dissected body spread out on the operating table. Neale noticed that Dollinson looked drawn and preoccupied, but that he showed no symptoms of the disease.

“Well?” Dollinson asked. “What has the autopsy turned up?”

“Plenty. But first—how’s Marie?”

Dollinson paled. “She’s—bad, Mike. Whatever this thing is that’s sweeping through the team, she’s got it. When we got into bed I touched her. She was like ice. She didn’t seem to know me.”

“Come here,” Neale said. “Look.”

He gestured with his scalpel. “I’ve laid Kennedy open and here’s what I’ve found. A parasitical nerve network running all through his body. Every muscle he has is hooked up to it. They all run to the brain, and cluster—here.” He indicated the ganglion, an inch square, nestling against Kennedy’s brain. “You’ll notice that the ganglion is on the right side of the brain. That’s why the facial tics always show up on the left side of the face, because the nerve centers of the brain exert sensory and motor control over the opposite sides of the body.”

“And you think Kennedy suicided?”

“I’m sure of it,” said Neale. “He knew what was happening to him. Probably there was a progressive deterioration of his control over his muscles. So while he still had some vestige of independent action he threw himself into the generator. I guess that’s preferable to the walking death of the disease otherwise.”

Dollinson sat down heavily. “Marie’s got it.”

“And Radek, Harrell, and Gross. Maybe even more by now. Probably we’re all infected in some degree or another, only we have different periods of incubation. We may be full of white fibers right now, only they haven’t made their move to take over, yet.”

“But—”

“Yes. Our turns will come. Only we won’t make the mistake the last expedition made.”

“What was that?”

“They waited too long to report the disease. Before they could let anybody know, the whole outfit was infected, and then they couldn’t report. So we came down unawares, and caught it. And—my God!” Neale went pale. “Allenson’s team—they’re on their way back to Earth in the Ariel now!”

“The whole ship’s probably infected with it,” Dollinson said.

“Worse than that. The Ariel will be landing on Earth in three months. And Earth won’t be suspecting anything unless we warn them.”

Neale reached for his coat; then, snapping his fingers, he went to his drug rack and detached an ampoule. “Come on,” he said. “We may not have much time left.”

They made their way stealthily into the ground floor of the residence building, not wanting to awaken the Harrells. Cautiously Neale nudged open the door of the section where the Radeks lived.

They were asleep—but with their eyes open. Cold glinting eyes that stared upward, unseeingly. Neale added a sixth name to the growing list: Belle Radek. Now six members of the team were infected. Six out of twelve.

“Get his arm,” Neale whispered.

Dollinson seized Radek’s right arm; Neale took his left. He nodded, and they jerked up suddenly. Radek woke, startled.

“What’s going on? What the hell do you fellows want at this hour?”

“We want you to do a little radio work for us, Sam. Come on. Out of bed.”

“He sounds genuine,” Dollinson said.

“That only means that Sam’s lost the fight with whatever is growing inside him. The stuttering and the stiffness comes from the fact that the mind is struggling against the invader. But Sam’s been completely taken over, and—hold him!”

Radek writhed suddenly and nearly broke loose. He did jerk one arm free and land a punch in Dollinson’s stomach; the ecologist spun backward, just in time to have the awakening Belle Radek climb furiously upon him.

Neale had come prepared. He flipped the trigger on the spray-ampoule he had brought with him and slapped the spray against Radek’s bare arm. The signalman froze a moment in inner conflict, as the nerves of his body strove to quit their jobs and the parasite urged him to continue fighting; then the injection did its work, and he toppled over, unconscious. A moment later his wife followed him.

“What did you do to them?” Dollinson asked.

“Hypnothol.” Neale said. “It’ll knock ’em out for ten minutes or so, and when they wake up they’ll be very cooperative. It’s a fast-action anesthetic as well as a truth drug. Very handy. Let’s get Radek over to the communications shack now, before it wears off.”

They dragged the unconscious man across the clearing to the shack. Neale flipped on the light. Radek sat groggily where he was put, quivering occasionally as the organism within him attempted to regain control over his numbed and useless muscles.

“Sam, can you hear me? Sam?”

“I…hear you.”

“Sam, tell me—what’s happened to you? What kind of thing has taken you over?”

“I am part of It,” Radek said tonelessly.

“It? What do you mean?”

“The oneness…the fulfillment. All is one here on this world, and I am part of It. Of We.”

“You mean a collective mind?” Neale asked.

“Yes.”

“Linked together by—by the network of nerve fiber inside you?”

“Yes.”

Neale was silent a moment. Then he said, “How about the Allenson group. Are they the same way too?”

“Yes. All but the one named Marsh, the doctor. He is not with Us. He is dead. He threatened to contact Earth, but the eleven of them who are with Us killed him just in time. As We will kill you.” The words, toneless, flat, held chilling menace.

Neale glanced at Dollinson. “Mack, lock and bolt the shack door. We may have trouble. Make sure the blasters are loaded, too.” To the slumping Radek he said, “Sam, you mean that everything on this world is part of this one collective mind, including the Allenson people? How about the crew of the Ariel?”

“They have joined Us too. And soon all Earth will belong and then all the universe. We have waited long for the opportunity to extend Ourselves from world to world, and Earth has given this to Us.”

With trembling voice Neale said, “Sam, are you absolutely under my command now?”

“Yes.”

“You’re incapable of obeying the orders of this—thing you belong to, right?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I want you to sit down over by the communications panel and make subradio contact for me with the Central Control of the Survey Department, on Earth. Will you do that?”

“Yes,” Radek said dully.

Neale waited while the somnambulant Radek made mechanical adjustments on the subradio board; lights flashed, indicating that waypoints and relay stations were being contacted. The signal was leaping out across the light-years, through the greyness of hyperspace, toward the home world of Earth.

Neale felt inwardly cold. He saw the whole pattern now, and it left him breathless with horror.

All life on this planet was part of one huge organism. That explained the balanced ecology that Laura had been so puzzled by. And the organism took steps to incorporate within itself all strange forms of life that wandered within its range.

That was what had happened to the Allenson expedition. One by one they had succumbed, as the spore of the alien organism ripened within their bodies; only their medic, Dr. Marsh, had remained untouched, and he had evidently realized what had taken place. He had attempted to warn Earth against Gamma Crucis VII, but the other eleven had prevented him, had killed him before word could go out.

Neale understood now why they had had no further need of medical attention. A wise parasite takes care of its host body and keeps it from harm. The organism living within the Earth people had evidently healed cuts, destroyed disease germs, and maintained the working efficiency of the body that served as its vehicle.

And then the second expedition had landed. The puppets that were the Allenson team were on their way back to Earth to transmit the organism now; having infected the crew of the Ariel, they longed for the greater quarry ahead. And one by one Survey Unit 1198 was succumbing. The Radeks, Gross, Harrell, Kennedy, Marie Dollinson, maybe all the rest of them by now.

Maybe even Laura. And maybe I’m next. Maybe any minute now I’ll feel the alien pull along my nerves, and know that in short moments the personality that is Dr. Michael Neale will be swallowed up in—

“Hurry up, Radek!” Neale barked. “Get that contact set up!”

“It’s almost ready,” Radek muttered tonelessly. “Here—go ahead, now.”

Neale took his seat at the communicator panel, indicating to Dollinson that he should guard Radek carefully in case the effects of the drug should wear off.

He spun the dial. A crisp voice said, “Central Control, Survey Corps. Lieutenant Jesperson speaking. Come in, please.”

“Jesperson, this is Medic Neale of Survey Unit 1198. I want to report an epidemic. It’s already affected at least half of our team, and the entire personnel of the outfit we replaced.”

“Epidemic?”

“Yes,” Neale said. In quick concise words he sketched in the nature of the “disease,” repeating the information he had dredged from Radek’s drugged mind. He spoke softly but urgently. “That’s the whole story. Except that the Ariel’s coming back to Earth right now, and every man aboard it is infected.”

“How can you be sure of that?”

Neale paused. “Would you want to be the man who said they weren’t?”

Jesperson said irritatedly, “If what you tell us is true, Neale, it means we don’t dare let the Ariel land. We can’t even send a man aboard to examine them. We’ll simply have to send up a missile and blow them out of the sky without warning. There must be a hundred human beings aboard that ship, and billions of dollars’ worth of equipment.”

Very quietly Neale said, “If you let that ship land, it’ll mean the end of civilization on Earth. It’s just as simple as that, and if I sound melodramatic it’s because I mean to sound melodramatic. Once that thing gets loose on earth—dammit, Jesperson it doesn’t matter if fifty innocent people on the Ariel have to die! You have to destroy that ship before it touches Earth!”

“I see that,” Jesperson replied tightly. “Okay. I’ll pass the transcript of your report along to the higher-ups and let them worry about it. We still have some time before the Ariel gets here. How about you people on Gamma Crucis VII, though?”

Neale coughed. “Forget about us. Report the whole team lost on duty.”

“But six of you—”

“Six of us are free of infection, now. But there’s no telling how long it’ll be before we go under. Make sure this planet is never visited again. I’m going to sign off now. I have work to do here. So long, Jesperson.”

“So long, Neale. And—thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. I—”

He grunted suddenly as a fist thumped against his back. Radek’s loose, he thought, and whirled up from the panel seat to defend himself.

“Neale! Neale!” came the voice from the speaker grid. “Is everything all right there? Neale!”

Neale ignored the cry. He stared at his attacker.

Not Radek. Radek still sat slumped in drug-induced stupor where they had left him.

It was Dollinson.

“So it’s your turn now, Mack,” Neale murmured. Dollinson’s eyes had the all-too-familiar gleam, now; his face quivered convulsively. He came forward again, swinging his fists, and Neale could see that the fast-dying entity that was Mack Dollinson was vainly trying to reassert control over his unruly body.

Dollinson ran toward him. Neale sidestepped and clubbed down on the back of his neck; Dollinson fell, lay quivering, struggled to get up.

Across the room, Radek was starting to move. And Neale heard pounding on the door of the communications shack. Of course! The creatures were all part of the same organism, and so all were in communication with each other; they knew Neale still survived, immune for some reason, and they were coming to get him.

Dollinson rose and straggled forward. The hinges of the door began to yield.

Neale hit Dollinson again, jumped back, fumbled for his blaster. He fired, once.

It made a neat black hole through the center of Dollinson’s chest. Neale felt sudden bitterness; Dollinson had been his closet friend, and—

Dollinson kept moving.

He was dead; that is, the body of Mack Dollinson was dead. But the thing that inhabited him still retained control over Dollinson’s muscles, still forced him forward, claw-like hands reaching out—

Neale fired again, this time at the head. He held the beam steady, ashing away all that was recognizable of Mack Dollinson. Ashing with it the whitish clump of ganglia that had sprouted inside Dollinson’s head. This time Mack dropped and lay still.

Remember that, Neale thought feverishly. Aim for the heads; killing the body doesn’t stop them, you have to kill the nerve-center.

Radek was next. The signal-man was on his feet and groping forward, having thrown off the remaining effects of the drug. Neale cut Radek down with a short full-intensity blast.

The pounding on the door grew louder. The door started to split. Neale glanced around frantically, found a window, leaped through just as the mob of them broke into the shack in quest of him.

He began to run. It was night now, and dark shadows were all around. He looked back and saw figures come running out of the shack in search of him.

They wanted him, now. They were too late to keep him from warning Earth—thank God for that!—but they wanted to kill him anyway, since he obstinately refused to contract the disease.

At least Earth has been warned, he thought. What happens to us doesn’t matter.

A tree swiped at him from above. He ducked. Any moment, he thought, the entire mobilized force of the planet would be after him, hordes of vultures and jagtoothed cats and insects that stung, determined to mow him down.

In the gathering darkness, a figure came by—Donna Harrell, the coordinator’s statuesque wife. Neale paused in flight.

“Donna?”

She turned to face him. Hatred was in her cold, alien eyes. Her face bore the tic.

Neale did not hesitate. He fired, twice, and she fell. Four of the twelve were dead, now. And of those who survived, all but Laura, Peg Kennedy, and Sallie Gross were known to harbor the alien life-form now.

I’ll wipe them out, he thought. Better a clean quick death than a lifetime as part of—that.

His first stop was the infirmary, but as he suspected, Sallie was gone. She was out with the hunters, then, in search of him. That left only Laura and Peg Kennedy among the possible immunes.

He heard the infirmary door slam. A dark figure stood down below—tall, broad. Only two men of the survey unit remained alive besides Neale, and one of them, Gross, was small. The man down there could only be Coordinator Clee Harrell.

“Neale!” came the hoarse voice. “Neale, have you gone crazy? You killed Dollinson and Radek in cold blood! Come down out of there, Neale. We know you’re there.”

In the darkness Neale felt his body streaming with perspiration. It’s a trick, he thought feverishly. A trick. I know Harrell’s been taken over. I saw him.

A blaster bolt suddenly squirted through the blackness at him and splatted against the wall over his head, sending the plastic wall cascading outward. Immediately Neale returned fire. He heard a groan; he had hit.

He ran down the stairs. Harrell lay there, writhing, his right arm seared away. But his eyes were not human eyes, and Neale felt no compassion for him. He fired once, at the coordinator’s head.

Five down, now. And how many to go?

They were surrounding the infirmary, Neale saw. He ducked away into the shrubbery and crouched there, waiting, watching them move past him.

There were too many of them for him to fire now. He counted: Gross, Sallie, Belle Radek, Peg Kennedy, and—he uttered a harsh little sob—Laura.

All of them, then. He was the only one left. And he knew his turn could not be long delayed.

Around him, the shrubbery rippled suddenly. Thorny arms stabbed at his eyes. Even the plants! he thought. Part of the single great evil mind that was the world of Gamma Crucis VII.

Overhead wings flapped. Time was running short now, Neale thought. He burst from the clearing.

There was no cry of “There he is!” from those who saw him. They were telepathically linked; they had no need to communicate out loud. But Neale saw shadowy shapes moving toward him in the night.

He collided suddenly with a figure coming in the opposite direction, and, startled, reeled away. He had forgotten Marie Dollinson. She grappled with him now, fighting with a demonic strength no woman had ever possessed, but Neale broke away and put a blaster shot through the thing that infested her brain. The blurt of energy lit the darkness for a moment, then subsided.

Pausing for breath, he counted the survivors in his mind: The Grosses, Peg Kennedy, Belle Radek, and Laura. Five of them. Briefly he prayed that he would have a chance to get all of them before they found him, or before the change happened.

Maybe I’m immune, he thought. Why me, though? Why should I be singled out?

The forest around him seemed angry and menacing. He knew he was lost either way: it made no difference whether he were ultimately absorbed into the group-mind of the parasites, or if he remained immune and were killed by the unit-mind. But he was not ready to give up.

He ran on desperately.

Rounding the main residence housing, he encountered Ferd Gross, who was armed with a blaster. But Gross’ aim went wild—perhaps Ferdie was still fighting back, trapped helplessly in his own body—and Neale incinerated him with a single well-placed shot.

That left four. Peg, Belle, Sallie, Laura.

Belle was the first. He spotted her on the side of the hill, near the tree where the blue-green apples grew, and brought her down at long range. After that came Peg and Sallie in swift succession. There was no sign of Laura. He called to her, but she did not appear, and Neale was relieved at that.

Wearily he made his way to his office, locked himself in, and threw the bolt. The dissected body of Don Kennedy still lay on the table.

Ignoring it, Neale threw himself down at his desk and put his head in his hands, sobbing with the release of accumulated fear and tension. After a while he looked at his watch. It read 0215.

In a little less than an hour, Neale thought with odd clarity, I’ve killed nine fellow human beings. One man rampage of killing.

Then he shook his head. He was being foolish. The nine human beings had died long since—or, even more horribly, remained alive, trapped within their own flesh. He had merely liberated them. He had destroyed nine containers for the weird group-life that infested this planet; he had sent nine Earthmen to rest instead of leaving them for an eternal existence within the corporate entity.

Neale knew what to do now. He rose and went to his supply chest, and filled a small flask with orange-yellow fluid from a larger container. The label on the larger container said STYROTHENE, and below that was the familiar skull-and-crossbones symbol of danger.

Styrothene was a nerve poison. In diluted solutions—one part in five hundred was the usual ratio—it was a highly efficient anesthetic, which blocked off neural impulses throughout the body and allowed for the most delicate surgery. In its pure concentrated form, it was the fastest acting poison known to man. Hardly did the liquid touch the tongue when death came.

Smiling now, because he was prepared, Neale adjusted the cork on the flask and put it in his jacket pocket. Next he checked the charge-case of his blaster. There was only one charge left.

He waited. Five minutes, ten went by. Then came the knock on the door that he was expecting.

With trembling fingers he slid back the bolt and opened the door. “Hello, Laura. Come in, won’t you?”

She stepped inside, and he bolted the door again.

“Working late again tonight, Mike?” she asked, in her normal voice.

He nodded. “There was a lot to be done.”

His stomach was a cold mass of fear. She stood before him, smiling, speaking to him as she had always spoken to him through the fifteen years of their happy marriage. Brutally he thought, The parasite has achieved full control over her vocal cords now. She doesn’t stutter. She can’t fight back any more.

She was saying, “I’ve been looking for you all over the place. It’s past 0200. It’s time to go to bed, Mike, dear. I’m so tired.”

“You are, aren’t you, Laura. Tired. Well, I’m tired too. It’s been a busy night.”

She extended her arms to him. “Come, Mike. Let’s go upstairs, shall we?”

“Not just yet,” he said tightly.

It was like a dream, a dream in which none of this had ever happened, in which Gamma Crucis VII had proved to be as safe as all the other worlds they had visited, in which there were no parasites, no unit-mind, no death.

The urge welled up within him to go to her, to forget his resolution. He was wavering, now. He realized the change was almost upon him, that it was his turn now, at last. At last.

“Mike—”

“No. You’re not Laura. You used to be Laura, and I loved you then.”

He raised the blaster. With shaking hands he fired, once, and looked away. After a moment he was able to look back, and he saw that she was dead.

It was very quiet now.

He put down the gun and sat quietly behind his desk. He picked up pen and paper and began to write, a brief, concise account of the strange parasite that had infected the nerve channels of the Earthmen on Gamma Crucis VII. This was to be his final report, and he chose his words with care, working thoughtfully.

The unit-mind, he wrote, is certainly an incredible organism worthy of detailed scientific study, as my few conclusions here have tried to show. Unfortunately, it is impossible to carry out this detailed study at present, since no adequate defense against the effects of the corporate mind exists, and the rate of absorption appears to approach one hundred percent, I think—

He put down the pen, frowning. Whatever it was he thought, he had forgotten it. But it made little difference, he realized. No one would ever read this report. Earthmen would never land on Gamma Crucis VII again. Laura was dead, and all the others, but at least Earth was safe, and this world would be left to itself for all eternity. If they were wise, he thought, they would blast Gamma Crucis VII out of the skies. They would do well to—

Neale felt very tired. The pen went rolling across the desk and fell to the floor, and he ignored it.

Something squirmed within his mind.

At last, he thought, with un-mixed relief. Gamma Crucis VII is claiming me, too. Now he could rest.

He reached for the bottle in his pocket. The thing within him clung to his arm, trying to restrain him, but its control was too new, too weak. Neale drew out the bottle, un-corked it, lifted it to his lips. At least, he thought, the planet-mind would have no Earthmen among its numbers.

He drank. He sensed the outraged cry of the thing within him as it realized it was to be cheated, and then consciousness left him.

SLAVES OF THE TREE
(1957)

I missed few opportunities to provide W.W. Scott with lead novelets for Super-Science. Exactly two months after I turned in “Planet of Parasites,” I was back in his office with the next 12,000-worder, “Slaves of the Tree,” which I delivered in October, 1957 for his June, 1958 issue. (I had spent the intervening month writing a batch of crime stories for Trapped and Guilty.) This one, though not very different in structure from the previous issue’s “Calvin M. Knox” novelet, ran under my “Eric Rodman” pseudonym.

“Slaves of the Tree,” the title and theme of which may have been tenuously related to a 1951 Jack Vance novella, “Son of the Tree,” that probably had lodged somewhere in the back of my mind, starts right off in full Super-Science mode: “There was something about the planet that Rayner did not like.” (Rule number one of pulp-fiction plotting: get your hero in trouble fast.) Rayner is a member of the Examination Squad, which has arrived on the planet of Maldonad, a place with “warm, slightly sickly air”, to find out what has happened to the descendants of the seven hundred colonists from Earth who had come there two hundred years previously. They are in a mess, of course—they are hardly even recognizable as human—and as Rayner and his fellow members of the Examination Squad attempt to find out what strange power it is that has transformed the colonists into the weird hybrid creature they have become, they too are drawn into—

Well, it’s a Super-Science novelet, so by this time you know a priori that the outcome for Rayner and his shipmates isn’t going to be good. But I did introduce one twist toward the end that varied the formula a bit.

——————

There was something about the planet that Rayner did not like. He knew it immediately, as soon as he had dropped the last three feet from the catwalk of the ship to the ground. The other four members of the Examination Squad had already left the ship, and were wandering around the clearing, breathing deeply, taking in the warm, slightly sickly air of Maldonad.

Rayner stood by the edge of the clearing, looking around. He felt ill at ease. Foolish, he thought. This is an A-one Earthtype planet. The Examination won’t take long. Just a routine once-over.

Ehrenfeld, the Squad head, was looking at him strangely. “You all right, Rayner?”

“Yeah. I’m okay.”

“Come on, then. The charts say we’re five miles from the settlement. We’d better go announce ourselves.”

Rayner nodded; it was silly to stand here and search one’s mind for the causes of groundless fears. This was just another colonized planet, out here in the Sixth Decant, just another world on which Earth had left some of her sons and now which had to be re-examined.

Two hundred years had gone by since the colonization of Maldonad by Earthmen. This was the third time a Terran ship had landed on the planet’s surface.

First had been the survey scoutship; the records showed that a scout team had come by Maldonad in 2614, and had marked it suitable for human colonization after the usual cursory tests.

It had taken a while to get the colony organized; in 2627, finally, a huge Colonial Force ship containing seven hundred settlers made the second landing on Maldonad. Seven hundred pioneers, volunteers to open up the new world. They were part of the great mushroomlike outward expansion of Terra to the stars. Thousands of worlds lay waiting; the stardrive had placed them within man’s reach.

Colonial Force regulations called for a two hundred year period of development, in which a newly settled world was to be left strictly alone. It must develop through its own devices, with no contact whatsoever with the main stream of galactic culture. And after two centuries had passed, regulations prescribed that an Examination Squad of five Earthmen should visit the world and certify it for admission into the Council of Worlds, if its ten generations of colonists had proved themselves worthy of admission.

Two hundred years had gone by, and in 2827 it was Maldonad’s turn to undergo Examination. Mark Rayner shrugged and followed the others through the forest. It was always a tense business, making first contact with the descendants of the settlers two hundred years later.

Sometimes they forgot their heritage. Sometimes they had forgotten the fact that they were human. In his seven years as an Examiner, Rayner had seen some chilling sights on the colony worlds. He wondered about Maldonad. He had never put much faith in extra-sensory perception, but the feeling of uneasiness was too strong for him to leave entirely out of consideration.

He caught up with the rest of the group, as they wheeled the equipment through the forest path. Ehrenfeld was in front, as a squad leader should be. He was a small wiry man with remarkable strength for his size; right now he wore the neutral blue and gray uniform of the Examination Squad, and the back of his blouse was stippled with sweat-spots. Maldonad was a warm world. The mean daily temperature, according to the records two hundred years old, was 93 degrees Fahrenheit. Right now it was closer to a hundred.

After Ehrenfeld came Bryson and Killian, the anthropologist and the biologist, a remarkable pair of opposites. Bryson was close to the retirement age of eighty, a tall withered old man with hardly an ounce of surplus flesh anywhere on his lean body. Killian was half a century younger, short, chunky, brash. They were pushing the main equipment barrow.

Behind them walked Magda Hollis, the squad’s one female. Rayner eyed her appraisingly as he drew near. She was no youngster, but still attractive at thirty-five. Her specialty was sociology and political theory. In the muggy warmth she had chosen to wear a plastifab halter and shorts that clung skin-tight to her slim body.

On the journey from Barriella, the previous world on the squad’s schedule, she and Killian had been carrying on a torrid shipboard romance. But evidently Magda and the chunky biologist had had a falling-out; since making the landing on Maldonad, the two of them had ignored each other as completely as if they had been sexless androids.

Rayner matched his pace to hers and said, “Nervous?”

She glanced at him. “Why should I be nervous, Rayner? I’m not normally a nervous person, am I?”

“I didn’t mean that. But I always find it an anxious moment—just before we’ve made contact with the people we’ve come to pass judgment on. It’s—it’s as if the planet lies hidden in a dark box, and we’re shining a light into that box, never knowing what weird thing we might find inside. You mean you never feel that way?”

Magda looked at him queerly. “Not at all. This is the sixteenth world we’ve visited on this tour of duty, and I haven’t felt anything of the sort. Maybe someone like you, Rayner—”

He cut her off before she could make the acid comment. She always had had an acid-tipped tongue, Rayner thought. He had wondered how Killian had been able to stand the woman’s biting sarcasms simply for the sake of an attractive body. He probably gave her back some of her own medicine, finally, he thought. And that’s why they haven’t been speaking to each other.

“On Morripar, though,” Rayner said. “Finding that blood-drinking cult. That was a fine thing to happen to Earthmen in two hundred years, wasn’t it? And the legal murders in the Wimli law-code?”

“Isolated developments,” said Magda. “Only to be expected in view of the nature of those worlds. But what of it? Why be nervous?”

“Maybe I have too much faith in the human species,” Rayner said. “Maybe it upsets me to see the strange things that sometimes happen to human beings when they’re left alone on an alien world for two hundred years.”

She snorted contemptuously. “You—having faith in the human species? Don’t make me laugh too hard, Rayner. It’s too hot here for laughing.”

He scowled and said nothing. He despised her, and he knew that she loathed him, barely troubling to keep her hatred below the surface. It was the same with all of them. Ehrenfeld had fought unsuccessfully to keep him off the squad, when the original assignment had been made; Killian held him in open derision, while old Bryson managed to ignore him as much as possible.

The team had been together for seventeen months, now. Rayner frowned bitterly. Seventeen months while a trained ecologist served as whipping-boy for a squad of neurotics. But it would have been the same anywhere else, Rayner thought, and this was the work he was most suited for, the work he most deeply enjoyed. He had never regretted applying for a position in the Examination Corps.

You never had to stay long on one world, in the Corps. You never had to put down roots. And that suited Rayner. As long as he could wander from world to world, he could put up with the scorn of his teammates. At least he was free.

A jewel-bodied insect with gleaming wings flew hummingly past his nose. The thick-ranked trees of the forest seemed to be bent over from the heat. Rayner heard Killian mutter something about the humidity.

Rayner hoisted his pack a little higher on his shoulders and walked on. It wouldn’t be long before they’d be reaching the Terran settlement. Tremors of nervous anticipation ran through him, and he moistened his suddenly dry lips.

The settlers’ village stood at the edge of a giant forest, in a clearing provided by nature near the mouth of a great river. The Examination Squad paused as they came to the settlement.

Two hundred years, and an original allotment of three hundred fifty couples. By now, anywhere from two thousand to five thousand humans should be on Maldonad.

Neatly-aligned streets greeted them. There was no paving, and the design of the buildings was curiously alien, but generally the village resembled all the other villages Rayner had seen in the past year and a half of visiting colonial planets. There did not seem to be any mechanical vehicles. At the edge of the street stood a cart laden down with vegetables, and hitched to it was an alien equivalent of a draft-horse. The animal was sway-backed and scaly, with thick legs ending in splayed hooves, and bright glittering green-gold eyes. It surveyed them lazily and swished its fleshy tail from side to side.

“It looks okay,” Ehrenfeld said. “Let’s go introduce ourselves.”

Rayner felt a twinge of nervousness as they stepped out into the quiet street. It was midday, and the big golden G2-type sun was high overhead. None of the inhabitants were to be seen.

“Obviously they’ve developed the custom of taking a noontime siesta,” Magda Hollis commented.

“Or else they saw us coming and are hiding in their cellars,” Rayner said.

Suddenly the silence was broken by the sound of footfalls. Rayner glanced across the street and saw someone—something—scuttling back into hiding behind the side of a house.

“What was that?” Killian demanded.

“It looked like a child,” Bryson said. “But what kind of child?”

“I’ll go have a look,” Rayner said. No one argued with him. He hitched up his pack and crossed the broad sunbaked street.

Quietly he circled the house; then, catching sight of his prey, he darted out a quick hand and caught it. He lifted it, and stared, astonished.

It was a child, and at a distance it might have seemed to be a human child. But, close up, the differences became apparent. Its skin was deep green and of a pebbly texture. Its high, domed head was virtually hairless. There was something froglike about the child’s face, and the batrachian characteristic was fully borne out by the firm webs between each of its bare toes. As for the eyes, they were the warm, liquid green-gold eyes of the alien beast of burden.

The child wriggled, squirmed, spat curses at him in an incomprehensible tongue. Rayner struggled with it. It seemed to be about nine, and naked except for a cloth round its middle. It had a definite musky odor, unpleasant, dank, sea-like.

“Hey! Come over here and see what I found!” Rayner yelled to his companions.

But at that moment the little creature broke from his grasp, snarled defiantly at him, and dashed away at a lightning speed, vanishing rapidly in the distance. Rayner stared at his hands. They felt slimy.

Shaken, he crossed the street again. “Did you see that thing?” he wanted to know.

Ehrenfeld said, “What was it?”

“Some sort of alien humanoid creature. A young one, unless they’re a race of midgets.”

“The survey chart says there’s no intelligent alien life on Maldonad,” Killian remarked truculently, as if he were trying to prove Rayner a liar.

Rayner glared down at the muscular biologist and said, “Maybe the survey team was wrong. Either that or the settlers here are having some mighty peculiar children.”

He rubbed his hands on his uniform trousers and shuddered. This was only the first surprise Maldonad held, he thought. But there were going to be many more, most likely.

They moved on a hundred feet further into the town, and abruptly the people began to appear. They filed out of the ramshackle old standard-type houses, tiptoeing into the hot streets, standing in tense little circles, staring at the Examination Squad, pointing, whispering, murmuring things to each other.

“Look at them!” Rayner said in horror.

Some of them looked almost human. Those were the ones with long hair, thick limbs, dark eyes. They might have been pure Terran-type humans, except for the greenish cast to their skin and the slight domed shape of their skulls. They looked different, but not alarmingly so.

There were others, though. Some of them were light green in color, almost hairless, with slim delicate bodies and human eyes. Others had the jewel-like eyes of the aliens. It was difficult to point to one of them and say, he was human, or he was an alien. They all seemed to be in a point of transition between the human and alien states. Hybrids.

Rayner’s throat felt dry.

He looked around, at the webbed feet of some of them, the domed heads, the lithe bodies. Then he turned and stared at his companions.

“There was an alien race living here,” he whispered. “And they’ve interbred.”

Magda Hollis nodded. “Fascinating! An entirely new species—semi-aquatic, I’d say.”

“Definite genetic mingling,” Ehrenfeld muttered. “And I’d say it’s been going on ever since the settlers first landed.”

“We’ll have to report this to Earth,” Rayner said. “We can’t cope with this ourselves. There’ll be a full investigation.”

“We’ll investigate first,” Ehrenfeld said. “Fully, before we notify Earth.”

Rayner turned on him. “Our job is to decide whether or not a planet is ready to enter the Council of Worlds, Ehrenfeld. You only need to glance around you to see that no such recommendation can be made here. We ought to pack up and get out, and have a team of specialists sent in to study whatever damnable thing has happened here.”

“I’ll make the decisions on this team,” Ehrenfeld snapped.

A colonist detached himself from the group and walked toward the little knot of whispering Earthmen. Rayner stared at him. He was half-human, half something else, with dark reptilian skin and the face of a human being.

When he spoke, it was in a velvet-lined voice that was more a gentle whisper than anything else. His language was barely recognizable as Terran, but the two centuries had distorted and altered the inflection until it seemed some new language altogether.

“Who are you creatures? Where are you from, and what do you want here?”

“We are from Earth,” Ehrenfeld said, speaking with exaggerated care. “Two hundred years have gone by since the settling of this world, and now we of Earth have returned to view your progress.”

“Earth?” the Maldonadi repeated incredulously. “You are from Earth?”

“Yes.”

The gentle strange eyes seemed to squint. The being turned away from them, faced the silent crowd, and spoke rapidly in what seemed to Rayner like an alien language until he realized it was only a sort of slurred distorted Terran. He caught the unmistakable final words: “They have come to us from Earth!”

Expressions of what seemed like joy spread over the crowd. Tension melted; they grinned toothily and began to cheer. Rayner distinctly heard what they were saying. The words puzzled him.

“They are from Earth! Praised be the Tree!”

The five Earthmen were given quarters in a large building near the center of town, which in times gone by had evidently been the community center of the settlement but which now served as a sort of hotel. Rayner was shown to a room on the ground floor. The building, like all the others in the village, was in a terrible state of repair, but none of the natives seemed to care or to apologize in any way for the shabby condition of the building. Evidently shabbiness was the norm among these strangely altered people.

Once he was settled, Rayner went out into the hall and found his comrades. Oddly, they seemed to feel none of the revulsion Rayner did. They were discussing the situation in abstract, objective tones.

“The survey team must have missed the native species completely,” Killian was saying. “They reported no intelligent animal life at all, and obviously there’s an unknown species of humanoid alien here.”

“And there’s been crossbreeding between human and alien ever since the landing,” Bryson said. “The race we’ve encountered is hybrid, of course. They’ve retained their language and some of the Terran customs, but the alien strain in them is becoming dominant.”

“Did you hear what they were yelling?” Rayner asked. “‘Praised be the Tree.’ They’ve developed their own religion, too.”

“Or borrowed one from the natives,” Magda said. “We can spend months here investigating these people, you know. We’ll be famous in scientific annals forever.”

Rayner shrugged. He knew it would be futile to oppose the four of them. They were determined to remain and study the settlers, and though it was a violation of regulations there was little Rayner could do if they insisted on remaining. His mind obstinately echoed with the pertinent section from Regulations:

101a sub-two: In the event that a world’s inhabitants have been found to deviate substantially from the parent stock, whether through natural mutation or any other genetic alteration, this fact is to be reported immediately to the offices of the Colonial Council. The Examination Squad will regard its work as terminated when such a world is discovered.

Obviously, thought Rayner. The job of an Examination Squad was purely and simply to live among a colonial culture for a period of a week to a month and determine whether the culture was sufficiently advanced to allow it to enter the main stream of galactic life. That meant opening the world to trade and tourism, granting them representation on the Council of Worlds.

Clearly this planet could not qualify for that. In many of the worlds Rayner had visited, there had been serious cultural deviation—as in the planet where cannibalism had become socially approved, or in the world where ceremonial blood-drinking was commonplace. These were relatively minor deviations compared with what had happened on Maldonad. The bloodline of Terra had been mingled with alien blood, here, as nowhere else in the universe.

Rayner shrugged. If his four companions wanted to stay here and act as an investigation committee instead of as an Examination Squad, there was nothing he could do but give in gracefully. He was outnumbered.

The next day they began their full-scale investigation into what had happened on Maldonad. The inhabitants—Rayner could not bring himself to call them “colonists” in their present state—were willing, in fact eager, to help the Earthmen in their inquiry.

The head of the village spent most of the morning with them, explaining the history of the settlement to them. His name was Smissun, he said, and that checked with something in the back of Rayner’s mind.

“Have you been head of the village all your life, Smissun?” Rayner asked.

“And my father before me, and my father’s father before him, and back into the mist of days,” replied the hybrid being, speaking in the soft slurred Terran the colonists used.

Rayner nodded. “That makes sense,” he said to Ehrenfeld. “The original Colony Director on the 2627 ship was named Jair Smithson. Smithson to Smissun; it makes sense. Control has stayed in the same family all along.”

“Tell us what you know of the early days of the colony,” Magda Hollis prompted. Her stylus raced over the pages of her notebook as Smissun spoke.

“We are told we came from Earth originally,” the chieftain said. “That was long ago, when we were different, when we looked like you. Before we found the Tree. Our fathers found the Tree, and chose their wives by it.”

Rayner frowned. The original colonists had all been married on Earth, before they made the trip. He wondered what Smissun meant, but he said nothing.

“In the beginning there were the Earthpeople and the Forest People,” Smissun said. “But the two peoples met at the Tree, and found each other good, and Earthpeople took women from Forest People and the Forest People married of the Earthpeople. And so we have lived.”

And so we have lived, Rayner thought. Hybrids.

Many things seemed puzzling. By all accounts the so-called Forest People were alien, even repugnant to Earthpeople. And yet there had been mating between the groups, and children had been born. Rayner wondered how that could have happened.

“This Tree,” Rayner said. “What is it?”

Smissun looked at him in surprise. “The Tree,” he said, “is the Tree. What else could it be?”

Patiently Rayner asked, “Where is it?”

Smissun pointed behind his shoulder. “In the forest. We go there once a week to worship.”

“And what kind of Tree is it?”

Smissun shrugged gently. “It is—the Tree,” he said simply.

Rayner gave up. Ehrenfeld said, “There are no Earth People left among you now? None of your people looks like us?”

“Occasionally one is born with the white skin and the webless toes,” Smissun said. “These do not live long. There has not been one of them grown to manhood within my lifetime, I believe.”

Killian scowled. “The alien genes are dominant, then. And recessive alien genes must be lethal.”

“What do the Forest People look like?” Bryson asked.

“Like us,” Smissun replied. “But they are better at swimming than we are, and their faces are different.”

“And when could you take us to meet the Forest People?” Rayner wanted to know.

“Soon.”

“This afternoon, perhaps?”

“Oh, no,” the hybrid said. “Not for four days. That is the time of the next Ceremony of the Tree, and we meet them there.”

“You couldn’t take us to the Tree today, then?”

“Oh, no. Not at all.”

The picture was taking shape, and it was a weird one indeed. The five Earthmen discussed it later in the day, as they transcribed their notes for permanent filing and began to form conjectures about what had taken place on the planet of Maldonad.

“The way I figure it,” Killian said, “the Earth settlers got here and built the colony as per regulations. Then somebody found this Tree in the forest. It turned into a sort of trysting place where Earthmen found alien lovers and vice versa. They must have thought it was a nice gag, going out into the forest and carrying on with alien beings.

“But then the babies started to be born both in the colony and in the forest, and the settlers discovered the two races could breed true. It’s a one-in-a-trillion fluke shot that two races developed on different planets could have a homogeneous chromosome pattern, but this must be the millionth shot.

“Within twenty or thirty years nearly all the new children had some degree of alien blood in them. Gradually the hybrid race evolved, and the pure Earth-types disappeared. That’s the situation now. The colonists are almost alien in form, though they’ve kept the language and some of the customs of Earth. And the Forest People still mate with the hybrid offspring of the old colonists.”

“One thing I don’t understand,” Rayner said. “How could it have started in the first place? I thought all the settlers were coupled off at the start. Why should they find these fishlike humanoids more attractive than their own mates?”

“It’s hard to explain to someone like you,” Magda said bitingly. “Maybe they simply found the aliens more attractive than each other. You wouldn’t understand such things.”

“That’ll be enough,” Ehrenfeld said warningly. “I’ve told you to stop ribbing Rayner, Magda.”

“Sorry,” Magda muttered. But there was nothing apologetic in her tone.

Bryson said, “There won’t be much we can do until they take us to the Tree, I guess. We can make photographic records of village life in the meanwhile, anyway.”

Ehrenfeld nodded. “We want to do a thorough job on this planet. I want to bring back a complete story.”

Rayner stared out the window at the bright sky, thick with fleecy clouds. His original feeling of uneasiness still persisted. The thought of a race of hybrids, half Earthmen and half alien creatures, was stomach-turning. He wondered how any such thing could ever have taken place.

There was no doubt that it had taken place. The original Terran genetic stock had been virtually obliterated in two hundred years. In a century more, no doubt, the people of the settlement would be identical in all respects to the mysterious creatures of the forest, and only the birth of an occasional throwback, an occasional pale child without webbed toes, would remind them of their time-shrouded origin on the planet Earth.

On the fourth day, Smissun came to them and said, “This is the day on which we go into the forest to worship the Tree.”

Rayner felt strange excitement stir him as he readied himself to make the journey out into the forest. He had kept to himself during the four days, saying little to his Terran comrades as they moved through the town, photographing, examining, recording.

It was obvious that the hybrids had not bothered to keep up the work of their remote ancestors. Many of the dwellings, Rayner discovered, were virtually falling apart. Some new ones had been built at the far end of the town, but these were of wood and of strange design. It was not hard to picture a day in the near future when all vestiges of the original colonial group from Earth had been eradicated by the grotesque change that had come over the one-time Earthmen.

There was a strange hush over everything as Smissun led them through the town and out into the glades of the forest beyond the broad fast-flowing river. The entire town seemed to accompany them—several thousand people, comprising a genetic melange of all conceivable variations on the human form. Many of the townsfolk were utterly alien in appearance; others still had lingering signs of their Terran ancestry.

They wore their finest clothes as they made the pilgrimage—clean dark-cloth sarongs for the women, loincloths for the men. The children either were naked or wore a brief twist of cloth round their middles.

Sunday morning in Maldonad Colony, Rayner thought wildly. The whole town is turning out for services.

The forest whispered gently as they walked through the well-trodden glades. Ehrenfeld’s camera clicked again and again as some bizarre broad-winged bird in flaming colors fluttered across their path, or some small alien reptile scuttled frantically into the underbrush at their approach. Rayner felt tension mount within him. We’re on our way to the Tree.

They were following the path of the river through the forest. It was still early morning, and the sun was not at its height; even so, the humidity was stifling. Sweat coursed down Magda Hollis’ bare back, and she cursed in a barely audible undertone. She was wearing only a brief and nearly translucent plastic wrap around her hips, and had left her breasts uncovered in the heat. Rayner felt no yearning for her, and he noted with some surprise that the other men in the group had taken no more notice of her near-nudity than had she been a wax doll. He had his own reasons for not being stirred by the sight of Magda’s full breasts, and old Bryson certainly could have no interest—but Killian was behaving most unlike his normal self, and Ehrenfeld seemed to have forgotten that he had once felt jealous of Killian at the time the biologist had been on good terms with Magda.

No one spoke. Smissun led the way, with his family around him and the Earthmen just behind. Then came the whole horde of villagers. In the distance, a forest beast honked thickly, and to their left the water rippled and eddied.

Suddenly Ehrenfeld pointed. “Look up there,” he said in a hushed voice.

Rayner glanced up. He whistled.

Directly ahead of them, perhaps five hundred yards ahead, a tree towered over its companions. Although many of the forest trees were two and three hundred feet high, this one topped them all by more than a hundred feet. Its magnificent crest thrust high up above the close-packed vegetation of the jungle.

There was no doubt. They were approaching the Tree.

Smissun halted and turned to face the Earthmen. There was an expression of exaltation on the hybrid’s face; his large golden eyes were gleaming with joy.

“We draw near the Tree,” he said. “And you will see the Forest People.”

He beckoned them forward. They advanced through a clearing beaten down by the regular procession of thousands of feet over hundreds of years, and suddenly they were in the presence of the Tree. It stood alone, in a broad bare patch in the forest.

It was immense. Its top loomed high in the haze above them, four hundred, five hundred feet from the ground—perhaps even more, Rayner thought. The base of its trunk was a massive wall of wood, more than a hundred feet thick. Great branches, each of them the dimension of a normal tree, grew from its sides in radial spokes. Each branch was heavy with vast limbs, and there was an abundance of glossy green leaves. Here and there, nestling in the foliage, Rayner saw the enormous bright-red bulk of the Tree’s fruit: a melon-sized fruit, bigger than a man’s head.

The hybrid folk were dropping to their knees around the great Tree, falling in reverence before this monster of the forest. Rayner thought dizzily of the depth and breadth of root that must be necessary to support the bulk of a tree such as this one.

A wordless song of praise was rising from the townsfolk now. Rayner understood how humble these people must feel in the presence of the Tree. He felt like kneeling himself, almost, but remained upright.

Near him stood Magda, and not far away were Bryson, Killian, and Ehrenfeld. He glanced at his companions and saw that they, too, were overwhelmed by the magnitude of this Tree of Trees that was the god of the hybrids.

A hymn was going up, now. Rayner strained to catch the words, but it seemed that they were only partly in Terran, and mainly in some strange and alien language whose words were smooth-flowing and liquid, with many vowels and few harsh consonants.

The Earthman realized that other figures were coming from deeper within the forest—lithe, graceful figures, with nothing Earthly about them.

So these are the Forest People, he thought.

Only about twenty of them had appeared, though more seemed to lurk in the dark glades beyond. Superficially they looked humanoid; they had two arms, two legs. But their hands and feet were webbed and ribbed with spines, leaving only the thumb and great toe free for independent action. Their eyes were utterly alien, green-gold and depthless.

They were naked. Their bodies seemed to glisten, as if they were wet from swimming, and Rayner saw gill-like processes at the sides of their jaws that seemed to indicate a semi-aquatic existence.

He saw the differences now between the hybrids and the Forest People. The hybrids were, most of them, clumsy, still laden down with their Terran genetic heritage. The Forest People bore themselves with animal-like grace, and there was a sleek beauty to them that made Rayner understand how the original settlers might have come to mate with them.

The ranks of the Forest People increased now, and they too knelt, joining their hybrid cousins in worship of the great Tree. Rayner glanced around the clearing.

His eyes fell on Magda Hollis. The sociologist stood as if frozen, staring at one of the male Forest People. Her eyes were wide, and her breasts rose and fell irregularly with her disordered breathing. She seemed almost to quiver with desire.

The alien song of praise to the Tree rose to an almost numbing crescendo of sound. Rayner watched unbelievingly as Magda moved on unsteady feet toward the little group of Forest People.

Horror swept through him as he watched. She sank to her knees next to one of the alien creatures, and from her mouth came a wordless song that blended strangely with the hymn to the Tree.

The Ceremony ended some time later, and Earthmen and hybrids made their way back through the now-steaming jungle to the village. The Forest People slipped away, silently as they came, into the darker recesses of the jungle that lay on the far side of the Tree.

Rayner walked by himself, too shocked and disgusted to seek the company of his fellow Examiners. Vivid in his mind was the image of Magda Hollis kneeling next to the sleek moist-skinned alien, her eyes turned toward the being in adoration and lust.

It was the way the hybridization had originally begun, he thought. The sudden quick hot burst of desire at first sight, when Earthman sees alien. It was incomprehensible and vaguely obscene, but there was no denying it had happened.

He wondered if the men of the group had felt the same way about the alien women. He knew that, for his own part, he had found them unattractive, though they were handsome in an exotic sort of way. But he was no judge of such things; and there was no telling what lures Killian or Ehrenfeld might respond to.

He looked at Magda as she walked alone thinking secret thoughts, with a strange smile on her lovely face. Deliberately he came to her side of the path and moved alongside her.

“You’re very quiet,” Rayner said.

“Thinking.”

“May I ask?”

“No,” she said.

He grinned amiably. “You were doing some sociological research at that Ceremony, weren’t you?”

Her hand came up like a rising sword; Rayner saw it come, but allowed the blow to land anyway. It raised an area of stinging redness along his left cheek.

“What I do is my business,” she snapped. “And if you make another remark like that—”

She left it unfinished, but there was dark malice in her tones.

Back at their quarters, Rayner sought out Ehrenfeld and said, “Did you see how Magda behaved at the ceremony this morning?”

“What do you mean?”

“The way she crossed over to those aliens and practically fawned over the one on the end?”

Ehrenfeld’s tanned, leathery face displayed no sign of any emotion. In a quiet voice he said, “I saw it. What am I supposed to say?”

“You mean you don’t object to what she’s up to?”

Ehrenfeld shrugged. “She’s a free individual, Rayner. If she happens to find that alien interesting, there’s no way I can prevent her doing anything about it. You’ll have to learn to mind your own business.”

Rayner took a deep breath. He stared bewilderedly at the squad chief, trying to read the unfathomable expression in the smaller man’s face, wondering if this were really happening or whether it were some drug-induced nightmarish hallucination.

Finally he said, “You don’t seem to get my point. Magda’s an Earthwoman. You don’t object to the fact that she’s obviously falling in love with an alien being?”

The corner of Ehrenfeld’s mouth quirked impatiently. “An entire colony of Earthmen did just that thing two hundred years ago, Rayner. Why should I complain if Magda decides to do the same thing?”

“Because it’s insane and disgusting, that’s why!” Rayner burst out. “Because space knows what kind of alien traits are being mingled into Terran blood! Because—” He stopped. There was obviously little point in arguing with Ehrenfeld, or with any of them.

One of the cardinal rules of Terran civilization was that bloodlines had to be preserved. Man’s genetic heritage was the product of centuries of selective breeding; it was not lightly to be destroyed.

Stringent laws prevented undesirable marriages. Sickly genes were weeded out of the species. The insane, the unfit, the hereditarily deficient—these were forbidden to breed, by laws harsh to the individual but kindly in the light of the overall future of the race. A new Earthman was emerging, healthier, wiser than ever before.

What the Maldonad colony had done, what Magda Hollis was now doing, was ten times more dreadful than mere violation of the eugenics laws. Alien blood, alien genes, mingled with those of Earth—Rayner’s mind rebelled at the thought. It was inconceivable.

Yet these four fellow Earthmen of his did not seem to object at all. It was as if, thought Rayner, they were under the influence of some strange compulsion, utterly outside themselves.

Two days went by; days in which the group of Earthmen continued their researches, each along their own specialized lines. Rayner surveyed the district, preparing his ecological report. Bryson and Magda operated as a unit, studying the hybrid people from sociological and anthropological viewpoints, analyzing the strange culture that had sprung up in this one-time Terran settlement. Killian ran biological tests; Ehrenfeld worked ceaselessly as the squad coordinator, preparing the unified report that would be submitted upon their return to Earth.

On the third day since the ceremony of the Tree, Rayner noticed that Magda was behaving peculiarly. She seemed tense and high-strung, irritable, fidgety; she continued to stare at her wristwatch, as if the day could not pass fast enough for her.

Rayner wondered what was on her mind. She spent half the day primping and fussing, as if she had an extra-special date that evening; as if—he went stiff in sudden alarm—as if she were going to meet a lover.

He decided to speak to Killian.

The blockily-built young biologist was working in his improvised lab when Rayner entered. Killian was bent over his microscope, adjusting the viewing stage, groping out with one hand for his tray of specimens, and scribbling notes every time he had a free hand available.

Rayner paused a few moments at the door, not wanting to interrupt anything. But Killian remained busily at work, and it became apparent to Rayner after a while that he was deliberately being ignored.

He cleared his throat. “Killian?”

“That you, Rayner?”

“Yes. Could I have a couple of words with you now?” Rayner said.

Without looking up the biologist muttered, “I’m pretty busy on these trypanosome slides, Rayner. You think you could come back in a little while—tomorrow afternoon, some time?”

Rayner’s jaws tightened. In a level voice he said, “I want to talk to you about Magda, Killian. And I don’t want to wait till tomorrow.”

Reluctantly Killian shut off the illumination for the microscope and restored his slide to the nutrient chamber. He pushed his sheaf of notes to one side, swiveled in his chair, and looked up at Rayner with an expression of sour impatience.

“Well?”

“You and Magda were pretty friendly aboard the ship coming out, weren’t you?”

Killian frowned. “Maybe. What’s it to you?”

“Nothing much. I was just thinking that the two of you must have had some sort of fight lately, the way you’ve been ignoring each other.”

The biologist drummed on the desktop. “I’m not married to the girl, you know. What happened on shipboard was just a shipboard romance. Over. Kaput. I have no more interest in that girl than I do in old Bryson, at the moment. But you didn’t come here to talk gossip with me, did you? You can clear out if that’s all that was on your mind. I’m too busy to—”

“Magda’s in love with one of those alien beings,” Rayner interrupted suddenly. “She’s going to go out to the forest tonight and meet him—it?”

He thought it would be a bombshell, but Killian hardly seemed to react at all.

“So?”

“So? Killian, doesn’t it mean anything to you to know that a girl you’ve loved is meeting an alien being in the forest and—and—” Rayner stopped. “I guess I must look like an awful busybody to you people.”

“You do,” Killian agreed coldly.

“It isn’t because I give a damn about your love life, or Magda’s,” Rayner burst out bitterly. “It’s just that it makes me sick to think of these hybrids…and Magda going to produce another one. How could anyone possibly want to get that close to one of those things?”

For the first time an expression appeared on Killian’s face. An expression of pity for Rayner.

“How could anyone possibly not want to?” Killian asked in astonished tones.

“You mean—you too—”

A smile of joy appeared on the biologist’s swarthy face. “There’s one of them out there, a slim little girl I saw at the Tree last week—and Ehrenfeld has his eye on one too. Even old Bryson says he wishes he was younger, so he could have one. And you, Rayner? It makes you sick?” Killian shook his head. “You poor pathetic thing. I don’t think I’ve ever felt sorrier for you than right now. I wondered why you stood like that the other day at the Tree, stiff and bored-looking. Now I know, Rayner. You just weren’t responding. You poor creature.”

Rayner had had enough. He glanced puzzledly at Killian, shrugged, and said, “So you’re in love with an alien too, eh? And Ehrenfeld? I guess I’m wasting my breath, then. I guess I might as well get out of here.”

He opened the door and stared once more at Killian before closing it. The biologist’s face still wore that calm expression of deep compassion.

In his room that night, Rayner lay on the straw pallet the hybrids had provided for him and stared upward at the striated pattern of veining that had formed in the ceiling where the ancient paint was starting to crack and crumble.

He had retired early, but he was unable to sleep. Instead he revolved the situation round wearily in his mind, examining it from all angles, trying to make it make sense.

His four companions had been normal Earthmen until the landing on Maldonad. He was fairly sure of that. He had spent seventeen months with them, and during that time none of them had revealed any unnatural urges, none of them had shown any strange predilections or bizarre personality traits.

Until landing here. And here on Maldonad three hundred and fifty supposedly normal men and three hundred and fifty allegedly normal women, all of them hand-screened and specially approved for colonization by the rigid classification system of the Colonial Force, had given themselves up to the aliens as lovers and had produced a strange semi-human race of hybrid beings.

It made no sense, Rayner thought.

It made no sense—unless one postulated the existence of some intangible force that had brought about the grotesque intermingling of the races.

What was it Killian had said about his behavior at the Tree? I wondered why you stood like that the other day at the Tree, stiff and bored-looking. Now I know, Rayner. You just weren’t responding.

You just weren’t responding, Rayner thought. Responding to what?

Immediately his trained mind gave him a plausible answer: responding to some psychic force, perhaps thrown out by the Tree, which urges the species to mate with each other.

It was biological nonsense, Rayner thought. But yet he had seen the neat classifications of biology—Terran biology—overthrown on half a dozen worlds before. There had been strange beasts, half animal half plant, with green chlorophyll surging in their veins. Those had been on the planet Legba, roaming the deserts of nitrogen-sand and feeding omnivorously. And there were the spider-beasts of Riyell, which metamorphosed weirdly, passing through amphibious and reptilian stages before reaching their final pseudomammalian forms.

Evolution had unrolled simultaneously on hundreds of worlds. The cosmos had played many tricks, made many experiments with the life force. And perhaps here on Maldonad, a sentient Tree, brooding over the forest like a rooted titan, sending out psi pulses which affected all within its reach, all except Rayner himself.

Yes, he thought. It makes sense. It makes a crazy sort of sense.

He rolled over, trying to sleep. The sound of a door opening further down the hall echoed for a moment, and he sat up, frowning. Everyone had long since turned in. Lights were out. There was no reason why—

Magda.

He recalled immediately; the primping, the fussing. Her impatience.

The hour of rendezvous had come.

Silently Rayner rose from his cot and drew some clothes on. He had to see for his own eyes, confirm what he already knew to be a foregone fact. Stealthily he slipped out into the hall just in time to see the slim figure of Magda, still clad in her sleeping wraps, vanishing at the end of the corridor, turning to go down the stairs.

Rayner followed along the corridor. He paused in the dark; there was a window at the head of the stairs that looked out over the front of the building. Quickly he snapped the release-catch; the window sprang open.

Cool strange-smelling Maldonad night air flooded in. He thrust his head out. He heard low voices.

Magda had appeared at the building. There was someone with her, someone who had been waiting in the shadows, someone who had advanced out of the darkness to meet her. Rayner heard them talking.

The other spoke in liquid alien accents.

He watched as they melted together in a tight embrace; then the alien being took Magda by the arm, gestured, led her away. They strode rapidly down the deserted village streets together, heading for the border that separated forest from settlement. With straining eyes Rayner watched as long as he could, until the pair vanished into the moonless darkness at the end of the road.

He turned away. Magda had gone to meet her lover. There was no doubt about it, now.

There were only four Earthmen when the time came to eat the morning meal. Killian, Bryson, Ehrenfeld, and Rayner. They ate quietly. No one seemed to comment on the fact that Magda was not among them this morning, and by this time Rayner knew better than to raise the question. He ate quickly; he was not hungry. As soon as he could he left the company of his fellow Earthmen and settled down to his day’s work.

He worked listlessly, unable to concentrate. The idea of an intelligent tree troubled him, almost frightened him. He pictured the vast thing rooted there in the forest, sending out its emanations.

Magda did not return from the forest. No one mentioned her name. The day slipped by slowly. Groups of the hybrids collected from time to time outside the building that served as the Examination Squad’s headquarters, staring at the Earthmen strangely. They almost seemed to be smiling encouragingly.

A second evening Rayner stared at the ceiling and heard sounds in the hallway; a second time he rose from bed to follow the footsteps down the hall, and a second time he peered from the landing window.

He saw the thick-bodied form of Killian down below. Killian—with a native woman who looked like a forest sprite. The two of them vanished into the darkness of night.

Two gone. Two more converts for the Tree.

Breakfast was an oddly subdued meal that morning, with only Ehrenfeld and Bryson and Rayner there. Bryson said little, Rayner nothing. Ehrenfeld spoke briefly of some plans he had.

When the meal was over Ehrenfeld turned to Rayner and said, “Would you stop into my office for a couple of moments, Rayner?”

Rayner shrugged and followed the squad leader down the hall. They turned in at the entrance to Ehrenfeld’s office.

Lying on the leader’s bed was a neatly printed slip of paper. Ehrenfeld scooped it up.

“I’d like you to take the day off and return to the ship, Rayner. I want you to transmit this message back to Earth for us.”

Rayner smiled apologetically. “Killian is officially the signal officer,” he said.

“Killian isn’t here. You know how to operate the subradio transmitter, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Then you’ll do so. The message is to be transmitted to the main Colonial Force office, and you’re to wait until you have an acknowledgement. Read through the message now and let me know if there are any questions you want to raise.”

He handed the paper to Rayner, who took it and read the brief message through quickly. When he was finished, he stared at the squad leader.

“You intend to send this?”

“Of course. Is something wrong?”

Rayner’s hands trembled a bit. He said, “It’s—it’s a recommendation that the planet of Maldonad be admitted into the Council of Worlds at once, with full representation on a parity status.” He shook his head. “That means opening of galactic trade routes between Maldonad and the other worlds, and sending of delegates from here to Earth, and tourist travel—”

“I’m well aware of what I’ve written there,” Ehrenfeld snapped crisply.

“You can’t be, sir! How could those half-civilized hybrids send a delegate to the Council of Worlds? How could there possibly be any trade between a non-industrial tribal culture like this and the civilized words of the galaxy? Pardon me, sir, but this message doesn’t make any sense at all. This world is the least qualified for admission of all those I’ve ever seen.”

Ehrenfeld glared coldly at him for a moment. Scowling, he said, “Mister Rayner, I order you to return to the ship and transmit the message to Earth. Do I understand that you’re defying my order?”

Rayner considered. Defiance of the squad leader was mutiny—punishable, if Ehrenfeld so chose, by immediate execution. The squad leader was fingering the blaster at his belt.

Finally Rayner nodded reluctantly. “All right,” he said in a hoarse voice. “Order accepted.”

It was a five-mile trek from the colonial settlement through the forest to the clearing where the Examination Squad ship had come down. Rayner set out almost immediately, bearing a light pack and Ehrenfeld’s message.

It was a warm day, even for Maldonad. Flies buzzed round him as he walked. Ground-lizards ran daringly up to his feet, darted out their scarlet triforked tongues, and scurried away toward safety. After half an hour, he saw the slim greenish-blue needle that was their ship, standing erect, glittering brightly in the hot mid-morning sunlight of Maldonad.

Moving mechanically, he covered the remaining distance to the ship, sprung the hidden lever that lowered the catwalk, climbed up the metal ladder into the entry hatch fifty feet above the ground. The hatch door slid hissingly closed behind him.

He made his way toward the signal compartment.

The subradio set occupied nearly one entire wall of the compartment. Its pilot light glinted redly, indicating that the set was ready for use at any time. With shaking fingers, Rayner began to set up the pattern of balanced forces that would hurl Ehrenfeld’s message across the light-years to the sensitive trans-space receptors on the dome of the Colonial Forces building in Geneva, on Earth.

He stopped.

Briefly conflict swirled in his mind. He had been trained to loyalty; it was more than a pattern of action for him, it was a way of life. He had never even so much as thought of countermanding an order given by a superior officer before.

But this was different. The superior officer was insane.

The pertinent section of the Regulations drifted into his mind:

14b sub-three: When a commanding officer is rendered unable to serve by virtue of disease or other impedance, his place shall be taken by the officer of next highest rank. Orders given by such a commanding officer during his period of disability are to be considered null and void unless countersigned by the acting commanding officer who has replaced him.

Rayner drew from his pocket the text of Ehrenfeld’s message, unfolded it, and read it through once again. Only a madman could have written such a message, he thought. A madman—or one who was under some external influence.

Such as that of the Tree.

There was little doubt in his mind of what he should do. It was impossible to transmit the message as it stood. Ehrenfeld’s object had clearly been to bring more Earthmen to Maldonad, where they too might fall under the influence of the Tree. Rayner knew he would have to block any such thing from happening.

With unquivering fingers he completed the connection and waited for Earthside to respond with the acknowledgement. After a moment it came: the pattern of buzzes that meant, We read you, go ahead.

Rayner lifted the code microphone to his lips. “I’m speaking from the ship Examiner Eleven, landed on the planet Maldonad as part of our examination tour. I wish to report that the other four members of my team have fallen victim to a strange alien sentient vegetable life-form.”

In quick, terse sentences he explained what had happened to the original colony planted on Maldonad, and then outlined the behavior of Magda and Killian during the past several days. He finished by reading the text of Ehrenfeld’s message in the light of conditions on Maldonad. He then offered his conclusions about the nature of the Tree, and added a warning that further investigations on Maldonad were to be considered only with great precautions.

Finally he said, “That sums it up. I’ll try to broadcast again tonight if I get the chance. Over. Out.”

He rose. Now Earth had the full report. But there remained one thing for him to do, to make sure that no Earthmen fell prey to the Tree ever again. He left the signal compartment and headed back through the spaceship’s narrow companionway to the weapons compartment.

Dust covered the racks of weapons. An Examination Squad only rarely made use of the arsenal it carried. Rayner looked around the storeroom until he found what he wanted: the flamethrower. Not even the Tree could stand up to the deadly neutron barrage of the flamethrower for long.

Cradling the bulky weapon in his arms, he made his way down the catwalk again and into the forest. It was past noon. Birds sang cheerfully.

By nightfall things would be different on Maldonad, he thought. After I’ve destroyed the Tree.

By the time he reached the village, the sun had begun to dip toward the horizon, and there was the first faint chill of night in the air. Goggle-eyed, the chattering hybrids stared at him as he walked down the wide street carrying the neutronic flamethrower.

He entered the building where the Earthmen had been quartered, and put a cupped hand to his lips.

“Ehrenfeld?”

A moment parsed; no response came. “Ehrenfeld?” he called again. “Killian? Bryson?”

Still no reply. “Magda? Are you in there? Is anybody in there?”

An alien voice at his elbow said softly, “The other Earthmen are in the forest. Why are you not in the forest with them?”

Rayner turned and saw Smissun. “A good question,” he said. “I guess I’ll go to the forest right now. I’ll go join my friends.”

“They have been worried about you. You did not yield to the Tree.”

Rayner nodded. “That’s all over with, now. I feel the Tree calling. I must go.”

Smissun pointed to the flamethrower and said, “What is that?”

“An offering for the Tree,” Rayner said curtly.

He found the forest path that led down by the river toward the Tree, and followed it. After a while the great bulk of the Tree became visible above the treetops. Rayner felt a little quiver of apprehension.

There’s nothing to be afraid of, he told himself. The Tree’s big, but it can’t move. It can’t defend itself. And I don’t feel its radiation.

He moved on through the noisy forest.

Fifteen minutes later he was at the edge of the clearing of the Tree; he looked about warily, not wanting to run into any of the aliens until he had done what he intended to do. He eyed the monster speculatively. It would take at least ten minutes of full-power thrust to cut completely through that vast trunk.

He moved round the Tree, calculating angles for the job of felling the great thing. Finally he was satisfied; he would make a small cut on one side, then one on the opposite side, and so maneuver things that the Tree fell sideways into the river.

A press of a lever released the tripod on which the flamethrower rested. Rayner settled down comfortably behind it. It was no problem to center the huge trunk in the weapon’s sights, and he adjusted the thrust controls with cool hands.

Just press the stud, he thought. A picture sprang to his mind, of red atomic flame leaping from the shielded muzzle of the thrower, of the bark and sap and wood of the ancient Tree melting away before the impact, of the mighty old giant toppling defenselessly. All I do is press the stud.

He jabbed down on the firing key. A tongue of flame burst forth, ripped into the side of the Tree. It seemed to him that a voiceless scream of agony echoed in the forest, soundless, just a shivering impulse of pain radiating from the wounded tree. He prepared for a second burst.

“Rayner!” a voice shouted suddenly.

He glanced up and saw Killian coming toward him over the clearing. There was a wild, ragged expression in the biologist’s eye. Rayner cursed; he might never get the job done now.

Springing up from the flamethrower, he ran to meet Killian’s attack. The biologist was nearly a foot shorter than Rayner, but broad and muscular; thick hands grasped Rayner’s wrists, and he struggled to break loose.

Foam was dripping from Killian’s lips. His face was pale and almost inhuman. Rayner wrestled with him, swung him around, fought to hurl him to the ground. Killian hung on viciously.

Suddenly Rayner managed to break his hold; he swung Killian aloft, threw him crashing to the ground. The biologist rolled over dizzily without getting up. Rayner whirled. A great gaping hole had appeared in the side of the Tree; if only he could finish the job before any of the others—

Too late.

They were all around him suddenly, Magda and Ehrenfeld and even withered old Bryson, and as if in response to unvoiced commands from the wounded Tree they were surging in frenzied activity.

“Murderer…vandal…” Magda cried, in hasty gasps, as she assailed Rayner, raking her nails down the side of his face, ripping away flesh. He struggled to get past her, to reach the flamethrower.

Bryson was crouched over it, efficiently ripping away the connecting chambers, tearing up the delicate sighting mechanism, prying the thrower apart and rapidly turning it into so much junk. Killian stirred and scrambled to his feet. Ehrenfeld, eyes raging maniacally, advanced on Rayner and seized his arms.

“You’re all crazy!” Rayner cried. “That Tree—it’s got you under control! Can’t you understand it?”

Laughing hideously, Bryson hurled fragments of the shattered flamethrower at Rayner. In a cold inhuman voice Ehrenfeld said, “You didn’t respond to the Tree, and so you tried to destroy it. But the Tree warned us! We got here nearly in time. Plenty of time to save the Tree.”

“No,” Rayner shouted frantically. “You’re human beings! This is all wrong!”

“Wrong?” Magda screamed. “You—you android! A synthetic man sent along because the law forced us to take you, a laboratory thing without emotions or feelings—and you tell us we’re human?”

Rayner saw that a crowd had gathered—alien and hybrid alike, come to see the desecrator of the Tree punished. They were chanting wordlessly now, a frenzied and wild song of vengeance.

He realized that this was the finish—but at least he had warned Earth. He had done that much. And if I hadn’t been an android? he thought, as they seized him and tied his limbs together. If I had been naturally born like these, I’d be a slave of the Tree myself now. But I warned Earth.

“I didn’t send your message,” he told Ehrenfeld. “I warned Earth what the Tree was. I told them you’d all become enslaved by it. They’ll be here with bombs, Ehrenfeld. They’ll destroy your precious tree.”

But there was no use talking to them; the frenzy was on them, and they could not hear. Rayner struggled in vain as they bore his pinioned body toward the Tree, laid him on one mighty root that was wider than a man’s body. They were dancing around him now, alien and hybrid and Earthman, singing joyfully. He saw a barbed knife glinting in Ehrenfeld’s hand.

He wasn’t afraid of death. How could he be, when he was an android, a synthetic creature that had never truly lived? He closed his eyes and waited. The Colonial Force knew what it was doing when it required one android to be included in each Examination Squad, he thought. He would die, perhaps, but no more Earthmen would become slaves of the Tree.

He opened his eyes and saw Ehrenfeld poised above him for the death-stroke. The onetime squad leader looked more like a beast of the forest than like an Earthman now. Rayner managed a smile.

“Praised be the Tree!” Ehrenfeld cried.

The knife came down. “Praised be the Tree!” They were the last words Rayner heard, before he found out what it was like to die.

FRONTIER PLANET
(1957)

The same June, 1958 issue of Super Science that brought the world my novelet “Slaves of the Tree” offered a second product of my red-hot typewriter, a short story called “Frontier Planet,” which I also wrote in October of 1957 and which was published under the name of “Calvin M. Knox.”

This one is really shameless. The term “space opera,” which refers to science fiction that uses tried-and-true action-fiction formulas, was devised as a variation on the phrase “horse opera,” meaning a formula Western story, the sort of stuff involving settlers and Indians, sheriffs and cattle rustlers, card sharps and gunslingers, all that classic pulp fiction set in an Old West that probably never really existed. And, just as I had written “Harwood’s Vortex” the year before in a deliberate nod to early science fiction’s old mad scientist/beautiful daughter formula, I acknowledged space opera’s antecedents in Western fiction with “Frontier Planet,” a straightforward Western story in which the settlers happen to be living on a planet called Hannebrink IV instead of some remote corner of Arizona, the cattle are beasts with red and green stripes and long swan-like necks, and instead of hostile Navajos or Apaches the ranchers are faced with the menace of “squat ugly gray creatures, practically neckless, with leathery jointed hides that gleamed dully in the late-afternoon sunlight.” All the elements of a traditional Western story are here: the isolated farmhouse on the prairie, the brave husband out on patrol in the foothills, the valiant pioneer wife alone in the house as a mounted party of aliens swoops down to attack.

I couldn’t follow the usual downbeat structure of the typical Super-Science tale here. Having the pioneer family wiped out by the Injuns after putting up a gallant resistance would have been too much of a deviation from the Western-story template I was working with. It would have been absurd, in fact. So—this is another spoiler, I guess—be advised that “Frontier Planet” has a happy ending, as pulp Westerns customarily did. The pleasure the story afforded me, and, I hope, you, was the sly retro one of sneaking an out-and-out Western story into a science-fiction magazine, the very thing that had been standard practice in the old pulp days of science fiction but was supposedly no longer done in our field.

——————

It was a deceptively peaceful day. The hot Sol-type sun had burned away the morning clouds, leaving clear blue sky for the afternoon. A gentle but sturdy wind was blowing in from the sea, carrying with it the faintly iodized smell of the ocean, bearing the tang of the water to the small Earth settlement.

Brian Elson turned to his wife and said, “There. Have you ever seen a lovelier sight in your life than that field—our field—with our crops growing in it? And the sun coming down, and the sea-wind blowing. Could you ever find anything like that on Earth, Mae?”

Mae Elson shook her yellow-haired head in reluctant disagreement. She was ten years younger than her husband, at twenty-three. She had been hardly more than a girl when she married him, and not much past twenty-one when they left Earth to become settlers on the frontier planet of Hannebrink IV.

“I’ve never said it wasn’t lovely, Brian. It is. It’s the loveliest sight in the universe. But—”

“But what, Mae?”

She turned to him, looking up at his tanned face with its work-coarsened features. “Out there,” she said, pointing to the jagged range of hills that served as the wall between the settlement and the wilderness beyond. “Back of the hills. The aliens—plotting, scheming, getting ready to sweep down and kill us.”

“Mae—”

“No!” It was an old argument between them, one that had never died since the discovery that Hannebrink IV was inhabited by intelligent humanoids in a pre-technological culture pattern. Humanoids who ran naked through the virgin forests to the west, and who threatened constantly to drive the Earthmen from their planet. “You keep telling me the aliens are afraid of us, that they won’t ever attack. What about Mark Brannon, though?”

“He went too far from the settlement. The idiot was prospecting for uranium, I guess, and some wild beast must have killed him.”

“And some wild beast carefully cut off his hands and feet and smashed his equipment?” Mae asked. “No, Brian. He was murdered by the aliens. The same way they’re going to murder us, some day. In our sleep, maybe.”

Elson sighed deeply, turned, let his hands rest lightly on his wife’s shoulders. “We’ve been through this a million times, Mae. Let’s not discuss it any more.”

“Don’t I ever count?”

He frowned. “We discussed this step very carefully before we left Earth. We agreed there might be dangers—but we decided it would be worth whatever dangers there were, if only to get away from the muck and filth of Earth. Remember? It cost us five thousand credits to get here—and if we went back to Earth we’d be in debt to the spacelines for the next ten years.”

“I want to have children, Brian. I don’t want to have to live in constant fear of what might come down on us from behind those hills.”

“Would you rather have your children grow up on Earth?” he wanted to know. “On a planet of twelve billion people, where there isn’t room for a man to turn around without apologizing? And you know we’d be in debt if we went back. Your children would grow up in poverty. At least here they’ll be free—tall strapping boys and girls who know what it’s like to be a human being, instead of a sardine crammed into a can.”

Mae stared at his broad, ruggedly unhandsome face a long moment. They had had this discussion so many times before, and always Brian had won. Inwardly she had to admit that he was right, that their children would be happier here on Hannebrink IV.

Except for the aliens. They cast a menacing cloud over every aspect of settlement life.

“All right,” she said, defeated. “We won’t talk about it any more.” She glanced out toward the field. “I guess lunch hour’s over. You’d better get out there and finish up. I’ll get busy round the house again.”

It was a regular routine of chores. Most of the time she was so busy she had no time to think, worry, brood. She just worked, and she was happy.

Life on Hannebrink IV was incredibly different from life on Earth. She had been born on the west coast of North America, in the population area known as the Pacifica—a sprawling, brawling, jam-packed area that spread from Washington southward to the tip of California, and held seventy-five million people. Somehow she had been singled out of all that mass by Brian, and he had married her, three years back, in 2762.

They had lived for a time in the allotted compartment for newly-married couples in the Eleventh Income Stratum—that is, in a one-room cubicle with adjoining semi-private toilet facilities and community kitchen, on the eighty-seventh floor of a hundred-fifty story housing development in what had once been the City of Los Angeles before the unification of Pacifica.

They had lived there two months. Then, one night, Brian had come home from his job with Central Transport bearing a sheaf of glossy folders and booklets. It was data on the colony-worlds.

There were over five hundred of them, new, unspoiled worlds out in the stars, pleading for colonists. Life was clean and fresh out there, but hard—and the worlds of Zyma and Vannevar VII and Leswick and Carbley and Hannebrink IV needed colonists, brave men and women willing to give up their jobs and homes and forsake the overcrowded mother world forever.

It was a hard decision to make. Life on Earth was scarcely pleasant, but it was secure; there were few dangers, no uncertainties. Brian had a good job, and the labor regulations made it certain that he would hold that job so long as he was qualified for it. In a year’s time they would be eligible to move on to a room with a private bath; perhaps by 2770 or so they might even have a two or three-room flat someplace overlooking the Pacific. These were the things they could look forward to, on Earth.

The planets were less certain. The colony worlds had all been thoroughly surveyed—as thoroughly as a five-man survey scout team could manage, in a few months’ time. How thoroughly could five men survey an entire world, even in a lifetime? It was relatively probable that any world passed by the survey teams was fairly suitable for human habitation. The planets were there; the invitation was out. And Brian wanted to go.

Mae pored over the travel folders endlessly, and before long the bright natural-color photos had their effect. She had never seen a tree or a blade of grass, in her twenty years. The photos showed luxuriant green carpets broken by towering brown-boled trees heavy with fruit. Sweeping vistas of sky, broad waterways, open fields yearning for the hand of the cultivator.

She saw alien animals, grotesque, strangely colored, some terribly fierce-looking, others lovable, cuddly. She saw thick forests of red and violet trees shot through with blazes of yellow. She could almost smell the clear sweet air of the colony worlds. There was no need for a room filter out there, she thought. Once a week she changed the filters on the room-vent, and saw the pounds of soot that had been combed from the city’s atmosphere.

After that, the path was clear. “We’ll go,” she agreed. “But where?”

“Let’s look at the folders some more,” Brian suggested amiably.

Three nights later, they had made their choice. Hannebrink IV, a world in the Alpheraz sector—Earthtype, with a diameter of 9000 miles and a gravitational constant of 1.003 Earth-norm; a world of blue skies and open fields, and three bright shimmering moons that cast strange intertwining beams of light which distorted the night-time shadows.

They drew their savings from the bank and applied for entry, and were admitted. They bought their ticket—one-way only, for two. It cost them all they had plus a little more, but the spaceline agreed to let them make up the deficit later, when they were settled.

The journey across space took several weeks. Mae was beside herself with impatience. Finally came the landing on Hannebrink IV.

The first few weeks of toil, the aches, the pains, all gladly contributed for the sake of breathing fresh air and seeing cloud-specked blue skies—

And then the discovery that the survey team had not quite done a comprehensive job. That in the wooded hills in the heart of the continent there roamed nomadic aliens, barely civilized, full of hatred for the intruders from the skies.

But by that time, of course, it was too late to go back.

That night, as on all the other nights of the year, Mae and Brian Elson saddled their riding-beasts and rode down to the big frame structure in the center of the settlement that served as the community center and town hall for the young colony.

There were eleven hundred settlers, spread in a huge loose semi-circle over the fertile flatlands at the extreme eastern edge of the continent. On one side of them lay a sea 8000 miles across; on the other, a range of steep hills, and beyond them an untamed continent.

Communications between the farmhouses were poor. There was a phone hookup, but it was unpredictable and often out of order. The customary method of communication was the nightly meeting in the town hall.

When the Elsons arrived, they saw most of the settlers were already there. The long hitching-post outside the big building was almost completely filled by the beasts the colonists used for transportation. Mechanical vehicles were impossibly expensive to import from Earth, and difficult for the colonists to build at their present level of mechanization; it was easier to use the sleepy-eyed horse-like creatures for getting around. They were angular things with coarse green hides and tiny horns behind their ears; they had a sort-of hump amidships that made a useful natural saddle.

Brian dismounted, helped Mae from her animal, and deftly hitched the two beasts to a vacant place along the rail. They went inside.

Friends greeted them as they took their usual seats. Mae saw Liza Brannon, Mark’s widow, talking to the Jespersons. Ever since her husband had been killed while scouting the area just on the far side of the bordering hills, Liza had lived alone, farming her land as best she could and being helped out by any of the menfolk who had a spare hour. Mae pitied her. All the colony consisted of married couples; it was a strict requirement. Liza was the only single woman in the colony now. If any man’s wife died in the next few years, he would marry her—but until then, she could only continue to wait.

After about an hour of informal exchange of news, the meeting itself got under way. Claude Merriam, the tall, distinguished-looking man who served as Colony Chief this year, came to the front of the hall and called the meeting to order.

“I want to get down to business right away,” Merriam said. His voice was deep and rich, a dark resonant baritone that had no need of artificial amplification. “We have a serious problem on our hands. I don’t want to scare you, friends, but I don’t want any of you to start getting overconfident either.”

He looked around the room. “Three days ago I sent Paul Chasen and Harvey Roberts on a scouting mission to the west. I didn’t see any need for stirring up alarm by making any public announcement of this. They got back here this afternoon, and I want you to listen to them now. Paul? Harvey? Take over.”

Two men that Mae knew only vaguely came striding through the aisleway and leaped lightly up to the stage. Paul Chasen was a farmer from the waterside area, tall and sun-darkened, with a mop of blonde hair; Roberts was older, about Brian’s age, a short balding man with thick muscular arms and a barrel-chest.

He was the one who spoke first. “I guess I don’t need to mention the death of Mark Brannon much to you. It’s ten days since we found Mark’s body at the edge of the cliff region. There was some talk that he might have been killed by the natives, and so Mr. Merriam came around and asked for a couple of volunteers to explore the area round about here and see if anything suspicious might be going on. Paul and I decided to take a look around. Paul, you want to tell them what we saw?”

Chasen cleared his throat. “We took a pretty near westward route through the forest, following the river a way, then branching north at the first ford. We came across a band of natives about thirty miles from here, camping out. They didn’t see us. But we saw them. They were holding some sort of execution, it seemed. One of their own kind was being put to death.” He moistened his lips and gulped. “We found the body later. It—it looked just like Mark Brannon’s body when it was found.”

“That pretty much proves that it was the aliens who killed Mark,” Roberts said. “But then we went a little further and came on a whole bunch of the aliens camping together. Three or four different tribes, it seems. Looking like they were getting ready to make war.”

Mae Elson’s hands felt chilled. She slipped one into her husband’s hand and squeezed tightly. He squeezed back, but it was not reassuring, somehow.

Claude Merriam took the floor again. He looked gravely worried.

“Difficult times are ahead for us, friends. We’re going to have to take emergency steps.”

From the audience someone yelled, “What kind of steps you mean, Claude?”

“We’ll have to be on our guard constantly,” Merriam said. “Suppose you hear me out, and then I’ll call for a vote on all my proposals.

“One: we’ll have to establish a regular day-and-night warning system. I want men to fan out over the hill area on eight-hour shifts and keep watch. I’ve drawn up a rotation system for the shifts.

“Two: we’ll have to be ready at home. That means periodic inspection of your weapons. The women will have to learn how to use a blaster, those of you that don’t. I’m not saying there’ll be an attack, but when the attack comes—if it comes—we can’t afford to have anybody not taking part in the defense. There aren’t enough of us to spare anybody.

“Three: we’ll need a stockade to protect the center of the settlement. I propose that each man in the community donate one hour and a half of his time a day to working on this stockade. I’ve drawn up a schedule for that too, by the way.

“Four: this part’s unofficial, and not really to be voted on. There are almost six hundred couples in this colony, and even though we’ve been on Hannebrink IV almost three years, some of us, only a hundred thirty babies have been born. Maybe you’re thinking that it isn’t safe to have children on a frontier world until things are more stable here. Well, that sort of thinking has its truth in it, but you’ll have to think about the other side now.

“We need population. The bigger and stronger we get, the less chance there is that the aliens ever will try to attack.”

Merriam paused a moment and glanced around the silent hall. “Okay. You’ve heard what I’ve had to say. You know the danger that exists. If anybody’s against any of my proposals, let him speak up now.”

The silence became intense.

Merriam waited more than a minute; finally he said, “I’ll consider that a vote of confidence. All right. We start organizing for defense tonight.”

The next few days were tense, frightening ones for Mae Elson. It seemed to her that the aliens were likely to sweep down in fury at any moment. As she moved around the farm, doing her chores in loneliness while Brian worked in the fields, she could not resist stealing an occasional look across the broad fertile plains at the dark rim of violet-hued hills that separated them from the territory of the aliens. Even now, she thought, they might be moving in single file over the hills, heading towards us—

She managed to look as if she were unafraid. As she milked the cow-beast (which was nothing like a cow at all, being striped laterally red and green, and with a long thin tube of a neck, something like a swan’s, which made grazing a simple matter) she whistled cheerfully to herself, and as she gathered the speckled blue eggs of the native hens or scrubbed the spotless prefabricated farmhouse or took goods to market, she pretended that life on Hannebrink IV was as safe as possible.

There were ugly reminders, though. Brian taught her how to use the blaster, and she practiced on a dead tree behind the house, lopping off limbs at Brian’s commands. And for ninety minutes every day Brian left the farm to work on the palisade that was growing round the settlement, and one day in every eight he served a spell in the network of watchmen that roamed the hills.

Life went on. But the vision of alien marauders burned deeply in her mind’s eye. She lay awake sleepless sometimes, thinking of the menacing creatures on the far side of the mountains.

At times such as those Brian would hold her tightly in his arms.

“Why aren’t you sleeping?”

“I—can’t fall asleep, Brian. I—keep thinking of—you know—”

“They can’t hurt us, darling. Why don’t you sleep, now?”

She closed her eyes, but it was no use. After a while she said, “I wish we had never come here. I wish we were back on Earth.”

“We picked this place,” he reminded her. “No matter what, we’re better off here than back in that swarming beehive. You know that.”

“Yes,” she admitted finally. “I suppose so. But at least there we were safe. There’s no security here.”

“There’s freedom, though.”

He rolled over as if indicating he did not intend to carry on the discussion any further. Mae lay awake, staring upward at the beams of the ceiling of the house they had built together, and listening to the far-off cry of birds over the water and the closer rhythmic chirping of the giant crickets that nested just outside.

Something screamed, far away, a high wordless yell that hung a moment on the night darkness and melted away. Mae stiffened.

“Did you hear that?”

“Hunting hawk over the hills,” Brian murmured sleepily. “I’m tired, Mae. Can’t you stop worrying for a while?”

No, she answered silently. She turned away and tried to sleep, but no sleep came—only morning, finally, and with morning another day’s work.

It was Brian’s day for serving in the hills, that day; he would be gone for eight hours, scouting the dangerous area flanking the wild wooded foothills. He readied himself for departure.

“Be careful,” Mae said.

He chuckled. “I always am. But I don’t think we need to be afraid of anything. Those natives might pick on one man if they found him wandering around their land, but I’ll bet they never attack the settlement.”

She looked at him a long moment and said, “Brian, will you promise me something?”

“Maybe. What?”

She hesitated. “If—if there is an alien attack, and we live through it—”

“Yes?”

“Will you agree to go back to Earth, then? Before any more trouble can hit us?”

He was silent a moment. Finally he said, “Okay. It’s a deal. If the aliens attack and we survive, we’ll go back to Earth. That’s how sure I am that there won’t be any attack.”

He kissed her. “I hope you’re right,” she said, as he shouldered his alpha-rifle and left.

She turned away and entered the farmhouse again. He’ll be out there eight hours, she thought. Then if we’re lucky he’ll come home, and next week he’ll have to go through the same thing again.

Is it worth it? The constant fear, the uncertainty, the doubt.

For a moment she found herself wildly wishing that the suspense would end, that the aliens would finally get it over with and stage an attack. A small attack, so they could survive and go back to Earth when it was all over, back to Earth where life was cramped and unpleasant but at least safe.

She shook her head. It was crazy to think that way. She busied herself with routine chores, knowing she would have to get through them twice as fast today so she could make up for Brian’s absence in the fields later in the afternoon.

The hours ticked away slowly. She ate alone at lunchtime, hating it as she always did when Brian was gone for the day. She waited for him to return.

At 1500 that afternoon she was in the fields when the house-phone chimed loudly. It’s Brian, she thought, as she ran through the furrows toward the house. He’s calling to tell me he’s on his way home. Oh, it’ll be good to hear him again!

She snatched the receiver from the cradle almost joyfully and said, “Hello, Brian? I’ve been waiting all day for you to call, and—”

“This isn’t Brian,” a man’s voice said. “It’s Leslie Chambers, Mrs. Elson.”

The Chambers farm adjoined theirs on the east. What did he want, Mae wondered?

“Yes? What is it?”

“There’s—been word from the hills, Mrs. Elson. Your husband and a couple of other scouts phoned in and said there was a mounted party of aliens riding toward them. Merriam’s sounding a general alarm. The aliens will be here in less than half an hour. You’d better close up the house, stay inside, and keep your guns handy. Ah—too bad Brian’s out there, Mrs. Elson. I don’t quite know what to say to you. I—”

“That’s quite all right,” Mae said in a voice she hardly recognized as her own. Brian, she thought. Brian!

“You’d better call the people on your chain-list, Mrs. Elson. Goodbye—and good luck.”

“Thanks,” she said. She hung up.

Merriam had drawn up a list of numbers: in case of attack, he would notify five settlers, each of whom would notify five more, each of whom would notify five more. That way, the alarm could be spread through the colony in a matter of a few minutes. With numb hands Mae took down the list; it was a grimy slip of paper she had pinned to the wall above the phone.

She called the first name on the list and in a flat, toneless voice said, “There’s an alien raiding party on the way. They’ll be here in less than half an hour. Pass the word on down the chain.”

It took only two or three minutes to notify the five names on her list. Then, hanging up the phone, she realized she would have to get busy.

The animals were outside the barn. She whistled for the dog and together they drove the protesting beasts to safety; it took nearly ten minutes. The sky was brilliantly blue; it was a surpassingly lovely day. Time seemed frozen in an eternal summer. And, thought Mae, right now the aliens are galloping toward the colony, and Brian lies dead out in the hills. It had to happen today, she thought. She was quiet, calm, bitterly resigned. This was no time for hysterics.

The hysterics could come later, she thought. If there was any later.

She sealed the back entrance, locked the window-shields, and closed off the cellar. There wasn’t much else she could do. She opened the weapons case and took out a hand-blaster and a rifle-size alpha gun. Carrying the cold weapons as if they were vegetables, she made her way upstairs to the second story. There she pushed open a section of the casement window, big enough to get the alpha-rifle through, and experimentally pointed it in various directions. From the window she commanded the approach to the house. The rifle had a range of—what was it, she wondered?—five hundred feet, or perhaps it was five hundred meters. Brian had told her, but she had forgotten.

There was nothing else to do. She sat by the window, holding the gun in unshaking hands, and waited nervelessly for the alien onslaught.

She tried not to think. She tried, but the thoughts came anyway:

We could have stayed on Earth. We could have lived in that little box of a room, and sweated and cursed, and maybe by now we’d have children, and everything would be all right.

But instead we came out here and worked ourselves half to death. And now I have muscles I never dreamed I had, and here I sit in a window waiting for my husband’s killers to come here and try to kill me.

She raised the gun quite calmly to her shoulder and tentatively squinted along the sight, making sure everything was in working order. She knew quite clearly and unemotionally what she was going to do.

This is my farm, now. And I’m going to defend it until I’m dead. That’s what Brian would have wanted.

She waited, eyes narrowed, peering at the horizon. Minutes passed—and then they started to come, the gray-clad horde, sweeping down out of the hills. They rode bareback on the riding-beasts, and even at this distance their savage war-cries could be heard. They rode in single file, coming down now out of the hills and across the plain. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Coming, now, to exterminate the sky-men who had taken part of their land.

Five minutes went by, and Mae saw them riding across the flat farmlands. They carried hatchets of some kind, she saw, and spears; scout reports had been right when they said that the aliens did not have the use of firearms. Mae watched them swarm around the distant Jesperson farm that lay nearest the hills. They had swept through the unfinished stockade as if it had never been built. She saw a cluster of them around the Jesperson house, saw angry blue bursts of flame darting from the upper windows. Aliens fell; more swept into the breach, while others continued the eastward ride across the plain.

They were close enough for her to see within ten more minutes. A party of eleven came riding toward the isolated Elson farmhouse. She counted them with care. Eleven, with a beribboned war-chief leading them, riding in a wedge-shaped formation. With great care she extended the rifle and started to aim.

She stared at them. Maybe one of these killed Brian, she thought.

They were squat ugly gray creatures, practically neckless, with leathery jointed hides that gleamed dully in the late-afternoon sunlight. They rode clinging to their mounts, legs wrapped desperately around the beast’s underbelly. They were naked except for paint and ribbons. Guttural cries filled the air.

I’ve never killed before, Mae thought. When butchering had to be done, it had always been Brian who did it; she had never been able even to look. But this was no time for squeamishness now.

Slowly she squeezed the trigger. A bright burst of fiery blue sprang from the muzzle of the blaster, leaped across the air, buried itself in the dirt a hundred feet before the advancing group of aliens. Mae was angry; she had misjudged the range. And the aliens were scattering.

They rode toward her now in eleven different paths. She took aim again and loosed a bolt; it caught one of the aliens square in the belly and for an instant the savage creature stood upright on his steed, gray body outlined in a glaring nimbus of blue flame. Then he toppled backward, and was charred ash before hitting the ground.

One down, Mae thought. And ten left.

They were outside the house now, only a hundred feet away. Mae heard the dog yowling. She fired again and killed a mount; a second shot killed the rider before he knew what was happening. Mae felt perspiration coursing down her body. She began to tremble, but rigidly forced herself back under control.

She fired again, missing, and sending a shower of sparks over the ground. Her next shot was better; it ripped an alien in half. Three dead now.

She heard the sound of stocky bodies pounding against the bolted door.

No! They mustn’t come in! Pulling the window wide, she leaned out and looked down. Three of them had dismounted and were methodically dashing themselves against the main door; it creaked and groaned on its hinges. She aimed the gun downward and fired. A blue splash of radiance rewarded her; two of the aliens dropped, the third leaped back. And in the same moment a hatchet came spiraling through the air from another alien off to the left. It cracked into the side of the building inches above the window, embedding itself.

There are only six of them now, Mae told herself. The sound of cracking timber came to her ears. The back door! They had split into two groups, now, and were assaulting the building at its most vulnerable places.

Brian, she thought for the thousandth time. Brian! She leaned out and drew a bead on one of the survivors. He looked up at her, snarled, glared with blazingly bright yellow eyes. His hatchet went back, his arm cocked, and she fired. Man and hatchet melted away. Five left.

She fired again, missing, and followed it immediately with a successful shot. Four left. Three, on the next burst. The back door yielded suddenly with a tortured shriek of splintering wood.

They can come in, now, she thought quietly. She closed the window and turned to face the door of the room, drawing the hand-blaster. She waited.

Footsteps sounded on the stairs. A lump grew in her throat. Heavy footsteps, bestial-sounding footsteps. The door crashed open.

She caught a glimpse of gray, hulking bodies hurtling through the door, and squeezed the trigger twice without aiming. Energy-flares blinded her; she heard animal-like grunts of agony. When she could see again she saw a charred body lying almost at her feet, and a second alien staggering sightlessly toward her across the room.

Her hand was quivering so hard she could barely aim. She fired once. The alien fell.

There was one more of them somewhere in the house, she knew. Somehow in the excitement she had kept a rigid count of the corpses, and there was an eleventh yet at large. She tensed; footsteps in the hall again. Grunts. Taking a deep breath, she fired through the open door.

That was the last of them, then. They were all dead. Numbly, she walked to the window. She had killed eleven intelligent beings; outside, all was calm. In the distance she saw the men of the village banded together now, putting the surviving aliens to rout. The war-party had been a fiasco.

She waited for the hysteric reaction to set in, but oddly none came. She remained calm. Maybe I’m the pioneer type after all, she thought strangely.

She forced herself to smile. She had talked of going back to Earth—but that was impossible now. She was bound to this planet by ties of blood. There was a world to conquer here, savages to drive back, a wilderness to open. And despite herself, she had shown she could stand the place.

As she stared out the window, she frowned suddenly, thinking she had heard a sound.

Yes. Footsteps.

Another one, she thought. She cocked the gun.

“Mae!” a voice called. “Mae, are you all right? God, I must be too late—”

Dumbstruck, she ran to the door, skirting round the dead aliens, and out onto the landing.

“Brian!”

He was coming wearily up the stairs, a ragged figure with bloodstains reddening one arm, with sweat darkening his clothes. But he was smiling.

“I saw the bodies,” he said. “I thought—”

“And you were in the hills,” she said. “I thought—”

“They came sweeping right past me,” he said. “I must have killed fifty of them. I was in a tree, picking them off. They got tired of trying to hit me with their hatchets after a while.”

Tears of relief forced themselves to the edges of her eyes. “I—killed all these,” she said. She stared levelly at him.

“I made a promise,” he said. “If there was an attack, and we survived—”

“No,” she said suddenly. “I don’t want to go back to Earth any more.”

“You—what?”

She smiled feebly. “Let’s go wash those scratches of yours off. There’s time to talk later.”

Yes, she thought. There was time to explain everything, later—about the child, and about the world waiting to be won, and the work that needed to be done. Of how she had matured suddenly in those few moments of bloodshed when she thought herself a widow.

There was time to explain all that later, she thought. Right now Brian needed bandaging, and the house had to be tidied, the corpses removed. The back door repaired, the cows milked, the dog fed. And after that came fifty more chores before nightfall. It was a busy life. It was a good life.

The phone rang. Mae sped downstairs, lifted it off the hook. “Yes?”

“Claude Merriam speaking, Mae. The alarm’s over for the time being. Just checking to see how things are down at your end of the settlement.”

She smiled warmly. “Just fine,” she said. “Just fine!”

THE ALIENS WERE HATERS
(1958)

As I moved along into 1958 I was just as productive as ever, but the publishing environment I found myself in was starting to get a little difficult. 1958 was going to turn out to be a bad year for the science-fiction magazines. Their sales had been dropping ever since the peak year of 1953, when an all-time record 39 different titles were published (and thus succeeded in killing each other off by overcrowding the newsstands). Some of them came and went so fast that their names are mere blips in the history of science-fiction publishing: Vortex, Cosmos, Orbit Science Fiction, Rocket Stories, Fantasy Fiction, all of which came and went during that one year. In 1958 the huge American News Company, the primary distributor of fiction magazines, abruptly went out of business, taking with it a lot of titles that it had been covertly financing through advances against earnings. And the continued boom in paperback publishing was squeezing the surviving all-fiction magazines into a marginal existence.

During the year many of the s-f magazines I had been writing for in the previous four years began to shut up shop or to cut back drastically on frequency of publication, and I was beginning to feel uneasy about my ability to earn a living through the sort of mass production of stories that had carried me through those years. What I had wanted to be all along was a science-fiction writer, and I looked askance at writing anything that took me away from that vocation, but my ledger for the first half of 1958 shows that I was starting to find all sorts of new markets, some of them in fields very far from s-f indeed. A radio program called “Exploring Tomorrow” hired me to do a bunch of science-fiction scripts adapted from my own work, and I did a couple of paperback s-f novels for Ace Books, which carried me through as some of my regular magazine markets began to disappear, but also I see an increasing number of crime stories for Trapped and Guilty, horror stories for a new title called Monster Parade, non-fiction items for such magazines as Exotic Adventures, Fury, Outdoor Magazine, and Your Health.

I was worried about losing W.W. Scott’s Super-Science, of course, which had become my mainstay. It was a poky little magazine at best, which probably had never shown much of a profit, and I wondered how much longer I was going to be able to sell it all those lovely $240 novelets. But Super-Science was unaffected by the American News Company collapse—if anything, it was helped by the vanishing of so many of its competitors—and throughout the year I went on writing copiously for it. In March, 1958 I sold Scott a short story called “The Aliens Were Haters” and a novelet called “The Traders,” and a little while later I brought him “You Can’t Go Back,” a short story that I had written the previous fall and had tried unsuccessfully to sell to two of the higher-quality magazines. He ran all three of them in the December, 1958 issue of Super-Science, “The Aliens Were Haters” under my own name, “The Traders” under the byline of Calvin M. Knox (and adorned with the gaudy new title, “The Unique and Terrible Compulsion”), and “You Can’t Go Back,” retitled “Exiled from Earth,” under the pseudonym of Richard F. Watson.

“The Aliens Were Haters” starts off as a standard Super-Science number—explorers from Earth land on an alien planet and get into a terrible mess—but, as you will discover, this time I deviated a bit from the formula.

——————

It was the third day out from the settlement that Massi found the alien spaceship in the jungle, and by that time he was the only member of his team who was still alive. There had been four of them when they started out from the American settlement on Kothgir II, and probability had it that one of the four would meet death in the jungle on the trip. Probability was wrong. Three out of four were gone; and, thought Massi, he himself had a long way to go before he got home safe.

Massi had half a million dollars’ worth of raw weed in his rucksack, though—latimeria stems, which were shipped back to Earth to be processed into pain-killing drugs. Latimeria grew only in the rain-jungles of Kothgir II, where the temperature never dipped below 100 and where the stingbugs went for your eyes if you didn’t watch sharp. Once a month, a team from the settlement came out into the jungle to gather the weed. Massi didn’t stop to wonder why it should be that three men had to lose their lives picking plants for Earth; it was his job, and so he did it. And Lurton, Weber, and Collins, who had all been alive three days ago, were dead now. Stingbugs had gotten Lurton. Weber had dropped suddenly into a covered pit in the road, and had been half digested by the inhabitants of the pit before anyone missed him. As for Collins, he’d been finished by a golden-eyed scissor-hawk swooping down.

That left Massi. He was on his way back through the jungle to the American settlement. He had twelve miles to cover on foot, and with luck he’d make it—if he avoided getting in the way of the local wildlife, and if none of the snipers from the rival Brazilian colony shot him down from behind. Massi wasn’t worrying. This was his twentieth trip into the jungle, and he figured he had the game beat.

Just lift one foot after the other, keep going, and know what’s happening all around you. That was all. Massi was a big square blocky man, thick-muscled but not thick-headed, with a shock of unruly brown hair gradually turning yellowish-white from too much alien sunshine. He was about thirty and was a native of Earth—St. Louis. Since the age of nine he’d been working in the out-worlds. Kothgir II was his fourth job. He had come here three years back, in 2187. He intended to stay a while.

He kept picking one foot up and putting it down ahead of the other, and by noon of the third day his pocketscope told him he was only a dozen miles from the American post. The rival Brazilian outpost was forty miles back the other way. Since it was noon, Kothgir was right overhead, pouring out its yellow radiance. Kothgir was a young sun, full of life. And Kothgir II was a young planet, tropical in its temperate zones and unbearable in its tropical zones. Massi shook a dribble of sweat out of his eyebrows and kept going. And at two minutes past noon he found the ship in the middle of a clump of tanglers.

It was lying on its side, a conical tube thirty-five feet long. Whoever had brought it down had made a lousy landing. The tailfins were crumpled for good, and the ship itself was bent in the middle like a broken cigar. There was writing on the side of the ship in flowing dark-green letters, and the writing was in no Earthly alphabet Massi had ever seen, not Arabic nor Hebrew nor Greek nor Cyrillic.

The ship could only be alien, from some other intelligent civilization. The thought sent a ripple of surprise through the normally stolid Massi. If his guess were right, it meant the first contact between Earthmen and another intelligent species. Although mankind had reached seventy worlds of other stars by now, not once had sign or trace of intelligent aliens been found.

Until now. Massi wondered who or what was inside that crumpled little spaceship.

Then he stopped wondering for a moment. His keen ears picked up the twig-breaking sound of footsteps behind him. He turned quickly, one hand sliding to the blaster at his belt. Three men and a girl were coming toward him, and they had blasters too. Massi waited for their arrival.

They were Brazilians, from the other settlement. The conquest of space hadn’t been any unified global effort; it was strictly on an each-nation-grab-what-it-can basis. A Brazilian ship and an American one had landed on Kothgir II just about simultaneously, and since neither would retreat they had shared the world between them ever since. Little love was lost between the rival settlers.

“Hello,” the girl called to him.

“Hello yourself,” Massi answered. He stood his ground, facing them, between them and the ship.

He looked at them. The girl seemed to be the leader. She was tall and rugged, heavily tanned, with wide mannish shoulders and coarse features. Thick black hair tumbled untidily over her shoulders. She wasn’t any beauty, Massi thought. Girls who went spacing never were.

The men were in their twenties, and all looked like brothers: slim olive-skinned youths with big noses and dark curly hair. They all carried blasters.

The girl smiled, showing crooked teeth, and said, “You are minding our ship for us, American?”

“Your ship? Damned funny design for a ship homing in Brazil. And that stuff on the side is the new Brazilian alphabet, I suppose. Yeah.”

“You make the mistake. We did not build the ship. We only claim it. We watched it fall from the skies two nights ago. It is ours.”

Massi saw the setup. He shook his head quickly. “You got the wrong idea. I found that ship and I own salvage rights.”

Two of the men began shouting and gesticulating, hurling a stream of rapid-fire Portuguese at him. Massi understood about every fifth word, but he got the general drift. His speaking vocabulary included some fifty Portuguese words, ten of them obscene and eight of them profane. He used each one, loudly and singly, and the Brazilians were so astonished by the performance that they shut up.

“Okay,” Massi said in the sudden silence. “Now look here. I found this ship. I got here first. The ship is mine.”

“We saw the ship land. We have come here to examine it,” said the girl sullenly. Her English was passable. “The ship is not yours but ours.”

“The law says first finder can claim.”

The biggest of the three Brazilian men chuckled amiably. “You Americans like to vote. Let us vote. We vote the ship is ours. You vote the ship is yours. We win, four to one, no? Democratic process!”

Massi glowered angrily at them. Overhead birds wheeled and screeched. Remembering the way Collins had died, he glanced up to make sure no scissor-hawks lurked up there. Then he looked at the Brazilians again. Sweat was rolling down his body, and he felt tension starting to mount inside him. Four against one was a hopeless struggle. Maybe he had found the ship first, but that didn’t matter if they decided to take it away from him. He wanted the ship now so bad he could reach out and touch the yearning. It was his ship, dammit! They weren’t going to steal it!

He decided to play along. He knew the jungle might have a way of reducing the odds, if he waited long enough.

“Okay,” he said, letting his tongue run around the rim of his dry mouth once. “It’s too damn hot to argue. Let’s open the ship up and see what’s inside. Then afterward we can decide who gets it.”

“No agreement is necessary,” the girl said evenly. “The ship belongs to us.”

“We can settle that later.”

“It is settled now.”

Massi scowled. He realized that loudmouthed stubbornness would only land him a burned gut. He was outnumbered, and maybe soon the Brazilians would realize he had a fortune in weed on his back. That would give them a double motive for killing him, and he was sure they wouldn’t hesitate. Better a live liar, he thought, than a dead hero.

“The ship is yours,” he said. “I just want the right to stick around and see what’s inside it.”

“Okay,” the girl said. “All right. You are wiser than I thought you were.”

She stepped forward, walking around Massi, and made her way up the little ramp of dirt that the ship had ploughed up in crashing. There was an empty hatch halfway up the side of the ship.

Massi watched the girl. She was wearing tight shorts and a man’s shirt. From the back she didn’t look bad at all. It was only when you saw her face, with its rough skin and beaked nose, its sprawling black eyebrows meeting at midpoint, that you realized why she had gone to the outworlds, where men have different standards of beauty.

She leaned over and pushed at the hatch. It didn’t give. It was part way open, having buckled when the ship landed, and she grabbed the upjutting flange and tugged. Muscles stood out on the surface of her gleaming sweaty skin, but the hatch refused to budge.

Massi came up alongside her and peered into the dark ship through the opening in the hatch. Nothing but darkness showed.

“You’ll have to cut the hatch away,” he said. “It’s the only way to get in.”

She looked up, eyes fiery. “I thank you for the advice! I would never have known!”

Glaring angrily at him, she spun around and gestured to one of the three men waiting below. She crackled some Portuguese at him and he responded by tossing her a small hand torch. Clicking it on with obvious skill, she began to cut a rectangular opening in the side of the ship. The job took about five minutes. Finally she nodded in approval and tossed the torch casually back to the man below. A neatly squared opening, its edges still cherry-red, had been cut where the hatch had been.

She looked at Massi and for an instant a kind of challenge passed between them; she was saying without words, This is a ship from another star. Do you have the guts to go in and have a look?

“Yes,” he said. “Let’s go in.”

He stepped around her and started to lift one jackbooted leg into the ship. She gripped his shoulder and pulled him back.

“Ladies first. You may follow.”

“Your pleasure.”

He followed her into the ship.

If there had originally been some alien kind of atmosphere within the ship, it was gone now. The air of Kothgir II, which was Earthlike air but for the presence of helium instead of nitrogen, had entered when the wall of the ship had ruptured. There was a faint mustiness in the ship, as of some lingering gas.

Massi and the girl moved cautiously. The ship was tilted, which made movement difficult, and to complicate things the single passageway was not high enough for either of them to stand upright. They shuffled up the corridor, half-crouching, moving step by step as if fearing an alien booby-trap.

Jungle cries came from outside, breaking the silence within. A dim reddish light glimmered in the ship. Massi’s eyes adjusted to it quickly. He could see a kind of control panel further ahead, at the uppermost end of the ship, and some sort of cabinet facing it. Gradually they worked their way along the 45-degree slope of the floor to the front of the ship.

There they saw the aliens.

“Children!” the girl breathed in surprise, with a tenderness Massi had not thought her capable of.

Indeed the aliens did look like children, but nightmare children. There were two of them, lying in some sort of acceleration cradle, floating on a liquid bath like two enwombed fetuses. They were no more than three feet long, naked, their bodies covered with glistening green scales. Small legs terminated in splayed three-toed feet; the arms seemed almost boneless. Their eyes, protuberant, were covered by transparent lids. A strut of the cradle had broken loose in the crash and had fallen across them, apparently breaking the arm of the leftmost alien. They both seemed to be alive, but badly jarred by the crash, unconscious, and probably suffering from internal injuries. Massi heard the sound of soft moans.

“The poor ones,” the girl murmured. “They are hurt!”

Massi eyed her strangely. It was odd that this strapping ugly six-footer of a girl should feel so moved by the sight of a couple of froglike green aliens. But perhaps it wasn’t so odd after all, he decided. Perhaps somewhere in that well-muscled breast beat a woman’s heart, sensitive to the plight of two pathetic creatures from some other star.

For a moment all considerations of national rivalry seemed to fade. The argument over who owned salvage rights to the ship was forgotten. The girl looked at Massi and said, “We must help them.”

“How? I’m no doctor.”

“We will radio for a doctor. But meanwhile—they are in pain.”

Massi stared at the wide slack mouths, the floppy forearms. These two pitiful creatures had piloted this ship from what unknown star, he wondered? Deneb? Betelgeuse? Rigel?

He was starting to get cramped from bending over so long. The ship’s musty air bothered him. And he did not share the girl’s maternal sympathy for the aliens. They were spacemen who had cracked up. Too bad; but why weep over them? Nobody was weeping for Weber, eaten alive by a swarming pitful of acid-tongued insects. Nor for Collins, sliced in half by the beak of a swooping bird.

These were alien beings. For all he knew, the advance scouts of an invasion. But yet the big rawboned girl was looking at him sharply, and possibly for the first time in her life her eyes were misting with tears. Massi felt a sudden inexplicable gush of compassion—for her, for the two battered little aliens, for the three dead men back in the jungle, for the whole damned universe.

He said, “I’ve got a batch of latimeria-weeds in my rucksack. Maybe it’ll ease their pain a little. Or maybe it’ll kill them. We could try it.”

She nodded. “Si. It would ease their pain.”

Frowning at himself and wondering why he was doing this, he hunched around and said to the girl, “Undo the straps and take out one of the stems. Just one.”

She fumbled with the thick straps, pulled the rucksack open, and lifted out a stem. Turning, he took it from her. It was thick and succulent, dripping with the sap from which drugs could be made. The stem he was holding had a market value of $1000, cash down. Three men had died so he could bring it back. And now he was giving it away.

Shaking off the thoughts, he broke the stem in half and, bending, thrust one half into each of the drooping alien mouths. He pinched the outer end of the stalk to start the sap running downward. Raw, the sap was strong stuff, but it did afford relief from pain.

As the first drops of the fluid fell into their gullets, the aliens emitted small sighing noises. Massi nodded. The treatment would soothe them.

“Let us go,” the girl whispered. “We shall radio for a doctor. These beings must not be allowed to die.”

Massi raised an eyebrow.

“Do we radio for an American doctor or a Brazilian one? We haven’t settled that matter yet.”

Her look was venomous. “You agreed to relinquish your claim!”

“So I did. But at least we ought to notify both settlements. You Brazilians have no right to keep this thing a secret. Not when it’s as big as finding a couple of live extraterrestrials.”

As they climbed through the opening in the side of the ship she said, “Perhaps you are right. You may notify your base—a little later.”

Two minutes after they had quitted the ship, the three Brazilian men were setting up a midget radio transmitter, while the girl stood to one side and snapped orders and what Massi took to be coruscating insults. She was definitely the boss. She knew it and her three men knew it, without question.

Massi had run across her sort often enough in the outworlds. They were the women who were too big and plain to be attractive to most men, and too rough to admit to themselves that they didn’t like the situation. They were as strong as men in most ways, and out here in the pioneer worlds they did men’s work.

Massi was willing to bet this specimen had never let a man lay a hand on her—or, if she had, she had made the man crawl for it first.

At another time, Massi thought, taming this girl might be an interesting challenge. Now he was just interested in getting out of the jungle alive and in letting the American outfit know what was lying here in the jungle.

He watched while they rigged up the transmitter. When it was ready, a minute or two later, the girl snatched at the microphone and shouted harshly into it:

“Allo! Allo! Capitan Jacopetti here. Are you there?”

That was as far as the conversation got. Captain Jacopetti never had a chance to find out whether the people at the other end heard her or not. For suddenly one of the men gasped and said, “Quick! Look over there!”

Whirling, Massi looked over his shoulder in the direction the panicky Brazilian was indicating. He saw the two alien beings standing at the lip of the cut-away entry hatch. They were surveying the scene with big glittering froggy eyes, clinging weakly to the ship to support themselves with one hand. In the other they held stubby metal tubes that looked like weapons.

Massi didn’t wait to find out whether they actually were. He sprang forward, bowling over Captain Jacopetti, knocking her away from the transmitter. Together they rolled over into a cluster of foul-smelling shrubbery. The three Brazilians weren’t so fortunate. They remained standing, one pointing in fright at the alien, the other two fumbling for their weapons.

The aliens held out the metal tubes. Abruptly a sheet of bluish radiance came fanning out from them, and swiftly and noiselessly the Brazilians evaporated above the waists. For one weird moment three trunkless pairs of legs stood erect; then they crumbled.

Hidden in the underbrush, Massi knew he had a moment or two before the aliens fired again. Yanking out his blaster, he adjusted the aperture to wide-beam, stepped down the intensity to a stun-bolt, and lifted the weapon to fire. He was too late. Before he could fire the woman at his side had squeezed her own weapon twice. Charred patches the size of baseballs appeared in the throats of the aliens. Like marionettes with their strings suddenly cut, the diminutive creatures went limp and toppled forward, falling from their perch in the hatchway and landing sprawled on the ground.

Angrily Massi snapped, “You shouldn’t have done that. I was just going to stun them!”

“How could I know what you intended? Killing them was best!”

“If we had stunned them we could have brought them back alive. Questioned them, find out where they were from. But no. You had to kill them.”

“They murdered Riccardo and Paolo and Carlo. They deserved to die.” Anger made her voice quiver. Flecks of spittle appeared on her chin. “I wish I could have killed them slower!”

She rose from the underbrush, and Massi followed her. The three dead Brazilians weren’t pleasant to look at; the blue radiance had simply sheared off the upper halves of their body, demolecularized them in an instant. Massi noticed that the beam had also destroyed the radio transmitter.

The girl was inspecting the aliens, prodding them roughly with her booted toes to see if they lived. It was hard to believe that this girl was the same one who had called the aliens children fifteen minutes ago and who had, misty-eyed, implored Massi to ease their pain. She stooped and pried one of the metal tubes from a dead alien hand. Massi snatched up the other, and together they examined the weapon.

“Better be careful,” he cautioned. “No telling which way you’re pointing that thing.”

“It is not pointing at you. Fear nothing.”

Indeed the danger of an accidental discharge seemed slim. The tube he held seemed to be hollow and open at both ends. Holding it gingerly, he explored its surface, finding no triggering device of any sort. It was just a hollow metal tube. He shrugged and tucked the tube away in his rucksack. Let the scientists back at the base puzzle out how it works, he thought. He could testify that it did work, somehow.

He grinned cynically and looked down at the dead aliens, who looked now like a pair of rag dolls. “That’s gratitude for you, isn’t it? Give them medicine and the minute they’re strong enough to walk they blow your head off.” He scowled. “But I guess I shouldn’t expect gratitude from them. Not from aliens. Maybe in their culture the proper thing to do is to kill the doctor who fixes you up.”

“There would be few doctors in such a culture.”

“Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they saw the radio operating and didn’t want you to send back word about them.”

“Or perhaps,” the girl said, “they are Haters. They were so consumed with hatred for other beings that they destroyed on sight.”

“I still say you shouldn’t have killed them. Maybe there was some misunderstanding—”

She laughed scornfully. “Fool! Woman! I killed them because they deserved to be killed!”

“Stunning would have been good enough,” he said, ignoring the insults. “But you were bloodthirsty, weren’t you?”

“And you are softhearted, then.”

She seemed to be regretting her moment of weakness in the ship, Massi thought. Maybe that was why she had iced up so swiftly. Well, no sense arguing with her about it. It had been hotheaded to kill instead of stun, but the aliens were dead and that was all there was to it.

She said, “Besides, my blaster is not equipped for stunning. It can only kill. I did not know hand-blasters could do both.”

“The new models can. The new American models, anyway.”

“May I see your weapon?”

He shrugged and handed her the gun butt-first for inspection. The instant he parted with it, he knew he had made a mistake, one of the few really boneheaded goofs he had ever made. She grinned coldly at him, flipped the safety off, and said, “Put up the hands, please.”

“What the hell are you pulling?”

“We are forty miles from my settlement, only a dozen from yours. In the nature of things you will reach your people many hours before I reach mine. That would not be so good for me. I would still be walking through the jungle when your men had come to view the ship. You will come with me, therefore. Or I will kill you here.”

Massi’s jaw sagged. Rage coursed through him, rage directed only at himself. Under-estimation was fatal when dealing with this girl, it seemed. He hadn’t even considered the fact that the alien ship was far closer to the American settlement than the Brazilian, and that unless she stopped him he would have been able to notify his base long before she could reach hers. So she had tried a trick so old it had long white whiskers, and now she had both guns and he had none.

There was nothing for him to say. He was too choked with shame to want to speak. She had called him a fool and a woman, and she had been right. He bit down hard on his lip in impotent frustration. His eyes could not meet her dark, mocking ones. Tricked, gunless, deprived of the biggest prize in the universe by his own unaccountable stupidity, he was sick with self-reproach.

“Okay,” she said, grinning gaily. “You will walk ahead of me. We should reach my settlement in two days if we do not waste time.”

It was mid-afternoon when they set out, Massi in the lead and the girl directing him from behind. The temperature was slowly dropping back from its noonday peak, but it was well over 100 anyway. Grimly Massi forced his bitter self-anger to subside; he was going to need his wits about him just to survive the jungle trek.

He said nothing, nor did she make conversation. At least she had the thoughtfulness not to taunt him, Massi thought.

He considered the situation. A small alien ship had wandered into the Kothgir system and had crashed. Obviously it was an advance scout of some kind. It was imperative that he got word back to his base about the landing; the Brazilians might or might not decide to let the other space-colonizing nations know about the possible peril, but he couldn’t risk that. He had to get back to his settlement and bring the news. Besides, the colony could use the metal of the ship, if nothing else. He didn’t want all that good metal to fall into the hands of the Brazilians.

So he had gone and handed his gun over to this brawny wench, and now he was on his way eastward, heading in the wrong direction for him. He cursed himself bitterly. He wondered about ways of winning back the advantage.

They covered eight miles by nightfall. It was slow work, hacking a path through the thick jungle, keeping your eyes cocked for unfriendly wildlife, taking each step slow for fear of a hidden pit. Massi was bone-tired by the time Kothgir slipped below the horizon and the pale blue moons had risen, two of them brightening the sky. Night-cries sounded in the jungle now. The bigger carnivores, having slept through the steaming day, now would prowl in search of their night’s meal.

Massi wondered what the girl was planning to do. Usually two people slept in shifts in the jungle, one standing guard at all times. But the girl would never dare relax. She would have to remain awake all night for fear Massi would seize the blasters. But if she dozed, even for a moment, he thought—

They settled down in a clearing by the bank of a small turgid stream for the night. But neither slept. They sat cross-legged ten feet apart, watching each other. For a while Massi pretended to be asleep, watching the girl through slitted lids to see if she would relax guard. She remained awake, staring at him coldly, never easing up.

The girl was superhuman, he decided. She was about as feminine as a tank, and twice as deadly. When the sun finally scattered the night, she was fresh and ready to go, seemingly not at all fatigued by her sleepless night. And Massi was perfectly willing to believe she intended to stay awake until they reached the Brazilian base.

But in that case, he thought, why doesn’t she kill me? It would be much simpler for her that way. He could supply two possible answers: either she feared making the trip through the forest alone, or else there was some lingering sentimentality about her that kept her from cold-bloodedly shooting him.

He wondered what sort of strength lay in those lean, flat, whiplike muscles, in that wiry unwomanly body. He wondered too whether she would shoot him down as readily as she had the two aliens. By mid-morning of the second day, he was desperate enough to try her out.

They were advancing through heavily wooded flatlands, marshy and spongy underfoot, infested with snakes of all sizes from the needle-thin and deadly Little Fry to the barrel-thick Swallowers. The heat had slacked off a trifle, but it was a long way from being comfortable.

He stopped suddenly. Behind him, the girl said, “Why do you hesitate?”

“I think I hear something. Swallower, maybe. You hear a gurgling sound coming from the left?”

She was silent a moment. “No,” she said finally.

“I do. We better hold up a second.” He took a deep breath and realized to his great surprise that he was apprehensive about what he was going to do next, that though he had entered the jungle twenty times without fear he felt fear now, not for the jungle’s presence but because of the girl behind him.

He pivoted suddenly, shouting, “Here comes a Swallower on your right! Look out! Look out!”

One good ruse deserved another, he thought. Despite herself, the Brazilian girl glanced to the right; the drawn blaster she carried wavered hesitantly, and the hesitation was just enough. Massi sprang at her, collided heavily, and threw her to the ground. He had been right: she had weakened when it came to drilling him in the middle with the blaster.

They landed on an oozy patch of marshland, Massi on top. He was two inches taller than the girl and better than sixty pounds heavier, and he made his advantage count. One hand reached out and clamped itself round her wrist, bending it back and forcing her to release the blaster. The other snaked round her throat. Slowly he levered himself to a sitting position, his knees planted on her arms, his body astride her chest, his hands gripping her shoulders and holding her flat. The fall had gone to him hands down.

She writhed, slapping her feet up and down and trying to thrust her knee into his groin, but she was helpless. All she could do was spit. She did that. Massi grinned and slapped her, hard. A trickle of blood started to run out of the corner of her mouth. She spat again and a second time he slapped her, even harder. He felt a savage joy in what he was doing. He had never hit a woman before, but this was hardly a woman. More like a wildcat.

Gradually she accepted the fact that she was beaten. Massi leaned back cautiously, slid a hand down her thigh, and yanked the other blaster from its holster. She muttered incoherent curses at him.

“Hurts to get fooled bad, doesn’t it?” he asked. “Now you know how I felt yesterday.”

Working quickly, he undipped the blasting chamber of her gun, cracked open the power-housing, and held it against the marshtop long enough for it to be thoroughly ruined. He tossed the useless blaster into the bushes. Then, holstering his own weapon again, he released her.

She rose, rubbing her split lips and sore arms, and favored him with as murderous a glance of hatred as Massi had ever seen. Shrugging it off, he said, “I hate to leave you stranded like this without a weapon, but it’s your own damn fault. Still, even though you’re a woman—”

“I am a solider, not a woman.”

“As you prefer. You’re on your own, Captain. I’m afraid we split up here. I’m going back the way I came. You have thirty miles to travel and I have about twenty. Want to bet on who gets there first?”

“You will. But if I ever see you again I will kill you. No man holds his body against mine and lives.”

Massi chuckled. “You’re lucky all I did was wrestle with you. Tell you what: if I ever see you again, I’ll do my best to finish the job!”

“I would kill you first.”

Suddenly she turned, as if afraid tears might come to her eyes in a moment, and dashed wildly off into the thick brush. Massi watched her go, and shook his head thoughtfully. She had put up a good fight, all right. She was a regular wildcat. But a good big man can lick a good big woman any time, he thought. He wondered if he ever would see her again—and who would walk away from the encounter alive. By whipping her he had restored his faith in his manhood—but he wasn’t sure the man had been born who could successfully bed that girl down.

He started to cut his way through the jungle, back toward the American settlement. Moving rapidly through the path already hewn, he reached the alien spaceship by late afternoon. The ground about the area seemed different: as if it had been trampled down, it seemed. He wondered whether others had found the ship. Certainly there had been visitors recently—in the last hour, perhaps.

Shrugging, he pressed on. Only twelve miles to go: he could cover two or three more before it became too dark to walk.

He was ten miles from the base when a sudden explosion shattered the jungle silence. He froze: a moment later a second explosion came, shaking the ground beneath him. The first explosion had come from behind him, the second from directly in front. As if raiders had bombed first the Brazilian, then the American colonies.

A flash of brilliance above caught his eye. He glanced up. Against the hard blue backdrop of the sky he saw a ship rising heavenward and vanishing, a big ship, a strange ship. And suddenly he knew what had happened.

The colony was still in flames when he reached it, late that night, after a forced march through the dark. There was nothing left but rubble. The alien ship had been very efficient. Fifty years of work blotted out in a moment; three thousand human beings dead. And he knew it was the same way fifty miles away, at the Brazilian colony.

Massi stared up at the bleak stars. From one of those stars an exploratory ship had come, and following it a larger one. The explorers had crashed; the mother ship, following its smaller companion, had landed to find both of their men dead at the hands of the planet’s inhabitants.

The Brazilian girl had been right: the aliens were Haters. In wrath they had visited flaming death on the only two settlements they could find. Perhaps the murder had been expiated, or perhaps the incident would provoke the first interstellar war.

But Massi did not worry about that possibility now. He was abruptly conscious of his position. He was alone, the only American to have escaped the holocaust. No Earth ship would call at Kothgir II for at least a year. It was a long time to spend in the jungle by yourself. And there had been another survivor. She was back there, perhaps only now first discovering what had happened to her people.

Massi wet his lips and checked his blaster charges. He was alone and he didn’t like to be alone, not while another person yet lived on the planet. He was surprised to find this need in himself; he had always thought himself self-sufficient, but now, standing at the edge of the fiery ruins of the American colony, he saw that he wasn’t.

He didn’t have to be alone. He wondered if that Brazilian girl could possibly be tamed. Taking a deep breath, he turned his back on the blazing dead colony and headed off into the jungle again, as morning began. Maybe the girl could be tamed. Massi was going to find her and try.

THE TRADERS
(1958)

The second of my three stories for the December, 1958 Super-Science Stories, the “Calvin M. Knox” one, was the novelet “The Traders,” on which Scottie stuck the typically flatfooted W.W. Scott title of “The Unique and Terrible Compulsion.” That phrase comes from the story itself, but it has always struck me as a trifle melodramatic for a story title, and so I have taken advantage of this opportunity to restore my original title after a lapse of almost six decades.

It follows the familiar pattern for a Super-Science novelet: Earthman isolated on a jungle world, a trading-post story with something of a debt to Somerset Maugham’s Malaysian stories and, very likely, Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness.” Fancy antecedents for a pulp science-fiction story, but I was just a couple of years out of my Ivy League college, putting my high-priced education to uses that probably would have surprised my dignified Columbia professors.

——————

Dave Garth was an honorable man. He had entered the Interstellar Merchant Service at the age of 23 in 2406, and by the time he was 28 he had risen high in the ranks of the organization. He had a reputation for impeccable honesty, and he was an advocate of fair dealings between Earthmen and the hundreds of native races of other planets with which Earth dealt.

In his first five years Garth had served the usual jobs on the Merchant Service circuit, ending up with a minor administrative post on Lorphar in the Semmelweis System. He was in his second year on the Lorphar job, and already beginning to speculate on how long it would be until he had risen to the top job at the Lorphar outpost, when he was called to his superior’s office and was told that a subradio-gram had just arrived for him from the central office on Earth.

He had been reassigned. He was to leave Lorphar immediately and return to Earth for briefing on his new job.

“We’re sorry to lose you,” his superior told him. “You did a fine job here, Garth.”

In a way, Garth was a trifle disappointed at being yanked from Lorphar. He was working out well there, with his job under control and going smoothly, and he liked the planet, its people, and the men he worked with. Still, if the Merchant Service thought he would be more useful somewhere else, it was not his duty to question their decision. He returned to Earth on the next ship that blasted out of Lorphar.

Earthfall took place early in April of 2412, and Garth reported immediately to the central office in Buenos Aires for reassignment. The main computer processed him through, and within half an hour he was in the office of one Martin Kingsley, a District Supervisor.

Kingsley turned out to be a slim pale man in his forties, who offered Garth a chair, a drink, and a cigar, and then plunged immediately into the matter at hand.

“Mr. Garth, do you know anything about the planet called Danneroi?”

“No, sir.” Garth shook his head. There were thousands of worlds in the galaxy, and he had nothing to gain by pretending he knew them all. Garth always believed in honesty as a guiding rule, and so far in his life it had worked out well.

Kingsley leaned forward and puffed at his cigar. “Danneroi is a Plus Point Two world in the Murchison System—it’s Murchison IV, I believe. We have a single outpost in the hotlands of Danneroi; they mine a good grade of thorium there, and we have big plans for Danneroi in the next few decades. The outpost is run by a single operator, and he’s been there for thirty years. His name is Lidman—Anton Lidman. He’s done a good job for us, or so we’ve been thinking all along. But now we get some strange reports about him.”

Garth stared solemnly at the well-dressed supervisor, and picked up his cue. “What sort of report, Mr. Kingsley?”

“A pickup ship touches down on Danneroi every three months to bring new trading goods for Lidman and to pick up the thorium he’s bought. I have the reports of the ship captains right here.” He displayed a sheaf of mini lac sheets. “I don’t think it’s news to you, Mr. Garth, that every time a ship touches down on a world to deal with one of our trading posts, we request a report on the behavior of our representative. Well, over the last three years or so we’ve had increasingly dismaying reports about Lidman—he’s uncooperative, cranky, secretive, that sort of thing. We began to suspect he might be too old for the post. But this last report here claims that Lidman’s been distributing drugs to the natives.”

“No!”

“That’s what the report says. I don’t believe it either—dammit, I don’t want to believe it. But according to the captain, Lidman’s been taking stuff from the medical stores, harmless stuff by our reckoning but viciously narcotic to the aliens. And I’ve checked back through Lidman’s requisition sheets of the last few years, and damned if he hasn’t been requesting particularly heavy supplies of medical goods.”

Garth moistened his lips nervously. The idea of a company man doing a thing like that was almost unbelievable to him. He was aware of the gulf between Earthman and alien, a gulf that should never be bridged by any kind of criminal action.

Kingsley went on. “So this is where you enter the picture, Garth. You’re being shipped out to Danneroi on the next pickup vessel.”

“As Lidman’s replacement?”

“Ah—no. As his assistant.”

“Assistant, sir?”

“That’s right. We can’t fire Lidman on mere suspicion; we need proof. So we’re sending you out as an observer, to keep an eye on Lidman and report back to us. Lidman has been notified that his planet has been upgraded from a one-man to a two-man post, and that an assistant will be on the way soon.”

“And what if I find he’s actually guilty of giving drugs to the natives?”

“You’ll notify us, and we’ll remove him from his post. You’ll replace him as our Danneroi man. It’ll involve a substantial salary raise, you understand.”

“And I’ll get an assistant?”

“Ah—no. You’ll be on your own out there, just as Lidman is now.”

“But I thought you said the planet was being upgraded to two-man status,” Garth protested mildly.

Kingsley shook his head. “I’m afraid that’s simply the excuse we’re giving Lidman for sending you to him. The planet isn’t quite in the two-man class yet. It won’t be for another five or ten years, perhaps.”

“So if Lidman’s guilty I’ll be out there on my own all that time,” Garth said thoughtfully.

Kingsley looked suspicious. “Do you object to taking on a one-man assignment, Mr. Garth?”

“No—not at all,” Garth said hastily. “Not really, that is. It’s simply that—coming from Lorphar, a ten-man planet—I hadn’t considered the possibility that my next assignment would be—”

“I see. I wish this company had enough money to make every world of the galaxy a ten-man station. It can’t be done, though.”

“Of course.” A new thought occurred to Garth. “What happens to me if Lidman isn’t guilty?”

“If you think he’s fit to continue operations,” Kingsley said, “he’ll be left on duty and you’ll be transferred elsewhere. With a bonus and a promotion, let me add.”

Garth nodded. He did not question the company’s plans for him. The loneliness of a one-man station was not quite what he had hoped to gain, but others had done such jobs before him, and if the company asked it of him he would comply. And though he didn’t care to serve as a company spy, still, drugging the natives was a despicable act that deserved punishment.

Dave Garth was an honorable man. He was loyal to his company and to the greater case of Terran civilization; besides, running a one-man station would be a challenge to him. Perhaps in the course of time he could build Danneroi up into a commercial center of two-man or even three-man status—with himself as top man, of course. It was a distinct possibility. Although Lidman had been out there thirty years, and in all that time he had failed to increase Danneroi’s status beyond one-man rank.

Garth stood up. “When do I leave, sir?”

Garth left Earth four days later, aboard the merchant cargoman China Coast, a ten-tube subwarp ship bound for the Sorgal System, but stopping off first for the quarterly pickup on Danneroi.

The network of interstellar trade relations was fantastically complex. Presiding over the whole enterprise was the monstrous computer at Buenos Aires, which filled three cubic miles of Argentinian soil with its rows of cryotronic elements, and which plotted the course of star-to-star trade like a giant spider brooding over its web. Earth was the core of the trade system. It sent scouts to each planet to determine what, if anything, that planet had that another world might use. Then trading posts were set up, pickup ships routed, trade relations established.

And so the raw thorium mined on Danneroi was shipped on to the Sorgal System, to be purified and worked into tiny power-sources, and other Terran ships would carry the power-sources to still other worlds which lacked natural radioactives themselves.

The Danneroi inhabitants would be paid for their thorium in goods from some other world; the Sorgal craftsmen extracted their profit too.

But in each transaction the real beneficiary was Earth, which took a minute fraction of the price as its share. That minute fraction, multiplied by the thousands of worlds of the universe, made the whole vast operation worthwhile; it turned Earth into the wealthiest world in the galaxy, growing wealthier with each passing instant.

But the essence of such an operation was impeccable honesty. Men like Dave Garth were needed for the job, men who had a code of honor and lived by it. There was no room in the Interstellar Merchant Service for the likes of an Anton Lidman.

The journey to Danneroi lasted ten days, by subwarp drive. The China Coast ducked into the blank void that was the subuniverse, threaded a Riemannian geodesic through the distorted and inconceivably alien dimensions of that sub-universe, and emerged in the “real” universe several thousand light-years away.

The mathematics of interstellar travel had taken four generations of solid work; even the giant computers had nearly given the job up as impossible.

Still, it had been worked out at last—and since Earth was the only world that had ever been able to solve the intricacies of subuniverse travel, Earth held a monopoly on interstellar commerce.

It was more than a monopoly, thought Garth. It was a sacred trust. That was why men like Anton Lidman had to be rooted out.

The China Coast carried a cargo of items desired by the Danneroians: revolving mirrors, sewing kits, cosmetics, and the like. There was no use paying the aliens for their thorium in money, for they had no use for money. But gadgetry? That was something else altogether. They were a technologically undeveloped race, and valued such things highly.

That was the principle on which Interstellar Merchant Service worked. Value for money; but the value was strictly subjective. A pound of solid gold was utterly useless to a Danneroian; a revolving mirror had real value.

And so to pay for their thorium with gold was absurd, but they would dig their hearts out for mirrors. No one was being cheated in such an arrangement.

The China Coast touched down at the base clearing on Danneroi in mid-afternoon on April 25, 2412, Galactic Standard Calendar. In his thirty years, Lidman had obviously worked steadily on improving the landing facilities at his trading post. A broad concrete landing area three thousand feet square had been cleared away in the heart of the jungle; Lidman broadcast a landing-signal and the China Coast made a perfect touchdown, square in the middle of the area.

A gong sounded within the ship, letting Garth know the landing had been successful. He was the only passenger, though there were eight crewmen, three to handle the complicated subwarp space transitions and the other five as cargo handlers.

He snapped off the nullgrav shield that had protected him during the period of deceleration and made his way out of the ship.

Although he had been in the Merchant Service five years, he had never failed to experience that tingling moment of anticipation just before he stepped out onto the soil of a new world, under an alien sun.

Danneroi was a Plus Point Two world; that meant that its similarity to Earth was rated at 1.2. Any planet with a rating between .5 and 2.5 was considered Earthtype; beyond that, special skills were necessary for survival, and Garth was not eligible for work on such worlds yet. He stepped from the ship.

Two natives were ready to help him as he made his way down the short catwalk from the exit hatch. Although Garth had studied up on the world, he stared closely at the aliens, feeling as always the impact of realizing once again that the universe was full of strange life-forms, many of them potentially able to reach Earth’s own level of civilization one day.

The Danneroians were humanoid beings. They stood shoulder-high to Garth’s six-foot height. Their bodies were slim and symmetrical, their limbs tapering, their fingers slightly webbed. Danneroi was a watery world, and these beings looked like good swimmers, streamlined for speed. They had no hair anywhere on their bluish-purple bodies, and they wore only loincloths.

There was a vaguely oriental slant to their eyes, caused by a fold of flesh that probably protected them under water.

In a soft throaty voice the alien to his left said, “You are Boss Garth?”

“That’s right.” Garth was a little startled to find the aliens speaking English, though on second thought he considered that in his thirty years on Danneroi Lidman had probably taught many of them the language.

“Boss Lidman is waiting for you down there,” the other alien said. “We will take you to him.”

Garth nodded and looked around. The sun, high overhead, was veiled by murky gray clouds, but the air was hot nonetheless. The section of Danneroi chosen for the trading post was tropical in climate.

Other parts, according to the survey report Garth had been given, ranged all the way up to better than 200 degrees in temperature, and the lakes bubbled and steamed. Here the average temperature was more manageable: a steady muggy 85-100.

Garth was used to hot worlds. His second assignment, Dwylliar, had had a mean temperature of 110. But that had been dry heat, desert heat. He wondered how he was going to like the humidity here.

Lidman seemed to have done a good job of building up the station. There was a large prefab at the edge of the landing field that was undoubtedly the trading post itself; next to it were three smaller blockhouses that looked as if they had been built by local labor.

The jungle had been trimmed back, and Garth saw wide roads extending radially out from the trading post area into the jungle.

Whatever sins Lidman might have fallen into lately, he had certainly done a competent job of setting up the trading outpost. Garth immediately felt less bitter toward the man. He respected competence.

And his enthusiasm for the Merchant Service was fired anew by what he saw here. It was, after all, a creative job: to carve from raw jungle a landing area, to build roads, teach the natives, establish trade relations, win their confidence and their trust. Lidman seemed to have done an excellent job. If only he hadn’t spoiled it by breaking regulations—

Garth’s reflections were interrupted. A short, stocky man was coming toward him from the trading post building a few hundred yards away.

Garth studied him closely. He was a man in his late sixties, perhaps even early seventies, but he looked rugged and capable. He wore only shorts and a tropical helmet, and his body was still muscular, lean, tanned. Only when you looked at his face could you see the inroads of age. His hair, cropped close to his head, had whitened—even his eyebrows. His face was deeply lined, his thin lips drawn downward in a probably perpetual scowl. And his eyes—they were almost depressing in their sadness, Garth thought. They were deep, sharp, brooding eyes. The eyes of a man who has lived a long time, and who has worked hard.

The eyes, thought Garth, of a man who has done wrong and who knows it.

Extending his hand, Garth said, “You must be Anton Lidman.”

Lidman ignored the hand. In a harsh, almost rasping voice he said, “Of course I am. Who the hell are you, youngster?”

Garth had to struggle to keep his voice calm as he said, “My name is Dave Garth. Didn’t the company tell you I was coming?”

“Let’s see your credentials.”

Silently Garth took his papers out and passed them over to the older man. He was surprised by the gruffness of his welcome, but as he thought it over he realized it was only to be expected. Thirty years of solitude, thirty years alone on this hothouse planet might do things to anybody’s temper.

Lidman flipped rapidly through the papers and handed them back. He had hardly looked at them: it was obvious that he simply was demonstrating his irritability by demanding them.

Lidman stepped back and sized Garth up. “So you’re my new assistant, eh? How old are you?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“I was thirty-five when they sent me out here. That was back in ’81. You weren’t even alive in ’81, were you? Maybe your parents weren’t even married then. And all that time while you were being born and growing up and joining the company, I’ve been out here on Danneroi.” Lidman’s wiry-face contorted bitterly. “Hell with all that. What’s your previous experience?”

“Five years in outworld service,” Garth said. “Nuril, Dwylliar, Cosgrove, and Lorphar. I was Routing Assistant for a year and a half on Lorphar before I was assigned here.”

Lidman grunted. “Okay, Garth. You’re officially welcomed to Danneroi. Damned if I know why the central office thinks this planet needs a two-man station, but as long as you’re here I’ll find some work for you. Can you swim?”

“Fairly well.”

“You’ll get plenty of practice here. The natives are great ones for swimming.” Lidman abruptly started to walk away. “You go amuse yourself for a while. I have to supervise the cargo transfer.”

He stumped away across the field, leaving Garth standing alone. Over by the ship, unloading was taking place; the ship’s cargo of trinkets and gewgaws was being carried into the nearest blockhouse. When that was done, the three-month accumulation of thorium would be loaded aboard, and the China Coast would blast off for the Sorgal System.

Garth wandered downfield to the trading-post. It was a two-story building; a couple of natives lounged out in front, dozing in the hot afternoon sun. Garth estimated the temperature at close to 100, and the humidity was in the same region.

A moist haze seemed to hang over everything on this planet. Droning blue-eyed flies the size of small birds whizzed through the muggy air. The jungle ringed the trading-post in; the sight of a spaceship out there on the landing-field was strikingly incongruous on this primitive world.

Garth glanced uneasily toward the bordering jungle. On a tropical world like this, it was expectable that unpleasant animals lurked out there. He didn’t intend to venture into that jungle any more often than his work required him to.

The unloading job took twenty minutes, loading half an hour more. It was late afternoon by the time the clear-the-field signal shrilled out and the China Coast rose upward on its rocket boosters. Garth stood on the porch of the trading outpost and watched the ship depart. Moments later he heard footsteps, and Anton Lidman appeared, followed by a few of the natives who had helped out in the unloading job.

Lidman said, “Usually the shipmen stick around for a day or two, but they were in a hurry this time. Damnably tight schedule, or something. Well, come on, Garth. I’ll show you where you’ll stay.”

As Garth reached for his luggage, Lidman quickly stepped in front of him to block the gesture. The older man said, “The natives can take care of that, Garth. They enjoy helping out that way. Don’t spoil their pleasure.”

Garth shrugged and followed Lidman up the stairs of the trading post building, with two natives following behind with his luggage. On the upper story, Lidman turned off to his left and indicated a small room with a cot and a rickety dresser in it.

“This is your place,” Lidman said.

Garth nodded He hadn’t expected luxury, not on a world that had been a one-man station for so long. Lidman handed him a spraygun and said, “This is for the bugs. Give the place a good spraying every morning when you get up, and at night when you sack out. Don’t trust the houseboy to do the job: unless you like bugs crawling around your room, take care of it yourself.”

“Right.”

“Toilet facilities are down the hall. My room is all the way down there to the right. Downstairs is strictly for business. I’ll brief you on your duties in the morning. No sense bothering now.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Couple more things. You bring a hat with you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Make sure you wear it all the time. The cloud blanket is pretty thick on this planet, but the sun comes through it stronger than hell anyway, and a day running around bareheaded can kill you. Second thing is, meals are on time round here. I have a native cook who’s pretty good. If you have any allergies or stuff like that, talk to her about it. Any other questions?”

Garth tightened. “Yes, sir. In case of accident—where are the medical supplies kept?”

Lidman’s eyes seemed to narrow a little, as if in suspicion. “For various reasons which may become plain to you later, I keep the medical stores under lock and key. If you need anything, come to me.”

“Suppose you’re not around?”

“I’ll be around, Mr. Garth. Don’t worry about that. Clear?”

The next few days were busy ones for Garth. He installed himself in his little room, began the job of getting himself accustomed to the perpetually muggy climate, and hid very carefully the small subradio transmitter he had been given for filing his secret reports. His room door did not lock, so it was necessary for him to hide the transmitter with great care indeed.

Lidman, as head of the outpost, had his own transmitter, but Garth was under orders to file his reports secretly, and that meant not using the base radio. He hid the tiny device under his discarded overcoat. The second day he discovered that his room had been searched, and he wondered whether Lidman had discovered the transmitter.

He settled into the routine of life on Danneroi. At first sleeping was difficult; the planet had five moons, and at least one of them was full at all times, so bright light streamed into his room every night, making sleeping even harder than it normally would have been in such a climate.

He found the food passable. As in most tropical societies, it consisted mostly of fresh vegetables prepared with hot sauces; meat, when it was served, was served newly-killed, since refrigeration was a problem.

Garth found the Danneroi style of cooking reasonably to his liking. It was obvious that Lidman had long since adjusted his palate to it and genuinely enjoyed the food.

The activities of the trading post consisted mostly of negotiating for thorium. A rigid set of values had been worked out, so many gimcracks and gadgets for so much thorium, and it was important never to vary this relationship. Most of the aliens, though, preferred to haggle; this took time.

Thorium was not the only export Danneroi had, though. Lidman revealed that with each pickup ship came several orders from zoos or research biologists of various galactic worlds for specimens, live or otherwise, of Danneroian flora and fauna.

This required special teamwork; over the years, Lidman had trained a corps of hunters who brought back the necessary animal, alive or dead as required, and who crated it for pickup by the next ship.

Each morning Lidman conducted classes in English for the natives. These were widely attended; some natives came from thirty and forty miles away, setting out at dawn each day to attend.

The trading post was a busy place. And, so far as Garth could tell in his first few days, Lidman was doing a perfectly adequate job of running it. The old man was crotchety and irritable, but that could be pardoned, considering that he had spent the last thirty years with no company but that of naked aliens. All things considered, he was doing an excellent job, however. And that puzzled Garth.

One of the prime rules of the Interstellar Merchant Service was that no drug or intoxicating beverage not native to a planet be distributed there. Interstellar trade in narcotics and liquor was strictly forbidden. Lidman knew that as well as anyone else.

Yet word had reached Earth at last that Lidman was breaking that regulation. It made no sense to Garth. If it were so, why would an intelligent and capable man like Lidman ruin his good record by violating interstellar law?

Garth didn’t have any answer for that. He was beginning to doubt that Lidman actually was committing the violation charged. After all, he had no evidence.

Not until the fourth day.

Garth rose that day at dawn, when the first warmth of the sun burst into his room. He had slept better the night before than on the previous three.

Since the trading post’s plumbing facilities were decidedly on the primitive side, Garth had to go outside for his morning shower. Years ago, Lidman had rigged an outdoor shower behind the building, and each morning just before dawn one of the natives fetched fresh water for the use of the Earthmen. Garth had an audience of five or six curious aliens while he showered. The fact did not disturb him; modesty was unnecessary on a planet whose total Terran population consisted of two males.

Lidman had long since been up, showered, and dressed. He grunted his morning greeting as Garth entered the small dining alcove for breakfast. When the meal was finished, Garth was given his morning assignment: straightening out the files of pickup vouchers over the past year. Lidman explained that he had been too busy to file the papers away properly. “Can’t be troubled with all that damned paperwork when real work has to be done,” he muttered.

Shrugging, Garth set to the task and worked most of the morning at it. Around eleven, he wearied of the routine and meaningless job, and decided to go outside and stretch his legs a little.

The sun was rising toward noonday heat. Garth, like Lidman, wore only shorts and sun-helmet now, and his body, which had grown pale during his stay on cool Lorphar, now was rapidly tanning. He stood in front of the trading-post, glancing round, listening to the animal-trumpetings coming from the jungle.

As he stood there a native came from the interior of the building, excused himself, and walked past Garth. The Earthman noticed a small white tube in the alien’s hand. A flicker of recognition and surprise ran through him. He called to the alien.

“Come over here.”

“You want me, Boss Garth?”

Garth recognized the alien as one of the trading post’s own laborers, part of a domestic corps of nine or ten who weeded the grounds, tidied up indoors, cleaned and prepared the food, and generally helped out.

“You’re Khalimuru, aren’t you?”

“Yes, Boss.”

The alien’s voice was soft, liquid-sounding. He was no more than five feet three or so, and he looked up trustingly at Garth. These people are like children, Garth thought.

“Khalimuru, what’s that in your hand?”

“Boss Lidman give it to me.”

“I didn’t ask you that. What is it?”

“Makes good dreams,” the alien said.

Garth felt a tingle of confirmation. “Can I look at it?”

“You give it back to me after?”

“Of course.”

The alien surrendered the tube. Garth looked at it. It was a tube of neopriozone, a useful drug in a tropical climate. Its chief use was as an antipyretic, a febrifuge for tropical diseases. It could also be used to reduce pain.

“What do you do with this stuff?” Garth asked.

“Drink it. Little at a time. Gives me good dreams. Boss Lidman let me have it when I work hard.”

Garth scowled. The rumors were true, then: unbelievable as it seemed, Lidman was distributing drugs to the natives. He held the little capsule thoughtfully, wondering just what action he should take.

“Does Boss Lidman give much of this stuff away?”

“He give plenty. Been doing a long time. You let me have it back now?”

Garth glanced at the capsule in his hand. Was it right to return it to the native, knowing what it was? he wondered. Then he decided it would hardly do further harm to hand the drug over. He gave it back. The alien nodded thankfully and scampered away.

Watching him go, Garth realized he was biting hard on his own lip. It was his duty to report old Lidman, now. He would have to notify Earth, and after thirty years in the Merchant Service Lidman would be relieved in disgrace. Why was the old man doing something like this? Why?

Another thought struck Garth. With Lidman removed, the Danneroi post was his, now. He would be all alone, in charge of the entire operation on this hothouse world. He realized it was a big responsibility.

Sure, his aim all along had been to reach a level of authority, but now that he stood on the verge of it he wondered if he could handle the job and do half as well as Lidman had done. For Lidman, despite his one lapse from the law, had done a splendid job of organizing Danneroi.

He decided not to approach Lidman directly on the matter yet. Instead he would notify Earth of his discovery, and bide his time.

Returning to the trading-post, he made his way upstairs without stopping off to greet Lidman, and entered his own room. Closing the door, he rummaged in his locker until he found his small transmitter. The only frequency it could broadcast on was a tight-beam carrier direct to the Buenos Aires offices of Interstellar Merchant Service. All he had to do was tap out the words, one after another.

Seating himself cross-legged with his back to the door so Lidman could not enter unexpectedly, Garth transmitted his message:

REPORT OF DAVE GARTH, DANNEROI. TO MARTIN KINGSLEY, BUENOS AIRES OFFICE.

HAVE FOUND NATIVE IN POSSESSION OF NEOPRIOZONE CAPSULE GIVEN BY LIDMAN. CONFIRMS EARLIER RUMORS. HAVE NOT SPOKEN TO LIDMAN ABOUT MATTER YET. LIDMAN’S HANDLING OF OPERATIONS HERE IS OTHERWISE FIRST RATE. FURTHER REPORTS WILL FOLLOW.

GARTH

The message having been sent, he restored the transmitter to its hiding place. It was nearly time for lunch now. Garth headed downstairs once again.

Lidman was standing in front of the building, giving orders to two of the aliens. The sky was darkening; a torrential rainstorm was sweeping down from the hills thirty miles to the north. Garth glanced through the screen windows at the short, lean figure of the older man. How long, Garth wondered, had Lidman been distributing neopriozone to the aliens? And above all else, why?

Their native cook appeared from within. “Lunch call, Boss Lidman,” she announced.

“Lunch call, Boss Garth.”

Lidman broke off his conversation and came inside. As he caught up with Garth, he stared at the younger man penetratingly and said, “Well? How soon will you be through with the filing?”

“By the middle of the afternoon, I’d guess.”

“Make sure you are. There’s plenty of other work for you here. Plenty. Let’s go get some lunch, now.”

It was an uncomfortable meal. Garth, tense with the knowledge that he had found proof of Lidman’s crime, was not very hungry. He tried to conceal his emotions. Lidman, across the table, shoveled greens and rice into his mouth eagerly. There was nothing wrong with Anton Lidman’s appetite, Garth thought.

The meal was silent. Lidman never spoke unless he had to; thirty years of solitude had taught him no need for small-talk. As for Garth, he was too concerned with his own problems to care to chatter.

In the middle of the meal Lidman looked up and said, “You going to be finished with that filing by half past two?”

“I hope so.”

“Good. A shipment of ore is going to be arriving at around three or three-fifteen from the Mbuambwe tribe, eighteen miles from here. I want you to take care of weighing it in and paying the natives. Think you can handle it?”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Your best won’t be good enough. Aim for perfection and settle for nothing less.”

Lidman returned his attention to his plate. Shrugging, Garth did the same after a moment. Lidman was simply giving him a little more responsibility, breaking him in on some of the more important duties of the trading-post. It was just as well, Garth thought. Before long I’ll have to run this whole operation myself.

He was finished with the dull task of filing away the pickup vouchers early, about ten after two. He went looking for Lidman, but there was no sign of the older man, and one of the trading-post aides told him that Lidman had gone away for the afternoon to visit a sick child in one of the nearby tribes.

Garth hadn’t realized that the job called for an amateur doctor, as well as a trader, teacher, and architect. But each day he was learning more and more about the responsibilities of running a one-man trading post. And it occurred to him now that perhaps Lidman had deliberately gone off and left him in charge this afternoon so he would have to tackle the job of weighing the ore without hope of assistance.

He read till about three, when Khalimuru appeared to tell him that the Mbuambwe ore-bearers were approaching the outpost.

Garth changed into a clean pair of shorts and waited for their arrival. There were eight of them, six men and two women, carrying over their shoulders fibromesh sacks that glittered in the afternoon sun. They looked strangely at him as they dumped their burdens down near the big scale on the trading post porch.

“I am Boss Garth,” he said. “Boss Lidman is not here today.”

“Will you deal fairly with us?”

“Of course.”

He whistled for a couple of his native aides, and they weighed out the ore. While it was being resacked and carted away to the blockhouses, to be stored against the next visit of the pickup ship, Garth computed a proper payment in mirrors, pocket-knives, radionic cookers, and the other gadgets requested by the aliens. Rather than skimp, he made the payment somewhat on the generous side.

However, the Mbuambwe spokesman gravely shook his head when he saw what Garth offered.

“This is not fair payment.”

“In what way is it unfair? I’ve followed Boss Lidman’s measurements. If anything, I’ve paid you too much.”

“Yes. You have paid us too much. Overpayment is not allowed.”

For an instant Garth thought the alien was teasing him, but then he reflected that these solemn little beings had shown no previous sign of a sense of humor. Evidently overpayment was unacceptable here. Lidman had warned that the aliens would haggle, but he didn’t expect them to haggle in this direction!

Kneeling, Garth removed several mirrors from the pile of goods that had been brought from the storehouse.

“Is this enough now?”

“One more.”

Repressing his amusement, Garth removed another mirror from the pile. Then the alien said, “Now our dealings are fair and can be blessed.”

Eventually the deal was consummated to everyone’s satisfaction, and the aliens withdrew, single file, into the jungle. Garth thought he had handled the transaction reasonably well. Certainly he felt he could manage by himself here on Danneroi, after Lidman was gone.

He sat on the porch, filling out the proper forms to cover the deal—he was determined never to let the paperwork pile up, the way Lidman had—and he was still sitting there half an hour later, when Lidman returned from wherever he had been.

His bare legs were splashed with mud; he had been into the jungle. He looked down at Garth and said, “You take care of everything?”

“The ore is in the bins. You want to look at the voucher forms?”

“I’ll look at them later. Tired.”

“Where were you?”

“Medical call,” Lidman said. “Boy in a village eight miles to the south had a devil inside him. Turned out to be appendicitis.”

Garth stared, popeyed. “You just performed an appendectomy?” he asked.

Lidman nodded. “Pretty good one, too. I figure I’ve yanked three hundred appendixes since I’ve been here. It runs about one a month, or so.” He chuckled. “Funny how that useless organ persists from world to world, isn’t it?”

“Do you have any medical training?”

Lidman shook his head vigorously. “I learned by ear. First dozen appendix cases I had, the patient died. What of it? The witch-doctor couldn’t do any more than I did, and at least I was picking up the skills. Since then I usually win if I get there in time. Can’t do anything about peritonitis, though. One man can handle only so much, specially when he’s an amateur medico.”

“You—you take care of childbirths too?”

Lidman looked scornful. “If there’s one thing a primitive woman knows, it’s how to bear a child. No, I don’t help out when they’re calving. Help’s only needed on surgeries.”

Lidman turned and started to go inside. Garth stood helplessly watching him for a moment, struck by the enormity of the job facing the operator of a one-man trading station, and decided that this was the time to have matters out with Lidman. Right here, now, before things went any further.

“Lidman. Wait a second.”

Lidman paused in the doorway and turned. “What do you want?”

“I want to talk to you.”

“Go ahead, then. Talk.”

“No,” Garth said. “Inside. I’ve got something serious I want to discuss with you.”

Garth followed the older man inside, through the big central room of the trading outpost, and into the smaller office adjoining it. Lidman shut the door, dropped into a wicker chair, and glanced up at Garth.

“Well? What’s worrying you?”

Garth ran his tongue over his dry lips. “Something I found out this morning. I’d like you to explain it to me.”

“Go ahead.”

“Khalimuru—the houseboy. I found him holding a tube of neopriozone this morning.”

“What of it?”

“He said you gave it to him.”

Lidman seemed to stiffen at every joint. “He told you the truth.”

“Khalimuru didn’t seem to be sick. How come he needs a whole capsule of that stuff?”

“He seems to like it,” Lidman said.

“How about the other aliens? Do they like neopriozone too?”

“Most of them do.”

Garth eyed the older man closely, admiring his coolness and wondering what madness lay behind it. “From what I gather, neopriozone acts as a narcotic for these people. You know that, I’m sure. And you hand the stuff out to them. Are you aware that you’re breaking the interstellar code?”

“I know what I’m doing, youngster.”

“I question that. You have no right to distribute drugs to primitive beings!”

“Maybe I have no choice about it,” Lidman said quietly.

“What the hell does that mean?”

Lidman shrugged. “What it means doesn’t concern you. What do you plan to do, now that you’ve uncovered my nefarious activities?”

Garth said levelly, “I’m going to report you to the central office for code violations. You’ll be relieved of your post on Danneroi and returned to Earth for trial. I’m your replacement here.”

“The home office knew, then. They sent you out here to spy on me.”

“They sent me as an observer,” Garth said. “You were suspected of illegal acts.”

Lidman glared at him scornfully. “You—you boy! You think you can replace me here? You think you can handle this?”

“I intend to try,” Garth said.

“I intend to try,” Lidman mimicked acidly. “How nice! And so you’re going to turn me in and send me back to Earth.”

“What would you want me to do? Condone your crime? Lidman I don’t understand you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“How could you do it—break one of the strictest rules in the book?”

“I had to,” Lidman said. “And don’t bother to ask me to explain.” He rose abruptly. “I spotted you as a spy the minute you landed here. You think I can’t tell the difference between a one-man world and a two-man? I didn’t need an assistant here. There’s nothing you’re doing that I didn’t handle myself for thirty years. Okay, Mister Spy. You’ve found me out.”

Lidman put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. A moment later the office door opened and three Danneroians entered. They looked questioningly at Lidman and at a gesture from him they glided up behind Garth and took his hands.

“Are you crazy?” Garth asked. “Teaching natives to manhandle an Earthman?”

“It just increases my burden of sin, doesn’t it?” Lidman said. To the aliens he added, “You are to take Boss Garth out into the jungle as far as the Ghiiar tree and leave him there. You will return alone.”

“We understand.”

Garth tested the strength of the aliens’ grip and found that they had him tightly pinioned. He stared in astonishment at Lidman.

“You’re just going to maroon me out there—out in the jungle?”

“Yes.”

“If I ever get back alive—if Earth ever finds out—they’ll put you away for the rest of your life, Lidman!”

The older man smiled wearily. “The rest of my life is not so long a time as you seem to think, for one thing. For another, you won’t get back alive; not unarmed and with no previous experience in the jungle. I’m sorry to do this to you, Garth. I really am. But I can’t abide interference with my plans. Things have to be the way they are here.”

Lidman looked at the aliens. “Take him away.”

Resistance was useless. The natives were small, but they were muscular, and Garth did not stand a chance. They trundled him silently and efficiently out of the trading post, across the clearing, and into the jungle. Garth made no attempt to struggle. He concentrated on memorizing the path, hoping that he would be able to find his way back.

He realized he had been a fool to approach Lidman so openly. The man was insane; had to be, to give drugs to the alien and then to send another Earthman out to death in the jungle. Garth saw now he should have imprisoned Lidman at once, notified Earth to come to pick the old trader up for trial.

Now he could predict what would happen. Earth, in receipt of Garth’s message, would send another investigator. Perhaps Lidman would invent some fantastic story about Garth’s insanity; in any event, he would deny the drug charge. He would be cleared, free to continue his pattern of life here.

The jungle was oppressively dank. Vines clung to the tree-tops, blocking out light. Giant insects droned through the moist air. Lizards, two feet long and brightly colored, scuttled out from under rotting logs to peer curiously at the procession, then hurriedly leaped back into hiding.

Minute followed minute, and as the path wound more and more complexly Garth began to discover he could never find his way back unaided. There was no real road any more, just a yard-wide track through the foliage. Underfoot the ground was marshy, soggy, wet.

Garth had just about abandoned hope when his captors, keen-eared, paused. A moment later he heard the sound that had made them stop. Footsteps, approaching rapidly—someone running after them.

It was Khalimuru. Breathless, he caught up with the others and exchanged a few quick sentences with them in the alien language.

Garth said, “What’s going on?”

Khalimuru looked up. “Boss Lidman sent me, Boss Garth. He says you are to be taken no further into the jungle. He says you are to be brought back to the outpost immediately.”

The trip back took nearly half an hour. Garth wondered what motive had compelled Lidman to make his sudden change of heart. Was it the realization of the inhumanity of his act that had motivated the reprieve? Or was it simply that he had decided to kill Garth himself, instead of trusting to the jungle creatures?

Whatever the reason, the reprieve was granted. On the return journey the natives kept clear of him, as if they were a little shocked at themselves for having dared to lay hands on an Earthman. He walked by himself, with several of the Danneroians leading the way and the rest in back of him.

When they reached the outpost clearing, Garth saw a huddle of natives outside the trading post. He walked toward them. When they looked up at him, there was an expression of fear and horror in their eyes, and they muttered nervously to each other in their own language.

“You are back, Boss Garth,” one of them said to him, in English.

“Yes, I’m back. Where’s Boss Lidman?”

“He—he—he inside!”

“Inside where?”

A pale fishlike face stared up at his. “Boss Lidman, is dead!”

“What?”

The alien went on, “Five-ten minutes ago. He put thunder-stick to head, loud noise sound. Boss Lidman fall dead.”

Garth felt a tingling of alarm. “Where is he?”

“He in office. Before he do that, he say we should listen to you now. You only Boss.”

Garth looked around at the others. “Is he telling the truth? Is Boss Lidman dead? And did he make me only Boss before he killed himself?”

Several of the natives nodded. Garth stared at them. He said, “Where is Boss Lidman now?”

“He in his office, Boss Garth!”

It had to be some kind of trick, Garth thought. Lidman was planning something devilish. Garth entered the trading post on tiptoes, going straight to the cabinet where the weapons were kept. He unlocked it, drew out a .45 blaster, checked the charge chamber.

Thus armed, he pushed open the door to Lidman’s inner office and leaped quickly back out of firing range.

Nothing happened.

Garth waited a moment or two. Then, cautiously, he stuck his head round the doorpost and peered into the small office.

Lidman was sitting at his desk, slumped over. He was clutching a pistol in his hand—not an energy blaster, Garth noticed with the peculiar clarity of shock, but an old-fashioned pistol. Lidman’s head was a bloody ruin. The bullet seemed to have entered just below Lidman’s right ear, and had risen diagonally through his skull, blasting off the entire left side of his head. It was an ugly sight. And it was definitely suicide.

As if to confirm that last thought, Garth saw a note lying on Lidman’s desk—a sealed envelope, addressed in the dead man’s own handwriting to Dave Garth. With shaky fingers Garth reached for the envelope, snatched it up, and started to rip it open. He realized that the natives were peering curiously through the half-open door behind him, and, turning, he smiled gently at them and pushed the door closed.

Then, taking a seat with his back to the body, he tore open the envelope. Inside he found a handwritten note covering both sides of a sheet of paper, in Lidman’s cramped little handwriting:

Dear Garth:

By the time you read this I will be dead at long last. For the past decade at least I have waited for death to take me, but I remained in good health and continued to live. Your arrival here at last gives me freedom to destroy myself, for I know my work here will be continued by you and that also you must inherit my suffering.

First accept my apologies for the beastly thing I tried to do to you today. I was shocked out of my mind, I guess, by your exposure of me. Perhaps it would have been best if I had let you die, but I don’t want another sin on my ledger, so I’ve sent Khalimuru out into the jungle to fetch you back. And in a few minutes I will take a very permanent way of resigning from the Merchant Service, leaving the outpost here in your capable hands.

You were, of course, correct in that I was giving drugs to the aliens. I have been doing so for nearly ten years, even though I have never ceased to be aware of the dreadful nature of my act. All I can say by way of excuse is that I had no choice. Ten years ago I treated a native with neopriozone, not knowing the narcotic effect it would have on him. When he recovered, he compelled me to give him more. Since then, many of the other natives have become addicts, and they likewise have forced me to supply the drug to them. Their method of compulsion is so uniquely terrible that I cannot bear to describe it here. I fear you will experience it soon enough.

In closing, I ask you to forgive me for what I have done on this world, and to pray for me. Perhaps I will have peace where I am going. I have had none in this life for many years.

Anton Lidman

Garth straightened up and methodically folded the suicide note into halves, then into quarters, and slipped it into the pocket of his shorts. His mind was still getting used to the events of the last few minutes. It took time to change gears; for half an hour he had figured he was being led to his death in the jungle, and now he came back to find Lidman a suicide, and the entire outpost in his hands.

And the note did little but puzzle. Evidently Lidman had touched off the neopriozone addictions accidentally, unaware of what he was doing. But what did he mean when he said the natives had used a “uniquely terrible” way of compelling him to keep supplying them with the drug?

He shrugged. First things had to come first, and in this tropical climate a quick burial was most important. Garth strode to the porch of the trading post and signaled to several of the aliens.

He ordered them to dig a grave six feet long and two feet deep at the edge of the jungle.

Garth next headed upstairs and took out his little radio transmitter, the one that he would no longer need to keep hidden. He turned it on and tapped out another message to the home office:

DAVE GARTH, DANNEROI, REPORTING. TO MARTIN KINGSLEY, BUENOS AIRES OFFICE.

LIDMAN A SUICIDE WHEN CONFRONTED WITH EVIDENCE OF DRUGGING. LEFT A NOTE ADMITTING HIS GUILT. AS PREVIOUSLY UNDERSTOOD AM TAKING FULL CONTROL OF DANNEROI OUTPOST AND WILL WAIT FOR FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.

GARTH

Then, calling four of the natives, he assigned them to pallbearing duties. There was no need for a coffin, not in this climate; wood placed in that ground would rot in a month or two anyway. With an alien at each leg and one at each shoulder, the body of Anton Lidman was borne across the clearing he had built, and gently he was placed in his grave.

Garth said a few words, and then signaled for the grave to be closed. When the new mound of soil rose high over the body, Garth inserted a stick as a marker. Later, at his leisure, he could possibly carve a tombstone for the old man.

He looked around at the natives.

“Boss Lidman is dead. From now on I am Boss.”

“From now on you are Boss.”

Garth smiled sadly. He had long waited for this, the chance to operate his own trading outpost; he was top man on Danneroi, and perhaps someday, when he had built the station up to five or ten-man status, he would really be important in the Service. But he felt no sense of glory, no exaltation. He had hounded an old man to suicide, and that somewhat tarnished everything.

He returned to the trading post. According to the schedule, Lidman had been expecting an ore consignment from a northern tribe later in the day. Garth wanted to get a little rest, to ease his nerves a little before he settled down to the job of running the trading post.

Trouble began half an hour later.

It started with Khalimuru knocking timidly on the door of Garth’s bedroom upstairs. He had not yet moved into Lidman’s room.

“Boss Garth? Are you there?”

“Come in. What’s the matter?”

“The people are waiting down there, Boss Garth.”

Instantly Garth snapped to attention. “What people? The ore shipment isn’t due for two hours yet!”

“Not the ore shipment,” Khalimuru said sadly. “It is the outpost people. At this time Boss Lidman used to give them dream-stuff. They want to know, you going to give it to them too.”

Garth felt a quiver of alarm. “Tell them—tell them I’ll be right down. I’ll talk to them.”

There were seven or eight of the outpost people waiting on the porch for him when he emerged. He was sweating and tense; this was the moment he had feared ever since his first glimpse of Lidman’s body. The moment when he would be called on to distribute drugs to the aliens.

He coughed to get some of the tension out of his nervous system. The aliens were eyeing him expectantly, almost holding their breaths in anticipation of what he was going to tell them.

He said, “I understand you’re here because this was the time when Boss Lidman gave you the dream-stuff. This stuff.”

He held up a neopriozone capsule and the aliens seemed to sigh with desire for it. Garth noticed now that they all had the glazed eyes of addicts.

He said, “Boss Lidman did a wrong thing by giving this to you. It is evil. Boss Lidman killed himself because of this. From now on, there will be no more of the dream-stuff for you.”

After a long pause one of the aliens said mournfully, “We must have it.”

“No. From now on no more.”

He fingered the blaster at his hip, just in case they decided to get ugly. But there was no visible reaction, just an intangible sadness of mood that seemed to descend over them.

Mildly another alien said, “Boss Lidman always let us have it. Why must things change?”

“Boss Lidman did wrong to give you the dream-stuff.”

“And you will not?”

“I will not.”

“Then we will kill ourselves,” said the alien.

For an instant Garth did not really understand. Then he frowned and said, “You don’t need to do that. There are cures for addiction.”

“We do not want cures. We want the dream-stuff, and if you do not give it to us we will kill ourselves.”

Abruptly one of the aliens—Garth recognized him as the downstairs houseboy—stepped off the porch and faced the group. He seemed to be smiling. As if by magic, one of the native knives had appeared in his hand—a vicious little weapon, eight inches long, with a curved, razor-keen blade that glinted brightly in the reddish late-afternoon sunlight.

“You will change your mind, Boss Garth,” the houseboy said in flat, calm tones. “When we did this for Boss Lidman he changed his mind. You will change yours.”

“You will get no drugs from me!” Garth said firmly.

The houseboy shrugged. Still smiling, he lifted the knife and, in a gesture that took no more than a second to perform, jabbed it into his stomach and sliced upward, laying himself open almost to the throat. The smile did not fade as the houseboy fell to the ground. A pool of blood began to spread outward.

Garth goggled unbelievingly. Before he could speak, a second Danneroian had come forward and he, too, was brandishing a knife.

“Will you give us the dream-stuff, Boss Garth?”

Thickly Garth said, “You must be out of your minds! Killing yourselves!”

“Will you give it to us?”

“No! No!”

Garth averted his eyes in horror as the second alien disemboweled himself. Currents of shock ran through him; he felt sick.

As a third alien stepped forward to kill himself, Garth shouted, “No! Wait! Here, take the damned drug! Take it!”

He hurled the capsule of Neopriozone at the alien, and, dashing within, picked up the keys he had taken from dead Lidman’s body. Hurriedly he found the medical cabinet key, opened it, took a handful of drug capsules from the rack, and hurled them at the group of aliens.

Shuddering, he ran upstairs.

For a long while he sat on the edge of his cot, bathed in sweat, trying to erase the nightmarish sight of two dead aliens from his mind. Now he understood why Lidman had called the aliens’ compulsion “uniquely terrible.” They indeed had a dreadful weapon. Either he supplied them with the drug or they disemboweled themselves right before his eyes. Life was cheap on this young world, it seemed.

Garth stared at his quivering hands. With those hands he had given drugs to the aliens. He had broken the rule he held most sacred.

I had no choice, he told himself grimly.

Heaving sobs racked him. He stared out the window, down at the happy group of aliens. They had what they wanted. No one seemed to care that two had died for it. They had these Earthmen figured out. We’re softhearted. They know how to make us give them what they want.

It was incredible that Lidman had been able to stand it so long. Always smiling, always obedient, the natives had nevertheless imposed a dread tyranny over him. There was always the unvoiced threat of self-destruction compelling him to hand out the drug, until he himself had broken the spell with a pistol shot.

Garth looked forward, into the years to come. Long years of nightmare on Danneroi, as he went about his duties and tried to pretend he wasn’t breaking the law. It was too much. He was an honorable man. He could never bring himself to distribute drugs, day in and day out, for the rest of his life.

Sobbing incoherently, he reached for the radio transmitter. He thought a moment, knowing that what he would write now would smash his career, would end his usefulness in the Merchant Service. He would be given a psycho discharge. But there was no help for it. He was caught in a vise-like grip.

If he refused the drugs, the aliens would slaughter themselves. If he gave them the drug, he was breaking his own staunch moral code. There was only one way out. Garth realized he was on the edge of cracking up.

With trembling fingers he tapped out a message to the home office:

THESE ALIENS ARE DEVILISH. SEND SOMEONE ELSE IN A HURRY. I RESIGN. HELP! HELP! HELP!

WATERS OF FORGETFULNESS
(1958)

Things were getting wobblier and wobblier for my science-fiction markets as the complicated year of 1958 moved along and magazine sales of all kinds began to diminish, and “Waters of Forgetfulness,” which I wrote for W.W. Scott in May of 1958, would prove to be the last straightforward science-fiction novelet I would do for him before the magazine underwent a desperate mutation in a last-gasp effort to survive.

An interstellar spaceliner has been shipwrecked on an unexplored planet. A member of the search team finds it and learns that the survivors have undergone—changes—as the alien environment exerts its influence on their metabolisms. And then he—well, he gets entangled in those changes too, and then—then—

It ran under the name of Eric Rodman, who was becoming a well established name in Super-Science, though perhaps the astute regular reader, if there were any such, might have noticed a certain thematic resemblance between Rodman’s novelets and those of Calvin M. Knox. But then came the transformation of Super-Science from a conventional s-f magazine into a monster-fiction magazine, and I found it necessary to vary my method just a bit to meet the new requirements.

The regular s-f magazines had continued to shut up shop all during 1958. Such titles as Infinity, Science Fiction Adventures, Fantastic Universe, and Hamling’s Imagination and Imaginative Tales, among others for which I had been a frequent contributor, came to the end of their days. Against this gloomy background the sudden upsurge of monster fiction provided one commercial bright spot. In the late 1950s a magazine called Famous Monsters of Filmland, which specialized in photo-essays on classic Hollywood horror movies of the “Frankenstein” and “Wolf-Man” sort, had shot up overnight to a huge circulation. A couple of the science-fiction editors, desperately trying to find something that worked, experimented with converting their magazines to vehicles for monster-based horror fiction. Over at Super-Science Fiction, Scottie concluded that the only way to save his magazine was to convert it to a book of monster stories also. Word went out to all the regular contributors, of whom, of course, I was the most productive, that all material purchased thenceforth would have to have some monster angle in it. I didn’t find that difficult, since most of the stories I was doing for him were space adventures featuring fearsome alien beings, and I would simply need to make the aliens a little bigger and more fearsome.

Strangely, Scottie didn’t change the title of the magazine. This was odd, because the presence of “Science” in it wasn’t something likely to appeal to horror fans. Instead he plastered the words SPECIAL MONSTER ISSUE! in big yellow letters above the name of the magazine on the April, 1959 issue, commissioned a painting that featured a gigantic and notably hideous creature sweeping a couple of space-suited humans up in its claws, and retitled every story in inventory to give it a monster-oriented twist: “The Huge and Hideous Beasts,” for example, or “The Abominable Creature.” (His gift for the utterly flat-footed title may have stood him in good stead here.)

The lead story for that issue was one that I was writing in July, 1958, just as the change in policy went into effect. Evidently I found it necessary to restructure the story midway through for the sake of monsterizing it, because on my frayed and tattered carbon copy of the manuscript I find a penciled note in my own handwriting indicating a switch in the plot as of page 26: “They are continuing along when they see a huge monster looming ahead. They lay low, but the monster pursues them. They hear it crackling along behind them. They trip it, but it claws its way out of the trap and comes at them.” And so on to the end of the story. Whatever non-monster denouement I might originally have had in mind is lost forever in the mists of time. And my original title, “Five Against the Jungle,” became Scottie’s “Mournful Monster,” which I included in my earlier volume of my early stories, In the Beginning.

I went on writing lead novelets for Scottie for a little while longer, but the tone was different now. The June, 1959 issue brought the world “Beasts of Nightmare Horror” by “Richard F. Watson,” an epic of—surprise!—space colonists up against the onslaught of alien monsters. The August, 1959 Super-Science yielded more of the same in “Planet of the Angry Giants” by “Dirk Clinton.” Then came the October, 1959 issue with “Dan Malcolm”’s “The Loathsome Beasts,” and that was that. Super-Science’s eighteenth issue was its last. I had three stories in that October, 1959 issue, but when I turned them in, in March of 1959, Scottie sadly notified me that he would need no more science-fiction stories from me after that. Though Trapped and Guilty were going to continue (for the time being), Super-Science had walked the plank.

I would miss it. It had supported me in grand style for three years, and the income from it would be hard to replace. The jig was up for those $240 novelettes, and my days as a high-volume producer of space opera were just about over, too.

——————

Halderson had just about given up the search for survivors of the missing spaceliner James P. Drew when his detectors picked up the faint, sputtering S.O.S. signal.

He sprang to his phones and tried to boost the signal, just in case coordinates were coming over as well as the bare, unadorned S.O.S. But the dim piping faded away and died within seconds. Halderson moistened his lips. The input tape had recorded the signal; he activated the playback switch, cut in the noise filters, and listened.

Yes. It was unmistakable, for all its indistinctness. It had only lasted a few seconds, but that was long enough for his detectors to pick it up. There were survivors of the James P. Drew! They were calling for help!

The super-luxury liner James P. Drew had disappeared somewhere in the thickly-populated Second Octant area of the galaxy about ten days before. It had been bound for Darrinoor out of Earth, and it had carried eight hundred wealthy first-class passengers plus a crew of nearly sixty. Just what had happened to the Drew was highly uncertain. Its messages had grown increasingly fragmentary and incoherent, and they were practically impossible to understand in the final minutes of the giant ship’s fire. It appeared that there had been a series of explosions aboard ship, beginning in the drive compartment and culminating with a grand outburst that split the liner apart.

Like all superliners of the Earth Line, the James P. Drew had been fully equipped with lifeships. It carried thirty ships, each built to hold ten or twelve people but each capable of holding as many as thirty if necessary. And there were hundreds of planets in the Second Octant to which survivors might have gone. Some of the planets were heavily settled; others were still utterly unexplored. But there were numerous Earthtype planets for the escaping survivors.

For ten days since the disappearance, over a hundred Disaster Patrol scouts had been combing the entire Second Octant area, hoping to pick up a message transmission from a group of survivors or, perhaps, to find one of the lifeships adrift in space. The scouts had drawn blanks so far. Not one had come upon a trace of the survivors of the James P. Drew disaster.

Disaster Scout Halderson had been on the verge of giving up and returning to home base. His small ship only carried two weeks’ supplies, anyway, and he saw no point in continuing the fruitless search for the missing millionaires. It was too bad about them, of course; but space travel was not completely safe, and accidents did happen.

He had been about to notify home base of his decision to return when his ultra-sensitive detectors picked up the feeble impulses of the call, coming in on the special wavelength that had been reserved for James P. Drew lifeships.

He played it back on his recording tapes. Yes, there was no doubt about it. The brief message had said, “S.O.S…S.O.S…James P. Drew survivors…S.O.S…S.O.S…”

Halderson integrated the signal and fed it to his computing tapes to get a directional fix. Perhaps the computer could give him an exact location; if not, it could at least pinpoint a general area which could be subjected to an exhaustive search.

He waited. He was in no hurry now. The computer took its own sweet time, checking probabilities and directional quadrations before beeping out a string of linked coordinates.

Halderson studied the sheet of paper that had issued from the computer. It gave a fairly precise orientation for the signal-source. Halderson nibbled on his writing stylus for a moment, then jabbed at the button that activated his chart-screen.

The screen lit up, glowing green with dark flecks in it. Quickly Halderson tapped out the directional coordinates the computer had given him, and the screen obligingly shifted to show him a view of the heavens in the area he called for.

One small dark fleck stood alone on the field of green. Halderson grinned in satisfaction. There was only one planet from which that signal could have emanated, then! It made his job that much simpler. The James P. Drew lifeship that had signaled him had come to rest in a relatively uncrowded sector of the galaxy’s Second Octant.

Nodding, Halderson jotted down the planetary data and shut off the chart-screen. He jacked in the contact for subradio communication with his home base on the planet Skaldek. Moments later came the crackling response from headquarters: “Disaster Patrol HQ. Come in, scoutship. Come in. Major Lang speaking.”

“Lieutenant Halderson calling, sir. Are you getting me? Halderson calling.”

“We read you,” came the reply from HQ. “Proceed, Halderson.”

“My detectors have picked up an S.O.S. message from survivors of the James P. Drew. I’ve made a directional estimate on the signal and I’ve come up with a possible planet of origin for it.”

“Let’s have the coordinates,” Lang said. “We’ll check them for you and advise.”

Halderson said. “It’s a Second Octant planet with Absolute Coordinates DY1164/AD2306. Repeat: Absolute Coordinates DY1164/AD2306.”

“DY1164/AD2306. Okay, Halderson. I’ll check them on the master planetary chart and let you know what to do next.”

Halderson waited patiently. It was impossible to install a complete galactic data-chart in every small scoutship; for any detailed information on a given planet, it was necessary for the scout to refer back to his home headquarters.

In a few moments Lang’s voice said, “I’ve checked that planet of yours, Halderson. So far as our records show, it’s a good potential harbor for castaways. It’s an Earthtype planet to three places, surveyed twenty years ago but never settled.”

Halderson nodded. Earthtype to three places meant that Earthmen could live there indefinitely without need of artificial protection. The air was breathable, the natural life edible, the water drinkable…

He said, “Very well, sir. In that case I’ll run a direct check on the planet immediately. If I find the Drew survivors there I’ll notify HQ.”

“Right.”

“Perhaps more than one lifeship landed there. I’ll keep you posted on my findings, Major.”

After he had broken contact with home base, Lieutenant Halderson pulled his small ship out of the idling orbit it had been in for the past hour, and punched out the coordinates of the new planet on his drive director. He estimated it would take no more than a day to reach the unnamed planet from his present position. He hoped the Drew survivors would be readily accessible, not stranded on a mountain peak or in the midst of some dreary alien desert, as so frequently happened.

Halderson had been in the Disaster Patrol for seven years. He liked the work, in an obscure way, even though it was lonely going and low paying. Disaster Patrol scouts were forbidden by law to accept rewards from people they rescued. Halderson didn’t mind that. Many times some rich tourist rescued by Halderson would offer to give the Disaster Patrol scout a fat reward, but Halderson was not even tempted.

He had no need for large amounts of money. He spent eight months of the 365-day Galactic Standard Year roaming the spaceways in search of stranded castaways, and the remaining four months of the year were his own, to be spent groundside on the more entertaining worlds of the universe.

That was all he asked. Eight months of rescue work, four months of relaxation. To be handed a couple of thousand credits for rescuing a wealthy traveler would only upset his quiet routine of life.

Most likely, he thought, somebody was going to offer him a reward this time. The James P. Drew had been, so he was told, the ultimate in pleasure liners. The fare from Earth to the gaming-world of Darrinoor was eighteen thousand credits for the two-week cruise, and from what he had heard the trip was worth the price in every way, if you cared for that sort of luxury.

Foods from the most remote parts of the galaxy, costly entertainers, party-girls supplied on the house if you wanted one, a constant flow of rare wines and liquors—yes, two weeks of that might be worth eighteen thousand credits for those who liked the high life.

Halderson didn’t. But he imagined that there would be at least one survivor who wanted to give him a reward.

“Contribute it to the Disaster Patrol pension fund,” Halderson would have to tell him. “I’m forbidden by law to accept it.”

As his tiny ship glided through the blank sleek grayness of nospace toward the planet from which the S.O.S. had emanated, Halderson thought back over his previous missions. Most of the time it was simply a matter of rescuing some cargo ship that had crashed on an alien world; and though that had its difficult points, it was usually simple work.

Twice before, superliners had been destroyed in space. At least a few survivors managed to get free in each case. But a lifeship is a small spaceship, and it can travel great distances if necessary. It was not always easy to locate the escapees. In this particular case, the planet from which the message had come was more than sixty parsecs from the last reported position of the liner James P. Drew.

He wondered whether there would be any trouble with this rescue. He hoped not. In four weeks more he was due for his annual leave.

The planet came into view twenty-two hours after Halderson had notified Headquarters about the S.O.S. He locked his ship into the standard reconnaissance orbit, five hundred miles above the surface of the planet, and began setting up his detecting equipment.

There were four continents, plus ice-masses at each pole. The planet was within the temperate zone of climate, which meant that the temperature varied between a hundred below zero and a hundred above, but that most of the planet was in the forty-to-eighty above zone. No sign of civilization was visible.

The planet had the usual distribution of climatic areas; in his first sweep around, Halderson saw bleak deserts, thick jungles, frozen tundra, grassy plains. Like most planets, this one had a pretty fair mixture of geography.

It was the fourth planet of a brightish yellow sun. Halderson saw three moons circling the planet: two reasonably big ones in wide orbits, and one close-in hunk of cosmic debris that was moving in a perversely retrograde direction.

The first quick sweep gave no indication of the whereabouts of the stranded lifeship. Halderson taped a message of greeting, looping the ends of the tape together so the message would be repeated infinitely, and sent it out over the known wavelength of the lifeship’s communicator. He doubted that they would be able to reply, but at least they would know he had arrived.

Then he got to work with the lifeship detector. It was geared to react to any large metallic mass on the surface of the planet, and it was particularly useful in finding ships that had crashed on uninhabited worlds. On an inhabited planet, of course, the detector was completely useless, since it would react to all sorts of stimuli. But here, if the lifeship really were here, the detector could locate it quickly.

It took fifteen orbital sweeps of the planet before Halderson heard the first cluttering sounds out of the mass detector. It took ten sweeps more before he had established the approximate location of the wrecked ship. Five sweeps later, he was leaving his fixed orbit and heading down for a landing.

It was just twenty-nine hours since the S.O.S. had been received.

Pretty fast work, Halderson thought with some satisfaction.

The lifeship had come to rest in a valley situated in the middle of the planet’s biggest continent, Halderson discovered. Whoever had landed the lifeship had done a pretty fair job, all things considered, but he had cut the jets a moment too soon. The ship had fallen from a goodly height without power—perhaps as much as two hundred feet—and the landing had not only smashed up the tail jet assembly but probably banged the occupants around severely.

Halderson landed his own ship, which was half the size of the lifeship, with professional ease, about a hundred yards from the wrecked ship. There was no sign of life either in or around the other vessel.

The Disaster Patrol scout ran the standard atmospheric checks before opening his locks. True, Lang had told him the planet was Earthlike to three decimals, but there was always the possibility of error. Halderson was determined to live to a ripe old age, and the best way to do that was to avoid taking unnecessary risks. Necessary risks were something else entirely.

However, his instruments checked the planet out as Earthlike and therefore safe for him, and he threw his airlocks open, strapped on his weapons, and stepped out of his ship.

The air was pleasantly mild and had a touch of springlike fragrance in it. According to the gauges embedded in his uniform’s wristband, the temperature was a cheerful 72.

The valley was very quiet.

Halderson strolled over to the lifeship and surveyed it from the outside. It stood reasonably upright, considering the crumpled nature of the tail assembly, and the main airlocks were open. He walked around the ship, checking on the extent of the damage. The lifeship was definitely beyond repair. It would never blast off again.

He had room for two or three passengers in his own ship, if necessary, but if there were more survivors than that he would have to radio for a Patrol pickup ship.

The silence of the valley oppressed him. He saw brightly-colored birds nestling in the trees, and in the distance a huge mountain peak vaulted toward the clouds.

The survivors, if there were any, were lucky to have crash-landed here. There were plenty of other worlds they might have picked that were a lot less congenial.

Indeed, there were plenty of other places on this very planet that would have been nasty for an extended stay, as Halderson had learned while making his preliminary inspection of the world.

Standing outside the crashed ship, Halderson cupped his hands and shouted three times, each time in a different direction.

“Halloo! Halloo! Halloo!”

He waited. He heard the dying echo of his own voice resounding from the distance, but there was no other sound to break the alien silence. He shrugged; maybe the survivors had picked up and moved on elsewhere. But that was a funny thing to do after you had sent out a rescue call. Perhaps they were all lying within the ship, dying or dead. But in that case, why were the airlocks open? For ventilation?

He shrugged and climbed up the catwalk and into the open airlock, to have a look around the lifeship and see what was inside. The silence of this planet was beginning to irritate him. This particular rescue mission was turning out quite unlike any other he had been involved in.

A lifeship is built for efficiency, not for comfort. It consists of a control panel in front, a drive unit in the rear, and passenger cradles in between. There were twelve cradles in this ship, each of them capable of holding two normal-sized people or three small-sized ones. But a quick look around told Halderson that only nine of the twelve cradles in this ship had been occupied at all—which meant that the lifeship had departed with even less than the intended minimum of passengers, let alone taking an extra load.

That was extremely odd too. The scene aboard the James P. Drew in its final moments of life must have been a terrifying one. But if all the lifeships had taken off with only nine or ten people aboard, then hundreds must have been stranded aboard the doomed liner with no means of escape.

Halderson moved up through the passenger compartment to the control section in the nose of the ship. What he found there was even more curious.

There was a man lying sprawled out face down in the cramped control section. He was wearing the blue and red uniform that Halderson instantly recognized as the garb of a crewman aboard an Earth Line ship. Someone had clubbed him in the back of the head with one of the portable fire extinguishers. He was dead.

But his assailant had not let the job end there. Still wielding the fire extinguisher, he had proceeded to smash the radio equipment and the entire control dashboard of the lifeship. That explained why the S.O.S. had died out so abruptly. The man who was sending it had been interrupted by death.

Halderson scratched the side of his jaw in complete perplexity. This James P. Drew lifeship seemed full of unanswered and knotty questions.

In the first place, why was a crewman aboard at all, even a dead one? Earth Line crewmen knew the regulations. They were not supposed to enter the lifeships until every passenger aboard ship was safely taken care of. Had this man become panicky and tried to save his own life despite the stern regulation?

And who had killed him? Why?

Why was the radio shattered and the dashboard controls ruined?

Where were the other survivors who had occupied the lifeship?

Halderson revolved the questions in his mind without coming to any conclusion. He decided finally that he would have to explore the vicinity of the wreck before any of this made sense.

He turned to make his way down to the airlock and out of the lifeship.

His way was blocked. A girl stood downship, with her arms folded. She was holding a Kesterton blaster, nestling in the crook of her folded left arm. It was pointed straight at his head.

“Who are you?” she asked. “And where did you come from?”

Halderson didn’t know which was more surprising, the fact that the girl was there at all or the way she was dressed. She looked about twenty or twenty-one, a tall, willowy blonde. All she was wearing was a mostly-transparent tunic-like affair that clung tightly from breasts to thighs. She was wearing it strictly for ornamental purposes, it seemed, because it concealed about as much as a pane of glass.

Halderson moistened his lips and said, “Are you one of the James P. Drew survivors?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Lieutenant Halderson of the Disaster Patrol. I’m here to rescue the Drew survivors. And I’d appreciate it if you’d put that gun down, or at least point it somewhere else. It makes me nervous.”

The gun stayed where it was. The girl said, “You come on out of the ship. We didn’t send for any rescuers, and we don’t want to be rescued.”

“I picked up an S.O.S.,” Halderson argued.

The girl shrugged lightly and pointed with the gunbarrel to the corpse of the crewman lying crumpled near the battered control panel. “Maybe he sent that S.O.S. out. That’s why he’s dead now. We don’t want none of it, none at all.”

“I don’t know what you mean. You want to stay here, marooned on this planet?”

“Maybe we do,” the girl said. “Come on. Outside with you.”

Halderson didn’t intend to start a quarrel with that Kesterton blaster. He knew the gun could eat a good-sized hole in him before he could move two steps, and so he simply followed her meekly out of the airlock, down the catwalk, and to the ground.

The other survivors were outside. Seven others. Five women, two men.

A couple of the women were prowling suspiciously around Halderson’s nearby ship. The rest were grouped together between the two ships, watching Halderson with care. He eyed them. One of the men was young and slick-looking; the other, older, looked like a successful businessman. Two of the women seemed elderly, one middle-aged. The other two, like the girl with the blaster, seemed to be in their twenties.

“What do you want with us?” snapped the oldest of the women—a formidable bristling dowager with three strings of black Hethlian pearls still round her withered throat. Her voice was a harsh croak. “What do you want with us, young man?” she demanded.

Halderson frowned. “I’m here in response to an S.O.S., to rescue you. And this is one hell of a reception for a rescuer, let me tell you!”

“To rescue us?” the old woman thundered. “Why, whatever would we need rescuing for?” She laughed boomingly. “We’re perfectly happy here!”

She shut her eyes and lapsed into what looked like a sort of trance. The Disaster Patrol man looked around bewilderedly at the others. The younger of the two men said. “Don’t pay any attention to her. She’s off the deep end.”

“I suppose she is,” Halderson agreed. “The shock of the accident, I guess.”

“No, it isn’t that at all,” said the girl with the blaster. “But we don’t want to be rescued, hear? Get back into your ship and get going off this planet, and don’t come back!”

“We can’t do that,” said the other old woman. “If we let him go we’ll be endangering ourselves. He’ll come back with others and take us away. And we don’t want to leave, do we?”

“Of course not,” came an answering chorus.

“You’re right,” the girl with the blaster agreed. In the sunlight her tunic was utterly transparent, revealing firm, high breasts and a flat tawny belly. Halderson suddenly realized what she must be: one of the party-girls from the staff of the James P. Drew. “We can’t let him go back. We’d better smash the controls of his ship before he makes trouble for us.”

Halderson began to sweat. Were they all insane? It looked that way.

He glanced across the valley to his own ship, which stood undefended, its airlock open. Then he glanced at the half-naked party-girl with the Kesterton blaster. She gestured to the younger of the two men and said, “Merrick—go over to his ship and fix it so it can’t take off again and so he can’t call for help.”

The sleek-haired young man nodded and detached himself from the group. Halderson watched him jogging toward the ship. If Merrick ever got inside that airlock, it meant the Disaster Patrol scout was stranded on this planet for life.

Halderson had only one way to save himself. He hoped these castaways didn’t know about it.

A spaceship’s airlock can be opened from outside, with the proper equipment—the equipment being a radio transmitter keyed to the operating frequency of the airlock door. Every Patrol uniform carried such a minute transmitter; they were handy in those rare cases when a lone pilot has accidentally locked himself out of his ship, and wants to get back in.

But the transmitter could also be used to close the airlock door from outside.

Gently, so that the motion was barely perceptible, Halderson let his dangling arms meet behind his back. He had to move a fraction of an inch at a time, in order not to alarm the girl with the gun. And in the meantime Merrick was getting closer and closer to the open airlock…

Halderson reached out with his thumb and flipped the actuator on the airlock control just a moment before Merrick had succeeded in scaling the catwalk. The airlock door clanged shut in his face. He cursed and pounded angrily on the unyielding metal.

“What kind of a trick was that?” the party-girl demanded hotly. “Why did the door close?”

“It was an automatic reaction,” Halderson said. “Just before I got out of the ship I set the lock to close in case anyone unauthorized came near the door. It’s a precaution I like to take on strange planets.”

“Open the lock!”

Halderson smiled. “I can’t, even if I want to,” he said untruthfully. “Once the door closes that way, it stays closed for twenty-four hours. Not even I can open it now.”

The girl frowned, but she seemed to accept the statement. “Very well,” she said. “You can’t do any harm while your ship is sealed, anyway. But understand this: we don’t want to be meddled with. We like it here.”

Halderson looked around in total confusion. Two old dowagers, one potbellied businessman, three good-looking young girls and a handsome playboy. All castaways. And they had murdered the man who had sent out the S.O.S. signal. They liked it here.

It made no sense at all.

They took his guns away from him, which he didn’t like but which couldn’t be helped. He knew he would simply have to bide his time now. Whenever he got his chance, he would have to make a break for his ship, open the airlock, and try to get away. Later, he could call for a pickup ship that would come to get these obviously crazed castaways.

It seemed that the whole tribe of them was going on a short migration, and Halderson was forced to accompany them. They ambled away from the ships, heading up the winding stream that ran through the valley, until they came to a grassy area where, Halderson saw, they had pitched the bubbletents carried in the lifeship’s cargo hold. Four tents had been pitched; each held two people. Halderson wondered who was coupled up with whom.

The party-girl never relaxed her aim, keeping Halderson in check all the time. He noticed a clear blue spring running past the tent area. He touched his dry tongue to his lips. The water was clear, sparkling, probably ice-cold, and he was thirsty.

“How’s the drinking-water?” he asked.

“Fine,” said the party-girl. As if to illustrate her statement, several of the others knelt by the spring’s banks and lifted cupped handfuls of water greedily to their lips.

Halderson said, “Mind if I get a drink? I’m pretty thirsty right now.”

“Go right ahead,” the party-girl said. “Just don’t try anything tricky.”

“No—don’t,” said a tense voice.

Halderson looked around. The person who had spoken was one of the other young women of the group. Her face was pale and lean, her eyes a little wild.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“If you value your sanity—don’t drink that water! Don’t go near it!”

“She’s out of her head,” scoffed the party-girl. “Don’t pay any attention to her ravings. If you want a drink, go ahead—drink hearty!”

But something in the other girl’s tone of voice made Halderson hesitate, thirsty as he was. “Why shouldn’t I drink?” he asked. “Who are you?”

“I’m Marian Chase. Daughter of Raymond Chase, if that name means anything to you.”

“The Governor-General of the Somilak Colony-world?” Halderson asked.

“Yes. He—he was killed in the explosion on the ship. We were on vacation, you see, Father and I.” Her lips firmed bitterly. “But you mustn’t drink that water. I’m the only one who hasn’t—and you see what’s become of all the others!”

“You mean, not wanting to leave this planet?”

Marian Chase nodded. She was a slim girl, dark of complexion, with large eyes made even larger by the pallor of her face. She wore expensive clothes, but they were tattered and filthy now. Her skirt was ripped to the thigh, her blouse torn in half a dozen places. “Each day they forget a little more,” she said. “It’s like a drug, the water on this planet. We tested it—Mr. Chivers did, before they killed him—and chemically it seems pure enough. But there’s something in it that attacks the nerve fibers. Weakens them; blots out the mind. One of those old women hardly knows what’s happening around her now; the others will be like that soon enough. Like a drug, washing away their minds! And of course they don’t want to leave this world now. They want to stay here, drinking from that spring, until their minds are gone completely and they’re just idiots.” She paused. “Maybe that’s a good thing. Blotting out all our memories, all our fears and agonies.”

Halderson stared at her. “You mean you haven’t touched any of the water of this planet?”

“Not a drop.”

“How long have you people been here?”

“This is the fifth day.”

“And you’ve gone without water for five consecutive days?”

Marian Chase smiled weakly. “Oh, no. There was a small water supply aboard the lifeship. Not much, but I’ve been rationing myself, just a few cupfuls a day. The others drink from the spring, you see, which leaves the entire ship supply, such that it is, for me. There’s not much left, though. And when that’s gone—”

“Don’t think about that,” Halderson said. “Maybe I’ll be able to get away in the ship with you before that happens.”

“Do you think there’s a chance?”

“What are you two jabbering about?” demanded the party-girl, who squatted about fifteen feet away from them with the gun trained steadily on Halderson.

“The spaceman is thirsty,” Marian Chase said.

The party-girl tossed her head contemptuously toward the spring. “Plenty of water down there, if he’s thirsty.”

“No. I’ll bring him a drink from the ship.”

Halderson looked up. “There isn’t much of that water left. You’d better keep it all for yourself.”

She shook her head. “Please—I couldn’t do a thing like that. Let me bring you a cup.”

Before he could answer, she was gone, trotting across the field down to the lifeship. Halderson frowned. The other members of the survivor party were still busily slaking their thirst at the spring. He shuddered as he watched them splash the water into their mouths.

Then Marian Chase returned, bearing a half-full cup of water. Halderson smiled thankfully at her and took the cup. The water was warmish and stale, but at least he knew it was pure. He drank slowly, savoring it.

“I checked the tank,” the girl said. “If we each have three cups of water a day, we have enough left for three more days.”

“Two cups a day, almost five days,” he said.

“And one cup a day, enough for more than a week. But no matter how thrifty we are, it’s all going to be gone soon. And then we either die of thirst or become like them.”

Halderson wondered if they planned to keep him under guard permanently. It would make sense, he thought, simply to shoot him down and blast the airlock of his ship open with that Kesterton, if all they were afraid of was his getting word back to Headquarters about them.

That was the sensible thing to do. But, Halderson reflected, these people were not rational. According to Marian Chase, their minds were rapidly ebbing away. And probably within each of them was some residual decency that kept them from taking the obvious way of disposing of him.

So they would sit around with a gun pointed at him until he died of thirst, it seemed. It wasn’t a pretty way to die.

During the next hour Marian Chase told him about the events that had occurred between the destruction of the James P. Drew and the present moment. The trouble had begun with a sudden explosion in the Drew’s drive compartment, and from there the flames and smoke had spread rapidly. There were other explosions. Within minutes, the great ship was crippled and the alarm bells were sounding.

Marian Chase and her father, the famous statesman Raymond Chase, had been in their cabin on the upper deck when the first explosion came. The ship had seemed to shudder, and then the wall of the cabin had buckled and split, crushing and killing the elder Chase. Marian had fled out into the companionway. A passing crewman had paused to tell her to head for the nearest lifeship. Then the alarms began to sound, and the abandon-ship order, with the traditional cry: “Women and children first! Women and children first!”

Somehow Marian had found her way through the turmoil and the smoke to one of the lifeships. Four people were in it when she entered: Mrs. Dugan and Mrs. Lumley, the two venerable dowagers who were traveling together; a hysterical young woman who had seen her husband killed before her eyes; and a fourth woman, dowdy and middle-aged, who said she had been traveling with her sister. The sister was somewhere outside, but the woman was afraid to go out to look.

In the next few minutes four more people entered the lifeship. The first was Ronald Merrick, a 29-year-old playboy who was on his third honeymoon; his wife was somewhere in the confused and panicky mob on deck, but he didn’t care. He was only interested in saving himself. Behind Merrick came an odd threesome. Lora Ryne was the party-girl, half-nude and disheveled. She came in with the fat businessman she had been entertaining, Max Dominick. Dominick, it seemed, was determined to have female companionship in case they were cast away on some lonely planet, and had brought the not unwilling party-girl with him.

Dominick had also brought someone else with him at the point of a Kesterton blaster. He was a crewman named Chivers, who insisted that he had no right aboard a lifeship until all the passengers were safely aboard the ships.

“Nonsense,” Dominick rumbled. “Do you think we know how to operate this ship? You’re going to pilot it for us, my good man!”

“But there’s an instruction manual on board—”

“Never you mind that,” Dominick told him, brandishing the deadly blaster. “Get this ship out of here, and do it fast.”

“We’re not full up,” the crewman protested.

“Would you wait around until the ship explodes?” Dominick bellowed. “Come on, now—blast off!”

And so the lifeship took off, bearing only nine passengers instead of the maximum complement of more than thirty. Marian had no idea whether any other lifeships made successful departures from the ship. All she knew was that minutes after they had left, a ferocious brilliance radiated through the portholes—the light, not of a sun going nova, but of the explosion of the James P. Drew.

The crewman, Chivers, did some quick astrogating and piloted them to the planet of their landing. The trip took two days. It was a faulty landing, and they were all fairly well knocked around as the ship touched down. Marian was thrown against a wall and made unconscious. When she woke, the ship stood open; there was no one in it but Chivers, who was unconscious.

She went to the open lock and looked out. The others had wandered upstream to the little spring and were drinking. Chivers woke, and he and Marian went to join them. The crewman had berated them for doing something as risky as drinking untested water on an alien planet, and he had tested it for them. He had pronounced it pure.

Then he had returned to the ship, saying he would compute their position and flash out an S.O.S. signal. Marian, who was thirsty, had been about to join the others at the spring when she noticed curious changes coming over them. They seemed dreamy and strange—and they were apparently alarmed at the idea of an S.O.S.

Before she could do anything, Merrick was racing back to the lifeship. She followed, hoping to warn Chivers. The crewman had just begun to send the S.O.S signal when Merrick, snatching up the portable fire extinguisher, crushed Chivers’ skull and smashed the radio equipment.

They were marooned.

And for the next five days Marian watched the gradual deterioration of her fellow survivors and the gradual depletion of her own water supply, until the day Halderson arrived.

The afternoon wore along. Halderson knew that if he could only get back to his ship and activate the radio transmitter that would open the airlock to let him in, he could use the ship’s subradio to call Headquarters and explain his predicament. They would send out a pickup ship and bring these people back to civilization, and, if it could be done, they would attempt to undo the damage to their minds.

But Halderson was guarded constantly.

His mind thought of half a dozen tricks he could use to get back into his ship. But none of them seemed even nearly adequate. All he could do was wait, and hope that the others would relax their guard before the supply of drinkable water ran out.

Late that afternoon Lora Ryne, who had been tirelessly guarding him all day, called to Merrick to take over. She handed him the gun and, rising languidly, stripped off her single flimsy garment and strolled to the river for a swim. The two dowagers were lying in a stupor near the spring. Halderson had a theory that the older a person was, the quicker he was affected by the action of the water. Merrick and the two younger women still seemed able to carry on a coherent conversation, even though their thoughts and actions were not sane ones.

Mrs. Dugan, Mrs. Lumley, and fat Max Dominick were all well along in years, and they seemed to have little contact with reality any more. It was as if they had drifted back into earliest childhood. They sat by the edge of the spring and smiled cheerfully, and from time to time they helped themselves to another drink.

It would not be long, he thought, before Merrick and Lora and the young widow, Lucy Clay, began to undergo the full mind-blurring. Already he could see that the other woman, Mrs. Brewster, who was in her forties or fifties, was starting to show the same dreaminess demonstrated by the three oldest survivors.

But how soon would it happen? he wondered. How soon would it be before Merrick and Lora and Lucy Clay slipped back to childish idiocy? Would he and Marian Chase be dead of thirst by that time?

Night fell. Marian had brought Halderson a sort of a meal, a few cabbage-like leaves and a yellow waxy fruit plucked from a nearby tree.

“It’s the best I can do,” she said. “Without the gun there’s no way we can get meat. We’ll just have to live off foraging.”

“How about the others? What do they eat?”

Marian shrugged. “The oldest ones don’t seem to bother eating at all, the last couple of days. They just drink the spring-water. It’s almost as if they’ve forgotten the very fact that they need food to stay alive. As for the others, they eat whatever they can find—the sort of stuff I’ve brought you.”

Overhead the two big moons were bright and clear, the smaller one whirling dizzily past and eclipsing the other every hour or so. It was growing darker rapidly.

Mrs. Dugan and Mrs. Lumley, the two ancient battleaxes, had crawled off to one of the plastic bubbletents to sleep. Halderson could hear their loud snoring from here, fifty feet away.

Max Dominick sat propped against a tree like a fat sleepy Buddha, his hands folded over his belly. He looked sloppy, with his week-old growth of stubbly gray beard. Mrs. Brewster, the woman who had saved for years and years to be able to take a voyage on the James P. Drew, wandered blankfaced around the camp area for a few hours and finally, after a long draught of the spring-water, disappeared into one of the other tents.

Halderson figured that those four would be finished soon. They had hardly spoken a word in the last half day, and what they had spoken was largely incoherent. The drug in the water was at work, corroding their tired brains, lulling them into forgetfulness.

The other three, though—they still were troublesome. They sat facing Halderson, debating insanely what to do with him, while he and Marian Chase listened quietly and in numb fear.

Merrick said, “I think we ought to break his head open the way we did to that other one.”

“Which other one?” asked Lucy Clay sleepily. She was a good-looking woman in her middle twenties, whose husband, killed aboard the Drew, had been on his way to Darrinoor to serve in the administrative corps there.

“The other one in the ship,” said Lora Ryne acidly. The party-girl still had a fairly sharp mind. “The one who tried to warn the rescue men. We broke his head open.”

“We ought to break that one’s head open too,” Merrick said thickly, pointing to Halderson.

“And the girl, too,” added Lora Ryne. “She might be dangerous.”

“Kill them all,” muttered Lucy Clay.

“We’ll do it tomorrow,” Merrick said. “Let’s tie them up and go to bed.”

Halderson tensed. Tie them up! With what?

He got his answer quick enough. Merrick tottered down to the lifeship, which was hidden behind the slight rise in the valley floor. He returned a few moments later carrying two lengths of rope. With a cleverness surprising in him, considering the effect the water had taken, he tied Halderson and Marian together, back to back, with a tight twist around their wrists, and then hobbled their feet.

“That ought to keep them till morning,” Merrick said, surveying his handiwork. “Sure. They won’t move till morning. Morning, we decide what to do with them.”

Merrick, Lora, and Lucy disappeared into one of the unoccupied bubbletents. Minutes later, Halderson heard animal-like cries of pleasure coming from the tent.

“It’s been that way the last two nights,” Marian said in a low voice. “When we first got here, old Dominick kept Lora as his private concubine, and Merrick went around propositioning everyone else except the two old women. He didn’t get anywhere. But the spring-water breaks down inhibitions.”

Fierce cries of joy were coming from the tent now.

“For the last few days Dominick hasn’t shown much interest in Lora, so Merrick took her over. Two nights ago he got the bright idea of going after Lucy too. He takes turns with them in there, I guess.”

Halderson tightened his lips. He strained at the rope that bound them.

“Getting anywhere?” Marian asked.

“Not at all. The devil did a good job of tying us, all right!”

“And what will we do now?”

“Nothing, I guess. Just go to sleep. Maybe in the morning they’ll be so far gone we can escape.”

She leaned back against him. Halderson closed his eyes. But the ground was hard, and a chill wind was blowing down out of the trees at them. It was nearly morning before sleep came.

The fiercely blazing morning sun woke Halderson. His head felt swollen like a balloon, his skin was dry and itchy, his throat parched, irritated. His wrists and ankles ached from the pressure of the rope with which they had been tied, and every muscle in his body felt cramped and mistreated. He realized that Marian Chase was already awake.

“I’ve been up since dawn,” she told him. “I didn’t want to move till you woke.”

Merrick freed them, keeping the blaster trained on them with care. Halderson and the girl rubbed their sore limbs.

“I could use a bath,” she said. “I feel filthy. But I don’t dare go near that deadly water.”

Halderson shaded his eyes to see the surrounding area. Dominick lay flat on his back, in a stupor. The others were cavorting in the water.

Merrick said, “Your spaceship door is still closed. You said it would be open.”

“Let’s go down and have a look,” Halderson suggested. Perhaps he could open the lock and get inside before Merrick could cause any trouble.

“Yes,” Marian said. “Let’s go down to the ships. We’re thirsty, anyway. We’d like to get some water out of the lifeship supply.”

Merrick began to giggle. After a moment Lora Ryne came up from the water and joined the giggling. The party-girl had not bothered to dress. Her body was lovely—but her eyes were the eyes of a little girl, and they belied the full breasts and curved thighs.

“She wants water!” Merrick roared. He slapped his side in amusement.

“Water!” Lora echoed.

Halderson glanced at Marian in alarm. He said crisply, “What’s so damned funny?”

“Water!” Merrick chortled.

“Water!” Lora repeated.

“You want water?” Merrick asked. “Are you thirsty, spaceman?” He pointed toward the spring. “Go drink down there where we do.” And he dissolved into gales of laughter once again. Like little children, Halderson thought. He wondered what the joke was. Then he saw the plastic water-container.

It was lying on its side near them, with its top off. Marian uttered a little cry and ran over to it. She snatched it off the ground, peered inside, shook her head mournfully.

“It’s—it was—the lifeship’s water supply,” she said in a quiet voice. “This was the last container there was. They must have found it and emptied it out this morning.”

“For a joke,” Halderson said. “A real funny joke, too.”

Merrick and Lora were laughing wildly—though Merrick still took good care that the blaster remained aimed. From where he lay under the tree in the shade, old Dominick joined the general merriment, adding his high-pitched wailing chuckle to the noise.

Halderson said, “That cuts off our safety margin neatly. We’ll have to get that blaster away from them and get back into the ship. And we’ll have to do it fast, or else—”

He left the sentence unfinished.

Halderson had no clear idea of how long a human being could survive without fresh water, but he knew it was an extremely limited time. A man could get along without food for a month, if he had to, and still live to talk about it. But water was something else again. Certainly he would need water within a few days, or he would be dead.

There was a water supply in his spaceship. There was a radio in his spaceship as well. But his ship was sealed closed, and he had no chance to perform the operation necessary to open it.

Another day passed. It was obviously summer in this part of the planet, and the heat was increasing—or was it only his thirst that gave the illusion? He stared for long hours at the shimmering, sparkling, tempting water of the spring, and then he looked at the shambling, vacant-eyed things the others had become, and the temptation vanished.

Next to him, he saw Marian Chase, her face drawn, her skin yellowish, her eyes sunken from thirst. He knew what she must be going through. It could not be very long before she cracked.

Halderson watched the others intently. Lora and Merrick seemed to be the only ones interested in guarding them, now, and both Lora and Merrick appeared to have forgotten just why the guarding was necessary. They took turns holding the gun. Halderson waited for the moment when the gun would slip from loosening fingers, when he could leap forward. But the moment never came.

The effect of the water seemed to increase from hour to hour. Max Dominick had lost all sense of humanity now; the plump oldster sat by the water’s edge, drooling, crooning some long-forgotten lullaby to himself. Near him lay Mrs. Dugan, playing in the sand. Her eyes were slack and glazed.

That afternoon the other old woman, Mrs. Lumley, died. Either the process had reached completion in her, obliterating her mind completely, or she had simply come to the end of her time. Halderson saw her collapse suddenly on her staggering way from her tent to the spring.

Merrick saw it too. He went over to investigate, nudged the dead woman with his toe, and burst into laughter. Within minutes, the other survivors who could still walk—Lora, Lucy Clay, and Mrs. Brewster—had gathered around and were giggling in chorus over the corpse.

“Horrible,” Halderson said, half to himself. He turned to look at Marian Chase. The girl’s face looked almost like a skull. She said nothing. Neither of them had had a drink for two and a half days now, and the torment was intense.

Still later that afternoon, the final remnants of Mrs. Brewster’s mind went, and she joined Dominick and Mrs. Dugan on the beach, a complete imbecile now. The remaining three continued to drink copiously. Halderson could see them weakening visibly from hour to hour. Lucy Clay wandered round the camp area wearing only lace-trimmed briefs, singing wildly to herself. Lora and Merrick swam and laughed and danced, one guarding the two prisoners at all times.

Night was beginning to descend when Halderson reached his decision.

He turned to look at Marian and said, “We can’t sit here any longer. We’ll have to take our chances with them.”

“What do you mean?” Marian’s voice was dry and thin, like the voice of a skeleton.

“Maybe they can’t aim that gun any more. Maybe if we jumped them they’d drop the gun. We have to get into my ship!”

“Why?” she asked tonelessly. “What does it matter now? We’ll be dead soon. We’ll all be dead soon.”

“No! Don’t give up, Marian! Can’t you see, they’re all weakening fast! We’ll get away!”

“They’re not weakening fast enough. So thirsty…so dry…Halderson, let’s go down to the water. Take our clothes off, swim in the cool water. The clear cool sparkling water. I want a drink.”

“No. Don’t give up yet,” he repeated. But he saw he had little time. The girl could no longer stand the torment of thirst. His own strength was diminishing. If they were going to escape at all, now was the time for action.

Merrick, Lora, and Lucy were sitting together not far away, singing. The sun seemed to be burning down with special malevolence, but Halderson knew that the heat was mostly in his own thirst-sharpened imagination. It was late in the afternoon, and the temperature was probably in the pleasant sixties. But it felt like a blistering ninety.

Halderson murmured, “Just stay here. Don’t get mixed up in this.”

He elbowed himself unsteadily to his feet and started to walk toward the three others. He went more than ten feet before any of them noticed him. It was Lucy Clay who first saw him approaching.

She looked up, giggling and pointing. “Hahaha! Hahah! Look!”

Halderson forced his exhausted body into a trot. At the moment, Merrick was holding the Kesterton blaster, letting it dangle in his lap. The one-time playboy was not even looking.

But Lora was. She snatched the gun away from Merrick just as Halderson arrived. The Disaster Patrol scout saw her raise the gun to fire.

But her aim was poor. The girl’s hand wobbled as she depressed the firing stud, and a burst of energy shot past Halderson’s shoulder, searing him slightly but doing no serious harm. Before she could fire again, he was clutching her arm.

She twisted lithely, her long nails raking Halderson’s face, as he struggled to pry the blaster from her grip. Merrick dimly perceived that something improper was going on and he rose to his feet and staggered toward the struggling pair.

Halderson drew the party-girl to him, feeling her warm bare body against his—and abruptly she stopped struggling. It was as if she had forgotten totally that Halderson was her prisoner. All she could remember now, in her largely blank mind, was the set of responses she was supposed to make when a man held her tight in his arms.

To Halderson’s surprise she pressed her body against him, stroking his shoulders with her free arm, lifting her lips to his for a kiss.

He stared into her empty eyes for a moment. Then he wrenched the gun free just as Merrick crashed into both of them.

Merrick and Lora went toppling to the ground in a tangle of arms and legs. The blaster skittered loose, and Merrick’s leg kicked it some ten feet down the grassy slope, where Lucy Clay picked it up.

Halderson turned and headed toward the girl, hoping to get the gun away from her. He was not prepared for what happened next. Giggling and screaming wildly, Lucy hurled the gun high into the air, far down toward the water. The blaster landed in the middle of the spring and sank immediately. Then the girl rushed to the edge of the water, nearly trampling over the slumbering form of old Dominick, and began to drink.

Halderson shrugged. The blaster would do no harm now. Water destroyed its power unit. He would have preferred to keep the gun for his own use in case of further trouble, but at least this way he would be in no danger from it.

Lora and Merrick had disengaged themselves and now were sitting staring dumbly at Halderson. They made no attempt to get up. Halderson tried to chuckle, but his throat was too dry; nothing but a hoarse rasping sound came out.

He grinned at Marian with sunbaked lips. “Okay. I’m going down to the ship to radio for help.”

The girl made no response.

She seemed to have no strength left at all. Halderson decided to leave her, for the time being, and bring her water after he had sent out the call for the pickup ship. He walked past her and down to his own ship.

He activated the transmitter and the airlock door slid open. It took nearly all of Halderson’s strength just to climb the ten-foot catwalk and enter the ship. He hung over the lip of the airlock, regaining his strength, before he could proceed.

His first stop inside the ship was the water supplier. He allowed himself just enough to wet the inside of his mouth, and then quickly cut off the faucet before the overwhelming temptation to drink until he could hold no more assailed him. There was not much of a water supply left. He would have to be sparing of it until help came.

Crossing upward to the control panel of the ship, he jacked in the subradio contacts and called his home base on Skaldek.

“Disaster Patrol HQ,” came the reply. “Come in, scoutship. Come in. Major Lang speaking.”

“Lieutenant Halderson reporting, sir.”

“Halderson? Speak up! We can hardly hear you! What’s been happening since we last heard from you?”

“How long has it been?”

“Three days!”

“Oh,” Halderson said. “Well—I’ve found James P. Drew survivors here. Eight of them.”

“Then why didn’t you report earlier? We’d have sent out a pickup ship!”

“I couldn’t, sir. They were holding me prisoner.”

“Prisoner?”

“That’s right. Something in the water on this planet, causes human beings to lose their minds. They become—like children, sir. Irresponsible. They don’t know what they’re doing. They held me at blaster-point and tied up here. I finally managed to get back into the ship and call. Nearly died of thirst first—didn’t dare touch any of the local water, of course, and mine was locked up in my ship—”

He paused. Major Lang said, “We’ll have a hospital ship right out to pick you up!”

“Good. One of the other survivors is still sane, but very weak. Six of the drugged ones are alive. An old woman died. Hurry it up, Major. This world is hellish.”

He broke line contact. Got to get another drink, he thought dimly. And then bring some up the hill for Marian. Got to get another drink.

He rose from the pilot chair. Vaguely he became aware that there was someone else in the cabin with him. Then he heard a loud giggle, and saw Merrick standing behind him, with a wooden club upraised.

Merrick laughed and brought the club down. Caught by surprise, all Halderson could do was raise one hand to protect himself. The first blow caught Halderson on the arm numbing him. The second cracked into the side of his head and he toppled forward, clawing futilely at the insane Merrick, and lost consciousness.

When Halderson woke, he had no idea how much time had passed. His head felt as if a fusion bomb had gone off inside it. He was being held tenderly by someone soft and warm and feminine.

Slowly he opened his eyes. He looked up and saw Marian Chase above him. He was too weak to move. The sun was enormous above him.

He saw his ship behind him. Merrick was lying in front of the ship, dead or unconscious.

“Here,” Marian said. “Drink this. You’ll feel better. Much better.”

She was holding a cup of water under his chin. He put one trembling hand on it to bring it to his lips. His face felt bruised and sore where Merrick had clubbed him. He touched the water to his lips. It was cool and fresh, and Marian was right—it did make him feel much better.

“I sent the S.O.S.,” he muttered weakly. “And then that idiot Merrick got into the ship and clubbed me down.”

“I know,” Marian said softly. “And then he must have collapsed. That was the way I found you. You were unconscious, and he was dead. I dragged you both out of the ship and watched you all night. Go on—have more water. It’s good for you.”

Halderson smiled and raised the cup to his lips again. He thought of something, laughed, then drained the cup. The sparkling water caressed his swollen tongue and bathed his parched throat.

“Why did you laugh?” Marian asked.

“When I lifted the cup, I thought to myself, you better go easy, there isn’t much of this stuff left. And then I remembered that the rescue ship is on its way. We don’t need to be cautious with the water supply any more.” He leaned back against her bosom, relaxing, wishing the throbbing in his skull would stop. “Be a good girl, Marian. Go into my ship and get me another drink. It makes me feel better.”

“But this isn’t from the ship,” she said sweetly.

For a moment the meaning of her words did not penetrate. Halderson heard them, but without really understanding. Then he realized what she had said, and he shook with terror.

“Where did—where did this water come from, Marian?”

“From the spring.” She said it innocently, gently. “I waited hours for you to come out of your ship, but you didn’t come out. And then I went to the spring to have a drink, because the water was so good, and I was so thirsty. I drank and drank till I couldn’t hold any more. Then I went up to the ship to find you, and I thought it would be nice to bring you some water too.”

“You’re joking, aren’t you?” he said in a rough voice. “It’s all a nice little joke?”

But then he twisted around to look into her eyes, and he saw that it was no joke. The blankness had begun to creep into her eyes. The water was taking its effect on her.

And he had swallowed a cupful of it. Was that enough to begin the deadly dissolution? He was still thirsty, terribly thirsty. He had to have a drink.

He pulled away from her and rose to his feet. The ground seemed to rock underneath him; he probably had a concussion from the clubbing, he realized.

Thirsty…so thirsty…

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“Into my ship. Got to get a drink.”

“But there’s water out here. Good water!”

He shuddered and started to climb the catwalk, but his muscles would not obey his brain’s command, and he realized it had begun with him too.

Marian came up to him and gently led him away from the ship, up the path to the little bubbling spring by the side of the lake. Dimly he saw bodies lying here and there, and not far away a girl he recognized as Lora Ryne, moving feebly like a stranded fish.

Halderson made no attempt to resist as Marian stripped away his tattered uniform, and then her own clothes. She took him by the hand and together they walked to the edge of the water. They knelt and drank, and then she led him into the lake and splashed him. He grinned. All the fear and pain was leaving him. He felt good, as if he were growing younger, as if everything were all right and all his worries had been foolish.

They splashed each other playfully in the water, and drank till they were full. When the rescue ship finally located them, a day and a half later, they were squatting stark naked by the edge of the sparkling water, making castles out of mud and giggling like the children they had become.

YOU DO SOMETHING TO ME
(1958)

With this story I was just about at the end of the phase of my career that had been devoted to writing quick, uncomplicated stories for the low-end science-fiction magazines. All the magazines that published that kind of story had folded, by the middle of 1959, or else had shifted their policies in the direction of the more sophisticated kind of s-f that Astounding and Galaxy were publishing. Since I was committed, by that time, to a life as a full-time writer who depended for his income on high-volume production, I needed to change markets, and I did. This was the period when I drifted off into writing fiction and articles for such men’s magazines as Exotic Adventures, Real Men, and Man’s Life, and when I found another new slot for my immense productivity in the suddenly hyperactive genre of soft-core erotic paperbacks, where I began turning out two and even three books a month—Suburban Wife, Love Thieves, Summertime Affair, and an almost infinite number of others of that ilk. And just ahead for me lay an entirely new career as a writer of popular books on archaeological subjects (Lost Cities and Vanished Civilizations, Sunken History, Empires in the Dust, etc.) By the mid-1960s I would be writing hardly any science fiction at all, not so much because I had left the field as because the field, as represented by its numerous monthly and bi-monthly magazines, had left me. I would not return until things began to change later in that decade, which brought a resurgence of magazines and a vast and dizzying upsurge in the publication of science-fiction paperbacks.

But in 1958 I still thought of myself mainly as a science-fiction writer, as I had set out to be, and, even though the number of science-fiction magazines was greatly diminished in the late 1950s, my records for the second half of 1958 and the first half of 1959 show that I was still writing the occasional story for the ones that had survived. My pulp markets were gone, but the top-of-the-line magazines remained, and, with my skills honed by all those years of prolific productivity, I was selling pretty consistently to those magazines. I see one in the November, 1958 Galaxy, and one in Astounding for January, 1959, Astounding again in February, yet another there in March, one in Frederik Pohl’s prestigious Star Science Fiction in May, Galaxy once more in August—quite a steady pattern of sales, not enough to support me on a full-time basis but enough to make the point that I wasn’t just a mass producer of action stories for the lower echelon of magazines.

Bob Lowndes’ two high-quality/low budget magazines, Future Science Fiction and The Original Science Fiction Stories, were still tottering along somehow in those bleak days of falling circulation and disappearing magazines, and I continued to write for him, too, mainly out of friendship but also because he would let me do any story I cared to do, whereas the editors of Astounding and Galaxy had quite rigid ideas about what they were willing to publish.

Lowndes still indulged in the old pulp-magazine custom of having artists do cover paintings and then asking writers to dream up stories that fit the existing illustration. In September, 1958 Bob showed me a lively painting by my friend Ed Emshwiller depicting a blonde beauty queen with a “Miss Universe” band draped around her midsection, and two goggle-eyed aliens with orange skin and purple hair fleeing from her in horror. That very quickly suggested a plot to me, and I wrote the light-hearted “You Do Something to Me,” which Lowndes ran in the February, 1959 issue of Future under my best established pseudonym, “Calvin M. Knox.”

——————

Now that everybody else at this end of the galaxy has put in their two units’ worth about the affair currently known as the Miss Universe Scandal of 2381, I figure it’s high time I said my own say—just for the records, you understand.

I’m Nick Seferiades, and I’m a talent agent by trade. It was my fool luck to be agenting for May Loreen when she became Miss Universe of 2381. I guided that girl right up to the pinnacle of celestial glamour. I was going to make her name a household word on a thousand and one planets.

Well, I sure did!

Yeah.

But not the way I would have liked. Not the way I would have liked at all. So here I am, Nick Seferiades, the Golden Greek of the entertainment world, cooling my heels in the balmy obscurity of Zeno XII. I watch the palm trees drooping in the blazing sun, and I sip palm-wine and swim in the coral-blue sea, and once a month I clip my coupons and go to the bank. Not a bad life at all, you say? No, I suppose not. But not the life for me, here in quiet retirement fifty light-years from Broadway.

I miss the whirl. I miss the gaiety. I miss the champagne and the sweetly-flowing dough.

But I don’t dare go back, all because of May Loreen. How the deuce can I, when I’m a laughing-stock on every human world of the galaxy?

Here’s what happened, straight from the horse’s—straight from the shoulder, I mean. I kid you not, this is the true and undoctored story. I don’t have any motive for doctoring now, do I? I couldn’t repair my reputation even if I papered the Asteroid Belt with affidavits.

It started with a phone-call on, according to my records, the fourth of February 2379. I was busy arranging a spring tour for one of my clients. I snapped on the screen and saw the fat, jowly face of Ted de Vera glowering at me. His cigar was sticking so far out of the tridim image that I pulled my head back like a scared turtle.

“Got a girl for you, Nick,” de Vera said in that obscene belly-rumble that passes for his voice.

I raised an eyebrow. Ted de Vera rarely touted a female without cause. “Tell me more.”

“She’s a knockout, Nick. She’s got everything except polish. She needs a master hand to guide her. I think you’re the man.”

“Nice of you to say it. Where can I get a look at this paragon?”

“Say the word and she’ll be at your office in half an hour,” de Vera promised. His eyes glinted. “I’m sure you’ll go for her. Gimme the usual deal?”

I sighed. “The usual,” I said. “Five percent of my ten percent. Plus the same on all residuals. You’re a parasite, Ted.”

“I’ve got an eye for the girls, laddie. Don’t begrudge me my meager moolah.”

Half an hour later my door scanner lit up, and I took a look at what was standing in the golden field and realized that that old lecher de Vera had bonged the gong once again. The man had an infallible eye for sex appeal. The girl waiting outside had everything.

I straightened my ruff and tidied my desk and said, “Come in?”

The door opened. The girl glided in and said in a thin, pinched, nervous voice, “Mr. Seferiades?”

At least she knew how to pronounce it. “Call me Nick. You’re the girl Mr. de Vera recommended, aren’t you? I didn’t quite catch the name…”

“Marion,” she said. “Marion Tweedy. My friends call me Molly.”

“Sit down, Molly,” I said.

She sat, hiking her dress up to her lovely knees with a kind of artless sexiness that made me feel twenty years younger and thirty pounds lighter in a flash. I was momentarily dazzled by a lot of bright white perfect teeth. I got control after a moment more, and said, “I suppose you want to become an actress, Molly.”

She nodded. “But I don’t think I have much talent. I mean—they say I’m pretty, and I suppose I am, but I don’t think I can act. I just don’t feel sincere playing the part of somebody else.”

I pretended to jot down notes. “Don’t let that trouble you, Molly. Just stick with me, and you’ll be famous before you know it. How would you like to be Miss Universe, as a starter?”

She gasped. “Miss…”

“Why not? You’ve got what it takes, and I know how to promote. But Molly Tweedy won’t ever make the grade. You’ll need a new name, for certain.” I frowned. “May Something. I need a last name.”

“May Lawrence?” she suggested. “Lawrence is my father’s first name.”

“Uh-uh. Lawrence has masculine connotations. It’ll never go over subliminally-wise. We need something softer, more feminine. Loreen. Yeah. That’s it. May Loreen.”

“May Loreen,” she said, as if trying her name on for size. “It sounds strange.”

“Don’t fret,” I told her. “It takes time to get used to a new name. But May Loreen’s going to be a name that goes echoing through the universe!”

By the end of that day she was signed and sealed. What a find! And pure as the Himalaya snow. If I had been younger or more lecherous, I might have tried the casting-couch routine, but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to do it. And I sensed that if I left May Loreen alone and didn’t make any passes, our business relationship would be a lot more successful in the long run.

So I showed her where the screen was, and she got behind it and changed into the swimsuit she’d brought along, while I fidgeted and twitched and longed for X-Ray vision. My jaw sagged when she came out. May Loreen was as perfect a specimen of H. saps female as I had ever beheld.

She was tallish, five feet five, with long, lovely legs that tapered in what I was sure was a mathematically precise curve. Her figure checked out at 37-23-37, which they tell me is the 24th Century idea of perfection. Her skin was creamy unblemished delight that contrived to look both milk-white and healthily tanned at the same time. Her blonde hair tumbled prettily. Her eyes were alive and sparkling, her lips full but not heavy, her nose a gem.

This girl was it, I told myself. This Girl Was It. She had everything.

Everything, that is, except the poise and sophistication that a glamour queen needed. But with her other natural equipment I wasn’t worried.

I took her under my wing in the most platonic way you can imagine. I paid a visit to her parents—a grouchy old pipe-smoking truckdriver and a weatherbeaten faded little woman—and promised them that within three years they could retire to a villa on Venus. I came away from there with their blessing and with a renewed sense of bewilderment about how something like May could spring from such unpromising stock.

I moved May into a midtown apartment, put her on salary of $150 a week, and set her up with my usual team: the dance-and-posture coach, the voice coach, the whole bunch. It was a regular Pygmalion job. But such raw material! A female like May Loreen comes along once in a dozen lifetimes.

At my instructions, she made no attempt to get romantically involved; I didn’t want her falling in love with some $30-a-week clerk and queering her chances for the big prizes that lay ahead. So she spent her weekends reading and listening to music, and otherwise improving her mind, at a little country place I maintained for such purposes.

She progressed magnificently. I watched her personality unfolding like a flower. No longer was she the shy little girl, astonished and upset by the fact of her own beauty; she glowed radiantly, now, proud of her unique endowment and determined to make the most of it.

Carefully, I planned out her career. We would enter her in the beauty contests, use them as springboards up into the tridim studios. In three years, I figured, she would be considered a full-fledged starlet. In five years, she would be a star actress, with billings all over the galaxy. At that time, at the height of her fame, she would make a spectacular marriage to some rising male star. The marriage, I figured, would need to last about twenty months for maximum effectiveness. At the end of four years as a first-magnitude star, she would retire, quitting while she would still be beautiful and famous and only 32. By that time I would have set up an investment program for her that would bring her a handsome income, would bring me ten percent of a handsome income, and would bring Ted de Vera five percent of my ten percent, all for the rest of our lives.

So it didn’t quite happen that way. It was all because of that damned Galactic World Fair. But I’m jumping too far ahead of myself, now. I ought to be putting this down in sequence, so you know how it happened.

All during the spring and summer of 2379, we worked on May Loreen, and the results were superb. I began engineering a little groundswell of publicity that would grow to floodtide in twelve months’ time. By the end of ’79 everybody who mattered knew that there was a girl named May Loreen around, who was being groomed by Nick Seferiades for lofty heights. And such was the magic of my name, in those days, that May’s stock began to boom.

I entered her for Miss New York State in January of 2380, and she took it with such ease it was ridiculous. All she had to do was promenade up and down in that skin-tight white bathing suit of hers, smile and wiggle her fanny, and the judges flopped over like Venusians out of water. It was a cinch to grab off Miss United States next. One of the contestants tried to combine seduction with coercion on one of the judges, but it didn’t work. The gal would have probably won on her own in any other year—we managed to hush her indiscretion up.

There was a flock of tridim offers, but I turned them all down.

As Miss United States, May was eligible for that year’s Miss Earth contest, and won that also—although for a while I was worried about a belle from China who had the judges wowed with her fragile-porcelain kind of beauty. The month May Loreen captured the Miss Earth title, her photo was on the cover of two dozen magazines. It was blinding to stand at a newsstand and look up.

After Miss Earth comes the Miss Universe contest. Now, as everyone knows, the “Miss Universe” label is a misnomer. The contest is limited to female members of the species H. sapiens only, since there aren’t any very convenient standards for judging one planet’s kind of beauty against another’s. Once upon a time, there was a contest for beauty queens of different planets, cooked up by a smartypants promoter who lived to rue the day. The gimmick was that the winner would be the entrant who most closely approximated the standard perfection of her own world.

So a creature looking like a warthog crossed with a dugong showed up as the entry from Alpheraz V. Turned out that the people of Alpheraz V are all but extinct, and that Miss Alpheraz was the only living adult female of her species—so she had to be the most beautiful of her kind. She demanded and got the award, and the promoter was never heard from again.

Ever since that classic fiasco, Miss Universe has been open to humans only—and I don’t mean humanoids, but human-type humans. Naturally, there were more humans on Earth than anyplace else in the galaxy. Of the fifty candidates for Miss Universe, thirty were from Earth—and most of them were girls that May had already beaten in one contest or another. The rest of the girls came from the colony worlds. Miss Mars looked like a coalminer, Miss Venus like a longshoreman, Miss Ganymede like a snow-shovel. It couldn’t be helped. Beauty queens don’t emigrate to the colony worlds. They stay in orbit between New York and Paris, keeping far away from any planet where they would be required to soil their hands with work.

On Mars, if a girl doesn’t fill her work quota and doesn’t have an awfully good excuse, she gets shot. There’s no room for slackers up there. But such a place isn’t conducive to developing such useless things as beauty queens.

In short, the other candidates for Miss Universe didn’t matter. May Loreen was a shoo-in. She was such a shoo-in that when I tried to place bets on her I couldn’t find a bookie in the Western Hemisphere who would touch my money. They don’t make book on walkovers.

I don’t have to tell you who won, do I? It was a breeze, a romp, a runaway. May Loreen captivated the judges from the start. You could see from the faces of the other girls that they didn’t think they stood a chance, either. Some of them didn’t even bother to keep their shoulders back and their lungs inflated as they crossed the stage.

I phoned Ted de Vera that night, after the result was announced. The contest was held in the Lunar Bubble, and de Vera was in Chicago, so the call set me back a shiny fat figure. But I didn’t care about a mere hundred-buck phone bill. Not then.

I chortled, “We did it, Ted! May won!”

“Are you surprised?”

“Of course not. But think of it, Ted—your discovery, hailed as the most perfect woman of all time!”

“I always had a good eye,” de Vera said modestly. “I’ll be looking forward to my check.”

It was all going to be straight up after that night. We threw a big party, and got wonderfully high; you’d be amazed how fast—and on how little—you can get sozzled in the Lunar Bubble, with that low grav, especially if some wise guy monkeys a little with the atmosphere that’s being fed into your section of the dome. We were half lit on oxygen drinks before the festivities got started, and were gloriously pickled not much later.

I remember May kissing me, full square on the lips, as an expression of glee. The sensation was so uncanny that it nearly sobered me on the spot. May was a Good Girl, but if she went around kissing people gaily all night, some of her virtue might evaporate pretty fast. So I laid off the sauce the rest of that night and kept an eye on her, just in case she forgot her training and decided to intertwine with one of the judges under a table.

My chaperoning worked out pretty well. May got back to Earth at the end of that week with her honor intact; I was determined that this was one beauty queen who would remain unsullied until the strategic moment came.

The money flowed in marvelously. If I had accepted all the modeling offers, May would have been posing thirty-six hours a day for the next three centuries. I hired a staff of ten to winnow the mail. Video network men fell all over themselves trying to arrange guest spots for May Loreen at five grand per minute. Tridim scouts pleaded for her signature on seven-year contracts. I bided my time, milking it for all it was worth. May Loreen was going to be a lifetime annuity for me, and I wasn’t going to let her go cheap.

And right at this point, I made my big mistake. If I had been a better Greek, maybe I would have known. But not dumb Nick Seferiades.

The Greeks had a word for it: hybris. Overweening pride. I know all about it, now. King Agamemnon insisted on having a red carpet rolled out for him, and the gods conspired to knock him off by way of showing a lesson in humility. Well, the same with me. I had this girl, May Loreen. The best that ever was. You looked at her, and it did something to you. She was perfection itself.

So I got a bright idea. I figured out a way to emblazon May Loreen’s perfection across the Milky Way. The Greeks of old would have said I was reaching too high, riding for a fall. Committing hybris, in other words. Well, hindsight is a wonderful thing, but maybe I would have gone ahead and done it anyway, even if Cassandra came up to me and told me what was going to happen.

There was this Interstellar Fair, you see. The Grand Show of the universe, held once every three hundred years. It was scheduled to take place on the planet of Validus, a couple of hundred thousand light-years from Earth in one of the star-clusters.

This place was so far out, that no Earthman had ever been there. Of course, there are plenty of planets where no Earthmen have ever been; they tell me that there’s an infinite number of planets in the universe, and only a finite number of Earthmen, many of whom never get much further from home than an occasional gay fling at the Lunar Bubble.

Three hundred years ago, when the last Interstellar Fair was held on Validus, Earthmen were still putting around the Solar System in ion-drive ships. The nullwarp was still a couple of decades in the future, and regular commerce with other stars was undreamed-of. So there was no Earth exhibit at the Validusian Fair that was held in 2081.

But this time, Earth had been invited to participate. There were no diplomatic relations at the moment between Earth and Validus, but the Validusians had made known their invitation through a couple of intermediary planets, and in the name of Earth the invitation had been accepted by World President Onomodze.

And I got my big idea.

There was all this fuss about setting up the Terran exhibit at the fair. We were sending our best symphony orchestra, and an exhibit of Terran paintings, and samples of Terran handicrafts, and just about everything else that represented a notable Terran achievement.

Except one thing. We weren’t sending anybody to represent the matchless beauty of Terran femininity.

I pulled strings. I spoke to a friend who spoke to a friend. And suddenly I had myself an invitation to visit President Onomodze at the Capitol Building in Accra.

Half an hour later, I was on a transatlantic jet bound for the world capital. Not very much later that day, I was in Accra, being whisked from the airport to the Capitol by special limousine. And by dinnertime that night, I was sipping excellent brandy in the Presidential suite while President Onomodze himself riffled through my tridims of May Loreen and nodded in keen appreciation.

At length he looked up at me and flashed his famous grin. “She is beautiful. She is a marvel!”

“You’ll send her?”

“Of course!”

And so I returned home with the good news: we were being sent to the Fair! The publicity, of course, was tremendous. May Loreen had been chosen above all women to represent Terran pulchritude on Validus, and you can imagine what kind of honor that was. May was elated. We’d be rolling in megabucks by the time the grand tour was over.

The trip to Validus took six weeks, even by nullwarp, which ought to give some idea of how far away it is. The World Government, of course, paid for our passage both ways, and threw in enough to pay for May’s hairdressers, wardrobe attendants, and other miscellaneous camp followers. Three or four reporters went along in the ship too, sending back daily dispatches about Miss Universe and her retinue.

As it worked out, we were practically the first Fair guests to arrive on Validus. The Terran exhibit hall was being built by local labor, since it was impossible to transport Terran workmen all the way there and back. The hall was almost finished, and the Terran personnel who had arrived ahead of us were installed in a hotel nearby, all together. The Validusians gave us a big welcome but they didn’t seem too happy about having much contact with us. Nor, in truth, did we go out of our way to pal around with the locals, because they were repulsive-looking little creatures.

The Validusians were humanoid in general set-up. Maybe that only accentuated their frightfulness. I can get used to an extraterrestrial who looks like a slimy one-legged blue egg, but the ones with humanoid forms always give me the willies. And these were definitely unpretty.

They were three or four feet high, with the right number of arms and legs and heads. Their skins were the color of boiled lobsters, a dismal reddish hue, and there was a thick, wrinkled, leathery look about their hides that made them even uglier. In place of hair they had a lot of purple spikes packed close together and standing three inches high or so on top of their big heads. Thick antennae sprouted from each temple, ending in a little buttony sort of thing the size of a pea. Their noses were grisly little slits and their eyes looked like bulging peeled potatoes with a raisin stuck in the middle. You can see why we kept to ourselves and didn’t mingle much with the locals during the time the Fair was getting organized. We kept busy, though, sending back elaborate stories of what Miss Universe was up to on Validus, how members of other races had remarked in awe on her beauty, and such. I remember one snatch of press-agentry particularly well, for reasons you’ll learn later:

“…Sktialimin Krenin, a ranking musician in the Rigelian thonkin orchestra, declared after viewing Miss Universe, ‘Her perfection is immediately evident.’ Here on Validus all races join in tribute to the loveliness of May Loreen, proving that there is an absolute standard of beauty at whose summit stands the glorious Miss Universe, May Loreen…”

Yes, I’m going to remember that little puff for the rest of my weary days. It haunts me. Oh, my departed Athenian ancestors!

I’ll skip over the days before the Fair opened. They were days we spent consuming exotic beverages and doing a remarkable amount of time-wasting.

The affair currently termed the Miss Universe Scandal of 2381 took place the night before the official grand opening of the Validusian Fair. I wasn’t there. Maybe things would have gone differently if I had been; I don’t know, but I like to think they would have.

Celebrities from all over the universe would be on hand for the grand opening. It was my idea to open the Terran exhibit by having May come out, wearing a sexy swimsuit and her Miss Universe badge, and welcome everyone to Earth’s first participating effort in a Validusian fair. The way I figured it, she would be a knockout.

Well, there was a rehearsal the night before. Sam Carmody, who was Coordinator of the Terran Exhibit, wanted everyone to run through his part in advance. It was a logical request.

Only…I had been on a bit of a bender two nights before the Grand Opening, and I hadn’t quite recovered yet. A Denebian had showed up with a bottle of milk white Denebian booze, than which there is no more boozier, and somehow the Denebian and I downed that entire quart bottle—no paltry fifth—within a few hours.

I understand that the Denebian’s shell softened as a result. Me, I got off without any physical damage. But I woke in a fog, with the granduncle of all hangovers, and there wasn’t any question of my attending the dress rehearsal. I was going to have to stay in bed and consume miscellaneous wonder drugs to clear the impurities, congeners, and extraterrestrial fusel-oils out of my overhung head.

Dimly I remember May Loreen standing over my bed and murmuring, “Poor Nick! How do you feel?”

I didn’t answer, I just groaned.

She said, “Aren’t you going to come with me to the rehearsal?”

I groaned again. This time I opened my eyes and found them staring into a notable and highly famed bosom. I raised my glance, smiled feebly at May, and croaked, “Good luck.” Then I shut my eyes again; the light from the bulb overhead was pounding my seemingly-exposed optic nerve mercilessly.

Mentally I pictured that lovely body in its skimpy swimsuit perched at the edge of my bed while I lay crumpled up with self-inflicted ills, and I groaned again. Slitting one eye open, I caught a glimpse of May hip-wiggling her way out of my room. The door closed.

And, though I didn’t know it then, all sort of trouble was beginning.

I spent that night in total delirium. But I’ve managed to piece together everything that happened. And it went something like this:

May, after coming to pay her sympathy call to me, started down the hall, a veritable Aphrodite, on her way to the dress—or, in her case, undress—rehearsal. She rounded a corridor suddenly and was scared half out of her wits by two piercing shrieks of pure horror.

For a moment or two, she was too startled to think. Then she saw the source of the shrieks, two utterly terrified little Validusians, scrambling away from her in a panicky retreat, frightened practically to jelly by her sudden appearance.

I’ll give her credit for keeping her presence of mind. She saw they were wearing translator belts, so she smiled at them—that mega buck smile of hers—and said in English, “Don’t be afraid of me. I won’t hurt you.”

The two Validusians turned and looked at her suspiciously. May told me she was pretty revolted by their repulsiveness, but she remembered that she was here as an official representative of Earth, and she acted accordingly. She posed for them. And, slowly, the Validusians recovered their mental equilibrium.

“Forgive us for this display of terror,” they begged her. “The sudden sight of you, unexpected, without proper preparation…”

“I’m sorry I frightened you,” May said gently. She was a couple of feet taller than they were, and no doubt the experience of turning a corner and nearly colliding with a gigantic alien being, even one as lovely as May Loreen, had nearly finished them.

“We are the ones who must apologize,” said the Validusians. “You are the Earthwoman?”

“Yes, I am.”

“You are exactly as they said you were!” they exclaimed. “Even beyond the descriptions we received!”

“Why, thank you,” May said, flattered. “How sweet of you.”

She noticed that the aliens still weren’t coming very close to her. They looked like a couple of timid hobgoblins, huddling together near the wall.

But one of them said, “We were on our way to visit you when we—ah—met so abruptly.”

“To visit me?”

Yes, to visit her. It turned out that the pair of Validusians had a proposition for her.

They were Validusian movie producers, of all things—specialists in tridims. Ordinarily they dealt through underlings, but this was so important that they had come personally to attend to it. What they wanted, as they explained out there in the hall, was to cast May in a movie they were making.

May said, “Well, I’ll have to discuss it with Mr. Seferiades—he’s my agent…”

“Will it take long?”

“It all depends,” she said.

They were very anxious to get her services. So anxious, in fact, that they named a sum beyond rational comprehension as her fee. It sounded to May like the Terran global budget for an entire fiscal year. Even as I think about it now, I have to admit it was a devil of a lot of money: the biggest single offer we had ever received, as a matter of fact.

May was awed by the offer from the two Validusians. She was so awed that she excused herself, went dashing back to my bedroom, woke me up, and poured the whole story in my ears.

“And they’re offering fantastic money, Nick, fantastic! But they say they have to film me right away, and they want to know if it’s okay. What do you say, Nick? Isn’t it tremendous? All that money!”

They tell me that I opened my mouth and made a couple of incoherent sounds, and immediately dropped back into my alcoholic stupor. I wish I knew what those sounds were.

Whatever they were, May Loreen took them as an affirmative. She didn’t bother consulting a lawyer. She didn’t bother consulting anyone. She signed the contract, the first time she had ever signed a contract without my consultation, and then she went downstairs for the dress rehearsal.

Three days later, with the Fair in full swing, I woke up sober, finally. May told me all about the contract she had signed. She told me all about the check they had given her. She told me all about Validusian movie techniques. It seems the Validusian producers were in a hurry, and they had filmed their May Loreen sequences while I slept.

As she talked, May watched my expression changing.

“But—but—you said it was all right for me to make the film!” she protested.

“I said? Me? I’ve been doped up on Denebian joy-juice all week. I didn’t approve anything! I didn’t know anything about this! May, do you realize you may very well have signed yourself into bondage on this planet for the rest of your life? You—you…”

I fell back against my pillow, gasping for breath. A movie had been made. With May Loreen in it. And it had all been done behind my back.

I sobbed like a baby.

You know most of what happened after that. The two glib little Validusian producers got their film out in record time. The translation from Validusian is kind of awkward, but they tell me the name of the film is “The White-Skinned Hideous Horror From A Distant World.”

Yeah. A monster movie.

Starring May Loreen. As the monster.

When I found out what the score was, I did my best to buy up the film. I offered untold millions for the film, the negatives, the prints, even the studio. No go. The Validusians weren’t selling. They had a fortune in those film-cans, and they weren’t parting with it.

So “The White-Skinned Hideous Horror From A Distant World” is the biggest money-making hit of all time, even though there have been scads of imitators in the six years since it was made. The film is still making the rounds of the distant galaxies; the enthusiastic promoters are peddling it in Andromeda now, I hear.

The gimmick is that to the Validusianoid race, there’s no more hideous sight than a Terran. We look even uglier to them than they do to us. On first sight, a Terran scares the bejeepers out of one of them. And it’s the same on thousands of worlds.

Those Validusian producers were brave beings. They almost jumped out of their skins when May turned that corner. But they stuck to their guns and they got what they wanted.

They made the greatest horror film of all time, it seems. People queue up for miles to get into the theater, and when May appears, dressed in a revealing swimsuit that leaves very little to the imagination, it really rocks them. Hundreds have died of heart failure while watching the film. And still they go. They love it.

Well, you see what happened to us. Word got back to Earth fast that the paragon of Earthly beauty was a loathsome monster to half the universe. I never saw a bubble deflate as fast as May Loreen’s. She got out of the mess with a bank account up in seven figures, and managed to marry a childhood sweetheart and vanish from the public eye as fast as she could. Last I heard she was living in the Procyon system and had just had twins.

Me? I haven’t dared to go back to Earth yet, and I’m not going to. Half the people think I was guiled into letting her sign, and the rest think more rightly that I was out of commission while the Validusians sold May a bill of goods. Either way I look bad. So I salvaged a good hunk of my earnings and here I am on Zeno XII amid the palm-trees.

Why am I here? Simple. There’s a local law that prohibits the showing of motion pictures on Zeno XII. There are also no beauty contests here. As time goes by, maybe I’ll forget the whole thing. But I doubt it. Somehow I’m never going to live down the fact that in the distant reaches of the universe beings are gaping and screaming in marrow-frozen terror as the lovely form of May Loreen, the fairest flower of Terra, crosses the silver screen.

THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE SPACE!
(1958)

My days of writing stories around cover paintings for Bob Lowndes were just about at their end, though, because by late 1958 his science-fiction magazines were tottering toward oblivion like so many other magazines of the time, and as an economy move his publisher had eliminated the expense of cover paintings altogether. The February, 1959 Original was the last issue to use a color illustration. (I wrote the cover story for it, “Delivery Guaranteed,” one of my favorites, working from an Emshwiller cover showing a man and a woman in spacesuits, traveling through space aboard a wooden raft propelled by a medieval-looking cannon.) After that, for the remaining year or so of the Lowndes magazines’ survival, the covers were simple one-color jobs decorated with black-and-white illustrations extracted from the interior of the magazine.

Even though I now had to think up my own story ideas instead of having Ed Emshwiller do the work for me, I still brought Lowndes stories all through late 1958 and early 1959, until the axe fell on his magazines. One of them was this one, another playful piece quite different from the earnest adventure stories I had been writing for Super-Science Stories and before that for Imagination and Amazing Stories. Lowndes ran it in the May, 1959 issue of The Original under the Robert Silverberg byline.

From then on there would be no more space opera for me, and after a period of relative quiescence as a science-fiction writer in the early 1960s I would reemerge with such novels as To Open the Sky, The Time Hoppers, and Thorns by way of indicating that I was going to be traveling on a different path thenceforth. But I have no regrets over having written all those reams and reams of space-adventure stories back in the 1950s for Amazing, Super-Science, and their competitors. The more of them I wrote, the greater my technical facility as a writer became, something that would stand me in good stead later on. They provided me, also, with the economic stability that a young married man just out of college had to have. Nor was I wasting creative energy that might better have been devoted to writing more ambitious fiction. You would be wrong if you thought that I had stories of the level of “Sundance” or “Enter a Soldier” or “The Secret Sharer” in me in 1957. I may have been a prodigy, but that prodigious I was not, not in my early twenties. Beyond a doubt, though, I was capable back then of “The Ultimate Weapon” and “Planet of Parasites” and the rest of the works reprinted here. So—with an affectionate salute to my hard-working self of more than half a century ago—I bring them out of the pages of the long-vanished magazines that gave them birth and offer them once again to exemplify the sort of work I was doing when I first set out, with an odd mixture of trepidation and confidence, on what was destined to become a sixty-year career.

——————

I guess the root of all my trouble was that I just didn’t like cities. Crowds. Soot-cluttered air. Noise. Neon lights. Not that I’m a country boy, you understand; I was born in Tarrytown, right in the heart of little old Metropolitan New York. But that was a long time ago—thirty-five years, to be precise; it was 2612—and at the time all this happened, I hadn’t set foot on Earth in twelve years.

And that was fine with me, just fine. I was perfectly happy where I was—and everything would have kept on being fine, if some white-collar needlehead in the home office hadn’t taken it upon himself to decide that I had some vacation time due me.

I work for Transmat, Incorporated. My official job designation is Maintenance Technician First Class, and my salary is seven thousand Terran dollars per Standard Annum, adjustable to meet local economic conditions on whatever world I might be assigned to. For half of the twelve years of my employ, I had been stationed on Crawford IX, which is a pleasant Earthsize world some six hundred light-years from Sol. It’s inhabited by about two thousand Terran colonists and by various native forms of life, the most advanced of which is a kind of small monkey with blue skin, no hair, and a bright green rump.

My job was to look after the big matter transmitter, which was Crawford IX’s only link with the mother world. It would take about six hundred years, more or less, to send a message by radio from Crawford IX to Earth—assuming that any equipment on Earth was sensitive enough to make the pickup—and it would take eleven hundred years, approximately, for any conventional drive spaceship to make the trip one-way. A faster-than-light ship, naturally, could do the trip in a couple of weeks—but there’s the minor drawback that human beings can’t survive hyperspace travel. So…faster-than-light ships are sent out unmanned, bearing matter-transmitters, and are landed by self-guiding feedback controls. After that, travel between Earth and the colony-world is carried on by Transmat, simply, instantaneously, and safely.

My job involved sitting around in the Transmat office on Crawford for the eight transmitting hours of each day, making sure that nothing went wrong. A minor oscillation of the wavicle amplifier and a person might arrive at his destination inside out, you see. So I ran a daily check on the Thorson tube that powers the Transmat; I took heat readings; I sent through confirmations of functioning each day, before any transmission began.

The rest of the time I was free to loaf, and Crawford IX is ideally suited for loafing, with its unspoiled lakes and virgin forests, its clear blue skies and its utterly fresh air. There isn’t any industry on Crawford IX, you see; the colonists won’t permit it. Most of them are farmers—though there are a few composers, writers, and philosophers living here and sending their output via Transmat back to Earth for consumption there (and for pretty good money, too, may I add). Life is simple, life is pure on Crawford IX. Every night there’s a meteor shower that makes even old hands gasp for the very beauty of it. There are three moons that orbit in a dazzlingly complex pattern, and so at night no shadow ever stands still.

A good place to live, in other words. I liked it. I was looking forward to spending the rest of my life there, putting in my daily maintenance stint and then getting out into the fresh air with a book or a block-and-tackle (no newfangled magnetic dredges for me, thank you!) or a bottle of something easy on the gullet. And then, one balmy Fourth-month morning, after I had okayed transmission for the day, I scooped out the newly arrived morning mail and found, sitting on the top of the stack, a Transmat flimsy addressed to Mr. Edwin Reese, Maintenance Division.

Ed Reese is me. And the only mail I get is my paycheck, once a month—and not due for three more weeks.

I don’t have any parents, brothers, sisters, wives, or mistresses back on Earth who might want to write to me.

I flipped the “Acknowledge Receipt” lever to show I had got the stuff; I dumped the rest of the colony mail into the basket for the postmaster to sort out later; and I slit my letter open with shaky hands.

It was from the home office, New York.

It said:

A routine check of our records discloses that you have not applied for vacation leave since entering our employ in 2635. This oversight should be corrected at once. You are entitled to thirty-four Standard Weeks of accumulated leave, with full pay. Upon your acknowledgment a relief man will be sent out to handle your duties until your return from Earth.

Frowning, I switched on the vocotype and dictated an answer in my best official tones.

“I am in receipt of your communication regarding my accumulated vacation time, and wish to inform you that I have no wish to use this time on Earth. If it is possible for me to spend my vacation here on Crawford IX, send a relief man at once; otherwise, forget the whole thing and I’ll continue as before.”

I looked the flimsy over, checked it for spelling and punctuation, folded it, put the home office address on it, and deposited it in the pickup cubicle of the Transmat, along with half a dozen packages scheduled to go out in the morning mail. I yanked the lever; cool green flame filled the cubicle, and a moment later it was empty.

Forgetting all about the interchange of notes, I got going on my morning routine of maintenance. About two hours later, though, the bell rang, signaling an arrival. In the cubicle I found three cartons addressed to locals, a set of replacement bulbs I had ordered a week back, and a new note from the home office.

Be advised that the terms of your work contract require you to take regular vacations for the sake of continued efficiency. Through a bookkeeping error you have not been reminded of this clause till now, but the situation must cease. The quality of your work may be seriously impaired if you remain on continuous duty. We must insist that you leave Crawford IX as soon as practicable and return to Earth for a period of rest and diversion.

I scowled and made angry snarling noises deep in my throat. Dammit, I didn’t want a vacation. I didn’t want to go back to Earth.

I switched on the vocotype and started mentally composing my reply. I would say something haughty, to the effect that in twelve years—six of them in continuous stay on Crawford IX—I had a 100 percent safety record; that I detested Earth and loved the bucolic beauty of Crawford IX; that vacations, anyway, were for clods. I had a host of fine arguments, but none of them coped with the minor fact that, by contract, I was required to go back to Earth once a year for a change of scene, that I had been getting away with it all these years, and that I had no way of wiggling out of that clause now.

I shrugged and dictated a brief note allowing as how I was willing to be relieved, if the company insisted. And that was how I came to make my visit to Earth.

My relief man popped out of the Transmat about a week later. By that time, I had tidied up all my loose ends, paid my outstanding bills in town, and generally fortified myself for the departure.

The relief man was a kid of about twenty-five, with a pleasant grin and a lot of untidy blond hair. “All set to go?” he asked me.

“I suppose I am,” I admitted reluctantly. “Come on—let me show you around this place.”

I spent the next two hours briefing him. He knew his technical stuff, all right; I could see that there wouldn’t be any problems about his care of the Transmat. I showed him the place where he was to stay, gave him a few tips about how to get along with the colonists, told him where the fishing was best, and that was it.

As I stood on the lip of the Transmat cubicle I said, “And remember—don’t get yourself too comfortably ensconced here. I’m only going to be gone thirty-four weeks.”

“Don’t worry. I know I’m only a temporary replacement.”

“Just don’t forget it.” I stepped into the cubicle. I felt a little uneasy about making the trip, even though I knew there was no chance of trouble. It was six years since I had last made an interstellar Transmat jump. I was a little out of practice, you might say.

“Ready?” he called.

“Ready,” I said.

He threw the switch. I saw the green flame coming at me, but before I had a chance to close my eyes it was dying away again—only I was somewhere else. Somewhere else, six hundred light-years away. I was in a Transmat cubicle the size of a small room, and there were faces looking in at me from outside.

“Mr. Reese?”

“That’s right. Where am I?”

“New York office of Transmat, Incorporated, naturally. If you’ll come out of there, we can discuss your vacation plans with you…”

“Sure.” I realized with a tinge of embarrassment that I was shyly hanging back, inside the Transmat cubicle. I climbed out of it, a little uneasily, and found myself in a lush office.

Only “lush” is a rather feeble word for it. The furnishings could be contained in that term, but I can’t think of a one-word description of the walls and ceiling which would tell you anything. It took me a moment to realize that there were walls and a ceiling, because at first I thought I’d stepped out onto the surface of an alien planet, with no atmosphere whatsoever. Then I realized that where the carpeting ended, a three-dimensional mural gave the effect of weird terrain extending to a far horizon, and that the stars, moons, and planets visible all around were more of the same, worked into the ceiling. (A little while later, I found that the “sky” rotated to give more of the planetarium effect, only it was no sky that anyone had ever seen, in any galaxy.)

I gasped, then realized that I was breathing perfectly good, pure—well, good at least—air. Four men who looked, by their harried expressions and thinning hair, like middle-level executives, were smiling at me.

“Welcome back to Earth, Mr. Reese,” one of them said. “It was a terrible oversight, letting you go so long without a vacation…”

“I didn’t mind,” I said.

He ignored my interruption. “You have thirty-four weeks of sheer pleasure ahead of you, Mr. Reese. Here we have your vacation pay, with accumulated interest…”

He handed me a check. It was for just about one year’s salary. I stammered something incoherent.

“Naturally,” he went on, “you’ll find Earth a bit strange to you at first. There have been twelve years of progress and expansion since you last were here, and no doubt you’ll be a trifle unsettled at first…”

“Especially since,” I said, “I don’t know a blessed soul on the whole planet. I don’t have any family, and after twelve years I wouldn’t know where to find my old friends…”

He smiled. “Certainly. We understand the situation. Miss Dwyer, would you come in, please? This is Miss Dwyer of our secretarial staff. We’ve asked her to look after you for your first week on Earth, until you’ve grown accustomed to our ways once again…”

I gaped. Miss Dwyer, who entered from the left, was a tall, shapely girl with turquoise hair, golden eyes, and lovely, full, kissable—but turquoise—lips. She was wearing a blouse transparent in front—only the transparent area kept shifting so you couldn’t get a very long view of any one given segment of her anatomy—and a pair of skin-tight brown leggings. All in all, quite a sight. There was a good deal of casual and thoroughly non-erotic nudity on Crawford IX, but this sort of carefully calculated display had my hormones in a whirl within seconds. It’s one thing when a colonist woman peels to the buff for a refreshing afternoon dip—that happens all the time, and it’s done with such innocence that you stop noticing it pretty quickly, believe it or not. It’s an entirely different matter when a girl’s blouse plays a startling game of peek-a-boo with you.

“Hello,” she said. “I’m Carol Dwyer. You’re Ed Reese?”

I nodded.

At that point the four executives faded out of the room with cheery goodbyes, leaving me standing stupidly gripping my vacation paycheck and goggling at Carol Dwyer. If I had known that anything as winsome as this would be tossed in on my vacation, I wouldn’t have waited twelve years to take it. I said as much. Carol flushed prettily.

Carol said, “They tell me you haven’t been on Earth in twelve years.”

“That’s right. Six years on Monroney VII, and six years on Crawford IX.”

She chuckled. “I suppose current Earth fashions haven’t penetrated to such primitive places yet. You seem surprised at the way I’m dressed.”

“It is rather—ah—startling,” I said.

“Oh, turquoise is simply the color this year,” she said. “It may look a little strange to see a woman with turquoise hair now, but you’ll get used to it in a little while.”

“Um. Yes. Turquoise,” I said, keeping my eyes away from that tempting area of transparency that kept oscillating around her blouse.

She walked to the wall, nudged a peculiarly shaped projection of “rock,” and a section of the mural depolarized itself to become an ordinary window. As it cleared, looking even madder than the scene there before, she said, “I’ve got a lot of things lined up for this week. We’ll really do the town. You like sensie-shows? Scentoramas? There’s so much we…”

I made a hollow gasping sound.

“Something the matter?” she asked.

“Out—there,” I said. I pointed through the window at the chaos outside. We were on perhaps the eightieth floor of an enormous skyscraper. As far down as I could see, the air was crisscrossed with bridges strung from our building to others in the neighborhood. Far, far below motor vehicles whirled back and forth like mad little beetles. A sluggish river of many colors ebbed along—and I realized it was a mass of pedestrians jammed up against each other. Everything outside seemed noise, confusion, incoherence.

I resisted the temptation to race from the window back to the Transmat cubicle. Instead, with as much dignity as I could muster, I turned slowly around until my back faced the window.

I gulped. I was bathed with sweat. “It’s—pretty overwhelming, isn’t it? I guess I’m not used to cities any more.”

“Oh, it doesn’t take long to get used to them.”

“Maybe not.” My legs felt watery. “Can we—can we get a drink in here, though?”

One of the executives had a private bar in his office, and Carol returned, a few moments later, with a crystal-clear drink that might have been a martini, except that it didn’t taste anything like the martinis I remembered. But it had a marvelous calming effect on me.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Rocket fuel.”

“That’s a peculiar thing to call a cocktail.”

“It isn’t called rocket fuel; it is rocket fuel,” she said.

“Huh?”

“It’s an old alcohol-based propellant from the pre-Transmat days; they used to use it on the Moon runs before the Transmat was invented. Someone whipped up a batch recently for a gag and found out it was good to drink. It’s the rage all over, now. Want me to get you another one?”

“Ah—no thanks,” I said. I felt very strange inside. The drink had gone down smoothly enough, but the whole idea of drinking propellants didn’t agree with me.

I was fortified by the drink, though, enough not to mind leaving the cozy security of the Transmat Inc. office and heading out into the street. We took an elevator that dropped so long I thought we were in free fall—the tallest building on Crawford IX is four stories high—and then emerged in the howling madhouse that was the street. It was a lucky thing there was a company limousine waiting for us. More than five seconds’ exposure to the bedlam that is New York on an ordinary business afternoon would have snapped my mind for good.

Carol and I nestled back in the plush limousine and she started pushing buttons. There was no driver; five years ago, the automatic cars had been developed, she told me. All the old models were prohibited now from entering city limits, on the reasonable grounds that it was no longer possible for a mere human being to pilot a car through New York traffic and survive.

I’ll say this: I can’t accuse the company of niggardliness. They had provided me with first-class guide service, a handsome car, and unlimited leisure. Of course, they can afford it; as the transportation company that makes the universe go round, they have more money to throw away on petty cash than most corporations earn in a century. But I couldn’t appreciate their generosity very much just then; I was scared stiff.

Carol shepherded me around to the entertainment high-spots. We took in a scentorama, which is an art form a bit too subtle for my colony-blunted esthetic perceptions, and then we went to a sensie show, which didn’t require any esthetic perceptions at all. I’ll confess it seemed a little shocking to me. Carol seemed to enjoy it, though, without any qualms. It wasn’t subtle at all, unless you’re the type that thinks there’s something subtle about being made love to by a three-dimensional electronic field projection with tactile and olfactory presence.

From there, it was on to the Coliseum to watch android robots banging each other around in the gladiatorial contests. These, too, had been developed since my departure from Earth. The androids seemed to bleed real blood when they were wounded. I wasn’t amused.

And, everywhere we went, the people! Thousands of them; hundreds of thousands. All making noise, shouting, yelling, laughing. Women in peek-a-boo dresses and worse; women with turquoise hair and pink hair; women naked to the waist and covered with blue-and-yellow polkadots. The men were dressed more conservatively, but they went in a lot for beards cut in exotic shapes and dyed unlikely colors. Carol assured me it was all in the normal evolution of Terran fashions—that if I had been on Earth while these styles were developing, I’d take them quite for granted.

Maybe so. But all I knew was that Earth had become a wild and weird place where I wasn’t happy at all. Twelve years of rural peace had left me unprepared for this sort of life.

I absorbed two or three more cocktails during the course of the day, and they damped my nerves down so that I didn’t get a fit of shakes every time we stepped out of the limousine. It was reasonably late at night by the time the robot slaughter ended. I had every hope that my fair companion was willing to call it a day and take me back to the hotel room Transmat Inc. had rented for me. I said so.

She pouted prettily. “But the fun is just beginning, Ed!”

“Oh, no. We’ve been at it for seven hours, and you’re just beginning?”

“I promised some friends of mine I’d bring you over tonight. They’re having a party and they’re just dying to meet you!”

I groaned quietly. “Look, Carol, I’m dead tired, and all this excitement the first day…”

“This? Excitement? Don’t be an old fogie, Ed!”

“But I am pretty beat. Can’t we meet your friends some other night? I’m going to be here eight months, you know…”

“Oh, all right,” she said, but I could tell it wasn’t. “I guess we can skip it, if you’re so exhausted. But I told everyone you’d positively be there.”

I could tell from her voice that she’d hold it against me if I refused to go. So I shrugged and said I would. She melted at once, called me a dear, and snuggled up against me in the back of the car.

En route, I tried to make that transparent spot hold still. I got slapped; things hadn’t changed that much on Earth.

The party was being held at somebody’s apartment in Nyack, which was just about eighty miles from where we had watched the robots slice each other up. I settled back and tried to get some rest. The car traveled at better than 150 mph along an electronically controlled highway, and about half an hour later we were pulling up outside of a lofty apartment house.

It was eleven P.M. Ten hours ago, I had been on blissful Crawford IX. Now, with three or four slugs of rocket fuel under my belt, and a king-size headache already developing, I was enjoying “rest and diversion”—so they called it—on good old Earth. As we shot upward in what felt like a jet-propelled lift, I shut my throbbing eyes and tried to calm down. I couldn’t. Mournfully I told myself that after thirty-four weeks of this kind of life I would need a vacation—and a long one—on some planet far, far from civilization.

The party was being held in a four-room apartment, which Carol said was immense by current Terran standards. About fifty people were packed into the place, and they had all been there long enough to be well lit up.

The host, a lanky, civilized-looking fellow with a long purple beard and waxed red mustachios, threw his arm around Carol affectionately in a way that obscurely annoyed me, and gave me a big handshake. “So you’re the vacationing outworlder, eh! Well, we’ll help you have fun while you’re on Earth, friend! Drinks over there!”

An android bartender was mixing them. I asked for and got a rocket fuel, not daring to request any of the old and familiar drinks for fear I’d be considered old-fashioned. I put the drink down my throat in a hurry, too; all these people packed into so little space made me feel uneasily claustrophobic. Parties on Crawford IX have room to spread out.

I had another drink, and another. There was dance music playing; Carol dragged me out on the floor, gave me a sketchy idea of what the steps were, and led me through it. It seemed pretty much like an Aztec fertility rite to me, though that may have been just because the dance floor was so crowded. I began to get that warm, hazy feeling about the universe. If I didn’t drink, my nerves would be jangled by the raucous partying going all around, so I drank and gradually got accustomed to the racket. I began to feel mellow and relaxed. I also eyed some of the other women at the party with a good deal of interest. They were nifty, by any standard—but in my eyes Carol outpaced them all. I decided I had been quite lucky to draw her as my guide to Terran civilization.

I met some of the men. They seemed to be young execs-on-the-way-up, who made a lot of money but not enough to live within their means; they were uniformly good-looking, well-dressed, and (to my somewhat alcohol-soaked mind) witty. There was Monty Somebody and Alex Somebody and Dave Somebody—no one owned up to a last name—and around my eighth rocket fuel of the evening they began to wake up to the fact that I was a Transmat technician.

“Hey!” Monty said. “I got a great idea! Let’s you and me and Dave and our friend Ed here go down to the Transmat office next block and have some fun.”

“Great idea,” Alex said.

“Great,” Dave echoed.

“Swell,” someone else said.

Before I knew what was happening, I was being propelled through the crush and out of the apartment, flanked by Monty, Alex, Dave, and Somebody Else. I caught sight of Carol wig-wagging desperately at me from across the floor; then the door closed, and I was outside.

The fresh air did a little to sober me, but—alas!—not nearly enough. Like five wobbly-legged musketeers we went careening down the street, singing songs rich with the heritage of centuries, and turned the corner into a business district.

There was a Transmat office on the corner. Transmat offices are open round the clock, but there isn’t much of a staff in them late at night. There was just one clerk in this one, sitting behind the counter reading a book, when we came rollicking in.

I still had only the dimmest notion of why we had come here; and I don’t have a very clear recollection of the sequence of events. I recall Monty and Alex grabbing the unfortunate clerk, and dragging him into the back office where the Transmat machine itself was. I remember Dave saying, “You know how to work this thing, don’t you?” and I remember saying I did.

“Okay,” Monty said. “Just for a starter, let’s send this twerp off to Sirius.”

Obligingly I set up the coordinates while the clerk jabbered in terror.

“Heave-ho,” they cried in unison, and tossed him into the Transmat cubicle. I pulled the lever; the clerk vanished in green flame. “What now?” I asked.

“Us next,” Alex chorded. “We wanna go on vacations for nothing!”

“Sure, sure,” I said. “Leave it all to me!”

With the calmness of utter intoxication, I set up Transmat coordinates from memory. Alex clambered into the cubicle and I sent him off to Feinberg XII, a jaunt of nine thousand light-years. At standard company rates, a trip like that would set a person back five thousand dollars or more, but tonight everything was on the house.

“Me next,” Monty cried—and off he went to Betelgeuse XXIX.

I was setting up coordinates that would ensure Dave’s safe arrival on Hardecanute IV when the front door of the office burst open and a swarm of people entered. I recognized Carol, the host, and half a dozen other parties. There were also three men in the traditional garb of policemen, and I suppose I thought they were fugitives from a masquerade ball.

“Ed!” Carol shrieked. “What have you been doing? Where are Monty and Alex?”

“On vacation,” I said with a snigger. “And now it’s Dave’s turn. This is fun!”

“Good Lord!” someone yelled. I turned my back on the crowd and finished setting up the coordinates. As I nudged the last dial into place, I felt a hand grasp my shoulder tightly.

I glanced around. It was one of the policemen. “That’s about enough of this stuff, bud,” he snapped.

I wriggled loose from his grasp. Dave gave him a push. He grunted and tumbled into the Transmat cubicle.

I yanked the lever; Carol shrieked; and the cop departed for Hardecanute IV, thirteen thousand five-hundred light-years from Earth.

I collapsed.

If there is a Supreme Being who orders the events of this universe, I devoutly pray that He will not afflict me with more such mornings-after as I experienced the next day.

I was in jail, for one thing.

A speaker grid set in the ceiling said, “A visitor for Prisoner Reese.”

Radiant bars of force that had been hovering in the air a few feet from my nose blinked out long enough to permit Carol Dwyer to step into my cell; then the force-field returned.

Carol was wearing an off-the-shoulder blouse that was off-the-bosom as well, at least so far as her left breast was concerned. She wore mildly-translucent trousers that might have been sprayed on; but the effect was totally lost on me. I surveyed her out of bloodshot eyes, and said finally, “Okay. When do they execute me?”

“You really went wild last night, didn’t you?”

“Did you come here to rub it in?”

She sat down facing me. I put my head in my hands.

“I didn’t realize how secluded from civilization you’d been,” she said. “If I had known how small the colony is on Crawford IX, we would have gone a lot slower in introducing you to Terran culture again.”

I merely groaned. “How much was the damage? And have they got everyone back yet?”

“The policeman, the company clerk, and Monty are back. There isn’t any word from Alex yet, but I suppose when he sobers up he’ll explain to the authorities, and they’ll send him back.”

“What’s it all going to cost?”

“Upward of seventy-five-thousand dollars, by economy-class rates.”

“Ten years’ pay!”

“Poor Ed,” she said soothingly. “Why don’t you try to get some more sleep? Everything’s going to work out okay.”

“Glad you think so,” I said sourly.

She left, and I tucked my aching head under my arms and slept some more. A few hours later she was back, with the news that Alex, very overhung, had checked in from Feinberg XII shortly before.

She also had some good news.

“I had a talk with some of the company brass,” she said, “and they’re going to let you off with a light reprimand. They’ll absorb the cost of the rumpus last night.”

“What?”

She nodded. I felt my headache ebb away. “I argued that it wasn’t fair to hold you responsible for the impact of Terran civilization on you, after all the years you’d spent in the back woods. After all, it was partly their fault for letting you go so many years without a vacation. So they decided to forgive you—and to let you spend the rest of your vacation wherever you like.”

As you see, it all worked out pretty well, if you don’t count the four-day hangover I had after that party. A Transmat lawyer took care of the disturbance-of-the-peace charge; the costs of shipping four human beings to distant parts of the galaxy were written off by the company; and I was shipped back to Crawford IX post-haste, to finish the rest of my thirty-four week layoff roaming the woods in peace.

Oh, yes, Carol came with me. It was time for her vacation, you see, and she decided to try a relatively peaceful place, for once. So she tried Crawford IX, and she liked it fine, just fine. Liked it enough to apply for permanent residency, as Mrs. Ed Reese.

So now it’s business as usual for me: I run the Transmat office on Crawford IX, with Carol helping out a bit, and when the time comes, I’m going to take my vacation—right here on Crawford IX. Carol is a little homesick for Earth, but not homesick enough to really want to go back to all that noisy foofaraw. Earth may set the fashions for the rest of the galaxy, and Earth may make more money than any other world. It’s an exciting place, in its way, only it’s not for me—or for Carol, any more. We like it just fine here. As they say, there’s no place like space!

Table of Contents

- Teaser
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Table of Contents
- Introduction
- THE INQUISITOR (1956)
- THE ULTIMATE WEAPON (1956)
- HARWOOD’S VORTEX (1956)
- QUICK FREEZE (1956)
- SIX FRIGHTENED MEN (1956)
- PUPPETS WITHOUT STRINGS (1957)
- A TIME FOR REVENGE (1957)
- HOUSEMAID NO. 103 (1957)
- RESCUE MISSION (1957)
- PLANET OF PARASITES (1957)
- SLAVES OF THE TREE (1957)
- FRONTIER PLANET (1957)
- THE ALIENS WERE HATERS (1958)
- THE TRADERS (1958)
- WATERS OF FORGETFULNESS (1958)
- YOU DO SOMETHING TO ME (1958)
- THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE SPACE! (1958)